JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN SOCIAL SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN SOCIAL SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES DOI: https://doi.org/10.15520/jassh.v7i4.595 JASSH 7 (4), 1682-1688 (2021) Received 10 Mar 2021 | Revised 28 Mar 2021 | Accepted 15 Apr 2021 | Online Available 27 Apr 2021 RESEARCH ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS ISSN (O) 2795-9481 THE RISE OF RADICAL TERRORISM AND THE ISLAMIC STATE IN IRAQ AND SYRIA Ewelie C. Justice 1 * Emmanuel Wonah 2 Abstract This paper examined the rise of radical terrorism and the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The broken politics in the Middle East and the fraying de-legitimization of state institutions arising from structural imbalance in the political system has resulted in the spike of radical terrorist organization like the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The paper adopted the secondary sources of data. To give theoretical explanation to the subject matter, two theories were employed. First, the Frustration-Aggression theory offers explanation that inequalities gives expression to aggressive outcome. Second, is the Clash of civilization theory identifies the new fault line of conflict along world civilizations. The paper found out that one of the deepest underlying sources of Muslim anguish and frustration lies in the dramatic decline of Arab civilization. The paper therefore recommended that the war against terrorism will be unending if the fundamental causes and grievances are not addressed. Key words: Terrorism, Radical Terrorism, Extremism, Middle East, Islamic State. 1 INTRODUCTION T he ever changing crisis in the Middle East lay credence to the fact that violent con- flict remains the dominant problem facing the international community. The exacerbating con- flicts in the region at first appears to be independent cases but a deeper reflection shows common features mostly a combination of ethno-religious and state resentment. In Iraq and Syria, the tussle is amongst the Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Turkmen among others. These divisive tendencies are further heightened and tend to escalate to conflict as a result of the irrec- oncilable contradictions arising from the economic, political and religious structures which depict the institutions of the state. The result of this underper- forming state institutions and perceived frustration has resulted in the emergence of different extrem- ist groups who have found safe havens in the Mid- dle East. In the midst of this conflict, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or otherwise known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levante (ISIL) has grown to power and subsequently proclaiming itself a “Caliphate” by 29, June 2014. Thus ISIS got stronger and was increasingly able to fight back and challenge the state including its monopoly of the use of force. 2 CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION TERRORISM Terrorism like everything else comes in waves (Rap- 1 Department of Political and Administrative Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Port Harcourt. P.M.B 5323 Port Harcourt, Nigeria. 2 Department of Political and Administrative Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Port Harcourt. P.M.B 5323 Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Address correspondence to: Ewelie C. Justice, Department of Political and Administrative Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Port Harcourt. P.M.B 5323 Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Supplementary information Te online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.15520/jassh.v7i4.595) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Ewelie C. Justice et al., 2021; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Tis Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. INNOVATIVE JOURNAL 1682