SOURCE:
http://www.cfr.org/iraq/islamic-state/p14811?cid=nlc-dailybrief-daily_news_brief--link24-20150407&sp_mid=48391511&sp_rid=YmN2YXN1bmRocmFAaG90bWFpbC5jb20S1
CFR Backgrounders
The Islamic State
By
Zachary Laub,
Cole Bunzel examines the Islamic State’s ideology in a Brookings Institution paper.
The UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria reports on developments in areas inaccessible to most Western journalists.
Graeme Wood examines the Islamic state’s religious beliefs, motivations, and strategy in the Atlantic.
Peter Harling, of the International Crisis Group, and the Economist’s Sarah Birke argue that a strategy centered on air strikes may, perversely, bolster the very conditions that gave rise to the Islamic State.
Counterterrorism strategies that beat back al-Qaeda make a poor model for defeating the Islamic State, Audrey Kurth Cronin writes in Foreign Affairs.
The Brookings Institution’s Daniel L. Byman and Jeremy Shapiro assess the threat of foreign fighters attacking the United States and Europe.
http://www.cfr.org/iraq/islamic-state/p14811?cid=nlc-dailybrief-daily_news_brief--link24-20150407&sp_mid=48391511&sp_rid=YmN2YXN1bmRocmFAaG90bWFpbC5jb20S1
CFR Backgrounders
The Islamic State
By
Zachary Laub,
April 1, 2015
Introduction
The self-proclaimed Islamic State is a militant movement that has conquered territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, where it has made a bid to establish a state in territories that encompass some six and a half million residents. Though spawned by al-Qaeda’s Iraq franchise, it split with Osama bin Laden’s organization and evolved to not just employ terrorist and insurgent tactics, but the more conventional ones of an organized militia.
In June 2014, after seizing territories in Iraq’s Sunni heartland, including the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, the Islamic State proclaimed itself a caliphate, claiming exclusive political and theological authority over the world’s Muslims. Its state-building project, however, has been characterized more by extreme violence than institution building. Beheadings of Western hostages and other provocative acts, circulated by well-produced videos and social media, spurred calls in the United States and Europe for military intervention, while mass violence against local civilians, justified by references to the Prophet Mohammed’s early followers, has been a tool for cementing territorial control. Widely publicized battlefield successes have attracted thousands of foreign recruits, a particular concern of Western intelligence.
The United States has led an air campaign in Iraq and Syria to try to roll back the Islamic State’s advances. Iraqi national security forces have allied with Shia militias to push it back on the ground. Meanwhile, militant groups from North and West Africa to South Asia have professed allegiance to the Islamic State.
The United States has led an air campaign in Iraq and Syria to try to roll back the Islamic State’s advances. Iraqi national security forces have allied with Shia militias to push it back on the ground. Meanwhile, militant groups from North and West Africa to South Asia have professed allegiance to the Islamic State.
What are the Islamic State's origins?
The group that calls itself the Islamic State can trace its lineage to the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 2003. The Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi aligned his Jama’at al-Tawhidw’al-Jihad with al-Qaeda, making it al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
Zarqawi’s organization took aim at U.S. forces (PDF) theirinternational allies, and local collaborators. It sought to draw the United States into a sectarian civil war by attacking Shias and their holy sites, including the Imam al-Askari shrine, in 2006, and
provoking them to retaliate against Sunnis.
Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike that year.
The emergence of the U.S.-backed Awakening, or Sons
of Iraq, coalitions further weakened AQI as Sunni
tribesmen reconciled with Prime Minister Nouri al-
Maliki’s Shia-led government.Zarqawi’s successors
rebranded AQI as the Islamic State ofIraq and later, the
Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS),referring to a
territory that roughly corresponds withthe Levant,
reflecting broadened ambitions as the 2011 uprising
inSyria created opportunities for AQI to expand.
The group isknown to its followers as il-Dawla
(“the State”) and itsArabic-speaking detractors as
Daesh, the Arabic equivalent of ISIS.
The Islamic State’s current leader, the self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, spent time in U.S.-run prisons in Iraq. Cells organized in them, along with remnants of Saddam Hussein’s ousted secular-nationalist Ba’ath party, make up some of the Islamic State’s ranks.
Zarqawi’s organization took aim at U.S. forces (PDF) theirinternational allies, and local collaborators. It sought to draw the United States into a sectarian civil war by attacking Shias and their holy sites, including the Imam al-Askari shrine, in 2006, and
provoking them to retaliate against Sunnis.
Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike that year.
The emergence of the U.S.-backed Awakening, or Sons
of Iraq, coalitions further weakened AQI as Sunni
tribesmen reconciled with Prime Minister Nouri al-
Maliki’s Shia-led government.Zarqawi’s successors
rebranded AQI as the Islamic State ofIraq and later, the
Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS),referring to a
territory that roughly corresponds withthe Levant,
reflecting broadened ambitions as the 2011 uprising
inSyria created opportunities for AQI to expand.
The group isknown to its followers as il-Dawla
(“the State”) and itsArabic-speaking detractors as
Daesh, the Arabic equivalent of ISIS.
The Islamic State’s current leader, the self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, spent time in U.S.-run prisons in Iraq. Cells organized in them, along with remnants of Saddam Hussein’s ousted secular-nationalist Ba’ath party, make up some of the Islamic State’s ranks.
How has the Islamic State expanded?
Sunni disenfranchisement in both Iraq and Syria created a vacuum that the Islamic State has exploited. In Iraq, a Sunni minority was sidelined from national politics after the United States ousted Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003. In Syria, a civil war erupted in 2011 pitting the ruling minority Alawites, a Shia offshoot, against the primarily Sunni opposition, spawning sectarian violence.
In Iraq, Maliki cemented his own power as U.S. forces pulled out in 2010 by practicing what was largely denounced as a divisive politics that excluded Sunni political rivals and gave Shias disproportionate benefits.
The Awakening councils effectively came to an end as Maliki rejected the inclusion of many of their militiamen in the security forces, an integration process advocated by U.S. forces, and arrested some of its leaders. In 2013, the security forces put down broad-based protests, contributing to the Sunni community’s sense of persecution.
Maliki purged the officer corps of potential rivals. Combined with desertion and corruption, this contributed to the Iraqi military’s collapse as Islamic State militants overran Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June 2014.
Syria’s 2011 uprising helped in the Islamic State’s expansion. Some analysts have even described a tacit nonaggression pact between Islamic State militants and Bashar al-Assad regime, with each focused on fighting the main anti government opposition forces for territorial control. As extremists came to dominate territory in Syria’s north and east and overran more moderate forces, Assad claimed it validated his argument that only his government could mount an effective opposition to “terrorists”—a term he has applied to opposition forces of all stripes.
The northern Syrian city of Raqqa is often cited as the Islamic State’s de facto capital. There, the group has established some new institutions (e.g., judicial, police, economic) and coopted others (e.g., education, health, and infrastructure) to provide residents a modicum of services and consolidate its control over the population.
After rapid expansion through Iraq in much of 2014, the Islamic State seemed to run up against its limits as it pushed up against majority Kurdish and Sunni Arab regions, where it faced greater resistance from Iraqi forces and local populations along with U.S.-led air strikes. Its militants have failed to advance on Baghdad or the Kurdish capital, Erbil, and lost a considerable amount of territory to Iraqi-government-aligned forces by early 2015.
In Iraq, Maliki cemented his own power as U.S. forces pulled out in 2010 by practicing what was largely denounced as a divisive politics that excluded Sunni political rivals and gave Shias disproportionate benefits.
The Awakening councils effectively came to an end as Maliki rejected the inclusion of many of their militiamen in the security forces, an integration process advocated by U.S. forces, and arrested some of its leaders. In 2013, the security forces put down broad-based protests, contributing to the Sunni community’s sense of persecution.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper estimated in February 2015 that more than thirteen thousand foreign fighters joined Sunni Arab antigovernment extremist groups, including the Islamic State, in Syria.
Maliki purged the officer corps of potential rivals. Combined with desertion and corruption, this contributed to the Iraqi military’s collapse as Islamic State militants overran Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June 2014.
Syria’s 2011 uprising helped in the Islamic State’s expansion. Some analysts have even described a tacit nonaggression pact between Islamic State militants and Bashar al-Assad regime, with each focused on fighting the main anti government opposition forces for territorial control. As extremists came to dominate territory in Syria’s north and east and overran more moderate forces, Assad claimed it validated his argument that only his government could mount an effective opposition to “terrorists”—a term he has applied to opposition forces of all stripes.
The northern Syrian city of Raqqa is often cited as the Islamic State’s de facto capital. There, the group has established some new institutions (e.g., judicial, police, economic) and coopted others (e.g., education, health, and infrastructure) to provide residents a modicum of services and consolidate its control over the population.
