Johnny Depp

11/20/2014
Poli Sci 340 Final Paper
Dissecting ISIL
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a fascinating
entity to emerge on the geopolitical scene, and one that seems
shrouded in an incredible amount of mystery, yet at the same time
inevitability. Jihadist organizations have always tended to utilize tactics
similar to ISIL, while extremist religious doctrines tend to be the
galvanizing force behind their actions. But there are some seemingly
unique factors at play here. It is likely that ISIL can trace its creation up
from several groups or organizations before it, but no Muslim
organization before have managed to actually take territory, or control
it. That seems to be the defining difference for ISIL. Additionally, they
have remained free of Western influence, and successfully brought a
huge amount of jihadist organizations together, while recruiting not
only locally, but globally to their ranks. This paper argues that we can
understand ISIL as a social movement founded by Abu Musab alZarqawi based on the principles of a jihad that was started in
Afghanistan, and which was continued and radicalized on the basis of
Salafi doctrine, in order to realize a desire for a free Islamic state that
is separate from Western influence; additionally, this essays argues
that ISIL will attain its goal within the next two years if Western powers
do not take boots on the ground action to prevent it.

The pragmatic origins of ISIL probably begin with the conflict in

Afghanistan that begin in 1978 as part of the overarching clash
between the United States of America, and the Soviet Union. The
conflict itself was not necessarily important. But the way that the
United States chose to fight the pro-Soviet Democratic Republic of
Afghanistan in what would be called the Soviet War in Afghanistan, was
by creating a faction of muhjahideen, who were essentially fighters
rallied by an Islamic jihad (Billard, 25). Essentially what happened in
this conflict is that the United States helped to create a global jihad in
the Muslim world in order to fight its opponent, the Soviet Union.
The concept of the muhjahideen is strongly religious itself,
and comes directly from the Quran, being those fighters that
essentially protected the prophet Muhammad (Peters, 39). There is
something even more important that happened here. The concept of
jihad is one that is easily used to the rhetorical ends of almost any
extremist organization, and in fact, jihad only refers to a striving, or
struggling towards some end, and has no essential element of
terrorism, or war (Morgan, 87). It is easy to get lost in dissecting the
concept of jihad, which is often translated as a holy war, and which
Western political analysts may simply never fully understand, but we
do know that jihad is something carried out by muhjahideen, and when
it is used in larger political contexts it tends to be used to refer to
military conflicts (Lewis, 143). Meanwhile, other theorists have

identified that jihad generally refers to the struggle of Muslims against

non-Muslims, and this includes other Muslims who do not hold correct
Muslim belief (Steffen, 221). The concept of jihad then, while
somewhat fluid, has associations of militaristic action, and a struggle
against the non-Muslim world.
Whatever truth about jihad as a concept in Islam, it seems clear
that the United States used the concept of jihad in this militaristic
sense to unify the fighters in Afghanistan. The deep religious unity of
the fighters that the United States used to beat the Soviet-backed
forces in Afghanistan played a role in securing their success (Peters,
41) But the creation of this religiously unified group also created a real
group of radicalized individuals who were on a jihad against the nonMuslim world. The best-known consequence of the creation of this
radicalized group was the creation of al-Qaeda, with the infamous
figurehead Osama Bin Laden (Naim and Naim, 28). Al-Qaeda was had
two distinct elements to its operations: first it operated as a stateless,
multinational army with an ideology of terror used as a method of
garnering global political influence, and second it tied this stateless
army together via extremist Wahhabi sentiments, and the rhetoric of
jihad linked directly the global jihad started in Afghanistan (Naim and
Naim, 32). Al-Qaeda is not necessarily important in and of itself for
understanding ISIL, but understanding that the link between the
Afghanistan conflict, and al-Qaeda is important because ISIL is

