The Purpose of ISIS, Pt. 3

This is part 3 of a 5 part report which attempts to detail a history of the rise of ISIS and to explain its true relations to the actors involved in the war theatre. It attempts to show how and why ISIS has been exploited while also answering the question:  what has been the group’s ultimate purpose in relation to the dominant powers manipulating the proxy conflict. Given what is known historically, it hopes to shed light on what the motivations are behind the current actions against the group, as well as what purpose they serve.

A Salafist Principality for the West

As the opposition became increasingly sectarian, it was apparent that it was the militant elements and their “deadly results”¹ which drove out and supplanted the real moderates.

A leading figure in the early uprisings, Haytham Manna criticized the negative impact that external intervention had on the protest movement. Writing in The Guardian in 2012, he explained that the main effect of taking up arms was to “undermine the broad popular support necessary to transform the uprising into a democratic revolution.” Furthermore, it was the eventual “pumping of arms to Syria [from] Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the phenomenon of the Free Syrian Army, and the entry of more than 200 jihadi foreigners… [that] have all led to a decline in the mobilization of large segments of the population… and in the activists’ peaceful civil movement.” The net result of this being that “the political discourse has become sectarian; there has been a Salafisation of religiously conservative sectors.”²

Going a way to back up this view, Vice President Biden succinctly admitted that in terms of finding “moderates”, in reality “there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers.” The shopkeepers and reformists being sidelined as the West’s allies, in Biden’s view, “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”³

The realization in the White House was that if they realistically wanted their policy to have any success they would have to empower those capable of producing results. “This idea,” Obama remarked, “that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of  former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth,” in other words, the moderate forces, “and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah,  was never in the cards.”⁴ Instead, as investigative journalist Gareth Porter explains, the US would have to accept “a tacit reliance on the jihadists to achieve [their] objective of putting sufficient pressure on the Assad regime to force some concessions on Damascus.” Obama would have to “hide the reality that it was complicit in a strategy of arming [al-Qaeda]” by maintaining the illusion that an independent “moderate” opposition existed, as this would be “necessary to provide a political fig leaf for the covert and indirect U.S. reliance on Al Qaeda’s Syria franchise’s military success.”⁵

Indeed, not only was this all well understood by planners, the true extent of the empowerment of extremists was known to decision makers from the beginning. The CIA, for instance, very early on was informing the President in classified assessments that “most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar” were “going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition.”⁶ The man described as the CIA’s “eyes and ears on the ground” in Syria, tasked with drawing up plans for regime change after spending a year meeting with rebels, concluded from his journey that in fact, “there were no moderates.”⁷

Even earlier the Defense Intelligence Agency was warning officials that events on the ground “are taking a clear sectarian direction” and left no doubt as to who was heading the opposition, stating “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency.” Most remarkably, this 2012 report had predicted the rise of ISIS a full two years before it occurred, stating that “if the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria.” Far from being undesired, in terms of the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey, the report said “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”⁸

Heading the DIA at the time, Michael Flynn confirmed the validity of this report, explaining that he “paid very close attention… the intelligence was very clear.”⁹ Not only that, he confirmed that his agency sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the White House about these and other predictions, saying that the jihadists were in control of the opposition and that toppling Assad would have dire consequences. By 2013 the assessments were saying that the US’ covert effort “had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State. The so-called moderates had evaporated… and the US was arming extremists.”

But instead of heeding these warnings there was “enormous pushback” from the Obama administration, Flynn explaining that “I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.” Indeed, according to a Joint Chiefs of Staff advisor, there simply was “no way to stop the arms shipments that had been authorized by the president.” Even though, Flynn said, “if the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic.”¹⁰

When asked if this obstinacy was a result of mere negligence on the part of the civilian administration, remarkably Flynn replied “I don’t think they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision.” Asked to clarify if he meant the US government deliberately decided to support extremist groups and the founding of a Salafist principality, Flynn stood firm and said “it was a willful decision to do what they’re doing.”¹¹

Former MI6 agent Alastair Crooke later attempted to shed some light on the strategic thinking behind all of this. He explained that the idea “of breaking up the large Arab states into ethnic and sectarian enclaves” had been “established group think” at least as far back as 2006, and that this idea had been “given new life by the desire to pressure Assad in the wake of the 2011 insurgency launched against the Syrian state.” The idea being to drive “a Sunni ‘wedge’ into the landline linking Iran to Syria”, and thereby fracture the connection between Iran and its Arab allies.¹²

Following along with much of what Biden, Obama, and others had said about the inability to find moderates and the necessity of relying upon extremists, Crooke concluded that “the jihadification of the Syrian conflict had been a ‘willful’ policy decision, and that since Al Qaeda and the ISIS embryo were the only movements capable of establishing such a Caliphate across Syria and Iraq, then it plainly followed that the U.S. administration, and its allies, tacitly accepted this outcome, in the interests of weakening, or of overthrowing, the Syrian state.”¹³

A Useful Pretext

Much effort has been made to portray ISIS as antagonistic to US interests and to place blame for its rise on official enemies. This is not surprising given the near-unanimous outrage that the group elicited after emerging on the world stage. However, outside of being a useful ideological construct, this analysis neglects some very fundamental characteristics inherent to the situation.

