The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham

[symple_box color=”blue” text_align=”left” width=”100%” float=”none”]

Mustafa Ettoualy is a PHD candidate at the University of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah. He is a researcher with main consternation in Political Islam and Translation. He published many articles on the issue of Political Islam in Morocco. He has recently published a book entitled “The Islamists and The Moroccan Makhzen: The Emergence of Islam-Oriented Party”.[/symple_box]

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham, abbreviated as ISIS or ISIL, claims religious authority over all Muslims. It is an extension of Al Qaeda as it proclaims allegiance and loyalty to its prominent figures such as Bin Laden, and later on to Ayman Eddaouahri. Following Al Qaeda doing what was assigned to it by “Intelligence services,” and after that it cards were maimed and smeared, the said services found a new established “scarecrow” on the debris of Bin Laden’s group, enabling them to resume some appointed tasks for the second generation, which are necessarily necessitated by the new geopolitical atmosphere.

The group has used several different names since its inception in early 2000 and went through several changes in terms of religious and strategies revisions mainly:

1- To entomb Al Qaeda’s maimed reputation and hearsay -a servant of the Western Intelligences against the existing ruling systems- to involve the Islamic states in a war that is not theirs[1] and put more pressure on these countries for radical amendments in their red lines after globalizing the controversial Issue of Terrorism[2]. Explicitly, Al Qaeda was an apparatus created to frighten and blackmail those who are in power and mainly to weaken the existing systems.

2- To cub the Islamic ideology and its escalating temptation to some people from sweeping the other previously exercised, or existing ideologies, throughout the Arab world. This is done with an aim to find a platform where to exist as one of the potential solution to the misery of people since the late nineteenth century. The motto of ”Islam is the Solution“ is a panel that has very often appeared in some  demonstrations  led by some Islamists  in different nations around the world, being fed by the return of the Jihadists to their home countries from Afghanistan shortly after  the collapse of the two poles (USA and USSR), as well as the defeat of USSR against the Jihadists who were sponsored by the USA, and the invasion of allies which was considered a crusade war by both the Bush administration[3] and the Islamist current and the second Intifada, which fuels the feeling of hostility and conspiracy theory against all what is Islamic.

3- To implicate the fundamentalists in a crisis that they cannot bear its responsibility, which will lead people after the fanatic group’s failure to fulfill their promises toward people, mainly to say that: “Islamists abused their responsibilities,” and people will despair of any good expected from them.

4- To mix up the real meaning of Islam as one of the celestial tolerate religions and create phobia and terror within Western societies as one of the new basis of the governing apparatuses.

5- To gain time to collect data analyses of the first phase (2001-2011), for the Second Phase that started with the so-called ”Arab Spring,” which I prefer to call “The Arab  fall and collapse”[4]

6- To declare the end of a phase and the beginning of a new phase. The end of that launched war against mainstream ideologies and national idiosyncrasies since the 11^th September attacks and the resumption of a war that targeted geopolitical sphere in an endeavor to reshape the existing national borders based on ethnicities.[5] Alqaeda was the armament of the first era while ISIS is the tool to carry out the strategy of the  second generation, which as I stated earlier is aiming to divide the Arab world countries into small entities[6].

Actually, after that the first era’s end was marked by the mistrustful assassination of the secret agent Bin Laden, the dawn of a new era peeped on the surface with that suspicious Arab spring’s decline, and of course, for each phase there are some cards that should be used in that “holly war,” as Jeorge Bush preferred to call it.

The smooth transition and transmission of Al Qaeda’s inheritances to ISIS is marked by two things: the first is the shift in the group’s nominations while the second is the silky transfer of power from one leader to another: Bin laden, Ayman Eddaouahri, Al-Zarqawi, and finally by El Baghdadi who crowned himself the Caliphate of The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham, ISIS.

In 2000, Al-Zarqawi had traveled to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets, like most of the other Al Qaeda and ISIL members. He run an Islamic militancy training camp near Herat. His main intention was to overthrow the kingdom of Jordan which he considered to be un-Islamic, according to his own interpretation of the Islamic laws and jurisprudence. For this purpose, he developed a large number of contacts and affiliates in several countries. Jihadists from different nationalities joined his organization of Monotheism and Jihad, an organization that pledged allegiance and swore loyalty to Usama bin Ladin since its inception, declaring himself the “Emir of al-Qa’ida in the Country of Two Rivers.”

Almost two years later and mainly in 2006, Al Zarqaoui‘s group was fused with another Iraqi group, changing its nomination to “Mujahideen Shura Council” and to “Oath of the Scented Ones,” respectively as a way to mark the shift in goals, in order to handle the struggle in the battle of confrontation.

In 2012, following the success of the plan of the so-called “Arab spring,” as it was the only way to weaken the existing systems and get rid of their strengths, and especially during the civil war against the existing system of Bashar El Assad, exploiting the political turmoil and unrest, the Oath stretched and expanded to Syria adopting the name of “Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham.

The trick of what is called Al Qaeda and its offspring -including ISIS- all pretended, since the first cold war, to kick out and oblige the coalition forces to withdraw from Iraq, to topple the regimes of the regions, which means a destabilization of the region and a protection to the  Israeli state’s recurrent atrocities, to assassinate collaborators with the occupation regime, to remove the Shia population and defeat its militias because of its death-squad activities, and lastly, to set up afterward a pure state; a state that is living in conformity with the state of Israel, side by side. Besides, in this vain, none of them declared hostility and Jihad against the state of Israel. Also, as stated in the western intelligences’ archives, leaders of these organizations were secret agents serving the western intelligences for years after being trained.

Hence, the disguise and the pantomime stage are over. The truth is no more clear only to those mavens and smart analysts. According to the fugitive CIA contractor agent Edward Snowden and other sources, the leader of ISIS, Baghdadi, like most of the Jihadists leaders, was trained and indoctrinated the basis of military affairs beside communication and public speaking skills to draw Jihadists from the entire world to what is called the “Hornet’s nest’[7]. The aim, according to the Centre for Research on Globalization, is to facilitate tracking them, and generally to shake the stability of the Arab countries[8], by  both the British and Israeli Intelligences.

From the aforementioned listed analyses, I can conclude by saying that Bernard Louis’s project to divide the Muslim world into slices is work-in-process. It seizes the weaknesses of the Muslim world in different fields, especially in the absence of strong strategies to curb exterior conspiracies that are aimed at destabilizing and weakening it. If the national fronts were solid and unified enough, these conspiracies would not take place, and neither Al Qaeda nor its offspring ISIS would have fixed goals, let alone that the so-called Arab spring would have never taken place. There should be social, political and mainly a cultural mobilization against exterior conspiracies and against those “worms” and pawns that try to destabilize nations.