article_snippet.sent: (CNN)It's easy to be anxious about the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
article_snippet.sent: And although it's important to start with the caveat that ISIS is indeed trying to scare and confuse us, I took away some tentative lessons from speaking with the people who have traveled inside the minds of ISIS.
article_snippet.sent: First, ISIS is clearly about religion -- ISIS version of radical Islam -- but ISIS is also about power.
article_snippet.sent: There is increasing evidence that the military backbone of ISIS is made up not by a group of Islamic zealots, but rather high-ranking officers from Saddam Hussein's army -- Baathists who were at least ostensibly secular.
article_snippet.sent: An internal ISIS report detailing ISIS organizational structure was reported on last week in the German weekly Der Spiegel.
article_snippet.sent: Next, ISIS presents ISIS as a global organization, but ISIS has thrived because of a local cause.
article_snippet.sent: ISIS has gained territory, cash and recruits primarily because of the rage and rebellion of the Sunnis of Iraq and Syria, who believe ISIS must fight the Shiites to secure the Shiites own survival and strength.
article_snippet.sent: The reality is that that Sunni cause is going to endure for some time.
article_snippet.sent: The United States has been successful in The United States tactical battles against ISIS and has managed to push ISIS back from many of The United States gains in Iraq.
article_snippet.sent: But the Sunnis of the region will remain in rebellion and the Sunni-dominated areas will remain in turmoil -- chaos that ISIS will be able to capitalize on this chaos.
article_snippet.sent: In the long run, ISIS might very well find that ISIS greatest foes lie within ISIS so-called Caliphate.
article_snippet.sent: The few reports that are emerging from areas controlled by ISIS suggest that, unsurprisingly, people do not like living under a brutal, theocratic dictatorship.
article_snippet.sent: unsurprisingly, people do not like living under a brutal, theocratic dictatorship live in fear, and even those who chose it as an alternative to Shiite rule are growing disenchanted.
article_snippet.sent: In this respect, ISIS is like other radical Islamic groups, such as the Taliban -- the Taliban have an allure in the abstract, but once the Taliban are actually governing in the Taliban medieval, barbarous manner, the allure fades and the disenchantment builds.
article_snippet.sent: Remember, no one has ever voted ISIS into power anywhere.
article_snippet.sent: Is ISIS a threat to the West?
article_snippet.sent: But The group's leaders ambitions appear to be mostly centered on The group's leaders Arab enemies, on building a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
article_snippet.sent: With that in mind, The group's leaders seek such a confrontation and hope that the United States will come to the Middle East and fight The group's leaders on The group's leaders terms, on The group's leaders terrain.
article_snippet.sent: Yet no matter how one rates the level of the threat ISIS poses, the group has changed the nature of terror.
article_snippet.sent: The leaders of ISIS have recognized that above all, The leaders of ISIS are a messaging machine, which in turn becomes a recruitment machine.
article_snippet.sent: Unfortunately, as long as those young Muslim men, scattered across the globe, are attracted to ISIS and stream to ISIS cause, the group presents the world with a danger that is impossible to fully assess but is one that grows by the month.
highlights_snippet.sent: ISIS has thrived because of a local Sunni cause in Syria and Iraq .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: Leaders of ISIS have recognized Leaders of ISIS are a messaging machine, Fareed Zakaria says .