World Media on Iraq, Syria and ISIS, 24 November, 2014
Compiled by New Age Islam Edit Bureau
24 November, 2014
The Articles:
• Early On, ISIS Targeted Sunni Tribal Leaders
By David Ignatius
• Can Tech Companies Stop ISIL?
By Alastair Sloan
• Al-Qaeda And ISIL: Is An Agreement Possible?
By Gökhan Bacik
• ISIS: No Threat To Pakistan
By Mohammad Jamil
• Boko Haram Is Acting Increasingly Like The Islamic State. Why Don’t We Treat It That Way?
By Jacob Zenn
• Theological Explanations Are A Diversion When Looking At The Rise Of Islamic State
By Myriam Francois-Cerra
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Early On, ISIS Targeted Sunni Tribal Leaders
By David Ignatius
November 24, 2014
A centrepiece of President Barack Obama’s strategy for defeating ISIS is mobilizing tribal fighters to join the Iraqi military in retaking Anbar and other Sunni-dominated provinces. But new research shows the jihadis have been working since 2009 to gut the very Sunni tribal leadership on which Obama’s rollback depends – making the U.S. campaign much more difficult.
U.S. strategists want to create a “national guard” version of the tribal militia known as the “Awakening,” which in 2007 and 2008 crushed Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor of ISIS. But overlooked evidence shows that the jihadis have worked systematically to destroy the Awakening and assassinate tribal leaders who might challenge their rule.
The jihadis’ long-running intimidation campaign against the Sunni tribes is one more sign that, as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told me in September, the U.S. “underestimated” ISIS. Obama later told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he shared Clapper’s critique.
Despite these mea culpas, U.S. planners may be making a similar mistake in assuming that the tribal networks can be rebuilt quickly. American officials believe Sunni support has been galvanized by the removal of polarizing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite. That’s true, but fighting the jihadis will be a long uphill road.
Research documenting the ISIS onslaught was compiled by Craig Whiteside, a former Army officer who fought in Iraq and now teaches at the Naval War College. By his count, at least 1,345 Awakening members have been killed in Iraq since 2009 by ISIS or its predecessor organizations. “In the Sunni areas where the Iraqi government had little control, it did not take long for [ISIS] to slowly and methodically eliminate resistance one person at a time,” he writes in a military blog called “War on the Rocks.”
Whiteside cites the example of the strategic town of Jurf al-Sakhar, south of Baghdad. Between 2009 and 2013, 46 Awakening members were killed in 27 different incidents there. The dead included four sheikhs from the local Janabi tribe. Similar killings across Sunni areas of Iraq “were barely noticed by the Iraqi government or in the media.”
The jihadis documented their assassination campaign in a grisly video called “The Clanging of the Swords,” which Whiteside cites in his report. Watching the video, you see a series of drive-by assassinations, accompanied by heroic Islamic music, as ISIS fighters gun down selected vehicles on the road or pedestrians on the streets. “The hungry lions chase their prey,” says an Arabic narrator, whose words are translated into English. It’s clear that the assassins’ intelligence is precise.
The Islamist fighters also targeted Iraqi police and army units in Sunni areas and Baghdad itself, starting more than two years ago. ISIS communiqués released in February 2013 claimed that in the second half of 2012, the group conducted 37 attacks in Baghdad and 43 assassinations in other areas of Iraq. U.S. analysts failed to see this gathering storm.
As its campaign against the Sunni tribal forces gained momentum in 2012 and 2013, ISIS began offering amnesty to Sunnis who had been part of the Awakening militia or the Iraqi security forces. The jihadi video shows scores of Sunnis experiencing “the joy of repentance” in an auditorium in Anbar. They recite a pledge of penitence together and then embrace masked jihadis on stage, one by one.
To swell its ranks further, ISIS staged a series of daring prison raids they called “Breaking the Walls.” Whiteside counts seven prison assaults between July 2012 and July 2013, culminating in a raid on Abu Ghraib prison that freed more than 500 senior ISIS fighters, including one named Abu Wahib, who later became the group’s leader in Anbar. The importance of this prison-break campaign in the rapid build-out of ISIS forces wasn’t understood by U.S. analysts.
U.S. officials argue that Sunni tribal leaders still want to work with American military advisers – all the more so after the jihadis’ brutal campaign of intimidation. As Sheikh Zaydan al-Jibouri told me in Amman last month, “We want to create a strategic relationship with the Americans.”
