ed al-Shishani in joining ISIS and those who continued to operate independently in the JMA under a new leadership.
In May 2014, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered al-Nusra Front to stop attacks on its rival ISIS. In June 2014, after continued fighting between the two groups, al-Nusra's branch in the Syrian town of al-Bukamal pledged allegiance to ISIS.
In January 2014, The Daily Telegraph said that Western intelligence sources believed that the Syrian government had made secret oil deals with ISIS and al-Nusra Front, saying that the militants were funding their campaign by selling crude oil to the regime from the oilfields which they had captured.
The Syrian government did not begin to fight ISIS until June 2014, despite it having had a presence in Syria since April 2013, according to Kurdish officials.
As Islamic State (2014–present)
On 29 June 2014, ISIS removed "Iraq and the Levant" from its name and began to refer to itself as the Islamic State, declaring the territory under its control a new caliphate and naming Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as its caliph. On the first night of Ramadan, Shaykh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani al-Shami, spokesperson for ISIS, described the establishment of the caliphate as "a dream that lives in the depths of every Muslim believer" and "the abandoned obligation of the era". He said that the group's ruling Shura Council had decided to establish the caliphate formally and that Muslims around the world should now pledge their allegiance to the new caliph. The declaration of a caliphate has been criticized and ridiculed by Muslim scholars and rival Islamists inside and outside the occupied territory.
By that time, many moderate rebels had been assimilated into the group. In August 2014, a high-level IS commander said, "In the East of Syria, there is no Free Syrian Army any longer. All Free Syrian Army people [there] have joined the Islamic State". The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that the Islamic State recruited more than 6,300 fighters in July 2014 alone, many of them coming from the Free Syrian Army.
Analysts observed that dropping the reference to region widened the group's scope, and Laith Alkhouri, a terrorism analyst, thought that after capturing many areas in Syria and Iraq, ISIS felt this was a suitable opportunity to take control of the global jihadist movement.
A week before it changed its name to the Islamic State, ISIS had captured the Trabil crossing on the Jordan–Iraq border, the only border crossing between the two countries. ISIS has received some public support in Jordan, albeit limited, partly owing to state repression there, but has undertaken a recruitment drive in Saudi Arabia, where tribes in the north are linked to those in western Iraq and eastern Syria.Raghad Hussein, the daughter of Saddam Hussein, now living in opulent asylum in Jordan, has publicly expressed support for the advance of ISIS in Iraq, reflecting the Ba'athist alliance of convenience with ISIS and its goal of return to power in Bagdad.
In June and July 2014, Jordan and Saudi Arabia moved troops to their borders with Iraq, after Iraq lost control of, or withdrew from, strategic crossing points that had then come under the control of ISIS. There was speculation that al-Maliki had ordered a withdrawal of troops from the Iraq–Saudi crossings, in order "to increase pressure on Saudi Arabia and bring the threat of Isis over-running its borders as well".
In July 2014, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau declared support for the new caliphate and Caliph Ibrahim. In August, Shekau announced that Boko Haram had captured the Nigerian town of Gwoza. Shekau announced: "Thanks be to God who gave victory to our brethren in Gwoza and made it a state among the Islamic states". Boko Haram launched an offensive in Adamawa and Borno States in northeastern Nigeria in September, following the example of the Islamic State.
On 12 September 2014, there were reports that the moderate Free Syrian Army rebels, who have been been backed by the United States with weapons and training, had signed a "non-aggression" agreement w