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Abstract
Although the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is seen as a novel manifestation of Islamic extremism, it is in fact the latest, albeit perhaps the most effective, of a long line of revivalist movements in the Islamic and the Arab worlds. Its motivations – hisba and jihad – differ little from its predecessors and its ambitions – to create a state organised in accordance with the precepts of the Islamic caliphate – reflect a long-standing Islamic ambition. It differs, of course, in terms of the sophistication of its political and military strategies, which mirror the contemporary complexities of the world in which it operates, but its objectives recall long-standing Islamic ideals, even if articulated in radically brutal and extremist ways. More importantly, perhaps, ISIS or Da’ish, to give it its Arabic sobriquet, reflects the enormous degree of resentment inside the Middle East at the ways in which Western powers have intervened in regional affairs over recent years, particularly their support for regimes and economic systems there that have betrayed, in the popular imaginary, the essential principles of social justice that lie at the root of Islamic vision of ideal social order. Indeed, in many respects, its analysis of the world in which it operates and of the objectives it seeks differ little in essence from those any other resistance and rejectionist movement, whether religious or sectarian. More specifically, it has been the sectarian conflict that resulted from the reversal of political order in Iraq as a result of the 2003 American-led invasion that has driven the success of the movement in capturing widespread Sunni support. Whether it can manage the complexities of the administration of a state remains open to question.
Notes
1. Harling, ‘IS Is Back in Business’.
2. After Hess, The Forgotten Frontier.
3. See Monroe, Britain’s Moment in the Middle East.
4. Algeria achieved its independence in 1962 through a revolutionary war while South Yemen saw an end to British occupation in 1968 and the Arab Gulf states ended indirect British rule in 1971 when the British government terminated Britain’s presence ‘East of Suez’. See Cleveland and Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East, 253–322.
5. This is excellently captured in Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
6. Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 201–31.
7. See Huntington, ‘Democracy’s Third Wave’, 27–9; and Huntington, The Third Wave.
8. ‘For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East – and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people’: Rice, ‘Speech at the American University of Cairo’.
9. Aboullouz, ‘Salafism in Morocco’, 169–70.
10. Mabrouk, ‘Tunisia’, 62–4.
11. The terms were first coined by Muhammad Faraj in his book, translated by Johannes Jansen, The Neglected Duty.
12. Gerges, The Far Enemy, 44–9: Mabrouk, ‘Tunisia’, 66–7.
13. Jahiliyya: the pre-Islamic state of ignorance throughout the Arab world; now applied to regimes and peoples in the Islamic world which have strayed away from the true doctrines of Islam. The term was popularised by Sayyid Qutb in his pioneering text, Milestones, 6.
14. The CPA had been formed on 16 April 2003 under Jay Garner as the body to administer Iraq after the Saddam Hussain regime had been dismembered by military action. Garner, a former general with experience in Kurdistan, was replaced on 11 May 2003 by Paul Bremer III, a career diplomat who was close to the neoconservative group that, by then, dominated the Bush administration.
15. Bremer, Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority Order No 1; Bremer, Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority Order No 2.
16. See Bremer and McConnel, My Year in Iraq, 57.
17. Andrews, ‘Envoy’s Letter Counters Bush’.
18. The decrees not only dissolved the army (200,000 men) in which the officer corps was largely Sunni and the Republican Guards, estimated at up to 80,000 men which were entirely Sunni in membership; they also banned from state employment the four top tiers of the Ba’ath Party, itself a predominantly Sunni organisation, a decision that affected the administration, health, and educational sectors. Although the Party was estimated in 1988 to have up to 1.5 million supporters and sympathisers (10% of the total population), its membership was far more restricted at an estimated 30,000 persons then (0.2% of the population: see Metz, Iraq) and at around 160,000 in September 2002 (32,000 cells with an average of 5 members in each). Overall, up to 10% of the Sunni Arab population was affected, over 100,000 of them soldiers.
19. See Article 53A and 53C of the Transitional Administrative Law, issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority on 8 March 2004 and coming into force on 28 June 2004.
20. The legitimacy of the constitution-making process has been contested and was opposed at the time by Ayatollah Ali Sistani. See Arato, Constitution-making Under Occupation, 117–37.
21. Nasser, ‘The Iraqi Resistance’. This is taken from an interview by Abdulazim Manaf with Izzat Ibrahim ad-Duri, published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Mawqif al-Misri, 26 May 2008.
22. Knights, ‘The JRTN Movement’, 2.
23. The soldiers of ‘Sham’ – Greater Syria, the Levant.
24. Burke, Al-Qaeda, 234–7.
25. Whitaker, ‘Revealed: al-Qa’ida’s plan’. In fact, Fouad Hussein, who befriended Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in prison in Jordan and discussed the issue with Shaykh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the spiritual leader of AQI, argued in 2005 that al-Qa’ida had a 20- year plan: (1) to provoke the United States into attacking it (2000–2003); (2) to transform itself into a broader movement based on Iraq (2003–2006); (3) to spread the struggle into Syria, Israel, Turkey, and Jordan (2007–2010); (4) to destroy autocratic Arab regimes (2010–2013); (5) to create an Islamic state/caliphate (2013–2016); and (6) and (7) total confrontation with the West and victory by 2020: Zelin, ‘Jihad 2020’.