continuing on the global jihad that was began in that conflict, and
carried on by al-Qaeda.
Bruce Livesey, a Canadian investigative journalist, identified this
phenomenon, and tagged this new form of jihad, which showed an
active interest in militaristic struggle by pure Muslims against the nonMuslim world as the Salafist Movement, and called the jihad created in
Afghanistan, and carried on by al-Qaeda Salaffi Jihadism (1). This is
where we find the crucial link to ISIL, and can begin to understand its
creation, because ISIL came from the same basic place as al-Qaeda,
but it has simply taken Salafism to more extreme heights. ISILs rise
has been linked specifically to a Salafi jihad that was started in
Afghanistan (zdalga, 1). This Salafi jihad broke significantly with the
Wahhabism that was present in the region before, and which was
sponsored by Saudi Arabia, by calling for the destruction of the Saudi
regime because of their ties to the United States of America (aka the
West); additionally, it was no longer necessary for a sovereign to
declare jihad, but rather it became enough for an individual to be
moved by Allah to join an ongoing global jihad to help liberate an
Islamic state under oppression, which was the lesson learned from the
Afghanistan conflict (zdalga, 1).
The aim of overthrowing the Saudi regime seems to have
stopped though, as the Saudis have become less friendly to the United
States, and the West in general, and have instead become major

financiers of ISIL (USA Today, 1). What has remained is the radical
sense of jihad that lacks the need for a sovereign to give orders to
jihad, while the lessons of Afghanistan have lead to widespread beliefs
that jihad is something individuals join for the liberation of all Islamic
nations from Western powers. In addition to that goal, it is important to
understand that Wahhabism, and subsequently Salafism are schools
that are directly opposed to Shia, and are instead fundamentalist Sunni
schools of Islam that were directly created in order to combat the
ideology of the West by focusing on a literal interpretation of the
Quran, and having no leniency in a black and white worldview, which is
why ISILs massacres are mostly of Shiites in the Levant, while alQaeda was not directly anti-Shiite, as Osama Bin Ladens own mother
was actually a Shiite (Weaver, 49-52).
The man who can be most essentially tied to the creation of ISIL
is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He was made almost legendary by the
American media prior to his death in 2006, but more importantly, all of
these trends are present in his lifes work, which is what lead to ISILs
rise. Al-Zarqawi fought in Afghanistan briefly, and there he made many
political connections, but the most important of which was to Sheikh
Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a radical Salafist cleric (Weaver, 49). Here
then in the man who was bound to found the organization that would
become ISIL, were the two elements that this essay has been
proposing are the descriptors for the behavior of ISIL: galvanization

from the jihad in Afghanistan, and radicalization by fundamentalist

Salfist doctrines.
Al-Zarqawi was given his first seed capital from al-Qaeda in
1999, following a stint in Jordanian prison from 1993-1999, to produce
an army that could be exported anywhere in the world for the
liberation of Muslim people, and he setup a training camp near Herat in
Afghanistan, which grew to have several thousand members over a
couple of years (Weaver, 54-55). He was put into use in 2003 following
the invasion of Iraq by the United States, and to great effect as a
seemingly ruthless figure catapulted to fame, and prestige by the
American media as much as by his actual exploits of violence (Weaver,
56). But al-Zarqawi was creating what would become ISIL long before
Iraq. Researchers at Roskilde University have analyzed ISIL as a social
movement founded by al-Zarqawi, and so they trace the beginnings to
the first group he founded in his hometown of Zarqa, the Bayat al-Iman
in the 1990s, which shifted names to Jamaat al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad in
2001, and finally it became a branch of al-Qaeda, and was called alQaeda in Iraq, or al-Aqaeda Fi Bilad al-Rafidayn beginning in 2004
(Hansen, 54). Al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI, was a significant, and
formidable faction in the Iraqi insurgency against the United States,
and the Iraq War helped given AQI a stronghold in Iraq that it had
never had prior (Kostro and Riba, 4). By 2006 al-Zarqawi had become
too public a figure, and too much of a self fulfilling prophecy in terms of

