if you decide to focus on the second one, you would need to choose one specific place.  For example, if you decide to focus on unrest in Syria and/or Iraq, you could focus on the rise of ISIS; why people are joining ISIS; why they are doing what they are doing, etc. For instance, you could use differential opportunity theory, which has been used in the literature to explain why people join gangs and why gangs engage in illegal activities.  I had a student one semester who used broken windows theory to explain political instability and the ongoing violence in Iraq; you could definitely use that theory for the ISIS crisis as well, considering the immense instability in Iraq and Syria in particular.  Strain theory is also another possibility.  Remember that each of these theories has strengths and weaknesses; you will need to discuss these at some point in the paper.  Since they are related to functionalism, strain theory and differential opporunity theory would have the strength that they would focus more on structural factors.  On the other hand, broken windows theory, falling under symbolic interactionism, might highlight more of the micro-level reasons for the rise/perpetuation of ISIS and related violence.  These are just some of my ideas; you could definitely use either social disorganization theory or game theory to explain unrest in any of the three countries.  A clear strength with game theory is that it can be used to explain the responses of various governments to instability in all three of these countries.