ISIS

by Jessica Stern

  ON NAMES AND DEFINITIONS

  Definitions of many of the religious terms used in this book are included in a glossary and an appendix, and readers are encouraged to consult those sections for more information. In addition, we believe it is useful to discuss here the name of the group itself and some terms that are used frequently in relation to the “Islamic State” organization.

  The group has renamed and rebranded itself multiple times. It is known as the Islamic State (its most recent self-appellation), but it is also frequently referred to as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS), or as Daesh, a derogatory term extracted from its Arabic acronym.10

  Differences between ISIS and ISIL stem from issues of technical transliteration and geography. The Obama administration steadfastly referred to the group as ISIL long after most journalists had switched to ISIS (which was also generally the acronym used by the group itself in English communications).11

  When the Islamic State dropped the -IS or -IL from its name at the end of June 2014, concurrent with its declaration that it was now a caliphate, it seemed this was the end of the naming controversy.12 But most journalists continued to refer to it as ISIS, while President Obama continued to refer to it as ISIL.13

  The rationale for the latter, as explained by Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times14 and others, is that referring to the Islamic State by its self-appointed name would legitimize its declaration of an Islamic caliphate.15

  Extremist groups often adopt a name that reflects their greater ambitions, and as a rule, people refer to them by the names they choose. Does it legitimize the concept of a white-only state to use the name “Aryan Nations”? Ironically, treating the Islamic State differently serves to elevate its claim to legitimacy, making it a special case requiring delicate handling, instead of just another extremist group. The insistence on ISIL also hints at an incorrect presumption that Muslims in general might be inclined to take the extremists seriously, and that the undecided might be swayed by nomenclature.

  We prefer Islamic State as the most correct usage, but the vernacular (led by journalists) has embraced ISIS—meaning that for purposes of clarity, ISIS is much more readily associated with the content of the book in the minds of most readers.

  On a more mundane level, the acronym IS presents challenges in a work of this length. For instance, the contraction “IS’s” is unappealing, and the pairing of IS with the verb “is” also leads to the unpalatable “IS is,” both of which would recur endlessly in the text.

  In concession to these issues, we will generally employ the acronym ISIS.

  An older semantic debate surrounds the use of the word jihad. A more comprehensive definition is included in the appendix, but we will briefly discuss our usage of the term here. The vast majority of the world’s Muslims are peaceful people, and many of them object to militants’ appropriation of the word and concept of jihad, which they understand to apply to nonviolent activities such as self-improvement or seeking justice.16 Military jihadists do not make such qualifications when they call their work jihad.

  “Whenever jihad is mentioned in the [Quran], it means the obligation to fight. It does not mean to fight with the pen or to write books or articles in the press, or to fight by holding lectures.” Those are the words of Abdullah Azzam, the galvanizing force behind the volunteer jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.17 This book will generally follow Azzam’s usage. We acknowledge there is a legitimate debate in the public square on this issue, but this book expediently uses the term as jihadists use it.

  Another area where definitions are murky involves distinctions among terrorism, insurgency, and war. For purposes of this book, we define terrorism as an act or threat of violence against noncombatants, with the objective of exacting revenge, intimidating, or otherwise influencing an audience. We define terrorists as nonstate actors who engage in violence against noncombatants in order to accomplish a political goal or amplify a message. Two characteristics of terrorism are critical for distinguishing it from other forms of violence. First, it is aimed at noncombatants. It is this characteristic of terrorism that distinguishes it from legitimate war-fighting. The laws of war, and both the Islamic and Judeo-Christian just war traditions explicitly forbid deliberately targeting noncombatants.18 Thus, terrorist acts might usefully be defined as war crimes that are perpetrated by nonstate actors. Second, terrorists use violence for dramatic purpose: instilling fear in the target audience is often more important than the physical result. This deliberate creation of dread is what distinguishes terrorism from simple murder or assault.19 Terrorists may be supported by states, but they have a fundamental quality of independence—or at least of disavowal and deniability. Thus, the Third Reich would not be considered a terrorist organization, but American and European neo-Nazis would.

