I know I haven’t posted anything recently.
My computer broke about a month or so ago, so I’ve been operating by way of tablet. I should have more posts up soon, but considering the horrible events of the past week, I thought I would share this with you all. It is the research paper I wrote to get in to college, and I think it would help get an idea of the changed ideas we all have about ISIS, as well as bring attention to it’s origins and tactics. If there are any questions or comments you have, just drop a comment at the bottom.
Thanks so much, and stay safe out there.
-ben martinez
The Islamic State of Who?
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has been in the headlines across the world lately, from their 2013 Abu Ghraib prison raid, freeing 500, to the capture of the city of Mosul and the Mosul Dam, and especially the widely publicized beheadings of journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley by the organization. A combination of all those actions brought the now well-known Islamic State into the public eye. Since 2011, it’s founding as the Islamic State, it skirted by relatively unknown compared to other jihadist groups, but since 2013, the Islamic State burst from relative obscurity into international news, seemingly out of the ether. Their shocking tactics, paired with their uncanny ability to recruit youth, and their psychological tactics all combined to create a volatile mix leading to their sudden rush to infamy and power.
Jama’at al-Tawhid w’al-Jihad, or The Party Of Monotheism And Jihad, is a name that sounds unfamiliar to most, but according to globalsecurity.org, it was the precursor to one of the most feared Jihad-based groups today, the Islamic State, otherwise known as ISIS or ISIL. This organization, founded in 2003, did not shift directly into becoming the Islamic State, however. It was only after the founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a 2006 airstrike that the Islamic State begin to form, with the remaining members reconsolidated in Iraq under the new name of AQI, or al Qaeda in Iraq, a splinter cell of the long-feared group al Qaeda. In 2011, upon the withdrawal of US Army troops, the AQI, now run by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, renamed itself the Islamic State of Iraq, and after a series of increasingly violent attacks and name changes, grew into what is now commonly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL for short, or the Islamic State.
The Islamic State, according to the CIA in a mid-September 2014 release, has anywhere from 20,000 to 31,500 soldiers it can call to arms in Syria and Iraq, with roughly 15,000 being from a foreign nation, and 2,000 from Western nations, CNN reported . As well, it has been estimated that the Islamic State controls 81,000 square miles, including uninhabited areas, roughly the size of Great Britain, says the Washington Post . These staggering numbers reveal something that analysts have long thought, and many Americans had feared, that the Islamic State is growing incredibly fast, considering it barely had a foothold in the area three years ago, nor was it reported on in popular media.
Since the introduction of the Islamic State into the public eye, it has come to the attention of many news outlets that more and more young people have been leaving their lives in all areas of Western countries to join in the Islamic State’s quest for an Islamic caliphate. One clear example of a young person moving to Syria to join is the soldier featured in the recruitment film “The Chosen Few Of Different Lands” , Andre Poulin, who calls himself Abu Muslim. In the film, Poulin, a 20-something Canadian-cum-jihadi, details how ‘normal’ his life was and how he liked hockey and fishing before the call to jihad was too great for him, leading him to convert to Islam and move to Syria. In the same film, he explains that potential jihadis need not be extremists to join the Islamic State, and that the Islamic State is in great need of doctors, engineers, and even construction workers in its ranks. The video shows potential recruits not only the potential glory of martyrdom — the result for Poulin, who is gunned down in the same film and proclaimed a martyr — but also that anyone can go and help fight, not just the ‘extremists’.
The Islamic State deliberately uses graphic images to show off its courage and strength, which UMass psychologist John Horgan, in an interview with New York Magazine’s Science of Us , said helps to prove their legitimacy through the amount of land captured, convincing more potential soldiers to join, thus allowing them to continue the cycle. He believes that this is one of the more crucial points of the ISs’ growth; The cycle allows for the IS to show off their successes, including their large swaths of land, and thus, their legitimacy as a potential caliphate and base for a global jihad. This idea of their legitimacy, Horgan says, makes them a real threat because it shows to potential jihadis that the Islamic States’ ideas are attainable, and not just a fantasy.
In an interview with the International Business Times, John Horgan discussed another factor that makes the Islamic State very accessible to new recruits: the fact that they want to show themselves as ‘an equal opportunity organization’. This idea of the Islamic State as such an organization helped to draw in foreign fighters, as well as those not interested in physical battle. In this same IBT article, Max Abrahms, a professor at Northwestern University, said that most of the people that the Islamic State wishes to attract are youth angry with their governments, who have recently converted to Islam, and may not know very much when it comes to the basic facts and tenets of Islam. Abrahms’ ideas, along with the widespread and sweeping reach of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook among young people, is how the Islamic State is drawing in so many youth into their ranks, either as soldiers, workers, doctors, or engineers.
To grow at the rate it has, and to be able to gain so many followers and fellow jihadis as they have, the Islamic State also used rudimentary psychological tools. Ian H. Robertson, a professor of psychology at Trinity College in Dublin, detailed a number of ways which the Islamic State has been successful, including unintentional ones, in their favor to gain their followers. In Psychology Today , Robertson argues that the trauma of the ‘shock and awe’ bombings of Baghdad led some people of Iraq to decide to commit similar acts in their own country by bombing buses and other public areas. The phenomenon of deindividuation allows for the militants of the Islamic State to commit acts such as raping and beheading those against them, Robertson added, by allowing individuals to disappear into a group, and believe that any acts are available to them, as they are in a group whose sole aim is to create an Islamic caliphate at whatever cost necessary so they can commit jihad.
Annotated Bibliography
“Jamaat Al-Tawhid Wa’l-Jihad / Unity and Jihad Group.” Global Security. Globalsecurity.org, n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2015.
In this article, Global Security is describing the conditions which gave rise to the jihadist group Jamaat Al-Tawhid Wa’l-Jihad, which after a number of years morphed into the Islamic State. This website is maintained and run by multiple ex-members of various national security groups, and is well respected and well known in nat’l security and intelligence communities, as well as reportage institutions. This was written for anyone who wishes to learn more about international security affairs. This source was used, as it helped to provide background to the reader of the existence of the pre-Islamic State group which helped to create the foundation for the Islamic State, both ideologically and structurally.
Ghosh, Bobby. “A Short Political History of the Terrorists Who Call Themselves the “Islamic State”.” Quartz. Quartz, 14 Aug. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
This article from Quartz, detailed the history of the group commonly referred to as the Islamic State from it’s inception until the middle of August. It also slightly analyzes the circumstances which helped to create the group, albeit in minimal detail. The author, Bobby Ghosh, was the TIME Global Editor, and was one of the longest-serving correspondents in Iraq for TIME Magazine; Quartz is also run by Atlantic Media, who also owns The Atlantic. This source was used for it’s history of the Islamic State
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