Apart from the obvious conspiracy theories there is of course evidence that after ISIS was founded in 2014 it had made a sort of compact with Bashar al-Assad’s government. After gaining access to documents of a former deputy to Baghdadi, Der Spiegel uncovered what appeared to be an agreement between ISIS and Syria’s Ba’ath regime. The nature of the agreement was an understanding that Syria’s air force would not strike ISIS and in return ISIS commanders promised to order their fighters not to fire on Syrian army soldiers. This made sense for ISIS since its immediate goal was to gain supremacy over Sunni areas while the Syrian army was, as well, primarily concentrated on the immediate threats that it faced from other groups further west. It was in the interests of both sides to avoid a mutually assured destruction with each other.¹⁴

The problem with taking this too far is that after ISIS had consolidated its hold over Raqqa and gained supremacy over much of the other rebel groups this understanding appeared to have dissolved, ISIS then mounting an assault against the Syrian army at Al-Tabqa airbase and executing more than 160 Syrian soldiers.  Since that point, ISIS has been in a constant state of war with the Syrian army, despite many attempts by regime-change supporters to claim otherwise.¹⁵

These kinds of arguments seem to miss an even larger aspect of the bigger picture and misinterpret the motivation of the various players involved. A truer picture of the situation is perhaps best exemplified by the dilemma that faced the Western powers as the public became increasingly aware of ISIS’ atrocities and began calling for some kind of a response to be made against the group. As Western officials had portrayed ISIS as a grave threat to Western civilization, there was great pressure on them to put their money where their mouth was and act. However, this put them in an awkward position.

For one thing, in terms of breaking up an enemy state into sectarian enclaves, ISIS had indeed proven quite efficient. It was also emerging as the strongest opponent to Assad and had accomplished much in the way of weakening the Syrian state, while, as well, driving an effective ‘Sunni wedge’ between Iran and its’ allies. Problematically then, as Christopher Davidson explains, “the Islamic State was effectively on the same side as the West, especially in Syria, and in all its other warzones was certainly in the same camp as the West’s regional allies.” Moreover, “on a strategic level, its big gains had made it by far the best battlefield asset to those who sought the permanent dismemberment of Syria and the removal of Nouri Maliki in Iraq.”

The trick, therefore, was “trying to find the right balance between being seen to take action but yet still allowing the Islamic State to prosper.”¹⁶

The response was an airstrike campaign aimed primarily at delineating boundaries that the group was not allowed to cross, mainly around the US’ own allies. This campaign also served as a useful opportunity to establish a military presence in Syria which otherwise would not have been manageable. After all, who would object to such an operation when it was being targeted against such a horrific barbarity as the Islamic State?

After having done nothing to stop the previous sectarian massacres that ISIS had committed, the US decided to launch its’ campaign when it appeared that the Yazidi’s in Iraq were about to face an imminent genocide at the hands of the advancing jihadists. While the mission was portrayed as a selfless rescue mission necessary to break a debilitating siege that ISIS had inflicted upon the Yazidis, in reality Kurdish fighters had already arrived on the scene days before the US got there and had begun the process of evacuating the civilians from the area.¹⁷

The real reason the US launched the mission was because ISIS was advancing towards the nearby Kurdish capital of Irbil which represents a key US client and area of extraction for Western energy companies. Apart from Western oil interests being heavily invested in the exploitation of the area’s natural resources, it also houses Israeli and US intelligence and military operatives conducting anti-Syrian, anti-Iranian, and other regional operations.¹⁸ Yet the main strategic purpose of this US alliance with Iraqi Kurdistan has been to make sure that the regime in Baghdad stayed in line; one CIA memorandum stating that the Iraqi Kurds are a “uniquely useful tool for weakening Iraq’s potential”, as well as a “card to play” against the Iraqi state.¹⁹

Therefore, far removed from the very public displays of humanitarian concern, Obama explained that the US would “take action if [ISIS] threatens our facilities anywhere in Iraq… including Irbil”, and made good on his promise that airstrikes would be launched “should they move toward” the Kurdish capital.²⁰

The analogous delineation of boundaries in Syria occurred a few months later when the US launched airstrikes to help defend the Kurdish enclave of Kobane from a similar assault by the Islamic State, the Syrian Kurds fast becoming a useful US ally on the ground. A highly-publicized spectacle, these airstrikes helped to solidify the legitimacy of the illegal bombing campaign. However, it was never apparent how crucial the US’ assistance actually was, or if the bulk of the city’s defense hadn’t already been secured by the towns battle-hardened fighters.²¹

Nevertheless, these pretexts proved useful. In one sense, they allowed the West to appear responsive to public demands for action, while, at the same time, allowing Western aircraft to conduct a de-facto no-fly-zone over ISIS territory in Syria. There was a real danger that states genuinely committed to the protection of the Syrian government, notably Iran but possibly Russia, would take matters into their own hands and actually try to eradicate the Islamic State. In this sense, the US-led campaign was useful in portraying the image of US commitment to defeating ISIS while insuring, as well, that no other state would defeat the group before their use had been exhausted and the West could claim that symbolic victory for themselves.²²

Notes:

1.)    Council on Foreign Relations, “Al-Qaeda’s Specter in Syria”, 6 August 2012.

2.)   Guardian, “Syria's opposition has been led astray by violence”, 22 June 2012.

3.)   P. Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State, pp. xix-xx.

4.)   New York Times, “Obama on the World”, 8 August 2014.

5.)   Consortium News, “Obama’s ‘Moderate’ Syrian Deception”, 16 February 2016.

6.)   New York Times, “Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria”, 14 October 2012.

7.)   NBC News, “Obama Nixed CIA Plan That Could Have Stopped ISIS: Officials”, 2 April 2016.