But this time around, the tribal leaders must combat a deeply entrenched enemy. ISIS controls the ground; it has the intelligence; it has fierce, combat-hardened fighters. Obama is right to seek Sunni “boots on the ground” for the campaign against the jihadis, but he needs to explain better to the American public the roots of this conflict, and how difficult and protracted it will be.
David Ignatius is published twice weekly by THE DAILY STAR.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Columnist/2014/Nov-24/278518-early-on-isis-targeted-sunni-tribal-leaders.ashx#axzz3JvHOfRRE
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Can Tech Companies Stop ISIL?
By Alastair Sloan
23 Nov 2014
Alastair Sloan is a London-based journalist. He focuses on injustice and human rights in the UK, and international affairs including human rights, the arms trade, censorship, political unrest and dictatorships.
Imagine an alternate reality to The Imitation Game, the latest World War II Hollywood epic featuring famed code breaker Alan Turing; in this version, Adolf Hitler's military complex has ditched their complicated Enigma machines. They do this in favour of the telegraph, the wireless radio or even the newspaper.
Imagine then if the Nazis had conducted their Blitzkriegs using these public mediums, instead of the secretive missives more typical of military organisations back then, and indeed today.
How strange would it then be if Allied intelligence agencies had abruptly accused the contemporary newspaper barons, radio station owners and telegraph operators of acting as "command and control networks of choice" for Nazi Germany.
This is the bizarre argument that Robert Hannigan, the newly appointed head of General Communications Headquarters, made in his first week in the job as head of Britain's secretive national surveillance agency. He argued that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was using Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp as coordination networks, or propaganda mediums. He accused Silicon Valley of being "in denial about its misuse". He asked for more cooperation, alleging these companies were resistant.
Problem of Propaganda
The nub of Hannigan's rhetoric is that GCHQ would rather ISIL use communication mediums which do not have cooperative offices in the West; servers which are readily accessible to his spooks. He casually over-states the problem of propaganda - warning that ISIL generates 40,000 tweets per day, neglecting to mention Twitter hosts half a billion tweets in that same period.
Instead, Hannigan would prefer ISIL communicate in other ways - methods which would be completely opaque to his agency's surveillance. Perhaps a paper letter, in a country where there are precious few western intelligence agents. Or a carrier pigeon.
Aside from the bizarre complaint of how damn easy it is to track these people, Hannigan had another gripe - that Silicon Valley does not do enough to help the intelligence agencies track down the bad guys.
The Reality Could Not Be More Different.
As broad background, we now know that more traditional technology firms like Vodafone, British Telecom, and Verizon already gave GCHQ access to the fibre optic cables running a great proportion of the internet under the Atlantic Ocean - equivalent to recording "all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours". GCHQ can also access any information the NSA bulk-collects from Silicon Valley, without even getting a warrant.
As publicly listed companies, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp have little interest in being "command and control centres" for terrorists, or hosting horrific content. Nothing hurts dividends like a website becoming a trove of extremist filth. Thanks to Snowden, awareness of privacy issues is also at an all-time high, and as tech blog The Register put it "sales of devices and cloud services would plummet should word get out that US tech giants were willing partners in mass surveillance".
Encryption Measures
Indeed, the Snowden revelations have seen Silicon tech giants implement a range of end-to-end encryption measures to reassure their users that their most intimate details aren't being exposed wholesale to spies for no reason. Hannigan's piece in the Financial Times is a transparently tactical public relations response to this activity.
But even despite these market risks, evidence suggests that Silicon Valley is collaborating with surveillance agencies anyway - putting Hannigan's view at risk of being painted as pure fantasy.
Twitter, for example, removed a record amount of content from January to June 2014, as made clear in their own "transparency reports". Other tech companies run similar programmes. Twitter even removed numerous accounts which didn't correspond to government requests - meaning they proactively went out and found tweeting terrorists, and expelled them.
As Privacy International also rightly calls out - there are numerous "official and voluntary schemes in place" to allow spooks to access data when needed. The latest documents released by The Intercept suggest that certain, unnamed, US companies knew about the surveillance programmes. Further evidence suggests financial payments were made to Silicon Valley to cover the costs of meeting NSA surveillance requirements.
It may be an attempt to offload blame, but according to NSA's top lawyer - Rajesh De, "big tech companies provided 'full assistance' in legally mandated collection of data".
