Aaron Zelin at the
Washington Institute recently provided us with a timely and
interesting look at the battle between ISIS and al-Qaeda for supremacy in the
global jihadist movement.
ISIS has its origins in
Jamaat al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad or JTWJ which was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
in 1999. Zarqawi, a charismatic militant Jordanian Muslim, came from a
poor, less educated background than Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda which
was founded in the 1980s during the Afghani jihad against the Soviet Union
occupation of the country. Zarqawi was sentenced to fifteen years in
prison after a failed suicide bombing attempt in Jordan which was undertaken in
1993 to unseat the Hashemite Jordanian monarchy. Zarqawi was released
from prison in the spring of 1999 and went to Afghanistan. The two key
figures met in 1999 in Afghanistan; at that point, Osama bin Laden had the
greatest leverage with the Afghani jihadists that were training in
Taliban-controlled areas of the country. Zarqawi wanted to set up his own
training camps with discharged Jordanian prisoners and was provided with around
$5000 in seed money by bin Laden. Zarqawi's small group, headquartered in
Herat, grew to between 2000 and 3000 members and quickly became a mobile army,
ready to unleash acts of terror anywhere in the world.
At that time, the main
goal of al-Qaeda was to overthrow what they viewed as apostate Arab regimes and
liberate occupied Muslim territory. By lending support to fighters, they
would be able to "cut off the head of the snake", the United States
and its western allies. In contrast, the mission of JTWJ was to topple
the Jordanian monarchy.
During the early 2000s
and after the invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi became well known for a long series of
attacks during the Iraq war including the execution of hostages by beheading
and suicide bombings. He declared war agains the Shiites in Iraq after
Iraqi forces launched an offensive on a Sunni town. As a result of his
successes in the battlefield, Zarqawi's profile was raised and many fighters
wanted to join JTWJ. In order to prevent himself from becoming irrelevant
in the jihadist movement, bin Laden entered negotiations with Zarqawi and the
two groups merged. JTWJ was renamed al-Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers or
more commonly al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). As a result of the agreement, AQI
gained control of the jihadist movement in Iraq and controlled the future
generation of the jihad. The merger gave the new group access to al
Qaeda's sources of funding and recruitment. What ended up separating AQI
from al-Qaeda was the difference in age of their respective fighters; in the
case of al-Qaeda, many of the fighters came of age in the 1980s and 1990s
whereas the fighters in AQI (now ISIS) came of age in the first decade of the
new millennium.
The ideological divide
between Zarqawi and bin Laden can be attributed to one factor; Zarqawi believed
that the only way to save the global Islamic community was to purge the
apostates within it whereas bin Laden believed that salvation for Islam would
not come through removing Muslims, rather it would come through the changing of
apostate institutions. Bin Laden's second in charge, Shaikh Ayman al-Zawahiri
(now the leader of al-Qaeda) and Sheikh Atiyat Allah Abd al-Rahman al-Libi, al
Qaeda's operations leader, both contacted Zarqawi and advised him to stop his
over-enforcement of sharia law and accompanying violence because it was
alienating Sunnis and hurting their global agenda. In 2006, Zarqawi
brought together several Iraqi insurgent factions and established Majlis Shura
al-Mujahedin (MSM).
Zarqawi had a four-pronged strategy to defeat the coalition
forces:
1.) Isolate United States
forces by targeting its allies.
2.) Discourage Iraqi
collaboration by targeting government personnel and institutions.
3.) Target reconstruction
efforts by targeting civilian contractors and aid workers.
4.) Draw the United
States into a Shia-Sunni civil war by targeting Shiites.
In the early years, the 15,000 members of ISI did not particularly have an easy time in Iraq. Its policy of criminal punishment, often death, which were based on very narrow interpretations of sharia law, proved to be unpopular with Iraqis. This led to a backlash and ISIS/AQI lost 2400 members that were killed by an alliance of U.S. troops and Sunni tribesmen and an additional 8800 captured. Unfortunately, the weakening of ISI did not last and the group grew in both numbers and influence.