8.)  Department of Defense, "Information Report 14-L-0552/DIA", August 2012 (subpoenaed), pp. 287-93.

9.)   Al Jazeera, “Head to Head: Who is to blame for the rise of ISIL”, 29 July 2015.

10.)           London Review of Books, “Military to Military”, 7 January 2016.

11.)            Al Jazeera, “Head to Head: Who is to blame for the rise of ISIL”, 29 July 2015.

12.)           Huffington Post, “If Syria and Iraq Become Fractured, So Too Will Tripoli and North Lebanon”, 1 June 2015.

13.)           Consortium News, “Lost on the ‘Dark Side’ in Syria”, 17 November 2015.

14.)           C. Davidson, Shadow Wars, pp. 391-92. Citing Der Spiegel, “The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State”, 18 April 2015.

15.)           Ibid., pp. 392-93. Citing Daily Star, “ISIS seizes last Syrian regime base in Raqqa province”, 25 August 2014. Channel NewsAsia, “IS executes more than 160 Syria troops in new atrocity”, 28 August 2014.

16.)           Ibid., pp. 421-22.

17.)            Ibid., p. 423. Citing New York Times, “Despite US Claims, Yazidis Say Crisis is Not Over”, 14 August 2014. Washington Post, “Why can’t the US figure out how many Yazidis are on Mount Sinjar?”, 15 August 2014.; Gulf News, “Kurds unite to oust Iraq jihadists, rescue stranded civilian”, 6 August 2014.

18.)           The New Yorker, “Plan B”, 28 June 2004. CNBC, “Iraqi Kurdistan-focused oil shares hit by IS advance”, 7 August 2014. RiskAdvisory, “Security in Iraqi Kurdistan – between perception and reality”, 18 September 2014.

19.)           C. Davidson, Shadow Wars, p. 424. Citing William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, p. 243.

20.)          Washington Post, “U.S. airstrikes target Islamic State militants in northern Iraq”, 8 August 2014.

21.)           C. Davidson, Shadow Wars, p. 431.

22.)          Ibid., p. 428.

The Purpose of ISIS, Pt. 2

This is part 2 of a 5-part report which attempts to detail a history of the rise of ISIS and to explain its true relations to the actors involved in the war theatre. It attempts to show how and why ISIS has been exploited while attempting to answer the question: what has been the groups’ ultimate purpose in relation to the dominant powers manipulating the proxy conflict. Then, given what is known historically, it hopes to shed light on what the motivations are behind the current actions against the group and what purpose they serve.

The “Moderate” Jihad in Syria

Syria was externally targeted because the US and its allies saw it as strategically beneficial to organize and foster an armed insurgency which could eventually become capable of overturning the government. The most prominent aspect of this being the attempt to create a “Free Syrian Army” of opposition fighters which could be displayed as the respectable and indigenous face of the insurgency and help sell the intervention to the Western public.

Helping to hide the foreign hand behind the militants, the rebel arming program was only officially announced in 2013, yet in reality began almost two years prior, at least as early as October 2011 after the fall of Gaddafi in Libya, but likely even much earlier.¹ Also dispelling the illusion that these FSA groups were solely a native development, it was revealed in late 2011 that US Special Operations Forces were on the ground and privately discussing to themselves how “there isn’t much of a Free Syrian Army to train right now”, the groups only later gaining prominence as a result of the foreign interference.²

Indeed, by this time knowledgeable academics such as Columbia University’s Joseph Massad were writing that the “[Arab] League and imperial powers have taken over the Syrian uprising in order to remove the al-Assad regime”, while the West’s best journalists would later characterize the program by saying “the impression one gets is of a movement wholly controlled by Arab and Western intelligence agencies.”³ Corroborating much of this, a former rebel explained to the Wall Street Journal how the insurgency was largely being directed from abroad, saying that “decisions weren’t always being made at the local level.” Instead, it was “the Salafists from Gulf nations… and the Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey” who would “send money to certain groups and then orchestrate attacks from afar.”⁴

Concurrently, great efforts were made to portray the FSA as an entirely independent outfit and to separate Western involvement from the extremist groups that were beginning to form. However, apart from whatever the rebels would tell the Western press, the reality on the ground was that there was never any division between the FSA and groups like al-Qaeda, the Islamists having been welcomed from the very start.⁵ For instance, the founder of the FSA, Syrian army defector Riad el-Asaad, described al-Qaeda as “our brothers in Islam”, while another rebel commander, a main recipients of US aid, admitted that his organizations was very much alike al-Qaeda and that the two groups fought alongside each other. Al-Qaeda did not, he said, “exhibit any abnormal behavior, which is different from that of the FSA.”⁶ So while US officials maintained that they only supported “moderates”, journalist Patrick Cockburn gets much closer to the truth, explaining that “it is here that there was a real intention to deceive”, because “in reality, there is no dividing wall between them [ISIS and al-Qaeda] and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies.”⁷

 Also troubling for the oppositions’ image, the “moderate” nature of the US vetted groups soon began to unravel, the FSA consistently being described as even worse than the groups who are commonly associated with extremism. While Department of Defense officials were aware that the “vast majority of moderate Free Syrian Army rebels were in fact, Islamist militants”, counterterrorism specialists explained that the “undisciplined and brutal behavior of the FSA stood in contrast to the much more disciplined Jabhat Al-Nusra.” Indeed, the British press described this brutal behavior in terms of their “looting and banditry”, explaining that “the FSA has now become a largely criminal enterprise” as they have been primarily focused on “profiteering, gun-running, and the extracting of tolls from road checkpoints.”⁸

