{"id":4082,"date":"2015-12-21T01:00:14","date_gmt":"2015-12-21T06:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/?p=4082"},"modified":"2015-12-21T10:51:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-21T15:51:11","slug":"some-thoughts-on-isis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/2015\/12\/some-thoughts-on-isis\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Thoughts on ISIS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the hottest topics, if not the hottest, in international affairs in 2015 is the question of ISIS, and the terrorist activities associated with ISIS.\u00a0 What is ISIS?\u00a0 How did it become such a powerful force so quickly, when most people have never heard of it as late as about three years ago?\u00a0 Did the U.S. play any role in the rapid ascendancy of ISIS?\u00a0 This article attempts to shed some light on these questions.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<strong>Background Information on ISIS:<\/strong>\u00a0 ISIS stands for <strong>I<\/strong>slamic <strong>S<\/strong>tate of <strong>I<\/strong>raq and <strong>S<\/strong>yria. It is also known as ISIL which stands for <strong>I<\/strong>slamic <strong>S<\/strong>tate of <strong>I<\/strong>raq and <strong>L<\/strong>evant, where Levant historically refers to the Muslim countries in Eastern Mediterranean shores, like Syria-Palestine, and Egypt.\u00a0 It is also simply known as <strong>I<\/strong>slamic <strong>S<\/strong>tate or IS implying that it is more global in reach.\u00a0 It was founded in 1999 in Iraq by the Jordanian radical Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden of al-Qaeda, but was killed in June 2006.\u00a0 It is an extremist militant Jihadist Sunni group who advocates religious war using violence.\u00a0 Since April 2010, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi became its leader.\u00a0\u00a0 Its original base was in Iraq and was then known as <strong>I<\/strong>slamic <strong>S<\/strong>tate of <strong>I<\/strong>raq (ISI), but in 2013 expanded to Syria and became known as <strong>I<\/strong>slamic <strong>S<\/strong>tate of <strong>I<\/strong>raq and <strong>S<\/strong>yria (ISIS), participating in military opposition to the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.<\/p>\n<p>Even when it expanded into Syria in 2013, ISIS was still relatively small, in terms of the territory under its control, number of fighters, and amount and sophistication of its weapons.\u00a0 But it quickly expanded in all these three measures within the last couple of years.\u00a0 How did that happen?<\/p>\n<p><strong>How Did ISIS Get Started in Iraq:<\/strong>\u00a0 Before discussing the situation in Syria, we first discuss how did ISIS or ISI get started in Iraq around the beginning of the 21th century.\u00a0 Using the excuse that Iraq was hiding and denying her possession of weapons of mass destruction, the U.S., Britain, and their allies invaded Iraq in March 2003 and toppled their president, Saddam Hussein, who was captured in December 2003 (and executed in 2006).\u00a0 However, there was no peace and stability in Iraq because conflicts continued for the next decade as Iraqi insurgency forces fought with the post-invasion Iraqi government set up by the U.S. occupying forces.\u00a0 It is estimated that 150,000 to 600,000 Iraqi were killed just during the next 3-4 years after the invasion.\u00a0 The weak and unpopular government was not able to provide stability to run the country, and enacted policies that were considered by many to have alienated the Sunni minority and enlarged the conflicts between the Sunni minority and the Shiite majority.\u00a0 Due to political pressure from within the U.S. against America&#8217;s direct involvement in another foreign war, President Bush started withdrawing American forces from Iraq at the end of 2007, and the withdrawal was accelerated by President Obama with all combat troops withdrawn by December 2011. \u00a0 As a result, the Iraqi government infrastructure, police, and society were basically destroyed, resulting in a political vacuum in Iraq.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Political Vacuum in Iraq:<\/strong>\u00a0 It was this political vacuum that allowed the newly established ISI or ISIL to grow.\u00a0 In the summer of 2014, ISIL launched a major military offensive in Northern Iraq and captured Mosul, a major city in that area, as well as other cities in Iraq, e.g., Tikrit which is only about 85 miles northwest of Baghdad, capital of Iraq.\u00a0 Therefore, the origin of ISIS (or ISI or ISIL or IS) and its growth were directly related to the political vacuum left behind in Iraq after the U.S.&#8217;s invasion of Iraq, toppling the government of Saddam Hussein but unable to replace it with a strong and capable unifying government, and subsequent withdrawal of American troops.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Syria Civil War and Proxy War:<\/strong>\u00a0 This leads us to Syria and the rapid expansion in the military strength of ISIS.\u00a0 Due to growing disparity between the rich and the poor, favoritism or corruptions from connections with government officials, poverty, high youth unemployment, etc., coupled with a most intense drought from 2007-2010 resulting in many crop failures, unrest by the Syrian people began in the spring of 2011 against the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.\u00a0 The al-Assad government responded with crackdowns.\u00a0 Then soon the unrest changed from demonstrations to armed rebellions, including the establishment of the Free Syria Army (FSA) from defected officers of the Syrian armed forces.\u00a0 Syrian government officials are mostly Shiite Muslims, although President al-Assad&#8217;s wife is a British-born and British-educated Sunni Muslim.\u00a0 The Syrian government, including its armed forces, traditionally has received support from Russia, and also from Iran and Iraq.\u00a0 But from the beginning of the unrest in Syria, the rebels and the FSA have received military training and support from the U.S., and also from Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and other Western countries.\u00a0 So the civil war in Syria is somewhat like a proxy war between Russia and the U.S.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Involvement of ISIS and Continuation of Proxy War:\u00a0<\/strong> Besides the two parties of the Syrian armed forces and the rebel forces led by the FSA, there was another major party involved in the Syria civil war, and that is al-Queda and later joined by ISIS (in the rest of this article, we will just refer to this combination as ISIS).