26. Dougherty and Ghareeb, Historical Dictionary of Iraq, 534.
27. Muqtada as-Sadr was a scion of the illustrious as-Sadr family of Shi’a leaders which had been decimated by the Saddam Hussain regime. His uncle, Muhamad Bakr as-Sadr, had been one of the founders of the ad-Dawa’ party in 1957 and had been executed by the regime in 1980, along with his sister, Bint al-Huda. His own father had also been killed by the regime in 1999: see Cockburn, Muqtada al-Sadr, 27–43, 105. Opposed to him was another leading Shi’a family, the al-Hakim, which had fled Iraq after the repression of the Shi’a between 1977 and 1980, moving to Iran where they founded the SCIRI: see Hooglund, ‘Iran, Wary Neutral’, 174–7. The antagonism between the two groups arose from their varying fortunes after 1980 – one still in Iraq and savagely repressed, the other in exile in Iran: see Herring and Rangwala, Iraq in Fragments, 14.
28. See Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, 129.
29. Roggio, ‘More Than 375 Suspected Al Qaeda Fighters’.
30. ‘Profile: Islamic State’.
31. His nom de guerre is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Qurayshi al-Hussaini, thus indicating his claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad. His given name is Abu Du’a Ibrahim bin ‘Awad bin Ibrahim al-Badri ar-Radawi al-Hussaini as-Samara’i, which indicates that he is a native of Samarra. He is said to have studied in the Islamic University of Baghdad where he gained a PhD in Islamic sciences. With colleagues he created a resistance group, Jama’at Jaysh Ahl as-Sunna wa’l-Jama’ah, in 2005–06 which joined MSMI shortly after its creation. He joined the shura committee of the movement and later succeeded Abu ‘Abdullah al-Baghdadi in May 2010. See https://pietervanostaeyen.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-a-short-biography-of-the-isis-sheikh.
32. See note 23.
33. Itani, ‘Losing Syria and Iraq to Jihadists’, 2.
34. Benotman and Blake, Jabhat al-Nusra.
35. Zelin, ‘Al Qaeda’.
36. Bennett-Jones, ‘How Should We Think About the Caliphate?’
37. Atassi, ‘Iraqi al-Qaeda chief rejects Zawahiri orders’.
38. Sly, ‘Al-Qaeda Disavows’.
39. ‘Two Arab countries fall apart’.
40. ‘Islamic State fighter’.
41. Christie, ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq’.
42. Bakier, ‘Ex-Baathists turn to Naqshbandi Sufis’.
43. Human Rights Watch, Annual Report for 2011: Iraq.
44. Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, 2 January 2013.
45. Al-Jawoshy, Schwirtz and Adnan, ‘Vice President Of Iraq’.
47. Cockburn, ‘Battle for Baghdad’.
48. Military equipment abandoned by Iraqi security forces; rumours that it had also captured $500 million in currency and specie from the Central Bank in Mosul appear to have been untrue.
49. Fayad, ‘Mosul One Month On’.
50. ‘Sunni Rebels’.
51. Mr al-Maliki was appointed a vice-president of Iraq instead so that his capacity for meddling in the future of the country is by no means ended! See Matthews, ‘Iraq Illusions’.
52. This is the military wing of the Yekiti or the PYD (Partiya Yekitiya Democrat – the Democratic Union Party). The PYD was created in 2003 as an affiliate of Turkey’s PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê – Kurdistan Workers Party), which had been displaced into Syria. It is, therefore, regarded by the Turkish government as a terrorist organisation. See Olivieri, ‘In Syria, Kurds Are Fighting Their Own War’; and Davies, ‘Crisis in Syria’.
53. Boghardt, ‘the Terrorist Funding Disconnect’; Boghardt, ‘Saudi Funding Of ISIS’.
54. Tabler, ‘ISIL Could Become the Voice of Sunnis’.
55. Ould Mohamedou, ‘ISIS and the Deceptive Rebooting of al-Qaeda’.
56. It should be noted that ISIS’s religious rhetoric and practices have been condemned as heterodox and irreligious by some of those that were the original inspiration of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – Abu Qatada and Shaykh al-Maqdisi chief among them: See al-Maqdisi, ‘This Is Some of What I Have and Not All of It’; and al-Maqdisi, ‘And Be Not Like Her Who Undoes the Thread’.
57. See, for details of Internet use, ‘Spies Say US Techs Are Terrorists’ Networks’; and, for detailed reporting of activities, Khalaf and Jones, ‘Selling Terror’.
58. It is worth noting that many of those who flock to its ranks have not been regarded by its cadres as viable fighters and the majority of them (nine out of ten) have returned, particularly to Western Europe disillusioned by their experiences. See Maher and Neumann, ‘Offering Foreign Fighters’.
59. See, for example, Atwan, Islamic State; Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State; Dorsey, Thinking the Unthinkable.
60. Doosidar, ‘How Not to Understand ISIS’.
61. Legrand, The Colonial Strategy of ISIS in Syria.
62. ‘A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’ (Weber, ‘Politics As a Vocation’); as opposed to Hegel’s concept of the ‘actuality of the ethical idea’ (Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, proposition 257). The Islamic concept of the state is that of the entity that ensures the proper public practice of Islam by properly enforcing shar’ia: see Lambton, State and Government in Medieval Islam, vi.