Post withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011, the country was left without a sufficiently viable military, thereby leaving the doors open for militants
Sharan Lal
October 1, 2014: The origin of IS can be traced to the US-Iraq war in 2003 when the US invaded Iraq and toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. Some time in 2004, a group of Sunni militants retaliated to the attacks on Iraq by the US and its allies. Later that year, the militant group pledged allegiance/loyalty to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda and officially came to be known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
Post the Saddam regime, Iraq has had a Shiite prime minister Mr Nouri al-Maliki from May 2006 till as recently as August 2014. Maliki did numerous things that possibly enabled AQI’s rise: he used Iraq’s anti-terrorism laws to imprison Sunni dissenters/protesters, prohibited certain Sunni Muslims (from the Saddam era/government) from holding office in the government/military and aligned himself with non-governmental Shia militias (i.e. unofficial military forces led by Shia Muslims). Over time, the AQI highlighted these acts of Maliki to various Sunni groups/tribes in order to merge with them, thereby growing AQI’s numbers. Post this, AQI changed their name to Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).
There was a phase when the extremist/brutal acts of violence on Iraqi civilians by ISI made it lose a lot of support. Many ISI militants even changed sides and fought along the side of the US and its allies. By 2009, the US forces believed that a majority of ISI leaders, recruiters and financers had either been killed or captured. However, this victory was short-lived as once the ISI appointed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as its new leader (also its current leader and self-proclaimed ‘Caliph’), the group was replenished and strong again as a lot of officers who served Saddam’s Ba’athist party were appointed in leadership positions.
Post the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011, the country was left without a sufficiently viable military, thereby leaving the doors open for the hostile takeover of several regions by ISI militants. As expected, ISI militants capitalised on Iraq’s political and military weakness and began spreading their wings.
How did IS occupy regions in Syria?
The civil war in Syria is one of the most important reasons why ISIS grew to be so strong. The Syrian civil war, originally known as the Syrian Uprising, is an ongoing armed conflict. The unrest began in the early spring of 2011 with nationwide protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s government, whose official forces responded with violent crackdowns. The conflict gradually transitioned from non-violent protests to an armed rebellion. This armed rebellion/opposition consists of various groups that were formed during the course of the conflict, primarily the Islamic Front (i.e. a merger of seven rebel groups involved in the Syrian civil war) and the Free Syrian Army (i.e. a group of rebels comprising mainly of officers and soldiers who previously worked for the official Syrian Armed Forces).
In 2013, IS capitalised on the growing tension between armed rebels and the Assad government and made rapid military gains in Syria, eventually taking over the Syrian city of Raqqa — the first provincial capital to fall under rebel control. Post this, IS which was till now referring to itself as ISI begun referring to itself as Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) or Islamic State of Levant (ISIL).
Is IS still part of Al-Qaeda?
When IS invaded Syria, it announced that it was going to merge with Jabhat Al-Nusra, an ‘approved’ sub-set of Al-Qaeda, which was fighting the Assad regime in Syria alongside other rebel groups. However, the Jabhat Al-Nusra’s leader rejected the merger and claimed that IS was attempting a hostile take-over of Jabhat Al-Nusra. After several months of confusion, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s head since the death of Osama bin Laden, ruled against the merger, but Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi rejected the ruling. This led to months of power struggles between ISIS and Al-Qaeda, ultimately resulting in Al-Qaeda breaking all ties with ISIS. ISIS now occupies close to a third of Syria’s and a quarter of Iraq’s land area and is believed to be more radical in its approach than Al-Qaeda ever was.
Who funds IS?
According to the International Business Times, IS has recently been labelled the world’s best-resourced terror organisation. Several Gulf countries have been accused of funding IS extremists in Iraq and Syria. A lot is speculated about the monetary support that IS has received from donors and sympathisers, particularly in the wealthy Gulf states of Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
However, its most important revenue source right now is the smuggling of oil from the oil fields it controls in Syria and Iraq. It has been reported to control about a dozen oil fields along with multiple oil refineries. Estimates of revenue vary, but a range of $1million to $2 million a day is considered reasonable. In order to keep the oil supplies flowing, IS has retained the technical workers at these oil operations/refineries, but replaced top management with its own people.
