By Dr. Mohammed Nuruzzaman The Islamic State (IS) is now one year old! Since its proclamation in June 2014, the IS has passed thr...
By Dr. Mohammed Nuruzzaman
The
Islamic State (IS) is now one year old! Since its proclamation in June 2014,
the IS has passed through major turbulence – sometimes winning wars against
Iraq and its allies and at times embracing defeats. Yet, it has well managed to
survive the US airstrikes and Iran-supported Iraqi ground offensives, aimed at
defeating, degrading or destroying it. The IS’s territorial boundary has
expanded off late after the takeover of Ramadi in Iraq and the ancient Syrian
city of Palmyra in May 2015, while the loss of Tikrit last March and the defeat
at Tal Abyad, a town in northern Syria, in mid-June at the hands of Kurdish
forces added to its list of big military setbacks. Defying Western challenges,
the IS has also successfully recruited, particularly through the effective use of social media,
young fighters from more than 100
different countries of the world; and in the last one year its
network of support and allegiance has spread out to Afghanistan in the East, to
Nigeria in Southern Africa, and Egypt and Libya in Northern Africa.
Such
developments, as rattling as they are, underscore a number of important points.
Certainly, the IS can no longer be viewed as a passing phenomenon, an occurrence
that would wither away someday. Rather, it has coalesced into a big entity with
political, military and administrative control over almost half of Syria and
Iraq. This entity looks certain to exist and may even expand in the future,
unless it is coerced into total submission or at least denied a footprint in
Iraq. In a similar way, the IS offers limited scope to entirely view it as a
terrorist organization, despite its much condemned practices of suicide
bombings, enslavement of non-Muslims, beheadings and other violations of human
rights. It maintains an army capable of fighting both conventional and
irregular warfare, has a hierarchical leadership structure with the caliph at
the top that decides political issues within its territory, performs administrative
tasks to facilitate day-to-day functions of people living on its territory and runs
an oil economy that
generates millions of dollars in revenues every month to support war efforts
and to boost regular economic activities. In November 2014, the IS’s
Treasury Department minted
and introduced its own currency to get rid of ‘tyrannical monetary system’ of
the West. No known terrorist organization has ever possessed such essential
state-like attributes.
Two
serious questions are sure to peek into the minds of analysts and the general
public alike: What has sustained the IS in the last one year, even in the face
of tough military actions by the US-led international coalition and
Iran-supported Shiite militia groups? And what does the survival and possible
future expansion of the IS mean for the Middle East and the whole world,
particularly the West? At a minimum, the IS, as it is apparent, has initiated
the first step to redefine the post-World War I colonial political map of the
Middle East and rebuild a new regional order with Islamic values and principles
at its core, and subsequently to challenge the Western world, primarily in
ideological terms. The challenge to the West promises a fierce clash between
Islamic universalism and eurocentrism, a concept that underpins the West’s
claim to global superiority and dominance.
What
Sustains the Islamic State?
Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi proclaimed the IS on 29 June 2014. The proclamation was viewed with much dismay and
no greetings, even by the majority of Muslims. The West, the Arab
and the Muslim states mostly saw it as an anachronistic development, as a
threat to the regional, if not the global, status quo. Al-Baghdadi’s official
speech, delivered the same day the IS was proclaimed, declared the return
of the ‘khilafah’, reminiscent
of the historical Islamic caliphates, the last being the Ottoman Empire-based
caliphate abolished exactly 90 years ago in early March 1924. He also called on
all Muslims (other than the Shiites whom the IS, like the Saudi Wahhabis,
considers ‘heretics’) to rally behind the IS flag to establish the khilafah (Islamic political and moral order).
Shiite Iran and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia felt threatened alike, as the IS, as a
Sunni militant group, already conquered vast swathes of Iraq and Syria and
seemed to be poised to strike at other regional states to enlarge its
territorial expanse and jurisdiction.
The
looming IS threats soon drew fire from three different sources – domestic,
regional and global. The US-trained and equipped Iraqi army put up the initial
resistance to what was then known as the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria)
but soon melted away in the face of the IS’s summer 2014 blitzkrieg. That
brought in the Shiite militia groups to counter and drive IS fighters away from
conquered Iraqi territories, giving the fight a sectarian character.
