Sidney Jones, an International Crisis Group analyst, noted the Paris attacks drew praise from some of the estimated 500-700 Indonesians fighting for Isis in Syria. Bahrun Naim, an ex-prisoner and jihadi intellectual, posted a blog entitled Lessons from the Paris Attacks (Pelajaran dari Serangan Paris). He urged would-be jihadists in Indonesia to study the planning, targeting, timing, coordination, security and courage of the Paris teams, she said.

Until recently, at least, there was no known Isis structure in Indonesia. But Jones predicted in November that rivalry between two Syria-based Indonesian Isis commanders, Bahrum Syah and Abu Jandal, could bring a Paris-style attack to Jakarta. As in Europe, jihadis returning from the Middle East may also be implicated in today’s events.

Without Isis’s physical elimination, there seems scant prospect of an end to its terror campaign. As Atlantic commentator Graeme Wood has noted, Isis does not want or seek peace with its enemies. There will be no truce or ceasefire. Isis sees itself as a harbinger of the end of times. Before the apocalypse arrives, it has pledged to destroy all 200 million Shia Muslims, whom it regards as heretics, all other Muslims who by accepting secular governance confirm their apostasy, and the “army of Rome” (the west).

Isis in Syria and Iraq continues to rely on foreign recruits to boost its numbers. But the perpetuation of its global terror campaign depends on attracting affiliates and sympathisers across the Muslim world and beyond, partly by example and partly through social media and the internet.

As Isis’s international notoriety grows, so too may its unifying appeal to the fanatics and fundamentalists, the disaffected and the dispossessed, and the merely criminal of the Sunni Muslim world. Its overriding ambition is plain: to be the first terrorist organisation with truly global reach.