Separately, the organisation has also received huge finances from smuggling, extortion and other crimes. It is believed that IS has extorted taxes from businesses in the areas occupied by them in Iraq and Syria, amounting to millions a month. The greatest financial triumph/achievement for IS came when it captured Mosul, Iraq in June 2014 and looted the city’s banks. The estimate of the amount of cash that IS has gained access to is approximately £1.2 billion.
Lastly, IS also controls the territory where 40 per cent of Iraq’s wheat is grown; it is supposedly milling grain and selling wheat flour in the open/local market. Given that IS generates most of its funds locally as against depending on external donations, it is very difficult for any external parties/countries to financially cripple IS or stifle/block its funding.
Where does IS source its arms and ammunition from?
The weapons used against the US and other coalition forces during the Iraq insurgency were those taken from Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of weapons spread across Iraq. IS has further strengthened its military capabilities by capturing large quantities/variety of arms and ammunition during the Syrian civil war. The weaponry includes surface-to-air missiles, anti-tank weapons, guns, battle tanks, armoured cars/trucks, anti-aircraft guns and multiple rocket launchers.
When it captured the city of Mosul in Iraq, IS seized armoured helicopters and cargo planes. It obtained about 88 lb. of nuclear material, in the form low-grade uranium compounds seized from a scientific research facility in Mosul.
Iraq’s UN ambassador had said that the nuclear material could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction. However, experts on the use of nuclear power have said that given the low grade of the seized material, there was no real/significant safety or security risk.
How does IS recruit and grow in numbers?
The Islamic State has recruiters all over the Western world seeking out new members through social media or known jihadi supporters in Canada, Britain, the US and other largely non-Muslim nations. These individuals are between the ages of 15 and 20, in all probability have never been involved in armed conflict but are swayed by videos that glorify jihad. These videos are uploaded on IS websites and then spread through media such as Twitter, YouTube and ask.fm. The videos made by IS are customised to specific demographic groups in Europe, the United States, South Asia and locally in Iraq and Syria.
In the West, IS attempts to make recruitment videos seem like an exciting video game with very slick production and with music overlaid on top of the graphics. IS is even said to have created an android app as part of its recruitment drive. In an attempt to reach into areas that have little or no Internet bandwidth (such as the Pakistan-Afghanistan border), IS has gone ‘low-tech’, distributing pamphlets in the local languages calling for younger Muslims to join them in their battle against Western “crusaders”.
Much like corporate jobs, there are also said to be interviews, sometimes over Skype, as they would like to know/confirm the identity and dedication of the new recruit. Once the vetting process is complete, whether online or in person, travel logistics are discussed — Turkey is said to be the most commonly used route into Syria. On reaching Syria/Iraq, the new recruits undergo training before taking up full-time roles.
Apart from Western countries, IS has recently started recruiting Muslims from Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Jammu and Kashmir in India. According to India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), over a hundred youths may have joined the jihadist militant group as of now and the terror group ‘Indian Mujahideen’ may be involved in recruiting men from India.
Women have always played a vital role in wars, if not on the battlefield then in the key areas of intelligence gathering, medical care, food preparation and support. However, the strict laws that IS abides by prohibit mixing between genders and has probably limited women’s presence on the front lines.
Instead, women are drawn into important support roles through effective social media campaigns that promise devout jihadist husbands, a home in a true Islamic state and the opportunity to devote their lives to their religion and their God.
Once IS took over areas in Iraq and Syria and proclaimed it to be their state, it required a female security force to ensure that local women complied with Islamic laws of dress and conduct. IS needed female police to check women passing through checkpoints, in case they were carrying arms for the opposition. Most of all, the Islamic State needed women so that their families can grow.
The IS recruitment initiatives seem to be working quite effectively. In August 2014, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that the number of fighters in the militant group had increased to about 50,000 in Syria and 30,000 in Iraq. The CIA, however, estimated in September 2014 that in both Iraq and Syria together, IS has between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters.
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