  The characteristics of terrorism, as we have defined it, raise additional thorny questions. How do we define “noncombatants”?20 The term is controversial. A soldier on the battlefield is unquestionably a combatant. But what if the country is not at war, and the soldier is sleeping in his barracks, as was the case for the victims of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing? In our view, noncombatants include civilians, military personnel not engaged in conflict, and political leaders (such as Anwar Sadat). Second, are child soldiers combatants or non-combatant victims? While it is clearly illegal under international law to recruit child soldiers, there is no consensus about the treatment of children who commit war crimes or terrorism.21 This question is particularly important in regard to ISIS, which, according to the United Nations, “prioritizes children as a vehicle for ensuring long-term loyalty, adherence to their ideology and a cadre of devoted fighters that will see violence as a way of life.”22 (For more on this topic, see Chapter 9).

  Will these child-perpetrators of atrocities be treated as victims of ISIS’s war, or as terrorists? International law is not yet clear on this issue.23 A Syrian child, who said that ISIS recruited him by “brainwashing” him with stories about Shi’a soldiers’ rape of Sunni women, defected to Iraqi authorities while claiming to his ISIS masters that he planned to carry out a suicide attack.24 The case highlights the uncertainties regarding how child-perpetrators should and will be treated.

  While ISIS claims to be a state, for purposes of this book, we will generally discuss ISIS as a nonstate actor, albeit one at the very edge of the definition, possessing extraordinary infrastructure and expertise, much of it acquired or stolen from state actors, and a will to govern. Similarly, ISIS pushes the boundaries of the definition of insurgency, which is usually defined as an armed rebellion by non-state actors against a recognized government. At the time of this writing, ISIS was fighting an insurgency against the Iraqi and Syrian governments. It was engaging in acts of terrorism against noncombatants. And it was the de facto authority in parts of both Iraq and Syria. For the time being, we believe ISIS is best defined as a hybrid terrorist and insurgent organization.

  ISIS is a movement and an organization that sits at the nexus of a rapidly changing region and world. While it is rooted in history, ISIS has also introduced new elements to our understanding of radical Islamism, terrorism, and extremism writ large. For this reason, it commands a disproportionate share of the world’s attention. Into these dark unexplored waters this book intends to wade, in search of understanding.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE RISE AND FALL OF AL QAEDA IN IRAQ

  The world awakened to the threat of ISIS in the summer of 2014, but that is not where its story begins.

  What we know today as ISIS emerged from the mind of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian thug-turned-terrorist who brought a particularly brutal and sectarian approach to his understanding of jihad.

  Many diverse factors contributed to the rise of ISIS, but its roots lie with Zarqawi and the 2003 invasion of Iraq that gave him purpose.

  Ahmad Fadhil Nazzal al Kalaylah was born in the industrial town of Zarqa, Jordan, located about fifteen miles fro
m Amman. He was a Bedouin, born into a large, relatively poor family, but part of a powerful tribe. He was a mediocre student who dropped out of school after ninth grade. Like many jihadists, he took on a nom de guerre based on the place he came from, Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

  In his hometown, Zarqawi was not known as an especially pious person, but as a heavy drinker, a bully, and a brawler.1 His biographer reports that those who knew him in Zarqa said he drank like a fish and was covered in tattoos, two practices forbidden by Islam. He was known as the “green man” on account of the tattoos, which he would later try to remove with hydrochloric acid. He was arrested a number of times, for shoplifting, drug dealing, and attacking a man with a knife, among other crimes.2

  In his early twenties, he joined Tablighi Jamaat, a South Asian Islamic revivalist organization, in part to “cleanse” himself from his life of crime. Tabligh Jamaat aims at creating better Muslims through “spiritual jihad”—good deeds, contemplation, and proselytizing.