After rapid expansion through Iraq in much of 2014, the Islamic State seemed to run up against its limits as it pushed up against majority Kurdish and Sunni Arab regions, where it faced greater resistance from Iraqi forces and local populations along with U.S.-led air strikes. Its militants have failed to advance on Baghdad or the Kurdish capital, Erbil, and lost a considerable amount of territory to Iraqi-government-aligned forces by early 2015.
What is the Islamic State's relationship with al-Qaeda?
The group became an al-Qaeda franchise by 2004 but has since broken with bin Laden’s organization and become rivals. The split reflects strategic and ideological differences. In Syria, the groups compete for power and recruits among many militant forces.
Al-Qaeda focused on attacking the United States and its Western allies, whom it held responsible for bolstering Arab regimes it considered apostate, like those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. For bin Laden, the establishment of a caliphate was the end goal—but one that was generations off.
In 2005, bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri castigated AQI’s Zarqawi for indiscriminately attacking civilians, particularly Shias. Zawahiri believed that such violence would alienate Sunnis from their project—a concern borne out by the success of the Awakening movement.
A more thorough rupture came after the start of Syria’s uprising. Baghdadi publicly rebuffed the private ruling of Zawahiri, who had succeeded bin Laden as al-Qaeda’s chief, that the emergent Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, remain independent, and Baghdadi’s organization restricted to Iraq. Since then, the two groups have at times fought one another on the Syrian battlefield.
Al-Qaeda focused on attacking the United States and its Western allies, whom it held responsible for bolstering Arab regimes it considered apostate, like those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. For bin Laden, the establishment of a caliphate was the end goal—but one that was generations off.
In 2005, bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri castigated AQI’s Zarqawi for indiscriminately attacking civilians, particularly Shias. Zawahiri believed that such violence would alienate Sunnis from their project—a concern borne out by the success of the Awakening movement.
A more thorough rupture came after the start of Syria’s uprising. Baghdadi publicly rebuffed the private ruling of Zawahiri, who had succeeded bin Laden as al-Qaeda’s chief, that the emergent Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, remain independent, and Baghdadi’s organization restricted to Iraq. Since then, the two groups have at times fought one another on the Syrian battlefield.
How is the Islamic State financed?
Oil extraction constitutes the Islamic State’s largest source of income. The group is estimated to produce forty-four thousand barrels a day from Syrian wells and four thousand barrels a day from Iraqi ones. The group then sells the crude to truckers and middlemen, netting an estimated $1 to $3 million a day. By selling well below market price, traders are incentivized to take on the risk of such black-market deals. The oil-starved Assad regime, Turks, and Iraqi Kurds—all putative enemies of the Islamic State—are rumored to be among its customers.
The Islamic State is believed to extort businesses in Mosul, netting upwards of $8 million a month. Christians who have not fled the city face an additional tax levied on religious minorities. Protection rackets bring in revenue while building the allegiance of some tribesmen. Exploitation of natural resources and trafficking in antiquities also contribute to the Islamic State’s coffers.
Ransom payments have provided the Islamic States upwards of $20 million in 2014, including large sums for kidnapped European journalists and other captives, according to the U.S. Treasury. The United States maintains a no-concessions policy, at odds with its European counterparts.
The Islamic State pays its fighters monthly wages estimated to be upwards of $350, more than rival rebel groups or the Iraqi government offer, and as much as five times what is earned by ordinary Syrians in territory controlled by the Islamic State.
The Islamic State is believed to extort businesses in Mosul, netting upwards of $8 million a month. Christians who have not fled the city face an additional tax levied on religious minorities. Protection rackets bring in revenue while building the allegiance of some tribesmen. Exploitation of natural resources and trafficking in antiquities also contribute to the Islamic State’s coffers.
Ransom payments have provided the Islamic States upwards of $20 million in 2014, including large sums for kidnapped European journalists and other captives, according to the U.S. Treasury. The United States maintains a no-concessions policy, at odds with its European counterparts.
The Islamic State pays its fighters monthly wages estimated to be upwards of $350, more than rival rebel groups or the Iraqi government offer, and as much as five times what is earned by ordinary Syrians in territory controlled by the Islamic State.
Does the Islamic State pose a threat beyond Iraq and Syria?
The Islamic State group’s claim to be a caliphate has raised concerns that its ambitions to capture and administer territory have no geographic limits. Militants in Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan have taken up the Islamic State’s trappings and sworn allegiance to Baghdadi. It is unclear, however, whether these self-proclaimed provinces of the Islamic State should be considered true outposts of Baghdadi’s organization, or rather, local militants looking to capitalize on the Islamic State’s notoreity as they compete with rival groups in local contests for power.