Zarqawi was killed by
American forces on June 7, 2006. He was replaced by a senior AQI
leader, Abu Hamza al Mujahir, an Egyptian with ties to al-Qaeda. In
October 2006, the group announced a rebranding with the establishment of the
Islamic State of Iraq or ISI under the leadership of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who
was replaced by the current leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after his death on
April 18, 2010. The current leader of ISIS has not pledged any sort of
allegiance to the current leader of al-Qaeda, Shaikh Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The division between al-Qaeda and ISI grew in April 2013 when ISI
announced that it was extending the Islamic State of Iraq into Syria and
changing the group's name to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham or ISIS.
On February 2, 2014, al-Qaeda announced that ISI was not a branch of
Qaidat al-Jihad, the official name for al-Qaeda. Both groups are now
killing each other on the battlefield and a propaganda war has erupted with
both groups using social media to lure fighters from one group to another.
ISIS views Zawahiri's leadership as illegitimate and its current path as
deviant from the path of Osama bin Laden. ISIS regards itself as the true
heir of bin Laden's al-Qaeda as shown in this quote from April 2014:
"...the leaders of al-Qaeda
deviated from the right manhaj, we say this as sadness overwhelms us
and bitterness fills our hearts...Verily al-Qaeda today has ceased to be the
base of jihad, rather its leadership has become an axe supporting the
destruction of the project of the Islamic State and the coming khilafa (caliphate)...al-Qaeda
now runs after the bandwagon of the majority and calls them as ‘the Umma,’ and
softens in their stance at the expense of the religion, and the taghut (tyrants)
of the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood)..."
In an attempt to end the
policies of ISIS that were proving to be troublesome for the worldwide holy
war, in October 2013, al-Qaeda's current head, Shaikh Ayman al Zawahiri,
released a pamphlet to codify the rules for how a jihadi should behave that you
can find here. Here are some quotes:
"Focus on spreading
awareness amongst the general public so as to mobilize it. Similarly, focus on
spreading a greater level of awareness and understanding amongst the Mujahid
vanguard to create an organized, united, ideological, and aware Jihadi force
that strongly believes in the Islamic faith, adheres to its rulings, shows
humbleness to the believers and deals with the disbelievers with firmness. At
the same time, full effort should be put in immediately to ensure that people
with scholarly and propagational abilities come forth from within the ranks of
the Mujahideen so that the our message & ideology may be preserved and the
call to Jihad may be spread amongst Muslims.
In the military
sector, focus should be maintained on constantly weakening the head of
international disbelief (America) until it bleeds to death both militarily and
financially, its human resources are drained and it withdraws to its own shell
after reaching a stage of retreat and seclusion, (sooner rather than later,
with the permission of Allah)...
Generally, avoid
fighting or targeting those who have not raised arms against us or aided in any
such hostile act and maintain focus primarily on the Crusader Alliance and then
upon their local surrogates.
Refrain from killing
and fighting against non-combatant women and children, and even if they are
families of those who are fighting against us, refrain from targeting them as
much as possible.
Refrain from harming
Muslims by explosions, killing, kidnapping or destroying their wealth or
property.
Refrain from targeting
enemies in mosques, markets and gatherings where they mix with Muslims or with
those who do not fight us."
Isn't it nice that even
terrorists now have a do's and don'ts list?
To summarize, it is
interesting to see how ISIS and AQI both emerged from the ashes of Iraq after
the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. When the delicate sectarian balance was
disrupted after the removal of Saddam Hussein, the resulting insurgency
provided very fertile ground for the establishment of anti-coalition forces.
It is also interesting to note that two key decisions made in May 2003 by
the Coalition Provisional Authority, the transitional government established by
the coalition forces, fed the insurgency. The first order, disbanded the
Iraqi security and armed forces, dismissing 250,000 security services
personnel, and the second was banning the members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath
Party from holding office. Estimates suggest that unemployment in Iraq
reached 60 percent in 2004. The 30,000 jobs created by July 2004 were
simply not sufficient to prevent Iraqis from joining the insurgency where they
would get paid $100 just for planting a roadside bomb or shooting an American
soldier. The moves by the Coalition Provisional Authority created
hundreds of thousands of angry Iraqis who had the arms and skills necessary to
create the base for the terrorist movement in Iraq.
Oh, the tangled web we
weave when we don't really understand the cultural ramifications of our
actions.