a violent, effective Islamic leader for the United States to tolerate

anymore and they assassinated him (Hansen, 55). But that was not the
end of ISIL.
In fact, since what Zarqawi had founded was actually a social
movement based on the idea that a jihad could be carried out without
the approval of a sovereign, and tied together by the hardcore Salafi
doctrine, it was able to easily live on. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi took over
AQI following al-Zarqwis assassination, along with Abu Hamza alMuhajir, who acted as al-Baghdadis minister of war, and it is these two
individuals who would create the incarnation of ISIL that is currently
having such an impact in the Levant (Hansen, 55). There was a
significant loss of support for the extremist methods employed by alZarqawis extremist AQI due to his penchant for dealing in absolutes,
and not being shy about utilizing public displays of violence to spread
his message, and it was determined by his successors that a new
brand image was needed.
So AQI rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq, and
maintained a campaign of bombing Shiite targets in order to keep itself
in good standing with the Sunni community in the region (Austin, 1).
But as the Iraq War was essentially lost, and the violence deescalated
the opportunity to distinguish themselves started to deteriorate, and
AQI began to expand its operations to Syria, to take part in the Syrian
Civil War, which presented an opportunity to gain further influence,

and stay alive as a social movement, and an organization (Hansen, 55).

Delving further into this though, the ethos of the mujahideen learned
from Afghanistan was still present in the organization founded by alZarqawi, and that included both the directive for good Muslims to
travel to occupied Islamic territories and help other Muslims fight
oppression, and the lessons of how to actually accomplish those goals.
Apart from the pragmatic concerns of influence that explain how ISIL
(then ISI) moved into Syria from Iraq, the more theoretical analysis
says that they moved there in order to ensure Sunni victory, which
their guiding Salafist doctrine proscribed as the true Muslims, and their
foundations reaching back to Afghanistan told them they must do.
Going to Syria was a natural move for the organization in this sense.
Indeed, it seems like these theoretical considerations would have
been well heeded at the time. Al-Baghdadi again changed the name of
the organization from ISI, to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,
indicating that it was expanding its territory, but more specifically, alBaghdadi specifically stated that the goal of the organization was to
implement a Sunni Islamic State covering Iraq and Syria, and over time
this has extended into the establishment merely of an Islamic State, a
caliphate, under which all true Muslims can live, and be represented in
the world (Hansen, 56). Commander of the United States forces in Iraq
in 2009 stated that under Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leadership of ISI,
and in much of the groups in the areas that ISI operated in shifted from

foreigners to Iraqi citizens, creating a consolidation of power into a

more unified Muslim identity (Reuters, 1). This was in alignment with
the beliefs of the organization that Muslim lands should be placed in
the hands of true Muslims.
In 2010, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was killed in an airstrike near
Tikrit by United States forces (Arango, 1). Almost immediately, Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi was appointed as the new head of ISIL (Shadid, 1).
This began a more serious period of ISIL in terms of what they hoped to
accomplish as an organization. They announced publicly that they
would be retaking all of their stronghold positions throughout Iraq, and
Syria as the United States proceeded to finish up the withdrawal of the
majority of its troops from the region (Youssef, 1). But even more
importantly, Bakr al-Baghdadi initiated a new campaign called the
Breaking the Walls, which was aimed at breaking Iraqi war criminals
out of prisons throughout the region (Youssef, 1). Pragmatically, the
Breaking the Walls campaign was remarkably successful, it escalated
violence, and lead to the freeing of 500 key prisoners from raids on Taji
and Abu Ghraib prisons, many of whom were Iraq War veterans, well
versed in military tactics, hardened by combat, and prepared to create
an Islamic state after witnessing the threat of Western powers in their
homeland (The Institute of the Study of War, 13-14).
The Breaking the Walls campaign can be seen as important
beyond the pragmatics though. It is an important campaign to

understand how ISIL became such a prominent power from the

perspective of military might, but also ideologically. To understand the
expansion, we have to understand that it was an opportunistic move
by ISIL to take back land it saw as rightfully Muslim from the exiting
American (i.e. Western) powers. So the exit of the American forces
helped to enable ISILs expansion, and the success of the campaign,
which enabled them to gain a large amount of influence, and cast
themselves as liberators of Muslim people. This brand image of
liberators goes beyond mere image though; it goes back to the core
foundations of the organization. The foundational premise was that
members of ISIL were part of a jihad to liberate all oppressed Muslims,
and by breaking Muslims out of Western-controlled prisons; they
showed that they were capable of doing exactly what they set out to
do.
But it was important in revealing another element of ISIL, which
is a deep-seated hatred of the artificial boundaries drawn by Western
powers over a hundred years ago by the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
Indeed, one of the most recent actions by ISIL was the release of a
video titled The End of Syskes-Picot, in which they show themselves
literally tearing down the artificial border signs, and declaring
themselves the liberators of the sham aka the Levant (ISIL). There
has not been very much analysis of this fact strangely enough. Before
ISIL itself released the video, it seems like no analysts caught on to the