The conflicts in Syria and Iraq have attracted foreign fighters by the thousands. Middle Eastern and Western intelligence agencies have raised concern that their citizens who have joined the fighting in Iraq and Syria will become radicalized and then use their passports to carry out attacks in their home countries. U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper estimated in February 2015 that more than thirteen thousand foreign fighters joined Sunni Arab antigovernment extremist groups, including the Islamic State, in Syria, and that more than 3,400 of more than twenty thousand foreign Sunni militants hailed from Western countries. (Estimates of the group’s total forces range from around thirty thousand to more than a hundred thousand.)
Another concern is Turkey’s five-hundred-mile border with Syria, through which foreign fighters have entered and exited the conflict. Turkey kept its border open as it sought the overthrow of Assad. But as the Islamic State crowded out other armed opposition groups and came up to the Turkish border, international pressure mounted for Turkey to seal the border. In September 2014, the UN Security Council mandated that states take measures to restrict the transit of foreign fighters (PDF).
Some analysts believe the threat of foreign fighters returning home to launch attacks is inflated. By March 2015, only two attacks on Western soil had been linked to the Islamic State; they may have been carried out by sympathetic “lone wolves” rather than sanctioned by the leadership.
The conflicts in Syria and Iraq have attracted foreign fighters by the thousands. Middle Eastern and Western intelligence agencies have raised concern that their citizens who have joined the fighting in Iraq and Syria will become radicalized and then use their passports to carry out attacks in their home countries. U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper estimated in February 2015 that more than thirteen thousand foreign fighters joined Sunni Arab antigovernment extremist groups, including the Islamic State, in Syria, and that more than 3,400 of more than twenty thousand foreign Sunni militants hailed from Western countries. (Estimates of the group’s total forces range from around thirty thousand to more than a hundred thousand.)
Another concern is Turkey’s five-hundred-mile border with Syria, through which foreign fighters have entered and exited the conflict. Turkey kept its border open as it sought the overthrow of Assad. But as the Islamic State crowded out other armed opposition groups and came up to the Turkish border, international pressure mounted for Turkey to seal the border. In September 2014, the UN Security Council mandated that states take measures to restrict the transit of foreign fighters (PDF).
Some analysts believe the threat of foreign fighters returning home to launch attacks is inflated. By March 2015, only two attacks on Western soil had been linked to the Islamic State; they may have been carried out by sympathetic “lone wolves” rather than sanctioned by the leadership.
What is U.S. strategy vis-à-vis the Islamic State?
U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has assembled a coalition of some sixty countries to “degrade and ultimately defeat” the Islamic State. The U.S.-led coalition includes the European Union and several Sunni Arab states.
In Iraq, the United States has deployed nearly three thousand uniformed personnel, armed the KRG paramilitary (the peshmerga), and led airstrikes against Islamic State forces. As of early March 2015, the coalition had carried out nearly 1,500 airstrikes, 70 percent from U.S. forces. Meanwhile, Shia militias have done much of the fighting on the ground, making up for the hollowed-out Iraqi army. Militias backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are playing a critical role in Iraq’s March 2015 push to oust Islamic State forces from Tikrit. Another militia involved in the fight against the Islamic State is loyal to the nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army battled U.S.-led forces early in the occupation.
The Obama administration insisted that Maliki step down and be replaced by a less polarizing politician as a condition of military assistance. His successor, Haider al-Abadi, pledged to practice more inclusive politics and bring Shia militias aligned with Iraqi security forces under the state’s control. But rights groups allege that these militias have evicted, disappeared, and killed residents of Sunni and mixed neighborhoods in the wake of operations to root out Islamic State militants.
Acknowledging these abuses, Sadr temporarily froze his militia.
Though opposition to Islamic State advances would seem to put Washington and Tehran on the same side, both sides have downplayed the possibility of tactical coordination in Iraq. Military measures that Sunnis perceive as bolstering hostile regimes could backfire, driving members of the community to cooperate with the Islamic State. The United States has also carried out air strikes in Syria in a bid to roll back Islamic State territorial gains. The United States does not have a fighting partner on the ground there, while political efforts to end the broader civil war (international negotiations and, more recently, a UN-backed effort to broker local cease-fires) have failed.
