The Islamic terrorist group ISIS seems like it rised overnight in June 2014, however, the group has existed since the early 1990's under different names and various shapes. The group has transformed from a political and religious ideal into a death cult.
The group began over two decades ago with a Jordanian named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He arrived in Afghanistan wanting to be a mujahideen in 1989, but was too late to fight. He left back home and remained a figure in international terror for the next decade. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan and set up terrorist training camps. In 2001, he fled to Iraq after the fall of Talaban. In 2004, his campaign of suicide bombings across Iraq had made him a superstar of the jihadi movement and even won the endorsement of bin Laden, whom he joined forces with forming al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI.

Zarqawi's ambitions were cut short in June 2006 when US Air Force dropped a pair of 500 pound bombs on his hideout, killing him. In 2011, when US troop withdrawals was complete, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was running the group, he took Zarqawi's tactics and supercharged them. He sent suicide bombers to police officers, military offices, checkpoints, and recruiting stations. Soon after, Baghdadi renamed the group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), to reflect his greater ambitions.
In early 2014, ISIS planned a bolder strike by taking of Mosul which marked a new phase in ISIS' evolution. It was now willing and able to seize and control land, not simply sending suicide bombers. The group also widened their targets. In August 2014, ISIS beheaded a U.S journalist, James Foley and threatened the life of another U.S journalist. In September 2014, two people are killed, Steven Sotloff, a U.S journalist, and David Hanes, a British aid worker.
In 2014, ISIS and Baghdadi were dominating headlines around the world in ways Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could hardly have imagined.