Ambassador Rajendra Abhyankar was India’s High Commissioner to Cyprus and Ambassador to Syria (1992-96), Turkey and Azerbaijan. He retired from the Indian Foreign Service in August 2005 after more than 36 years of multi-faceted diplomatic experience of people, places and issues. His talk at ORF Mumbai on 18 July 2014 focussed on the current situation in Syria and Iraq, the violence unleashed by the self-styled ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS) and the dramatic declaration of a ‘caliphate’ by its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.