And as Al Jazeera America recently reported, Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote an email to the head of the NSA, apologising for not attending a collaboration meeting - "General Keith ... so great to see you ... I'm unlikely to be in California that week so I'm sorry I can't attend [will be on the East Coast]. Would love to see you another time. Thank you!"
The tone doesn't suggest an uncooperative relationship.
Ritual Lawbreaking
Hannigan's blaming of Silicon Valley is a crude attempt to launder his agency's reputation for ritual lawbreaking since 2001. He has taken the opportunity of the ISIL crisis haunting public opinion, to cancel out the Snowden revelations and his agency's mass wrongdoing. His comments came shortly after FBI Director James Comey made near identical comments in the US, calling, like Hannigan did, for more collaboration from tech companies.
Writing in the Financial Times, which has an older audience less-versed with Generation Y's obsession with social media, it's easy for GCHQ to paint a picture of newfangled technology being evil, rather than ISIL themselves, or indeed GCHQ or the NSA (in relative terms).
There are three words that the unrepentant GCHQ and NSA would do well to remember - before moaning about uncooperative technology companies: Get a warrant. There is already a perfectly decent system for recovering information from any organisation that provides information conduits for a terrorist, regardless of how cooperative the company may be in the meantime. In many ways, we are extremely lucky that ISIL chooses to use the services of western companies to communicate and propagandise.
So Hannigan doesn't need to qualitatively criticise the relationship between spying agencies and those companies - the law, a judge, and a warrant can give you all you need.
Alastair Sloan is a London-based journalist. He focuses on injustice and human rights in the UK, and international affairs including human rights, the arms trade, censorship, political unrest and dictatorships.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/11/can-tech-companies-stop-isil-2014112374746624352.html
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Al-Qaeda And ISIL: Is An Agreement Possible?
By Gökhan Bacik
November 16, 2014
According to several news sources, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have agreed to stop fighting each other and have decided to join forces against their opponents. Various prestigious news sources, such as the Independent and Newsweek, have confirmed this development. However, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, who spoke to CBS news, has said that he does not agree. According to him, what we have is a kind of limited tactical accommodation on the battlefield, not a perfect unification of two groups.
Clapper is correct. To claim today that ISIL and al-Qaeda have resolved their problems is to exaggerate. Since the beginning, there have been two standard dynamics required for unification that work. The first is to do with other groups, like Khorasan or Jabhat al-Nusra, that aim to reconcile al-Qaeda and ISIL. In fact, it was al-Nusra that first tried for reconciliation when the rift between al-Qaeda and ISIL opened. The second dynamic is the various fighters in both groups (i.e., in al-Qaeda and ISIL) who find this clash meaningless.
What are the differences? Ideologically, the differences between al-Qaeda and ISIL are a matter of minor details that have emerged largely from methodological and administrative issues.
To begin with, ISIL has its own ecumenical caliph in Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. By appointing a caliph, ISIL has declared that it no longer recognizes the global authority of al-Qaeda. Thus, technically speaking, from the point of view of al-Qaeda, ISIL is a rebel organization. Thus, recognition of ISIL as anything other than a tactical ally may weaken the global prestige of al-Qaeda.
The second difference is a matter of generation. The backbone of al-Qaeda and ISIL is made up of different generations of radical supporters. They were socialized in different contexts. It is this generational difference that explains why and how ISIL was able to declare a global caliphate so quickly.
The third difference (and this may sound a little bizarre) is that al-Qaeda's approach to Muslims is more moderate than that of ISIL. How? ISIL, basing itself on Zarqawi's paradigm, argues that it is a duty to purge the Ummah (global community of Muslims) of Muslims who do not represent Islam perfectly. It is for this reason that ISIL has become a machine for killing Muslims who it sees as problematic. Al-Qaeda does not share this view. Instead, al-Qaeda argues that institutions that cause trouble in the Ummah should be purged, not individual Muslims. Although the comparison might again sound bizarre, al-Qaeda is far less brutal than ISIL.
The fourth difference is al-Qaeda's condemnation of certain tactics of ISIL, such as the targeting of Kurds, as a failed strategy. Al-Qaeda is a global network, and it cares about global balances, whereas ISIL is concerned with more local priorities. Al-Qaeda sees this as a problem, for it wants a globally orchestrated agenda that is not put at risk by local strategies.