Also quite troubling, being enmeshed with the other fighters the FSA had soon assumed the de-facto function of serving as a weapons conduit to the extremists. While it was later confirmed that at least half of all supplies given to the “moderates” were duly handed over to al-Qaeda,⁹ multiple court cases earlier revealed that arms shipments received by the FSA would be unloaded and distributed quite indiscriminately to whoever was fighting nearby. Helping to explain this, former MI6 agent Alastair Crooke pointed out that “the West does not actually hand the weapons to al-Qaeda, let alone ISIS… but the system that they have constructed leads precisely to that end.” This is because the weapons shipments given to the FSA “have been understood to be a sort of ‘Wal Mart’ from which the more radical groups would be able to take their weapons and pursue the jihad”, as weapons always migrated “along the line to the more radical elements.”¹⁰

This wasn’t something that the Western backers of the opposition just turned a blind eye to, instead such cooperation with jihadists was explicitly ordered by them on multiple occasions, usually when the extremists were needed to win battlefield victories. In 2014, for example, a CIA-backed commander explained that “if the people who support us [the US and its allies] tell us to send weapons to another group, we send them. They asked us a month ago to send weapons to [hard-line Islamists] in Yabroud so we sent a lot of weapons there.”

On a separate occasion, US-led operations rooms “specifically encouraged a closer cooperation with Islamists commanding frontline operations” during the conquest of Idlib, the supervision given by US military intelligence operatives being “instrumental in facilitating their [Islamists’] involvement.”¹¹

Enter the Proxies

Having successfully kept most of this hidden from view, focus on the FSA program helped to distract from the wider reality that the US and its allies were supporting the entire opposition indiscriminately.

It has long been known that states like Qatar had been supporting both al-Qaeda and ISIS,¹² their own deputy foreign minister openly stating “I am very much against excluding anyone at this stage, or bracketing them as terrorists, or bracketing them as al-Qaeda given Qatar’s perceived necessity of removing al-Assad at all costs.” As well, al-Qaeda’s Syria franchise themselves admitted that they “get money from the Gulf” with their “great name.”¹³

Also widely known is that Saudi Arabia and Turkey both had intimate ties with al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the rest of the other radical jihadists. Far from trying to hide these connections, both countries had in fact openly supported a rebel coalition that was dominated by al-Qaeda.¹⁴ Yet in reality this was all undertaken in cooperation with the United States or with their implicit blessing.

Getting to the heart of the matter, an extensive investigation by Foreign Policy’s Elizabeth Dickenson uncovered that not only had Qatar gotten “such freedom to run its network for the last three years because Washington was looking the other way,” but that “in fact, in 2011, the US gave Doha de facto free rein to do what it wasn’t willing to do.”¹⁵ White House officials explained that “Syria is [Qatar’s] backyard”, while academics similarly concluded “there is no chance that Qatar is doing this alone.”¹⁶

Indeed, the weapons shipments coming from Qatar had been conducted in conjunction with the CIA, who US officials confirm acted in a “consultant role.”¹⁷ In the case of Saudi Arabia, whose former foreign minister himself admitted that it was the Saudi monarchy who created ISIS, stating “Daesh [ISIS] is our [Sunni] response to your support for the Da’wa [Iran-aligned Shia ruling party of Iraq]”,¹⁸ their involvement was also conducted jointly with the US. The terms of this arrangement, revealed by The New York Times, was that the Saudis would provide large sums of money and weapons and in exchange would be granted a seat at the table and have a say as to which groups would be supported, while the CIA would coordinate such shipments and help train the fighters.¹⁹ Seemingly finding no objections from their US partners, we now know that they and other Gulf allies were the ones “who fund [ISIS]”, as was revealed by then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in congressional testimony.²⁰ Similarly, while it was revealed that Turkey’s intimate coordination with ISIS was “undeniable”,²¹ in fact evidence suggests the country’s weapons shipments were largely conducted in cooperation with CIA officers and US officials,²² cooperation which continued even as it was revealed that Turkey was collaborating with ISIS and allowing substantial tracts of its territory to remain open to the group.²³

Honest reporters therefore correctly categorized the US’ involvement by explaining that “the U.S. in many ways is acting in Syria through proxies, primarily Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates”, while Turkey was “taking the lead as U.S. proxy.”²⁴ Western officials however began to publicly distance themselves from this involvement, claiming the “US had growing concerns that, just as in Libya, the Qataris are equipping some of the wrong militants.” This was worrying because “this has the potential to go badly wrong… [because of] the risk that weapons will end up in the hands of violent anti-Western Islamists.”²⁵ Yet as Christopher Davison explains, whom the Economist describes as “one of the most knowledgeable academics writing about the region”, this was all an attempt to “establish some distance” between the US and its allies in the Gulf, “so as to insulate themselves from any possible fallout from such risky moves.”²⁶

Describing the true relationship, a former advisor to one of the Gulf states explained that the reason the US did not try to stop nations like Qatar from delivering weapons to extremists was simply because “they didn’t want to.”²⁷

The reason the Western powers were supporting such virulent elements was actually quite simple. Besides having a well-documented history of supporting jihadist networks against their enemies,²⁸ the most radical groups taking part in the Syria conflict were as well the best and most effective fighters. Joshua Landis, a US academic and specialist on Syria, explained that the “radicals got money because they were successful. They fought better, had better strategic vision and were more popular.”²⁹ Helping to explain the thought process further, prominent think-tank analysts actually recommended supporting al-Qaeda under the basis that they bring “discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf,” and most importantly, “deadly results.”³⁰