fact that ISIL has the destruction of the Sykes-Picot borders in its list of
goals. The only commentator to mention it was the infamous, and
highly questionable Fox News personality Glenn Beck, who asserted
that it was the goal of ISIL all along to destroy the Sykes-Picot borders,
and create an Islamic nation that was independent of Western
influence (Beck). Shockingly, it seems like Beck was largely correct in
this analysis, as ISILs own video seems to prove. Additionally, Bakr alBaghdadi declared himself to be the new caliph of a new caliphate that
ISIL had established, and stated that ISIL is the new Islamic State, that
is to be a nation of Islam free from the West (Kaplan, 1).
Since the release of the ISIL video, and their own proclamation
that fighting against Sykes-Picot is a legitimate political cause apart
from it being a worthy religious cause there has been some
discussion about the effects of Sykes-Picot in the Middle East, and
various analysts have scrambled to describe the artificial borders as
leading to the creation of ISIL. Actually, this seems somewhat unlikely
given the trajectory of ISIL thus far traced in this paper, and there are
analysts who agree. It has been said that even prior to the Ottoman
Empire, the tribes in the Middle East were not peaceful, and the
borders never really made any difference in the violence of the region
(Mert, 1). This seems quite likely. The foundation of ISIL is partly antiWestern insofar as Salafi beliefs are strongly opposed to all non-Muslim
beliefs, but the problem is that Shiite beliefs are considered non-

Muslim beliefs, and even worse, they were created via a perversion of
Islam according to Salafi doctrine, so that there is bound to be intense
conflict between Sunni and Shiite sects regardless of the borders that
contain them (or fail to).
Indeed, the Middle East, regardless of borders, has always been
an area that has had to deal with many quasi-states, and there is no
reason to think that different borders would produce different results
(Ahram, 1). What seems more likely is that ISIL needed to make public
displays of liberation to follow its successful Breaking the Walls
campaign, and it needed to take action that it could create rhetoric
around to promote itself as an official Islamic nation in order to bolster
the claims of Bakr al-Baghdadi as the new caliphate. On the other
hand, it is entirely possible the members of ISIL feel legitimately
wronged by the Sykes-Picot borders, which are undeniable products of
imperialism by both Britain and France from a century ago. And ISIL
has been able to leverage this obvious act of imperialism to fantastic
success in winning over thousands of Muslims from many different
regions to its message, so whether it is real, or not, ISIL understands
that creating an image for itself of destroying imperialistic barriers to
create a new Islamic nation are very good for its recruitment, and its
sustained life.
This has been the point that ISIL has broken with all the
traditions of groups in the region because it has taken a territory,

drawn its own border, and started collecting taxes (Abdul-Hussain and
Smith, 1). Of course, they have also robbed banks, and collected
millions in ransoms of various individuals, while also selling massive
quantities of oil on the black market from captured oil fields that net
them 1-3 million dollars a day (Abdul-Hussain and Smith, 2). ISIL is a
group that has a deepseated reactionary element within it, and that
element is reacting to the invasion of the Middle East by Western
powers, as well as to the abuses that they have suffered from corrupt
local regimes. For the first time in the Middle East this group seeks a
true return to the values of its homeland, and that is why it is essential
for them to create at least the illusion of having their own Islamic state.
This consolidation most likely why so many of the disparate groups in
the Middle East has sworn loyalty to ISIL, in order to embrace a central
power that it non-Western.
In fact, the consolidation may have had roots in the days of alZarqawi. Researchers believe that Zarqawi formulated a strategy
where he isolated America troops, and their international and coalition
partners, deterred Iraqi cooperation, distributed the rebuilding process
by targeting Western contractor buildings and humanitarian aid
centers, and then ensnared the Western troops in a Sunni-Shiite civil
war, all because he saw good Muslims being deprived of their values
by the West (Hansen, 57). It is thought that all of this was done
precisely to prevent any form of Western democracy from being setup,