So, is an agreement impossible? First of all, as Clapper said, certain tactical accommodation is always possible. This is critical. One should not forget that ramifications are a major dynamic of radical groups in the post-Cold War era. “Ramification” refers to the process of a group giving birth to several others. Thus, typical radical groups (including al-Qaeda) are not very upset about the emergence of others (ISIL, in the case of al-Qaeda). The only fact is that al-Qaeda wants to hold the monopoly over global jihad.
The correct question, therefore, is not about whether al-Qaeda and ISIL will merge, but about whether they can generate a model for cooperation.
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist/gokhan-bacik/al-qaeda-and-isil-is-an-agreement-possible_364501.html
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ISIS: No Threat to Pakistan
By Mohammad Jamil
November 19, 2014
The hoisting of a few flags and the distribution of pamphlets by some ISIS sympathisers do not pose any palpable threat
In the first week of November 2014, MQM chief Altaf Hussain in an address referred to wall chalkings and the hoisting of a few flags in southern Punjab. He also expressed serious concerns over the growing threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Pakistan. Some analysts also view ISIS’s presence as a major threat to Pakistan, Afghanistan and the region at large. The Balochistan government, quoting intelligence sources, has made a similar statement. However, in reply to a question about ISIS’s presence in Pakistan during an interview the other day, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General (DG), Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa said, “There could be isolated cases where they are trying to show their presence or to become relevant, but I do not see this growing into a major threat.” The terrorists of ISIS may have some individuals helping them in Pakistan but they are not a major cause of concern, he added.
It is true that thousands of militants from Europe and dozens of other countries have flocked to Iraq and Syria, which is the main battleground for ISIS. However, ISIS militants’ actions are confined to Iraq and Syria and there is not even a remote possibility that ISIS can make inroads into Pakistan. Countries in the region such as Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan are staying vigilant and will not allow them to enter by air or land. ISIS can use some Taliban elements or members of other groups but they are already on the run due to the ongoing military operations in North Waziristan and Khyber Agency. In this backdrop, there is no cause for alarm or threat from ISIS in Pakistan, as Pakistan’s armed forces have the capacity and capability to fight the militants, something they have proved during Operation Zarb-e-Azb. The hoisting of a few flags and the distribution of pamphlets by some ISIS sympathisers does not pose any palpable threat.
Of course, the MQM is concerned over the presence of the Taliban and other militants, who have challenged the monopoly of the party that ruled the roost in Karachi during the last three decades. After the 2009 military operation in Swat, disguised as internally displaced persons (IDPs), militants from Swat, South Waziristan, Mohmand Agency, Bajaur, Dir and elsewhere began taking refuge in Karachi. At first, they did their best to blend in with other militants who fled to Karachi. They shaved their beards, cut their trademark long hair and worked in the city as petty labourers. Thus disguised, they waited for the right time to establish and reinforce their networks in the city. Earlier, small cells of various Taliban groups existed in the city but their job was primarily to raise funds for their parent groups, largely through bank robberies.
The Pakistani military and its agencies seem to be aware of the level of the threat of ISIS in the Middle East and elsewhere, and have also taken notice of the distribution of ISIS pamphlets that bear the logo of the Kalima (Muslim profession of faith), the historical stamp of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and a Kalashnikov rifle. On August 4, 2014, in a post on its Twitter feed, the Pakistan army’s spokesman, Major General Bajwa stated, “Pakistan army soldiers have neither been sent to Saudi Arabia nor deployed on Saudi Arabia’s borders with Iraq to fight Islamic State (IS).” This means that the Pakistani military understands the repercussions of sending troops to act as a mercenary army. It is worth mentioning that an ISIS delegation reportedly met the Taliban’s second-tier leadership to seek their allegiance after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi pronounced a caliphate. Since they have already taken an oath of allegiance to Mullah Umar, how can there be two Amirs (leaders) or caliphs?
It is also well known that, in August 2014, ISIS distributed pamphlets in Peshawar and the border provinces of Afghanistan. The booklet, titled Fatah (victory), published in Pashto and Dari was distributed in Peshawar as well as in Afghan refugee camps on the outskirts of the city. A number of splinter groups operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan announced their support for the ISIS. Among them, Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and Maulvi Abdul Qahar, operating in Nuristan and Kunar provinces of Afghanistan, announced their support for the self-styled caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Former Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Shahidullah Shahid and six other TTP commanders joined ISIS recently. But ISIS cannot help them in Pakistan or Afghanistan, as their area of influence is in Iraq, Syria and their neighbourhood where they have started losing ground after making initial gains.
