Caliphate Reincarnation
Militant Islamist fighters on a tank take part in
a military parade along the streets of northern
Raqqa province June 30, 2014
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Doctor of History, Professor, Chief Research Associate at the Institute for International Studies (IIS) of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO)
What is the Islamic State movement and who supports the establishment of a caliphate and Caliph Ibrahim in the 21st century, calling all Muslims in the world to submit to it and join the jihad? What challenges are Syria and Iraq facing amidst terrorist attacks by the Islamic State and aerial bombing by the United States and its NATO allies? The American tactic of fighting militants from the self-proclaimed caliphate appears unlikely to be effective. Given the abundance of weapons in the region, terrorism threatens to spread throughout the world, using religious rhetoric as a cover.
What is the Islamic State movement and who supports the establishment of a caliphate and Caliph Ibrahim in the 21st century, calling all Muslims in the world to submit to it and join the jihad? What challenges are Syria and Iraq facing amidst terrorist attacks by the Islamic State and aerial bombing by the United States and its NATO allies? The American tactic of fighting militants from the self-proclaimed caliphate appears unlikely to be effective. Given the abundance of weapons in the region, terrorism threatens to spread throughout the world, using religious rhetoric as a cover.
On June 29, 2014, the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, the jihadist organization the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), declared the establishment of a caliphate on Iraqi and Syrian territory controlled by its militants [1]. On the same day, in accordance with Sharia law, supporters of the Iraqi division of al-Qaeda announced that one of founders of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (aka Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarrai) would be its caliph, to be known as Caliph Ibrahim, i.e. Supreme ruler over the Muslim community.
Millions of Sunnis view the Islamic Caliphate as a unique institution capable of eliminating all manifestations of state nepotism and of protecting the Muslim community from foreign political and economic dependence as well as foreign religious and cultural influences.
There is no doubt that this event has become a landmark in the history of human civilization. Radical Islamists, focused on the struggle for the purification of Islam from various alien impurities (cultural, ethnic, or any other features of the various peoples who embrace Islam) have never before founded their own state. And the newly emerged empire of jihad is already posing serious threats and challenges not only to Muslim states, but to the whole world as well.
Caliph and Its Host
The Islamic State organization was formed in 2006 in Iraq as a result of a merger of eleven radical Islamist groups that split off from Al-Qaeda of Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the spiritual leader and close associate of Osama bin Laden, took an active part in creating the organization.
It is well-known that until 2013, the Islamic State grouping was regarded as an ordinary Sunni autonomous armed unit and numbered no more than four thousand people [2]. It was made up of mostly former soldiers and officers of the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein before the invasion of the United States and NATO in Iraq in 2003. However, the grouping very quickly became a center of attraction for jihadists of every stripe, migrating from among the countries of the Middle East, as well as of North, West and East Africa.
Currently, there are 80 thousand individuals (50 thousand in Iraq and 30 thousand in Syria) fighting under the black banner of the Islamic State [3]. According to Western media, around 3 thousand of them come from Europe, the United States and the former Soviet republics, including Russia (mostly from Chechnya), who have joined the ranks of the army of the just recently resurrected caliphate [4]. Judging by the fact that the Islamic State publishes its propaganda literature in five European languages, the number of people who have been recruited outside the Middle East is really impressive. At least 95 per cent of jihadists fighting against the Syrian government troops are not citizens of Syria.
The grouping has earned a reputation as one of the most violent Islamist organizations. Militants of the Islamic State are responsible for numerous terrorist attacks against NATO forces on the territory of Iraq, many war crimes, mass executions of Iraqi and Syrian military, as well as genocide against adherents of different faiths [5]. The immediate goal of the organization is to create an Islamic Sunni state on the territory of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, governed by Sharia law. In the longer term, it plans to expand the country's borders to the “classical caliphate,” stretching from Spain to India.
Further pumping of weapons into an already highly explosive region is fraught with the most disastrous of consequences.
The Islamic State became widely known in the summer of 2014, when militants launched a full-scale offensive on the northern and western regions of Iraq. It took radicals a month to take control over several major cities, including Mosul and Tikrit, and come close to Baghdad. In Syria, the extremists of the Islamic State occupied the northern province of Raqqa, and made its central city Ar-Raqqah the headquarters of the organization [6].
The personality of the newly emerged Caliph Ibrahim is of note. Having changed overnight his military warlord uniform for Muslim theologian clothing, he preaches the known Wahhabi “truths” from the central mosque of Mosul, that is, that Muslims must get rid of democracy, secularism, nationalism, as well as all other garbage and ideas coming from the West [7].
