With the ISIS heartland in Iraq and Syria imploding, its support groups in the periphery, as well as rival groups such as al Qaeda, are gathering momentum.

With the likely dwindling of ISIS power, will there be a reverse defection where the groups that previously left al Qaeda rejoin the movement? Or, will the so-called Islamic State reinvent and refocus on weakly governed sub-regions and countries?

The epicenter of international terrorism started to shift from Afghanistan to Iraq after US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and reached its peak after the Syrian uprising in 2011.

But, as it suffers in its heartland, it is very likely that ISIS will grow in size, strength and influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

… Rohan Gunaratna is a Professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technology University, and head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, Singapore. He is the author of 16 books including Inside al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror. The opinions expressed here are solely his.