and thus abolishing the possibility of an Islamic state in the Middle East
(Hansen, 57). Insofar as this is the correct analysis of the social
movement that al-Zarqawi started, and which is now ISIL in fact
currently calling themselves just the Islamic State we can make
sense of ISILs consolidation, and change from the stateless, mobile
model of al-Qaeda. If we ask why ISIL is doing what they are, it is
because they want to have their own self-determination as an Islamic
state.
But many organizations have fought against Western powers,
and the money-making schemes of ISIL are not even unusual for most
jihadist organizations (Abdul-Hussain and Smith, 2). Aside from the
rhetoric of the caliphate, and the actual establishment of a region
which people can travel to in order to serve them, ISIL also
understands two things very well: giving money to the lowest
members, and using social media. ISIL has a $2 billion war chest, and it
uses that money to pay its fighters $400 a month, which is double
what any other similar group pays (Piven, 1) This demonstrates that
ISIL has some kind of legitimacy to all of the poor, and disenfranchised
people in the region, and even sympathizers around the world. It shows
that it knows how to take care of the least of its people, and not
squander money on lavish palaces as the corrupt dictators, or the royal
families are seen to. Additionally, on a simple pragmatic level, it means
that they get all of the extra rebel fighters who are purely selfish to join

them. With so many groups to choose from, potential fighters might as

well choose the one that pays the best.
The second aspect of ISIL is really quite brilliant. They have used
social media in a spectacularly successful way to spread propaganda
and recruit new fighters not only from the Middle East, but also across
the globe. ISIL has had managed an extremely effective, and
sophisticated social media presence; it has accounts on all major social
media sites such as Facebook, and Twitter, and it has utilized new app
technology to gain hundreds of thousands of followers and constantly
have them broadcast their message for them, often without the
followers even realizing it (Bernard, 1). The social media services
cannot even fight against ISIL because there are actually hundreds of
thousands of real people signing up to spread the message of ISIL
every day, and it is part of the core requirements of being a member of
ISIL to broadcast that message daily on social media (Bernard, 1). In
addition to the textual sites, ISIL also curates its images on sites like
Instagram and Tumblr, and has excellent production quality on its
videos, even when they are of savage things such as beheadings
(Bernard, 2). This attention to social media detail has never been
employed by any other jihadist organization, and so it gives ISIL an
amplified voice in the world and gives it an immense sphere of
influence that extends around the globe. This is how they have
recruited individuals from countries as diverse as Canada, Norway,

Chechnya, France, New Zealand, and Australia, in addition to swelling

their ranks at home.
What then it to be the future of ISIL? It is extremely difficult to
say. It looks like the threat cannot be ignored by the West, and today
the United States top military officials announced that they are making
plans to assault ISILs territory at some point given the success of
pushing ISIL forces away from Baghdad (Al Jazeera, 1). Meanwhile,
political leaders around the world are banning ISIL fighters from their
countries, and in the case of Britain, the Prime Minister plans to ban
ISIL fighters for exactly two years (Swineford, 1). But ISIL continues to
gain local support with many other jihadist groups swearing loyalty to
them, most recently a large group of the Egyptian jihadists (Karim and
al-Atrush, 1). The social media campaign also does not seem to have
faltered, and there does not appear to be any weakening of the
financial mechanisms that fund ISIL. Meanwhile, trade sanctions wont
work on them, since they dont particularly care to trade with Western
powers in the first place, and they are financially self-sufficient. So,
barring actual boots on the ground military action taken by Western
powers, it seems likely that ISIL will continue to consolidate the jihadist
organizations in the Middle East, continue gaining fighters, and expand
its borders from its current position throughout Iraq and Syria, and
further into the Levant, most likely taking over Lebanon, and Jordan.
Their claim to want to establish an Islamic State is spurred by a

century of Western abuse, and so, unchecked, they just might succeed
in attaining that goal.

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