  According to the historian Barbara Metcalf, Tablighi Jamaat traditionally functioned as a self-help group, much like Alcoholics Anonymous, and most specialists claim that it is no more prone to violence than are the Seventh-Day Adventists, with whom Tablighi Jamaat is frequently compared.3 But a member of Tablighi Jamaat told coauthor Jessica Stern that jihadi groups were known to openly recruit at the organization’s central headquarters in Raiwind, Pakistan.4

  In 1989, just three months after joining Tablighi Jamaat, Zarqawi joined the insurgency against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan, by which time the Soviets were already in withdrawal. The war had left him behind.

  Zarqawi was not yet a leader, or even a fighter. In Afghanistan and over the border in Pakistan, he spent much of his time working on jihadist newsletters. While it might have seemed a humble start for someone who dreamed of battle, his introduction to jihadi media would later turn out to be useful.

  But that was surely not clear at the time. “Zarqawi arrived in Afghanistan as a zero,” one of his fellow jihadists told journalist Mary Anne Weaver, “a man with no career, just foundering about.”5

  He later trained and eventually fought in some of the most violent battles to emerge from the post-Soviet chaos in Afghanistan, when Afghan factions began fighting one another for control of the country. He found focus and earned a certain respect in the eyes of his peers. The experience changed him.

  “It’s not so much what Zarqawi did in the jihad—it’s what the jihad did for him,” the jihadist said to Weaver.6

  Perhaps most important were the many relationships he forged during this time. The jihadists he recruited or met during this period would one day form the kernel of an international network. And one new friend turned out to be particularly important to Zarqawi’s future—Sheikh Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, one of the architects of jihadi Salafism, an ideology based on the principle that any government that does not rule through a strict interpretation of Shariah is an infidel regime that must be violently opposed (a fuller description can be found in the appendix).7

  Maqdisi would become Zarqawi’s spiritual father and close friend, despite their very different backgrounds. A trained cleric of Palestinian origin who lived in various Arab countries before settling in Jordan, Maqdisi was the “bookish fatwah monk.” Zarqawi would emerge as the man who would test Maqdisi’s theories “in real time and in a real war.”8

  Both men returned to Jordan in 1993. They were involved in a series of botched terrorist operations, culminating in their arrest for possessing illegal weapons and belonging to a banned jihadi organization.9

  Like Afghanistan, prison was transformative for Zarqawi, according to Nir Rosen, who interviewed many of the jihadist’s Jordanian peers:

  Their time in prison was as important for the movement as their experiences in Afghanistan were, bonding the men who suffered together and giving them time to formulate their ideas. For some, it was educational as well. One experienced jihadi who knew Zarqawi in Afghanistan told me: “When I heard Zarqawi speak, I didn’t believe this is the same Zarqawi. But six years in jail gave him a good chance to educate himself.”10

  Zarqawi tried to recruit his prison-mates into helping him overthrow the Jordanian leadership. After he was released from prison in 1999, Zarqawi participated in the foiled “Millennium Plot” timed for January 1, 2000, a plan to bomb two Christian holy sites, a border crossing between Jordan and Israel, and the fully booked 400-room Radisson hotel in Amman.

  But he was again thwarted and the plot was disrupted by Jordanian security services.11 Zarqawi managed to escape, first to Pakistan and from there to Afghanistan, where he met Osama bin Laden.12

  By most accounts, the meeting with bin Laden did not go well. And why would it? The two men were united only by a broad commitment to violent jihad. Bin Laden and his early followers were mostly members of an intellectual, educated elite, while Zarqawi was a barely educated ruffian with an attitude.