Al-Baghdadi, who is now 43 years old, used to be a commander of Mujahideen troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2004, he was arrested by the Americans and held captive in the detention facility at Camp Bucca in Iraq. However, despite serious charges of organizing terrorist activities against him, he was released for some obscure reasons. There is evidence that al-Baghdadi had been recruited by the CIA, just as some other militants of al-Qaeda, namely Abdel Hakim Belhadj and Sheikh Khaled Shirif, who played a key role in the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya. Thus, in particular, the secret documents published by former employee of the US National Security Agency Edward Snowden have revealed that al-Baghdadi collaborated with the CIA, as well the British and the Israeli intelligence services [8].
Whose Interests Does the Caliphate Serve?
Arreas controlled in Iraq
What makes the Islamic State so attractive to its supporters? There are two main reasons. First, the American puppet government of al-Maliki (2006-2014) pursued a policy of strengthening Shiite dominance in Iraq, which objectively pushed the Sunni population towards armed resistance. The conflict between the government and the opposition in Syria is of a religious nature too, and has been caused by violent confrontation between the Shia (Alawite) and the Sunni.
The righteous and perfectly structured Caliphate, which was formed in the Middle Ages during the victorious Muslim conquests in the 7th-9th centuries, is opposed to all modern forms of government, which, as reality shows, inevitably generate social injustice, lawlessness, pervasive corruption, oppression of the poor and the tyranny of the narrow layer of the rich. Millions of Sunnis view the Islamic Caliphate as a unique institution capable of eliminating all manifestations of state nepotism and of protecting the Muslim community from foreign political and economic dependence as well as foreign religious and cultural influences. It is not accidental that the Caliphate and Caliph Ibrahim enjoy the support of thousands of Sunnis in cities controlled by the Islamic State.
Should the planned scenario be successfully achieved, there is a very high probability that the niche now occupied by the Islamic State will be filled by other radical Islamists.
Second, the Islamic State does not need financial support from abroad, as, say, the opposition to the ruling Syrian regime, namely, the Free Syrian Army or other paramilitary or political groupings that are part of the Western-backed National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. The self-proclaimed Caliphate gets billions of dollars from robbing banks and shops, seizing the property of adherents of different faiths, exchanging hostages for ransom, and engaging in slave trading, drug trafficking and illegal oil distribution. The Islamic State today is the richest terrorist organization in the world, with a budget of 2.3 billion USD; every day it acquires assets worth 1 million USD just through speculations in the oil black market [9]. American political analyst Jordan Perry is certainly right when he says that these financial resources allow the Islamic State to copy the strategy of Hamas in providing services, health and education through which they become much more entrenched [10]. Easy money apparently attracts adventurers and soldiers of fortune even from distant countries.
Reactions to the Reincarnation of the Caliphate
Since the appearance of the Islamic state jihadists in Syria in 2013, the official government identifies the organization as a force that poses the most serious threat to the national interests of the Syrian Arab Republic. This is due not only to the fact that the militants of the Islamic State are calling for the overthrow of the regime and cruelly persecuting adherents of different faiths, but also to the fact that their actions aimed at establishing a Caliphate openly threaten the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Syria. On August 4, 2014, the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a Statement noting that the Government of Syria strongly condemns the actions of the Islamic State and are determined to confront takfiris, terrorists and extremists [11].
Russia’s reaction to the emergence of the self-proclaimed Caliphate was clear and definite: “We see this as another bloody provocation aimed at the further aggravation of inter-community relations, the split of the country and the establishment of a base for international terrorism on its territory.” [12]
In early September 2014, the United States began the process of creating a coalition of NATO countries to fight the Islamic State. Beginning on August 8, 2014, American aircraft has regularly delivered airstrikes against Caliphate bases in Iraq. The oil-producing monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula and Jordan joined the NATO coalition. In an address delivered to the nation on September 10, 2014 from the state floor of the White House, President Obama spoke about a systematic campaign of airstrikes against ISIL positions in Syria and Iraq [13]. Without the approval of the UN Security Council, the United States with the support of a number of allied countries carried out an air operation on September 22 to destroy oil-producing areas in the Syrian province of Raqqa, i.e. the territory controlled by the self-proclaimed Caliphate. In addition, President Obama signed a resolution adopted by both houses of Congress which allows for supplying weapons to and training fighters of the Syrian opposition, which includes such jihadist groupings, such as Dzhebhat en-Nusra.
The situation is taking a paradoxical turn, since the Americans, in order to avoid losses on the ground, are ready to spend $500 million to organize a new internal conflict between the Syrian opponents, hoping that the forces fighting against the Islamic State will eventually use the delivered weapons to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and his entourage once the Caliphate is destroyed. There is a steady flow of weapons and money from the US and Western Europe to support the armed Kurdish fighters (Peshmerga), and the units of the Iraqi army, which overseas strategists regard as the force needed to support the air attacks on the ground. The Iraqi Ministry of Defense, as well as local groups which oppose ISIL, has received military aid from the Pentagon worth $20.1 billion [14]. However, the further pumping of weapons into an already highly explosive region is fraught with the most disastrous of consequences.