\u00a0 In contrast to the rebel forces led by FSA or the Syrian government armed forces who are mostly Shiite Muslims, supporters of ISIS are mostly Sunni Muslims.\u00a0 Although both FSA and ISIS are fighting against the Syrian government armed forces, they also fight against each other, and trying to take control of territories under the control of the other party.\u00a0 For example, FSA rebel forces and ISIS have fought against each other in areas around the cities of Aleppo, Idlib, Reqqah, etc., and sometimes with the control changing hands more than once.<\/p>\n<p>Beginning on September 30, 2015, Russian military planes attacked both ISIS forces and FSA rebel forces in Syria.\u00a0 Attacking ISIS forces may be consistent with U.S. policy, but attacking FSA rebel forces is not consistent with U.S. policy.\u00a0 Therefore, Russia and the U.S. in one sense seem to be on the same side fighting against ISIS, but their proxy war also continues with respect to supporting al-Assad or the FSA rebel forces, with Russia supporting al-Assad and the U.S. supporting the FSA rebel forces.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Expansion and Growth of ISIS:\u00a0 <\/strong>The FSA rebel forces are not necessarily dedicated with great convictions to fight against ISIS.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, many fighters of the FSA rebel forces have defected from FSA and joined ISIS.\u00a0 Because CIA provides training and weapons to rebel forces, such defection would increase the size of the ISIS army as well as the quantity and sophistication of their weapons.\u00a0 Of course, when ISIS seizes a territory from rebel forces, it would also gain many American weapons that were left behind.\u00a0 Sometimes FSA rebel forces would also sell their American-provided weapons to ISIS.\u00a0 These are all reasons contributing to the rapid growth of the size and strength of ISIS.<\/p>\n<p>Something else also contributed to the rapid growth of the size and strength of ISIS.\u00a0 Besides fighting in Syria, the ISIS troops also moved (or moved back for some) to Iraq and became rebel forces against the Iraqi regime.\u00a0 When the U.S. withdrew her troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, it left behind many American equipment in Iraq, such as jeeps, trucks, tanks, as well as weapons.\u00a0 So when the ISIS troops moved into Iraq and gained control of parts of Iraq, all these expensive equipment and weapons became theirs for free.\u00a0 The U.S. should have known that the situation in Iraq and neighboring countries are very tenuous.\u00a0 So the U.S. should have either removed or destroyed those equipment or weapons, instead of just leaving them behind.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Summary:\u00a0 <\/strong>The existence of ISIS, especially its rapid growth in size and strength in Iraq and Syria, was not due to U.S. inaction, but was directly related to three sets of actions by the U.S. government:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<ol>\n<li>The U.S. invasion of Iraq.\u00a0 This toppled the Saddam Hussein government.\u00a0 It destroyed the Iraqi infrastructure and security force.\u00a0 But it was not able to provide a viable stable government that has the support of the Iraqi people.\u00a0 The resulting political vacuum in Iraq led directly to the birth and initial growth of ISIS.\u00a0 U.S. is very good in tearing down governments, but is not very good in creating stable and viable governments.<\/li>\n<li>The U.S.&#8217; support for the FSA rebel forces to try to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad government and engaged in a proxy war in Syria with Russia.\u00a0 This includes providing training and weapons to the FSA rebel forces, who turned out not to be so committed soldiers to the cause that is aligned with that of the U.S.\u00a0 When the FSA rebel forces were not able to defeat ISIS or when these FSA rebel soldiers defected to ISIS, it contributed to the growth in size and strength of ISIS.<\/li>\n<li>When the U.S. withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011, instead of taking or destroying their equipment and weapons, the U.S. left these equipment and weapons behind.\u00a0 Thus, when ISIS moved into Iraq and took control of some of the territories, ISIS got these equipment and weapons for free.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/ol>\n<p>For a short (12 minute) video discussing some of the above issues by an award-winning American journalist Ben Swann, see &#8220;Truth in Media:\u00a0 The Origin of ISIS&#8221;: \u00a0\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hA9GVqMyDqY&amp;from=timeline&amp;isappinstalled=0&amp;app=desktop\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hA9GVqMyDqY&amp;from=timeline&amp;isappinstalled=0&amp;app=desktop<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Refugee Issue:<\/strong>\u00a0 The instabilities, fighting, and economic chaos left behind in Iraq and Syria, at least partially as a result of America&#8217;s actions, have created a huge stream of refugees from Iraq, Syria, and neighboring countries to escape and try to find another land so they can survive.\u00a0 The U.S. has a moral obligation to help solve the refugee problem by taking a share of the refugees.\u00a0 Denying them a chance to survive would be like denying the Jewish people the chance to escape from the Holocaust from Germany-controlled countries during WWII.\u00a0 This already happened once in 1938 during WWII when only two countries (China and Dominican Republic) were willing to increase their quota of granting visas to Jewish immigrants.\u00a0 Now we have a chance to practice the often shouted slogan &#8220;Never Again!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the hottest topics, if not the hottest, in international affairs in 2015 is the question of ISIS, and the terrorist activities associated with ISIS.\u00a0 What is ISIS?\u00a0 How did it become such a powerful force so quickly, when most people have never heard of it as late as about three years ago?\u00a0 Did [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4082"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4167,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082\/revisions\/4167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}