Donald, Hillary and the origins of ISIS

The World
An ISIS fighter in Raqqa, Syria, in 2014.

Pretty much everyone in American politics agrees on at least this: You’ve got to talk tough about ISIS.

Pretty much no one goes to the extreme Republican nominee Donald Trump has in dubbing President Barack Obama and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton "co-founders" of the terror group.

To be clear: It's absurd to suggest Obama or Clinton had any role in creating ISIS. 

But there's no question the United States government played a role in the circumstances that led to the group's rise.

Trump later, much later, backtracked — tweeting that he was being sarcastic. But it's hard to know what to make of that, because Trump was so forceful in making his claim, in both a speech and an interview.

This makes it a good moment to answer two imporant questions: Where did ISIS come from? And what role did the US play in its rise? 

ISIS and al-Qaeda

In terms of ideas and ideology, ISIS is an off-shoot of the same movement that created al-Qaeda, and the two were, in fact, intimately connected for a decade.

Both are striving to fight infidels and the power of the West; with a long-term goal of creating a pure Islamic state and thus helping to bring about the end of days, as foretold in their reading of the Quran.

Where ISIS differs from al-Qaeda is in its 2014 decision to declare a caliphate or Islamic state, which al-Qaeda opposes at this stage. 

In terms of political power, ISIS has been kept alive, and even flourished to some extent, because of the very real grievances among the Sunni Muslim populations of Iraq and Syria, the core heartlands of ISIS.

Sunnis in both countries suffer very real political disenfranchisement, exclusion from power, and simple discrimination. In Iraq, where they are a minority, Sunnis suffered a traumatic reversal of fortune in 2003. Under Saddam Hussein they had lived as a relatively privileged elite. But that ended abruptly with the US-led occupation.

In Syria, Sunnis have been underdogs pretty much since independence in the 1940s, ruled by an Alawite minority. The civil war in Syria is connected to the struggle for enfranchisement and equality there. Again, ISIS takes advantage of these grievances despite the fact that most people in the region find its ideology and philosophy alien and repulsive.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq

In terms of organization, the roots of ISIS are pretty clear. It was setup in 1999 as the brainchild of a Jordanian man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who called his group “The Organization of Monotheism and Jihad." Zarqawi and his group set up shop in Iraq after the US-led invasion, giving a sharp ideological edge to the Sunni revolt against US occupation. In October 2004, Zarqawi pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda, and re-branded his group as “al-Qaeda in Iraq.”

Al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI, was based partly in towns in eastern Syria with a nod and a wink from the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who probably regrets that decision now.

Zarqawi was killed by US forces in June 2006, and a new leader, Abu Omar al-Bagdhadi, took over. He declared an Islamic state in Oct 2006, and eventually re-branded the group as the Islamic State in Iraq, or ISI.

The group’s brutality alienated much of the Sunni population that had at first welcomed them. The US was able to exploit that divide. They won over Sunnis as part of the “Sunni Awakening,” coinciding with a surge of US forces, allowing the United States to defeat ISI/AQI on the battlefield in 2007 and 2008.

That also laid the groundwork for a drawdown of US forces and a final withdrawal at the end of 2011.

ISIS as we now know it

ISI/AQI went into abeyance. Abu Omar al-Bagdhadi was killed in 2010 and a quiet cleric, Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi (no relation) took over. This shy and retiring man is now emir of perhaps the most brutal "state" of modern times, the secretive overlord of ISIS.

Baghdadi was able to revive his organization’s fortunes, which had been very much in decline, by stepping into another regional conflict: the Syrian civil war, which erupted in early 2011.

Once again, ISI provided a sharp ideological edge to what many saw as a legitimate revolt against a tyrannical regime. It set up a Syrian branch called the Nusra Front.

But Baghdadi’s ambitions grew with his successes on the ground. In 2013 he decreed the merger of al-Nusra with ISI, and that was when the group first adopted the name ISIS — the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria. But the shift was not welcomed by leaders in the Nusra Front or al-Qaeda proper.

These differences led to a rupture and open conflict between ISIS and the Nusra Front and al-Qaeda. Baghdadi’s group was more effective on the battlefield and in the propaganda war. His atrocities and spectacular military successes in Iraq and Syria in 2014 created the monster we know today.

The US role

And so what's been the US place in all of this? At the broadest level, the United States has failed to manage the perceptions and realities of Western power, leading to the alienation of people across the world who feel their interests are downtrodden. This dates back to the rise of the United State as a global power in the 1940s. In the Middle East, for example, a particular focus of grievance has been the US alliance with Israel and its support for dictators and autocratic monarchs.

More directly, the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq destabilized the region, and led directly to Sunnis losing power in Iraq, creating the conditions that AQI/ISI was able to exploit. At first, the United States failed to recognize or manage the political need to maintain a fair balance of power between different identity groups in Iraq.  

They tried to fix that around 2007, bringing Sunnis back into the political tent with promises of political power sharing. But these promises were not fulfilled by the Iraqi government.

That is one very real criticism that can be leveled at the Obama administration: In 2011, as it was withdrawing from Iraq, the United States failed to ensure the new government in Baghdad respected those promises to the Sunni population.

Instead, within days of the US flag coming down on Dec. 18, 2011, the Sunni vice president was chased out of Baghdad, shattering Sunni hopes of a fair deal. The United States did nothing. Many Sunnis decided their only hope was to take power back at the barrel of a gun.

These were conditions that ISIS was able to exploit.

The Obama administration is also criticized by some analysts for failing to stop the civil war in Syria. Washington balked at the suggestion of a Libyan-style intervention, and then failed to follow through on threats to intervene if chemical weapons were used.

However, more sympathetic analysts defend the policies of the Obama administration in both Iraq and Syria in 2011-12, saying there were good political reasons for both sets of policies. Obama had been elected in part on the promise of getting out of Iraq, and that entailed leaving Iraqis responsible for their own fate. A feeling of war-exhaustion in the US population made the president and Congress wary of re-engaging in Iraq, or intervening in Syria.

Others argue that the United States did not have enough leverage to pursue different policies or create different outcomes.

Obviously, the United States has been a major player in the Middle East. As a superpower, its decisions and actions — including any decision to be inactive — play a role in every part of the world.

So, while it's absurd to say Obama or Clinton "founded" ISIS, policies the Obama administration followed did have indirect consequences that created conditions ISIS was able to exploit.

But the same could be said for the administration of George W. Bush. 

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