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 IraqThe 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.”1The 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 Given this, some have concluded that Saddam had simply been replaced by another “repressive and murderous authoritarian state, albeit under a more representative sectarian set up.”2The Maliki-era repression was also marked by the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.4Following 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.5Yet 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.9Concurrent 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.10Yet 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 SpringWith 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.13The 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.14The 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.17These 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.19Apart 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.21As 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.”22Such 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.24However, 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.”26Thus, 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.
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