To be sure, dissenters in the organization were unconvinced of this claim, arguing that the loss of its lands, prompted by its oppression and extremism, had turned ISIS into a farce. Some have even urged a total revolt against al-Baghdadi, calling for ISIS members in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere to rise up against him.

But these dissenters, many of whom have now fled to northwest Syria and Turkey, evidently have failed to convince ISIS’s true believers—those who buy into its propaganda hook, line, and sinker. They are the ones who really matter here, because it is they who stand to buoy the movement in the months and years to come.

For them, terror attacks such as the Sri Lanka bombings, an attempted operation in Saudi Arabia, and a border assault in the Democratic Republic of Congo last week are all evidence of ISIS’s greater victory. To the faithful, these events show that the group was as successful in expanding its reach and capabilities as its leaders claim it to have been. However, large-scale attacks are exceedingly difficult to pull off and are therefore unreliable as a way of signaling the group’s power. So ISIS has been cultivating another key “proof” of its continuing relevance: On its own organizational chart, it has been untethering its caliphate brand from Syria and Iraq.

This effort began in earnest last summer, when the group compressed its numerous wilayat (“provinces”) in Syria and Iraq into just two, wilayat al-sham and wilayat al-’iraq. It then applied the same treatment to its affiliates in Yemen and Libya. Farther-flung branches—for instance, in Somalia and Southeast Asia—were promoted to wilayat status too. This was not just some obscure lexical shift. ISIS was proactively reframing Syria and Iraq as just two of many parts of its overarching global caliphate, something that made it much easier to argue that the group would remain alive and well in the rest of the world, even if its proto-state lost all its land.

We’ve seen this strategy before. Back in 2004, the Islamic State’s predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI, was militarily defeated in Fallujah—a city it had been occupying for six months alongside other insurgents. At the time, the group’s then leader, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, framed territorial defeat as a tactical setback in the short term, but a strategic victory in the long term. He asserted that Fallujah mattered most because of what the battle for the city said about AQI. It put AQI on the map, he claimed, showing it to be a viable force capable of fighting the “crusaders” head-on and globalizing its ideology. That, he said, was priceless. Sure, AQI was materially weakened, but that didn’t matter, because at the very same time it had been ideologically strengthened.

This is how ISIS is trying to get through its territorial tribulations now, and this is why we have to expect more activity from it, not less. It doesn’t really matter whether ISIS’s leaders actually believe what they are spouting. What matters is that ISIS’s true believers are buying into it. If they continue to do so, the group stands a good chance of surviving through this next, post-territorial phase of its existence.