It took over 15 years of both hard and soft power from the international community to eventually sort out the situation on the ground in Bosnia. [...] Unfortunately, solving the problems in Syria will take at least that long given the underlying Sunni-Shiite conflict overlaid by the atrocities of the past five years.

Hundreds of young Muslim women from the west who travelled to Syria to marry fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, known as Isis, are part of what experts call, the “soft-power” of the militants. Isis has used social media to attract new recruits and build an image of the group as a reincarnation of the just and righteous state to which many Muslims aspire.