Indian Defence Review

At a press conference in June 2010, the commander of the US forces in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno announced that 80 per cent of the ISI’s top leadership, including recruiters and financiers had been killed by the US forces (he added that only eight of the leaders were still at large) and that the organisation had been cut off from the top leadership of Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new head of the ISI, replenished the leadership of the organization which had been depleted, by appointing former Ba’athist and intelligence officials who had earlier served in the Saddam Hussein regime. This new leadership, nearly all of whom had spent time imprisoned by the US forces, make up roughly a third of Baghdadi’s top 25 commanders.

Journalist Sarah Birke has pointed out ‘significant differences’ between the al Nusra and ISIL. Syrians feel that the ISIL, which has a strong presence in northern and Central Syria, is a party of ‘foreign occupiers’. Foreign fighters in Syria include Russian speaking jihadists, part of the Jaish ul Muhajireen wal Ansar (JMA). The JMA’s Chechen leader, Abu Omar al-Shishani swore allegiance to ISIL and al-Baghdadi in November 2013 and the group itself split between those who followed al-Shishani and those who continued operating under the original JMA. The ISIL and al Nusra had come to a parting of the ways, with the ISIL concentrating on the formation of a Caliphate and the Nusra insisting it had, essentially, an anti-Assad agenda.

In January 2014, the Islamic Front (Arabic al-Jabhat al-Islamiyah), a merger of seven rebel groups involved in the Syrian Civil War, announced on November 22, 2013, and the US trained and funded Syrian Free Army launched a joint offensive against the ISIL in and around the city of Aleppo. By May that year, al Qaeda’s supremo Ayman al Zawahiri ordered al-Nusra to stop attacks on the ISIL and balance of power between the two organisations became increasingly complicated. The ISIL made some gains in Iraq increased its ambitions and started a recruitment drive in Saudi Arabia, where the northern tribes have links with those in western and eastern Iraq. On June 29, 2014, the ISIL removed “Iraq and the Levant” from its name, began referring to itself as the “Islamic State”(IS), proclaimed itself as caliphate and named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as caliph.

Analysts felt that the dropping of the reference to the region in its name as widening the group’s scope and that the physical occupation of territory by the group gave the IS the impression that the time was ripe for it to take control of the global jihadist movement. The real dichotomy in the region was the fact that the US trained (and largely supplied) Syrian Free Army and the rebel groups of the Islamic Front were fighting the ISIL and had, therefore, common cause with al- Nusra in its confrontation with the ISIL and ultimately with the US aim of setting up the Syrian Free Army, viz. undermining the continuation of the Assad regime. Ayman al Zawahiri’s disenchantment with the ISIL and backing of al-Nusra in its Syrian operations added to an almost piquant situation, where Zawahiri’s al Qaeda, the main target of US anti-terrorist efforts and the US-backed Syrian Free Army with its anti-Assad regime efforts had common cause.

Meanwhile, opposition to the ISIL (hereafter referred to only by its most recent avatar Islamic State-IS), was inevitable from the traditional monarchies in the Arab world, since the group had declared the legality of all emirates in the Middle East and the Arab Gulf as “null and void”. Jordan and Saudi Arabia moved troops to their borders with Iraq by June and July 2014, following Iraq losing control or withdrawing from strategic border crossing points to the IS. There was some speculation that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had deliberately ordered the Iraqi troop withdrawal in order to bring home to the Saudis the possibility of the IS over running its borders as well.

A month later Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau added to the confusion by declaring support for the new caliphate and for Caliph Ibrahim. Shekau captured the Nigerian town of Gwoza and launched further offensives in north-eastern Nigeria, following the example of IS.

In mid-2014 the IS had recruited over 6,300 fighters (according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights), elements of which had earlier been part of the Syrian Free Army — which was armed, trained and funded by the US. The US role in fishing merrily in the troubled waters of the Middle East is a subject which will be examined independently hereafter. Meanwhile the increasing military clout of the IS resulted in a series of victories in Northern Iraq and the consequent capture of territory by them.

The most significant influence of the advance of the astringently theocratic IS into territories in Iraq and Syria was on the ethnic Yazidi population of these areas. The Yazidis are Kurdish and Arabic speaking people, whose religion is rooted in early Persian religions, blended with vestiges of pre Islamic Mesopotamian and Assyrian religious traditions, plus elements of Christianity and Islam. The Yazidis, out of fear of the advancing IS militants, fled into the mountains. They faced a threat of genocide and of abduction of womenfolk from the advancing IS on the one hand, while on the other they faced deprivation of food and water in the mountains, where they had fled for safety.

The US in such circumstances, launched a humanitarian mission to aid the stranded Yazidis on August 7, 2014, and to start an aerial bombing campaign on August 8 in Iraq against the IS, which marked a new level of the hostility, rhetoric and action between these old opponents. Fortuitously for the US, the United Nations concluded later in September and October that the IS had slaughtered thousands of Yazidis in the region in August.

In response to the US air campaign, the IS despatched over 10,000 militants from Syria and Mosul to capture the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. By October, the IS militants had advance within 25 kms. of Baghdad and Iraqi troops as also Anbar tribesmen opposing the militants, threatened to abandon their weapons if the US did not send in ground troops to help fight the IS. By end October 2014, the radical forces in control of the Libyan city of Derna added a new dimension to this imbroglio by declaring allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, making Derna the first city outside areas in Syria and Iraq a part of the so-called “Islamic State Caliphate.”

The response of the Islamic fundamentalists involved in the regional imbroglio was classic and with the wisdom of hindsight, entirely predictable. Representatives of the Ahrar ash-Sham (Islamic Movement of the Free Men from the Levant), a coalition of Syrian militant, anti-government groups, held a meeting with the al-Nusra Front, the Khorasan Group (a group of senior al- Qaeda functionaries operating in Syria), the IS and the Jund al-Aqsa, earlier known as Sarayat al Quds (Soldiers of al Aqsa, an Islamist rebel group in Syria, formed as a sub unit of al Nusra Front) in an effort to unite several such radical groups against the US-led coalition and the other moderate, mainly Syrian rebel groups. By early November 2014, the Egyptian militant group, Ansar Bait al-Maqdis (Supporters of the Holy House) or Ansar Jerusalem (Supporters of Jerusalem), a Sunni fundamentalist group, owing allegiance to IS, pledged support to the IS combine, thus widening its influence still further.

The efforts of the US to contain the activities of the IS, viewing the latter purely as a terrorist group which could be cowed down and ultimately controlled with a massive display of firepower, is clearly misplaced. A study of the various countries and their interest in the current crisis, the sources of funding and weapons of the IS as also a dispassionate look at the US role and is interventions in the Islamic world as also in the Middle East, is necessary to put the issue in its true perspective. This will be the subject of the following article.