Post-Saddam Iraq’s principal regional ally Iran made no mistake to dispatch
arms and fighters, with top Iranian leaders publicly declaring their firm support
for Iraq to beat back the IS. President
Barack Obama declared
a ‘perpetual war’ on the IS in early September 2014 to ‘degrade and ultimately
destroy’ it without clearly elaborating how the IS had threatened the Americans
and the American homeland. Why then is the IS growing bigger and surviving as a
colossal entity?
What
perhaps accounts more for the IS’s continued existence is not its superior
military skills to seize territories and fend off counter-offensives but the
very weaknesses in the military strategies of Iraq and its allies, particularly
the US. The Obama administration came forward with a half-hearted air campaign
strategy with no commitment to deploy ground troops. Until now the US has
limited its actions to an ‘advise-and-assist’ military role in the fight
against the IS. The Iraqi military officials see the US air support as erratic
and lawmakers
accuse Washington of
doing more for the Kurdish regional government at the cost of the rest of Iraq.
There are controversies over the effectiveness of US air operations to track
down and incapacitate the IS fighters as well. Senator
John McCain revealed
after the fall of Ramadi that two-thirds of US air force pilots return without
dropping any ordnance on the IS military targets. He blamed slow
decision-making up the chain of command. The Iraqis now view neighboring Iran
as a more reliable partner. It is an open secret that the
Iran-backed Shiite militia groups, such as the Badr Organization and the Kataib
Hezbollah, are leading the charge to recapture IS-controlled Iraqi territories
including Ramadi, with Iranian Revolutionary
Guards commanders advising
and fighting on the front lines.
Iran has,
of course, its own reasons to fight against the IS militants. Iranians of every
rank and file – the reformists and the conservatives, the liberals and the
hardliners – see the IS as an existential threat to the Islamic Republic itself
and the so-called Shiite Crescent stretching from Beirut to Tehran via Damascus
and Baghdad. Foreign Minister Javad
Zarif underscored this
point during his August 2014 visit to Iraq when he said: ‘Iran regards Iraqi
security as its own’. The
Revolutionary Guards have
defended its involvements in Iraq and Syria as a defensive and preemptive
action on the ground that: “If we do not fight them [the IS and other Sunni
rebels] in Damascus, we have to fight them back in the streets of Tehran”. In
effect, it sounds like an extended concept of security justified on the claim
that Iran’s real security lies in defending Iraq and Syria. In a recent
interview with IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting), Ali Shamkhani, the
Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a Revolutionary
Guards veteran, identified
three red lines in
dealing with the IS in Iraq: threats against Baghdad, attack on the Shiite holy
shrines, and any IS advance towards the Iranian borders.
Iran’s
involvements in Iraq are likely to further intensify if the IS crosses the red
lines, but Tehran has limits to its own power: it is reeling under crippling
Western sanctions with the Rouhani government trying to negotiate a way out of
the decade-old nuclear standoff with the US; the Iranian armed forces are
stretched too thin in Syria as well as in Iraq; and the recent emergence of a
Saudi-led Sunni alliance to fight the Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels in
Yemen.
What is
more alarming for Tehran is the evolving Sunni view of Shiite Iran. Most Sunnis
in the Gulf Arab states view Iran’s role as promoting a Shiite agenda in Iraq,
Syria and Yemen that further constrains Iran’s anti-IS role. Saudi
Arabia and other Gulf monarchies save
Oman project Iran and its allies as sources of grave threats, threats that are
considered more perilous than the IS –the jihadist group allegedly created
and funded by US friends and allies in the Middle East as a counterweight
to Hezbollah. The Gulf monarchies are so preoccupied with Iran’s recent surge
in influence in Iraq and Syria that they are now openly cooperating
and coordinating actions with Israel to thwart Iran’s rise as the dominant
regional power believed to be sealed by a possible nuclear agreement with the
US by the end of June 2015.
A nuclear
deal or not, the US remains Iran’s “number
one enemy” and the deep scars in Iran – US relations developed over
the last nearly four decades are unlikely to be removed so soon. This is what
gives the IS an extra respite to maneuver more effectively to face the US-led
coalition and Iran to destroy it.