Therefore, as former British diplomat Alastair Crooke explains, the operative idea was to “use jihadists to weaken the government in Damascus and to drive it to its knees to the negotiating table.”³¹

Notes:

1.)    Julian E. Barnes and Adam Entous, “U.S. to Give Some Syria Rebels Ability to Call Airstrikes,” Wall Street Journal, 17 February 2015.; Judicial Watch, “Defense, State Department Documents Reveal Obama Administration Knew that al Qaeda Terrorists Had Planned Benghazi Attack 10 Days in Advance,” 18 May 2015.; Seymour M. Hersh, “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” London Review of Books,” 17 April 2014.

2.)    The Free Syrian Army never had a central command structure, it always referred to a myriad of disparate groups using the label as a brand name, but the FSA has also become a euphemism for describing any CIA supported and/or vetted groups. WikiLeaks, “INSIGHT - military intervention in Syria, post withdrawal status of forces”, cable released on 6 March 2012.; Aron Lund speculates that when the FSA was created in July 2011 it could have been the product of a Turkish intelligence operation. Aron Lund, “The Free Syrian Army Doesn’t Exist,” Syria Comment, March 16, 2013.

3.)   Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, p. 320. Citing Joseph Massad, “The struggle for Syria,” Al Jazeera, 15 November 2011.; Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution, p. 86.

4.)   Raja Abdulrahim, “Former Syrian Rebel Mourns Uprising’s Failure,” Wall Street Journal, 26 January 2016.

5.)   “Some rebel units around Damascus, which had earlier given themselves Islamic-sounding names to attract Saudi and Gulf financing, opportunistically switched to more secular-sounding titles in a bid to attract American support”, Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State, p. 26.; Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, p. 335, 336.

6.)   Bill Roggio, “Free Syrian Army commander praises al Nusrah Front as ‘brothers’,” Long War Journal, 30 March 2013.; Joshua Landis, “US Key Man in Syria Worked Closely with ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra,” https://twitter.com/joshua_landis/status/504610185952784384.

7.)   Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State, p. 3.

8.)  Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, pp. 334-336. Citing Nafeez Ahmed, “Islamic State is the cancer of modern capitalism,” Middle East Eye, 27 March 2015, and counterterrorism expert A. Hashim, “The Islamic state: from Al-Qaeda affiliate to caliphate”, Middle East Policy, Vol. 21, No. 4, 2014, p. 7, and Ruth Sherlock, “Syria dispatch: from band of brothers to princes of war,” Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2013.

9.)   Thanassis Cambanis, “The Syrian Revolution Against al Qaeda,” Foreign Policy, 29 March 2016.

10.)           Comments made by Alastair Crooke, “Al Qaeda in Syria,” BBC, 17 December 2015.; Richard Norton-Taylor, “Terror trial collapses after fears of deep embarrassment to security services,” Guardian, 1 June 2015.

11.)            Isabel Hunter, “'I am not fighting against al-Qa’ida… it’s not our problem', says West’s last hope in Syria,” The Independent, 2 April 2015. No longer available, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20140406105449/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/i-am-not-fighting-againstalqaida-itsnot-our-problem-says-wests-last-hope-in-syria-9233424.html.; Charles Lister, “Why Assad is losing,” Brookings, 5 May 2015.; Nafeez Ahmed, “Endless enemies – how the US is supporting the Islamic State by fighting it,” Middle East Eye, 17 July 2015.

12.)           Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, p. 322, 456. Citing US Navy admiral and former NATO supreme commander James Stavridis, “the biggest share of the individual donations supporting the Islamic State and the most radical groups comes from Qatar,” NBC News, “Who’s Funding ISIS? Wealthy Gulf Angel Investors, Officials Say”, 21 September 2014.

13.)           Ibid., p. 322. Citing Elizabeth Dickenson, “The Case Against Qatar,” Foreign Policy, 30 September 2014, and Weiss, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, p. 100.

14.)           Desmond Butler, “Turkey Officials Confirm Pact With Saudi Arabia to Help Rebels Fighting Syria’s Assad,” Huffington Post, 7 May 2015. No longer available, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20150508173130/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/turkey-saudi-arabia-syria-rebels-pact_n_7232750.html.;  For further information on Saudi Arabia and Turkey’s support, see Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, pp. 324-26, 453-67.

15.)           Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, p. 321. Citing Elizabeth Dickenson, “The Case Against Qatar,” Foreign Policy, 30 September 2014.

16.)           Ibid., pp. 321-22. Citing Mark Mazzetti, C. J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt, “Taking Outsize Role in Syria, Qatar Funnels Arms to Rebels,” New York Times, 29 June 2013, and David Roberts of King’s College London, , “Is Qatar bringing the Nusra Front in from the cold?”, BBC Online, 6 March 2015.

17.)            Ibid., p.324. Citing Mark Mazzetti, et al., “Taking Outsize Role in Syria, Qatar Funnels Arms to Rebels,” New York Times, 29 June 2013.

18.)           Financial Times, “Mutual suspicion frays historic US-Saudi ties,” 20 April 2016.

19.)           Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo, “U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels,” New York Times, 23 January 2016.

20.)          C-SPAN, “General Dempsey acknowledges U.S. Arab allies funding ISIS”, 16 September 2014.