The civil conflict in Syria has several dimensions. It started as a rebellion of the impoverished periphery against the relatively prosperous center. Riots in the outlying districts were supported by mass demonstrations of the urban middle class for democratic reform and against the authoritarian regime of the Assad clan and his bureaucratic and oligarchic environment. The internal protest movement quickly took the form of a long-standing sectarian conflict between the Alawites and the Sunnis [15].
Having interfered in a complex web of confrontation, the United States is actually inciting another conflict – this time among the different groups of Sunnis. Should the planned scenario be successfully achieved, there is a very high probability that the niche now occupied by the Islamic State will be filled by other radical Islamists, whose views and atrocities against other dissenters do not differ much from those of Caliph Ibrahim’s followers. Even American experts on conflict resolution harbor few doubts that the war in Syria will be of a protracted nature, since the American administration finds itself in a deadlock and simply cannot work out an instructive policy towards Syria. However, it has time to so until 2020, and maybe even after that [16].
Iraq faces a similar challenge. The American overthrow of Saddam Hussein regime brought about chaos and anarchy in the country. Enmity between local Shiites and Sunnis was exasperated anew. Chances are that in the case of a hypothetical victory by Shiite groups over the Islamic State, these groups will likely demand the creation of their own independent state. It is not accidental that Turkey, fearing exactly this, is not allowing Turkish Kurds to cross the Syrian border and reunite with their compatriots fighting against the Islamic State.
A natural question arises: who is interested in splitting Muslim populations on religious, ethnic or other grounds; who will profit from the total collapse of the Islamic states that until recently were a real political force? In my opinion, the answer is more than obvious. The same countries that have elaborated and perfected the technologies of the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, namely the United States, a number of NATO countries and the oil monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula. They are interested in fomenting processes of disintegration in the strategically important region of the Middle East.
All attempts to reach a settlement in Syria and Iraq without the general disarmament of all armed groups and forces are doomed to failure. The militarization of the region and pinpoint air attacks will only strengthen and expand the terrorist International, and contribute to spreading jihad to other countries and continents.
References
1. Comment by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich in connection with the proclamation of Islamic caliphate on extremists’ controlled territories of Syria and Iraq, June 30, 2014. http://www.mid.ru/bdomp/nsrkonfl.nsf/90be9cb5e6f07180432569e00049b5fb/44257b1000
55db8444257d07005ce745!OpenDocument2. The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2014.
3. The Economist, June 14, 2014.
4. The New York Times», September 15, 2014.
5. Report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Special session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on the issue of massive violations of human rights as a result of the activities of the terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on the territory of Iraq, September 9, 2014. http://www.mid.ru/bdomp/nsrkonfl.nsf/90be9cb5e6f07180432569e00049b5fb/44257b1000
55db8444257d47002cae94!OpenDocument Comment by the Information and Press Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the persecution of the Christian Iraqi population by Islamists. July 22, 2014. http://www.mid.ru/bdomp/nsrkonfl.nsf/90be9cb5e6f07180432569e00049b5fb/44257b1000
55db8444257d1d00426f8f!OpenDocument6. Raqqa: The violent Islamic State “capital” targeted by U.S. airstrikes. - The Washington Post, September 23, 2014.
7. The Washington Times, August 5, 2014.
8. Former CIA Agent: The ISIS Leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi Was Trained by the Israeli Mossad, World Observer, August 12, 2014.
9. AFP et «Le Parisien», 18. 06. 2014.
10. Vesti web-site http://www.vestifinance.ru/articles/44889
11. Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) web-site http://sana.sy/ru/?p=7312
12. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation web-site http://www.mid.ru/brp_4.nsf/newsline/848D78885B17F8EF44257BB100506022
13. President Obama: We Will Degrade and Ultimately Destroy ISIL, September 10, 2014. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/09/10/president-obama-we-will-degrade-and-ultimately-destroy-isil
14. U.S. aid to Iraq may speed up despite billions already spent. – «Reuters», August 15, 2014.
15. A.V. Krylov, A.V. Fedorchenko. Mnogovariantnyj prognoz razvitija situacii v regione BVSA / Analiticheskie doklady IIS Edition 1 (40) — Moscow, MGIMOUniversity, 2014, pp. 7-11.
16. Fisher M. Political science says Syria’s civil war will probably last at least another decade // The Washington Post, October 23, 2013.
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