...Syrian conflict.

Being now engaged in a war on two fronts nonetheless. Did they all the sudden grow in size?

They feel little loyalty to al-Malaki, who has acted as a dictator...

That were over there training the new Iraqi Army had less than stellar things to say about them. Maybe 10% had any interest in actually receiving any training, said the hardest part in dealing with the rest of them was keeping them from constantly banging each other.

They have been a major element in the Syrian fighting, and trace to some of the early resistance in Sunni Iraq.

They are far, for that matter, from the major component of the forces now in motion in Sunni Iraq. Tribal militia and Ba'athist remnants are providing most of the man-power and support.

They're one of the reasons why we were (and are) hesitant to arm rebels in Syria--the "good" rebels (FSA) weren't able to defeat both the "bad" rebels (ISIL/ISIS, Al Nusra, AQ) and Assad's military at the same time, and a whole warehouse full of American military supplies fell into the "bad" rebels' hands last winter.

on Assad being overthrown, as far as I'm concerned. We have a habit of wanting to overturn governments in the middle east and leave unstable power vacuums (Iraq, Libya). There was no guarantee that American lethal aid would have made a difference anyway in arming rebels, because these "moderate" rebels would have had to be super-organized and effective AND have popular backing to take over all of Syria--very doubtful they could have been successful, and most likely the weapons would have ended up in ISIS or Assad's hands. The Hillary/Petraeus/Panetta team screwed Obama with convincing him that Assad had to go, and Obama knows it.

ISIS has been heavily involved in the Syrian civil war, and has been in the news for a long time.

My bad, maybe.

Not sure what their goals are beyond establishing an Islamic extremist territory, like the Taliban in Afghanistan/Pakistan. So for that reason, they haven't been the boogeyman in the news here.

Lots of folks keep tuned into global issues by reading a variety of international sources on the Web.
Lots of countries have english online newspapers..Der Spiegel, for one.

You might want to check out the DU Foreign Affairs group, btw.

I take a medium road..I skim headlines of various sites, then when I want to know more, I search for background info.
from 5 or so sites...including, believe it or not, CIA Fact Book.
Here is the page they have for Ukraine:
http://www.ciaworldfactbook.us/europe/ukraine.html
toss in a llittle Wiki info., check out Al Jazeera, and Foreign Affairs Magazine, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/

Soon you have sources from several points of view, and you can figure out what makes sense.

And I've known about them for a couple of years, as a major player in Syria.

You have to pay attention to the names of the players and have a scorecard. It's rather like saying that you didn't know a team was playing in the World Cup or in the NFL until they are matched against the one team you're rooting for. It's not just "my guys" versus "somebody else whose name I can't be bothered with."

The tussle between the "moderates" and the "Islamists" in Aleppo a situation that's still nto resolved, involved ISIS. The attacks by Turkey across the border against Islamists in Syria that got too close to the Turkish border involved ISIS.

Social media used to recruit new wave of British jihadis in Syria
Messages and photos posted on sites such as Twitter and Facebook provide inside track on motives and activities

In this war perhaps more than any other, these young men are exploiting the immediacy and worldwide reach of social media, smartphone apps and Skype to converse, share experiences, recruit would-be fighters and raise money from home with amateur propaganda posters and videos.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/15/social-media-recruit-british-jihadis-syria-twitter-facebook

But they'd been around a lot longer.

If ISIS had a facebook page.

See my post #7.

A lot of extremist groups have facebook pages and twitter accounts.

2. Mainstream news is a joke.

effort to take out the Iraqi government. ISIS is just part of the story...

This is yet another reason to stay the frak out of it.