21.)           Martin Chulov, “Turkey sends in jets as Syria’s agony spills over every border,” Guardian, 26 July 2015.; Nafeez Ahmed, “NATO is harbouring the Islamic State,” Insurge Intelligence, 19 November 2015.; For further corroboration of Turkish complicity, see Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, pp. 461-67.

22.)          Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, pp. 466-67. Citing Eric Schmitt, “CIA Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syria Opposition,” New York Times, 21 June 2012.; Fehim Tastekin, “Turkish military says MIT shipped weapons to al-Qaeda,” Al-Monitor, 15 January 2015.; “Syria-bound trucks put spotlight on Turkey,” Al-Monitor, 21 January 2014.; Ruth Sherlock, “Fears that US weapons will fall into al-Qaeda’s hands as Syrian rebels defect,” Daily Telegraph, 11 November 2014.

23.)          Ibid., p. 461-62.

24.)          Jay Solomon and Nour Malas, “U.S. Bolsters Ties to Fighters in Syria,” Wall Street Journal, 13 June 2012.; Philip Giraldi, “NATO vs. Syria,” American Conservative, 19 December 2011.

25.)          Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, pp. 324-25. Citing James Risen, et al., “US-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell into Jihadis’ Hands,” New York Times, 5 December 2012.; Adam Entous, et al., “A Veteran Saudi Power Player Works to Build Support to Topple Assad,” Wall Street Journal, 25 August 2013.

26.)          Ibid., p. 325.

27.)           Andrew Cockburn, “A Special Relationship,” Harpers, January 2016.

28.)          Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, pp. 85-176.; Nafeez Ahmed, “Islamic State is the cancer of modern capitalism,” Middle East Eye, 27 March 2015.

29.)          John Judis, “America’s Failure – and Russia and Iran’s Success – in Syria’s Cataclysmic Civil War,” TPM, 10 January 2017.

30.)          Ed Husain, “Al-Qaeda’s Specter in Syria,” Council on Foreign Relations, 6 August 2012.

31.)           Comments made by Alastair Crooke, “Al Qaeda in Syria,” BBC, 17 December 2015.

The Purpose of ISIS, Pt. 1

This is the first of a 5-part report which attempts to detail a history of the rise of ISIS and to explain its true relations to the actors involved in the war theatre. It attempts to show how and why ISIS has been exploited while attempting to answer the question: what has been the groups’ ultimate purpose in relation to the dominant powers manipulating the proxy conflict. Then, given what is known historically, it hopes to shed light on what the motivations are behind the current actions against the group and what purpose they serve.

ISIS is Born in Iraq

The origins of ISIS are buried beneath the rubble of the US occupation.

It was out of this crucible of war and invasion that the original grievances were born, leading analysts to conclude that “the basic causes of the birth of ISIS” were the United States’ “destructive interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq.”¹

The framework underlying this being the exacerbation of Sunni-Shia tensions in the aftermath of the invasion, which previously have been inflamed through various other foreign interferences. These were highlighted by the sectarian brutality of the post-invasion Iraqi government, which then continued under Maliki later on. Given this, some have concluded that Saddam had simply been replaced by another “repressive and murderous authoritarian state, albeit under a more representative sectarian set up.”²

The Maliki-era repression was also marked by the governments’ continual gravitation towards Iran, further stoking fears within the Sunni community that Iraq would become an Iranian-backed Shia power that would exact further reprisals against its Sunni population. Grievances were therefore ignited not only against the violation of the occupation but as well among even non-Islamist Sunnis who felt marginalized and threatened by their government.³

 Out of this sectarian nexus, a man known by the name of al-Zarqawi was able to bring together various groups of jihadists under the umbrella of “al-Qaeda in Iraq” and lay the foundations for a sort of governmental structure which could evolve into an eventual Islamic state. A veteran of the jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Zarqawi had reportedly obtained sanctuary in Iran where he accumulated weapons and equipment before later returning to Iraq to oppose the US occupation.⁴

Following al-Zarqawi’s death at the hands of a US airstrike, a new federation of jihadists then established the “Islamic State in Iraq” by the end of 2006, although it was at first marked by widespread defections as the Sunni insurgency was then losing momentum. However, evidence reveals that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad had helped the insurgents by facilitating the flow of jihadists into Iraq, in an apparent attempt to jeopardize the US occupation and thereby prevent against a similar US attack against Syria.⁵

Yet what really allowed ISI to expand its influence were the abuses and violence perpetrated by the US military.⁶ Rising to power during his imprisonment in the infamous Camp Bucca, the group was rejuvenated under the enhanced leadership of the mysterious to-be-named al-Baghdadi.

However, it is widely accepted that the Camp Bucca prison served as a sort of training ground or “jihadist university” from which the eventual Islamic State was born. The networks Baghdadi established there going on to form the upper echelons of the groups top leadership. Indeed, without such military detentions “it would have been impossible for so many likeminded jihadists and insurgents to have met together safely in Iraq at that time without such a protective atmosphere as Bucca.” In this sense, a former inmate explains that the US did “a great favor” for the mujahideen, having “provided us with a secure atmosphere, a bed and food, and also allowed books giving us a great opportunity to feed our knowledge with the ideas of al-Maqdisi and the jihadist ideology.”⁷

Yet the round-ups conducted by the US army were indiscriminate and civilians were targeted wholesale, estimates from 2006 confirming that only 15% of detainees were true adherents of any kind of extremist ideology.⁸ Yet now jihadists leaders like Baghdadi were given an opportunity to further radicalize others, prisoners explaining how “under the watchful eye of the US soldiers”, “new recruits were prepared so that when they were freed they were ticking time bombs”, not the least of which due to the extensively documented abuses and torture that took place there as well.⁹

Concurrent with this was a covert attempt by the US military to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq by fostering alliances with other al-Qaeda-affiliated Sunnis. Spelled out and confirmed by an army-commissioned Rand report, the strategy was to utilize groups like ISI, who, although having fought against the US military, could be counted on to “sow divisions in the jihadist camp” by fighting against al-Qaeda, and thereby the US could exploit “the common threat that al-Qaeda now poses to both parties.”