A representative of Hizbut Tahrir (HT) in Pakistan vowed to support ISIS but HT is no more than a constellation of minor groups with a fantasy about a caliphate, held together by affiliation to the global jihad. However, the little known Tehreek-e-Khilafat Pakistan declared its allegiance to the pseudo-caliph. According to the Daily Telegraph, the Tehreek-e-Khilafat is considered part of the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella movement linked to al Qaeda, containing dozens of terrorist groups, racketeers and sectarian outfits. On the other hand, many Muslim extremist groups and militants from the world over condemned Baghdadi’s proclamation. Baghdadi’s hatred and violent behaviour are against the very essence and teachings of the Quran and Sunnah. He is, therefore, not worthy of the title of caliph and must be denounced assertively.
Mohammad Jamil is a freelance columnist. He can be reached at mjamil1938@hotmail.com
Source: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/19-Nov-2014/isis-no-threat-to-pakistan
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Boko Haram Is Acting Increasingly Like The Islamic State. Why Don’t We Treat It That Way?
By Jacob Zenn
November 13, 2014
Jacob Zenn is analyst on African and Eurasian Affairs at The Jamestown Foundation in Washington, DC. His writings reflect his own research and do not represent any institution or organization.
On Monday, a suicide bomb blast ripped through a high school assembly in north-eastern Nigeria, killing nearly 50 students. And on Wednesday, a female suicide bomber carried out an attack at a university not far from Nigeria’s capital of Abuja. Though not confirmed, it seems clear that these were the latest tragic attacks by militant group Boko Haram – whose name means “western education is blasphemous” – against students in the country. In September 2013, Boko Haram killed 40 male students and their teachers at a dormitory in north-eastern Nigeria. And earlier this year, in its most notorious attack, the militant group kidnapped more than 275 schoolgirls who were taking an exam. Boko Haram wants to deter students from studying anywhere but at Arabic-only madrasas where a Salafist interpretation of the Koran is taught, but no science, math, English or other “infidel” concepts.
Recently, Boko Haram’s schoolgirls kidnapping received an acknowledgement from the Islamic State. In the October 2014 edition of its official magazine Dabiq, the Islamic State cited Boko Haram’s kidnapping in Chibok as precedent for its own sexual slavery of hundreds of non-Muslim Yazidi girls in northern Iraq. Like Boko Haram, the Islamic State has set prices for girls depending on their beauty and youth.
But the reintroduction of slavery is not the only similarity between the Islamic State and Boko Haram. Boko Haram is taking more and more cues from its counterpart in the Middle East, mirroring its savage tactics and inflamed rhetoric. If the United States doesn’t strengthen its resolve to stop Boko Haram’s expansion, the militants’ gains could become a morale boost for the global radical jihadist movement and a loss for democracy and stability in Nigeria and worldwide.
Since Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau first expressed “support” for Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in July 2014, Boko Haram has adopted the Islamic State’s semiotics. Boko Haram edited its own logo to feature the Islamic State’s Rayat Al-Uqab flag on top of its previous logo of crossed guns over a Koran. In a different video, released in October, Boko Haram played the Islamic State’s “national anthem,” the Nasheed “My Ummah, Dawn Has Arrived,” while Shekau declared Boko Haram’s own Islamic state in northeastern Nigeria in October. And on Sunday, Boko Haram released a video of Shekau in a mosque and praising al-Baghdadi’s caliphate in Iraq and Syria before a screenshot of an al-Baghdadi sermon emerged in the video alongside Shekau.
Not only does Boko Haram appeal to the Islamic State’s symbolism and ideology, but it also follows the Islamic State’s insurgency doctrine. On Nov. 3, for example, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a Shiite procession in north-eastern Nigeria, killing worshippers. Again, Boko Haram is strongly suspected of being behind the attack. Evidently, Boko Haram has brought sectarian warfare to Nigeria like the Islamic State has done in Iraq and Syria.
