An incisive narrative history of the Islamic State from the 2005 master plan to reestablish the Caliphate to its quest for Final Victory in 2020 Given how quickly its operations have achieved global impact it may seem that the Islamic State materialized suddenly In fact al-Qaeda's operations chief Sayf al-Adl devised a seven-stage plan for jihadis to conquer the world by 2020 that included reestablishing the Caliphate in Syria between 2013 & 2016 Despite a massive schism between the Islamic State & al-Qaeda al-Adl's plan has proved remarkably prescient In summer 2014 ISIS declared itself the Caliphate after capturing Mosul Iraq-part of stage five in al-Adl's plan Drawing on large troves of recently declassified documents captured from the Islamic State & its predecessors counterterrorism expert Brian Fishman tells the story of this organization's complex & largely hidden past-and what the master plan suggests about its future Only by understanding the Islamic State's full history-and the strategy that drove it-can we understand the contradictions that may ultimately tear it apart