Mass releases from Bucca were therefore orchestrated in an attempt to augment the strategy with manpower and engender support from the local Sunni tribes. And while the strategy in a sense succeeded, at the same time, it also emboldened another segment of disgruntled Sunnis, when the original causes of their resentments were continuing under the anti-Sunni repression of the US-backed government. The resulting sectarian violence pushed other Sunnis into supporting ISI as the lesser of the two evils, further entrenching the groups foothold in the country.¹⁰

Yet this was only half of the story.

By this time influential policy planners were already thinking up other strategic uses which could be gleaned from supporting these disgruntled Sunni radicals.

The accelerated relationship then forming between Maliki and Iran had greatly distressed the White House. Fearing an Iranian-dominated Iraq more so than a resurgence of al-Qaeda, in the context of a “redirection” of US policy against Iran, it was thought that “ties between the US and moderate or even radical Sunnis could put fear into the government of Prime Minister Maliki.” The reasoning was that an alliance with Sunni extremists would be useful as it would “make [Maliki] worry that the Sunnis could actually win the civil war there”, and thus encourage him to cooperate with the US.¹¹

Therefore, in order to remedy the Iranian influence spreading throughout the Maliki government, clandestine operations were adopted, the byproduct of which being the “bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”¹²

The Fake Arab Spring

With the eruption of the crisis in Syria and the subsequent lack of state authority that came with it, ISI was able to exploit the power vacuum and expand its grasp beyond Iraqi borders, changing its name to the “Islamic state in Iraq and al-Sham/the Levant” or ISIS/ISIL to reflect this greater reach.¹³

The Syrian crisis itself represents just one part in a much larger strategy by the Western powers aimed at manipulating the trajectory of the Arab Spring uprisings to ensure that they ultimately serve the regional agenda of the West. Having successfully thwarted the threats faced from the self-determination and pro-democracy uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, similar but smaller protests in Syria and Libya were covertly redirected into a pretext for attacking uncooperative regimes which had historically proven antagonistic to Western interests.¹⁴

The uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen all threatened to wrestle away the status-quo systems of control that the Western powers had exerted in these countries for almost half a century. This had ensured that foreign corporations maintained easy access to valuable markets and resources and that profits flowed primarily to Western investors.¹⁵

This framework of neoliberal reform began to be implemented during the 1970’s when Arab republics were struggling amidst the impacts of global economic downturns and began to institute policies largely directed from above by international finance institutions (IFIs) such as the IMF and World Bank. Given that the IFIs had been increasingly dominated by Western governments, they primarily represented the interests of the financial elite from wealthy Western countries. Therefore, the models they suggested were of rapid economic liberalization and denationalization which on the one hand gave Arab administrations immediate financial relief, yet at the same time, made their economies increasingly vulnerable to exploitation by Western multinational corporations and financial institutions.¹⁶ As some have described, such policies had the effect of “massively restricting the ability of [these] governments to promote policies in their own national interests”, as they promoted rules which the UN explained “reflect an agenda that serves only to promote dominant corporate interests”, while at the same time rejecting the kind of policies that historically have been shown to achieve developmental success, such as import controls, taxes on foreign corporations, and state interference in the private sector.¹⁷

These policies resulted in the emergence of a growing state-bourgeoisie which was able to enrich itself in a nepotistic fashion through its proximity to influential players within the state sector, allowing connected persons and groups primary access to newly privatized assets which they were able to monopolize and monetize.¹⁸ These local elites served the function of clients of the Western powers which insured that the vast bulk of the country’s wealth would flow outwards and into the hands of foreign investors, resulting in a system of modern day neo-colonialism from which the United States and other previously colonial regimes were able to maintain effective control of the region and its resources.¹⁹

Apart from the liberalization of resources the prescriptions adopted from the IFIs included the removal of labor rights, the weakening of trade unions, increases in worker instability, tax advantages for foreign corporations, and the privatization of welfare systems.²⁰ This lead to massive increases in inequality, large concentration of wealth, and an erosion of the previous Cold War-era social contract which had traded economic security for political quiescence to authoritarian political structures.²¹

As these policies advanced these states were increasingly unable to meet the basic needs of their citizens, and the compounding socio-economic pressures led to the rediscovery of long-suppressed notions of Arab dignity and self-determination which became personified within the Arab Spring protests. In this way, the Arab Spring was primarily a result of “people being drawn to the streets by the pressing economic grievances and uneven development that are the result of more than thirty years of neo-liberal policies.”²²

Such movements were naturally a major threat to the established systems of power, primarily being centered around social justice and the rebuilding of domestic welfare states that threatened to unseat supplicant and compliant regimes with more assertive and indigenously representative administrations.²³ Too much of a challenge for the Western powers to bear, externally-directed counterrevolutions were conducted to insure that such movements would be co-opted and redirected so that the governments which resulted would maintain as much of the previous order as possible, thereby insuring that the threatening ambitions for democracy and self-governance were effectively crushed.²⁴