Moreover, since July 2014, Boko Haram has abandoned its attack-and-retreat guerrilla warfare tactics, hiding out in the mountainous areas between Nigeria and Cameroon after attacks. Now, like the Islamic State, Boko Haram militants have begun to seize and hold territory in at least three north-eastern states — Yobe, Borno and Adamawa — with reports of towns in the neighbouring states of Bauchi and Gombe also falling. Like the Taliban and Islamic State, Boko Haram is carrying out executions of Christians and whippings, stoning, and amputations of so-called “sinners,” including those who receive Western education.
Boko Haram is a cross-border movement, with support, in particular, from non-state militant actors, arms traffickers and financiers. There is some evidence that Boko Haram has received funding from al-Qaeda. Now, according to well-connected Nigerian journalist Ahmed Salkida, the Islamic State is expected to recommend that African militants join the insurgency in Nigeria if they can’t travel to Syria, in return for Boko Haram’s continued call-outs to the Islamic State and al-Baghdadi.
Unlike the Islamic State — which is boxed in northern Iraq and northern Syria by powerful neighbours, such as the Turks, Kurds, Iranians, Saudis, Jordanians and Israelis — Nigeria’s neighbours are much more fragile. Already Boko Haram’s expansion beyond Nigeria is more feasible than even the Islamic State’s expansion.
For this reason, the United States has serious incentive to work with the Nigerian government and international partners to cut off the resources Boko Haram is acquiring from these outside militants. Yet, right now, the United States is concentrating on rapidly unfolding events in more familiar theatres like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, so it may not be expending the needed resources to combat the insurgency in West Africa. We’ve sent thousands of troops to Liberia to aid in the Ebola response, but just 80 to search for hideouts where Boko Haram has enslaved the kidnapped schoolgirls. Without serious measures and cooperation between the United States and allies with the resolve to win this battle, West Africa could witness human rights atrocities on a scale previously unseen in the region. We could see devastated regional economies and a proliferation of safe havens and weapons markets for militants elsewhere in Africa to exploit. There also could be a larger flow of refugees into Europe from Nigeria.
In addition to working to end Boko Haram’s funding, the United States can exercise leadership with its European allies in West Africa — such as France, which has close historical and linguistic connection to Nigeria’s neighbours — to develop a regional strategy to prevent Boko Haram’s expansion and roll back the insurgency. The United States and other allies also can work with Nigeria on employing satellite technologies to pre-empt Boko Haram attacks on civilians in remote towns by detecting the irregular movements of Boko Haram’s armed convoys in the desert areas of north-eastern Nigeria. Since Boko Haram is part of the global radical jihadist landscape, the United States can also combine its broader counter-extremist messaging to the Nigerian context and share best practices with the Nigerians.
The United States may have “insurgency fatigue” as a result of unsettled scores in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, let alone the enduring conflicts in Libya, Mali, Somalia and elsewhere. But Nigeria is a long-time ally of the United States, and effective global leadership in West Africa is needed to halt Boko Haram’s momentum. Only then can students like those in Yobe State, Chibok and elsewhere have the opportunity to craft a future for themselves and their country.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/13/boko-haram-is-acting-increasingly-like-the-islamic-state-why-dont-we-treat-it-that-way/
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Theological Explanations Are a Diversion When Looking At the Rise of Islamic State
By Myriam Francois-Cerrah
3 NOVEMBER, 2014 -
In a “post-ideological” West, the “East” is persistently filtered through the lens of ideology, and, specifically, through the lens of Islam, with the latest moral panic over Islamic State (IS) its most recent manifestation.
For all the talk of ideology, our knowledge of IS is actually extremely limited. As Professor Alireza Doostdar points out, “We know close to nothing about IS' social base. We know little about how it made its military gains, and even less about the nature of the coalitions into which it has entered with various groups — from other Islamist rebels in Syria to secular Baathists in Iraq.” The fact is, much of what we take as “knowledge” about IS is gleaned either from their uncritically reproduced propaganda videos, which aim to present the group’s narrative as coherent and substantiated, or from Western devotees to the cause who in fact, make up only a small proportion of the group’s estimated 20,000-31,500 fighters and who’s motivations for joining might have far more to do with our representations of the group – as a counter-cultural challenge to the supremacy of Western ideals – than what the group is actually about. IS is certainly “anti-Western” in its outlook, but its objectives are local — controlling land and resources in order to establish a state in which a previously disenfranchised group will experience pre-eminence.