Some critics in Washington argue that the Obama administration’s failure to follow through on its rhetorical support for rebel forces in Syria with training and arms put them at a disadvantage against both Shia pro-government elements like Hezbollah and Sunni extremist groups, which grew strong with the support of Tehran and deep-pocketed Gulf donors, respectively.
In September 2014, the U.S. Congress authorized the Pentagon to train and equip “appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition” to attack Islamic State forces—but not the Assad regime and its allies. In early 2015, the United States began its program to train five thousand troops a year for three years.
Some critics of the train-and-equip mission have called it too small and slow to change the battlefield balance. Also problematic, argues CFR Fellow Micah Zenko, is that the Obama administration has not articulated if and how it will commit U.S. forces to protect these groups if they come under attack by the Islamic State or pro-regime fighters.
In Iraq, the United States has deployed nearly three thousand uniformed personnel, armed the KRG paramilitary (the peshmerga), and led airstrikes against Islamic State forces. As of early March 2015, the coalition had carried out nearly 1,500 airstrikes, 70 percent from U.S. forces. Meanwhile, Shia militias have done much of the fighting on the ground, making up for the hollowed-out Iraqi army. Militias backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are playing a critical role in Iraq’s March 2015 push to oust Islamic State forces from Tikrit. Another militia involved in the fight against the Islamic State is loyal to the nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army battled U.S.-led forces early in the occupation.
The Obama administration insisted that Maliki step down and be replaced by a less polarizing politician as a condition of military assistance. His successor, Haider al-Abadi, pledged to practice more inclusive politics and bring Shia militias aligned with Iraqi security forces under the state’s control. But rights groups allege that these militias have evicted, disappeared, and killed residents of Sunni and mixed neighborhoods in the wake of operations to root out Islamic State militants.
Acknowledging these abuses, Sadr temporarily froze his militia.
Though opposition to Islamic State advances would seem to put Washington and Tehran on the same side, both sides have downplayed the possibility of tactical coordination in Iraq. Military measures that Sunnis perceive as bolstering hostile regimes could backfire, driving members of the community to cooperate with the Islamic State. The United States has also carried out air strikes in Syria in a bid to roll back Islamic State territorial gains. The United States does not have a fighting partner on the ground there, while political efforts to end the broader civil war (international negotiations and, more recently, a UN-backed effort to broker local cease-fires) have failed.
Some critics in Washington argue that the Obama administration’s failure to follow through on its rhetorical support for rebel forces in Syria with training and arms put them at a disadvantage against both Shia pro-government elements like Hezbollah and Sunni extremist groups, which grew strong with the support of Tehran and deep-pocketed Gulf donors, respectively.
In September 2014, the U.S. Congress authorized the Pentagon to train and equip “appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition” to attack Islamic State forces—but not the Assad regime and its allies. In early 2015, the United States began its program to train five thousand troops a year for three years.
Some critics of the train-and-equip mission have called it too small and slow to change the battlefield balance. Also problematic, argues CFR Fellow Micah Zenko, is that the Obama administration has not articulated if and how it will commit U.S. forces to protect these groups if they come under attack by the Islamic State or pro-regime fighters.
Additional Resources
Cole Bunzel examines the Islamic State’s ideology in a Brookings Institution paper.
The UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria reports on developments in areas inaccessible to most Western journalists.
Graeme Wood examines the Islamic state’s religious beliefs, motivations, and strategy in the Atlantic.
Peter Harling, of the International Crisis Group, and the Economist’s Sarah Birke argue that a strategy centered on air strikes may, perversely, bolster the very conditions that gave rise to the Islamic State.
Counterterrorism strategies that beat back al-Qaeda make a poor model for defeating the Islamic State, Audrey Kurth Cronin writes in Foreign Affairs.
The Brookings Institution’s Daniel L. Byman and Jeremy Shapiro assess the threat of foreign fighters attacking the United States and Europe.
More on this topic from CFR
- Next Steps for U.S. Foreign Policy on Syria and Iraq Author: Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies
- Iraqi President Fuad Masum on ISIS and Iraq's Challenges Speaker: Fuad Masum, President, Republic of Iraq
Presider: Michael R. Gordon, National Security Correspondent, New York Times - Transcript: Foreign Affairs Media Call on Iraq and ISIS Speakers: Steven Simon, Senior Fellow, The Middle East Institute, and Barak Mendelsohn, Associate Professor, Political Science Department, Haverford College
Presider: Gideon Rose, Editor, Peter G. Peterson Chair, Foreign Affairs Magazine
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