However, for states which at the same time sat astride coveted natural resources and had long frustrated the ambitions of Western powers to gain greater access, local protests represented a golden opportunity to overturn non-compliant regimes under the pretext of Arab Spring humanitarian and democratic concerns.²⁵ The idea was, as Durham University’s Christopher Davidson explains, to give “ostensibly similar but evidently much smaller-scale protest movements in Libya and Syria the sort of outside helping hand they needed to become full-blown and state-threatening insurgencies.”²⁶ Thus, those Western states which had insured the failure of progressive Arab Spring movements throughout the region, “soon took the concurrent role of funding and weaponizing a fraudulent and more violent Western-sponsored version of the Arab Spring” in both Libya and Syria.²⁷ The cause of such bloody crisis therefore, being a result of these states having been “deliberately targeted in a calculated and sustained manner by external actors who saw a strategic use in supporting and boosting the ambitions of local oppositionists.”²⁸

The “fake Arab Spring” and subsequent civil wars that resulted from these externally-directed and Western-backed insurgencies nevertheless were successful at insuring the failure of the protesters ambitions while as well providing the perfect environment for radicalized extremist organizations to expand their reach and control over territory.²⁹  Such a situation was further encouraged and facilitated by the Western powers who, as previously explained, saw such groups as strategically beneficial foot-soldiers which could be utilized and directed against their enemies.

Notes:

1.)    Ezgi Basaran, “Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS,” Al Monitor, 2 September 2014.

2.)   Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East, p. 366. Citing Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, “The Terrible Beauty of Wikileaks”, Critical Muslim, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, p. 215.

3.)   Ibid.; Ezgi Basaran, “Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS,” Al Monitor, 2 September 2014. Comments made by Graham Fuller.

4.)   Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, pp. 369-71.

5.)   Ibid., pp. 372-73. Citing Weiss, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, p. 49, 58-9, 70-78.; Roy Gutman, “Assad Henchman: Here’s How We Built ISIS,” The Daily Beast, 1 August 2016.

6.)   Nafeez Ahmed, “After Mosul: The coming break-up of Iraq and end of the Middle East,” Middle East Eye, 13 March 2017.

7.)   Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, pp. 375. Citing Martin Chulov, “ISIS: The Inside Story,” The Guardian,” 11 December 2014, and Bunzel, “From Paper State”, pp. 22-3.

8.)  Nafeez Ahmed, “After Mosul,” Middle East Eye, 13 March 2017.

9.)   Ibid.; Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, pp. 375. Citing Bunzel, “From Paper State”, pp. 22-3.

10.)           Nafeez Ahmed, “After Mosul,” Middle East Eye, 13 March 2017.

11.)            Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, p. 367. Citing Seymour M. Hersh, “The Redirection,” New Yorker, 5 March 2007. Remarks made by Patrick Clawson, deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

12.)           Seymour M. Hersh, “The Redirection,” New Yorker, 5 March 2007.

13.)           Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, pp. 380-81.

14.)           Ibid., pp. xi-xiii, 275, 276-347.

15.)           Ibid., pp. 177-78.

16.)           Ibid., p. 195.

17.)            Ibid., p. 200. Citing Peter Sutherland and the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, from M. Curtis, Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World, p. 213, 221.

18.)           Ibid., p. 195, 197-98.

19.)           Ibid., pp. 197-201.

20.)          Ibid., p. 196.

21.)           Ibid., pp. 194, 201-205. Citing Steven Heydemann, “Arab autocrats are not going back to the future,” Washington Post, 4 December 2014.

22.)          Ibid., p. 201. Citing K. Bogaert, “Contextualizing the Arab Revolts: The Politics Behind Three Decades of Neo-liberalism in the Arab World”, Middle East Critique, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2013, pp. 214-15, 224.

23.)          Ibid., pp. 221-22.

24.)          Ibid., pp. 221-272.

25.)          This was exacerbated further in Syria when Assad rejected a pipeline proposal by Qatar which would have connected their North Pars gas field, which is contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field and together account for the largest gas field in the world, to European energy markets through transitional hubs in Syria and Turkey. This would have greatly reduced Russia’s hold over Europe through their dependence on Russian gas exports, which now account for over a third of its energy demands. The proposal was rejected by Assad in order to “respect the interests of [his] Russian ally” while instead an Iranian sponsored project was put into motion, which would have linked their South Pars field to Europe thereby increasing Russian and Iranian influence and further frustrating the US ambition of unipolar geopolitical dominance. See Eurostat, “Energy production and imports”, data from July 2016.; The Guardian, “Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern”, 30 August 2013.; Foreign Affairs, “Putin’s Gas Attack: Is Russia Just in Syria for the Pipelines?”, 14 October, 2015.; Middle East Eye, “The US-Russia gas pipeline war in Syria could destabalise Putin”, 30 October 2015.; EcoWatch, “Syria: Another Pipeline War”, 25 February 2016.; For visual representation and listings of the largest gas fields, see Wikipedia, “South Pars / North Dome Gas-Condensate field”, and Wikipedia, “List of natural gas fields.”

26.)          Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars, p. 275.

27.)           Ibid., p. 276.

28.)          Ibid., p. 275.

29.)          “It was the war in Syria that destabilized Iraq when jihadi groups like ISIS, then called al-Qaeda in Iraq, found a new battlefield where they could fight and flourish”, Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution, p. 9.