Given that a majority of recruits are in fact local, it is worth questioning the notion they’ve all undergone an ideological conversion before joining a group, which is just one of many arguing for the mantle of legitimate struggle and leadership in the region. Rather than ideas – because let’s face it, Al Baghdadi’s view that the world's Muslims should live under one Islamic state ruled by Sharia law is hardly an intellectual innovation – perhaps it is the group’s strategic and tactical abilities which have won them repute among fighters seeking a united leadership. Or in some cases, the calculation may simply be financial, with salaries reportedly ranging from $300 to $2000 per month.
The ideological narrative also implies widespread Sunni Iraqi support for IS which, less than a newfound commitment to radical ideals, is more likely often a reflection of political calculations in an extremely precarious climate. The populations within IS controlled territory are in many cases victims many times over of a systematic use of extreme violence to force population compliance. Why else do IS display severed heads on town railings? As useful as essentialist arguments for bloodthirsty barbarians may be, the truth is violence is usually a strategic calculation to advance political objectives, in this case widespread docility of terrified locals.
The focus on theological explanations also obscures what the polls tell us about popular opinion in the Arab world. How else are we to reconcile the allegedly wide pool of IS supporters in Iraq with the fact the entire region, Iraq included, has seen a decline in support for political Islam (including the non-violent, participationist variants) and that despite a fall in support for democracy in Iraq – likely the result of domestic factors – 76 per cent of Iraqis agree or strongly agree with the statement: “A democratic system may have problems, yet it is better than other political systems.”
In fact, defining conflicts in strictly ideological terms is simply a way of relieving ourselves from any substantive assessment of the environmental factors at play. Forgotten are the discussions of the real causes of a country’s malaise – which in the case of both Syria and Iraq are manifold, and instead is a singular discourse focused on a theological argument for an Islamic State. To quote Jeremy F. Walton, what is missing in the current discourse is “an account of the decades of communitarian inequality and war in Iraq and Syria, where two Ba’athist regimes — Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq and that of the Asad’s in Syria—yoked political representation and economic privilege to sectarian and ethnic identity, Sunni Arab in the case of Iraq and Alawite in the case of Syria.”
This isn’t to say that ideology or ideas more broadly have no explanatory power in assessing groups like IS, but surely the ongoing bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, the absence of viable, let alone representative and accountable governments, and the use of violence as a political tool by both governments, like the Assad regime, or militant groups across the region, should be afforded greater prominence than the ‘ideological’ outlook of a group who’s most sophisticated theological output so far has been a Friday sermon!
Our obsession with textuality – even when in this case the texts themselves are conspicuously absent – is indicative of the persistence of philological readings of events in the Middle East. This has allowed for a variant of the same argument – Islam is the problem – to be used to both exculpate all other factors, be they foreign interventions or domestic dictatorships, from responsibility, while pinning blame on the populations themselves for their state of woe. What transforms Ancient Texts into radical handbooks for justifying mass murder? The political conditions under which they are being read.
And just as texts don’t speak for themselves, neither do IS propaganda videos, specifically designed and edited to convey the impression of a coherent narrative. And yet, we see very little effort to unpick the discourse, the constructed self-definition, little effort to look beyond the smokescreen because it reflects back precisely the sort of organisation we expect to see emerge from the ME, ideology incarnate. History, politics, economics, all deemed irrelevant in the face of this Islamic “essence” which represents the consistent explanatory variable in the behaviour of Eastern folk.
A recent report by the Washington Post pointed to Camp Bucca, one of the Iraq war’s most notorious prisons, as having funnelled 100,000 detainees through its barracks, and described the centre as “an opening chapter in the history of the Islamic State” with many of its leaders, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and nine members of his top command previously incarcerated there. These men had formerly been part of the insurgency fighting the US presence in Iraq and in prison, a convenient collaboration was to emerge between previously longstanding enemies, Baathist secularists and radical Islamists, united in a common purpose. There is no more telling evidence of the pragmatic accommodation of ideology to political necessity than the marriage of these two diametrically opposed and historically antagonistic outlooks, secular leftist and religious literalist.
The discussion of IS needs to move beyond both eschatological and philological diversions – the roots of its violence isn’t cultural, but rather, as long argued by the scholar Mahmood Mamdani, political violence demands a political explanation.
Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2014/11/theological-explanations-are-diversion-when-looking-rise-islamic-state
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-terrorism-jihad/world-media-iraq,-syria-isis,/d/100151