  One version of the meeting, reported by Mary Anne Weaver, described this first encounter as uncomfortable. Bin Laden was put off by Zarqawi’s insistence that all Shi’a Muslims must be killed, an ideological argument accepted by only the most extreme Sunni jihadists, who believe Shi’a are not true Muslims. Zarqawi was reportedly arrogant and disrespectful of bin Laden. Others in al Qaeda felt the brash young jihadist was not without his merits, however. He was eventually allowed to set up his own training camp in Afghanistan, albeit not officially under al Qaeda’s wing. But the differences aired on the day bin Laden and Zarqawi met would continue to define the relationship between the two jihadists for years to come.13

  Over the course of the next five years Zarqawi operated independently from, and yet with the support of, bin Laden and al Qaeda Central. His training camp in Herat, Afghanistan, was supported by al Qaeda funds with the consent of Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban. He spent time in Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, where he recruited new fighters and grew his network. He was more focused on jihad in Muslim countries, such as Jordan, while bin Laden at the time was focused on the West, including his long-planned spectacular terrorist attack on the soil of the United States. In the days prior to September 11, bin Laden repeatedly sought bayah, a religiously binding oath of allegiance, from Zarqawi, who refused to comply.14

  Nevertheless, when the Americans invaded Afghanistan after September 11, Zarqawi fought to defend al Qaeda and the Taliban.15 Wounded in battle, he fled in 2002 to Iran, and from there to Iraqi Kurdistan,16 where he joined Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish jihadist group. The Kurds are an ethnic group inhabiting Kurdistan, a region that includes contiguous parts of Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

  Zarqawi’s membership in Ansar al-Islam would later be cited by the United States as evidence that he and al Qaeda were collaborating with Saddam Hussein. But the Kurdish group Zarqawi had joined viewed the Iraqi regime as apostate and aimed to establish a Salafi state governed by Shariah.17 Ironically, it was the invasion of Iraq that pushed Zarqawi into an alliance with bin Laden and led to al Qaeda’s enduring presence in Iraq.18

  Armed with irrational exuberance and a handful of dubious pretexts for war, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003. The invasion had been justified by exaggerated claims that Iraq possessed or was close to possessing weapons of mass destruction, and by the false claim that Saddam Hussein was allied with al Qaeda. While Iraq had a long history of sponsoring terrorist groups, al Qaeda was not one of them.

  Zarqawi’s name first became widely known in the West when the Bush administration described him as the link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, claiming that Iraq had given safe haven to the terrorists, who now plotted mayhem with impunity inside its borders.

  “From his terrorist network in Baghdad, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond,” Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council.19 But Zarqawi was neither collaborating with Saddam nor a member of al Qaeda.20

  In the early days after the invasion, many
Iraqis were overjoyed that the brutal dictator had been removed from power. By April 9, Baghdad had fallen and Saddam Hussein had fled. By May, President Bush announced, “Mission Accomplished.”

  President Bush had spearheaded a strategy of “taking the fight to the terrorists,” which he would later repeatedly articulate as “We’re taking the fight to the terrorists abroad, so we don’t have to face them here at home.”21

  The statement proved half true. Iraq would be a lightning rod for jihadists, who flocked to a country where they had not been able to operate successfully before in order to confront American troops. But the invasion reinforced jihadi claims about America’s hegemonic designs on the Middle East, providing a recruiting bonanza at a time when the terrorists needed it most.

  Jihadi leaders around the globe described the U.S. occupation as a boon to their movement, which had begun to decline in large measure due to the destruction of al Qaeda’s home base in Afghanistan. Abu Musab al Suri, one of the jihad’s most prominent strategists, claimed that the war in Iraq almost single-handedly rescued the movement.22

  As President Bush had claimed, Iraq became a “central front” in the war on terrorism.23 But it was a front that the United States had created.24

  Soon after the invasion, terrorism within Iraq’s borders rose precipitously.25 There were 78 terrorist attacks in the first twelve months following the U.S. invasion; in the second twelve months this number nearly quadrupled, to 302 attacks.26 At the height of the war, in 2007, terrorists claimed 5,425 civilian lives and caused 9,878 injuries.27 The violence also expanded abroad, as in 2005, when al Qaeda in Iraq bombed three hotels in Amman, Jordan.28 The coordinated attack had targeted Western-owned hotels, but the victims were almost all Jordanians, provoking an intense backlash within Jordan and angering many jihadists, who feared the operation would destroy al Qaeda’s chances of winning support in the country.29