For its
part, the IS has proved itself militarily resilient, politically viable and
economically manageable. The IS fighters are brutal and fearless, highly
skilled in battlefield tactical maneuverings, follow the US army’s combined
arms doctrine that integrates the use of light, medium and heavy weapons, and
fight the enemies with sophisticated weapons captured from the enemies. A
former American
Special Forces officer has
said this of the IS fighters: “They’re just better fighters. They have fire
discipline… They keep moving. The Iraqis do none of these things”. Politically,
the IS maintains tight grip over conquered territories. People living on IS
territories either welcome it gladly or are silenced to challenge it openly. So
far no report of popular rebellion against the IS has emerged, stories of extortions
and fearmongering by
the IS forces notwithstanding. On the economic front, the captured Syrian and
Iraqi oil fields are producing the necessary lifeblood for the survival of the
IS. It sells oil in the black markets and its customers include the Syrian
government and a bevy of regional merchants who bring in some $90
million for the IS every month. All these portend little realistic
hope for destroying the IS anytime soon.
What
does the Existence of the IS mean?
The
survival of the IS has significant consequences for the Middle East and for the
world at large. To begin with, the IS is unfolding as a direct threat to the
political map of the Middle East drawn up by Britain and France after World War
I. Its territories straddle the borders of Iraq and Syria and thus partially
negate the creation of a half dozen states, modeled on the state-centric
European political order and on the Ottoman Arab territories in the Middle East
(the Levant, Jordan, Iraq, and Palestine). Britain and France secretly
negotiated the Sykes
– Picot Agreement of
May 1916, three years before World War I had ended, to establish their colonial
footprints in the heart of the Arab world. Jordan and Iraq (then called
Trans-Jordan) as well as Palestine went under British control while Lebanon and
Syria were awarded to France.
The
Versailles Treaty of 1919 formally accorded legitimacy to these conspiratorial
divisions of Arab territories by two European powers. Britain also reneged on
its promise made to Hussein bin Ali, Sherif and Emir of Mecca (1908 – 1924) who
had supported British war efforts against the Ottoman Turks in exchange for
recognition of an independent
Arab state covering
territories from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen. The Arabs were further
disappointed by the Balfour Declaration of June 1917 that promised British support
for the creation of a Jewish ‘homeland’ (not a Jewish state) in Palestine.
The IS
flatly rejects and wishes
to erase the political borders delineated
by the Sykes – Picot Agreement. It hopes to strengthen the declared caliphate
by uniting all Sunni Muslims under its rule. Much of course depends on the IS’s
capacity to hold onto conquered territories and launch counter-offensives to
capture more territories from Iraq, Syria and other neighboring states. The
recent military victories in Iraq (Ramadi) and Syria (Palmyra) somewhat hint at
IS’s capacity to gradually achieve what it wishes for. If this were to happen,
the IS also looks set to rewrite the history of the Middle East. The
demolitions of non-Islamic cultural heritage sites by IS forces may be
interpreted as a first step to its project of rewriting Middle East history. It
is against
idols in any form –
statues, sculptures and engravings – and IS leaders justify the destruction of
the idols by citing verses from the Holy Qur’an. Verse 120 in the Qur’an refers
to the abolition of the idols as a ‘righteous deed’. The so-called cultural
heritage sites, according to the IS, serve a nationalist agenda that
contradicts the guidance of Allah. This interpretation brings two points into
focus: a) the IS stands to expunge non-Islamic parts of Middle East history, at
least of the last almost one hundred years marked by European colonial
penetrations and dominance; and b) it aims to de-link, if not totally cut off,
the Islamic Middle East from the non-Islamic West which the IS views as the
oppressors of the
Muslims.
Viewed
from the ideological terrain, the IS’s existence and expansion poses much more
formidable challenges to the West. Historically, Islam and the West have found
themselves locked in battles
over ideas and dominance, with
each attempting to prevail over the other at different historical periods. The
rise of the IS appears to be the latest round of ideational competitions
between the two. The West has historically justified its prevalence over the
non-West, more specifically the Middle East, by cherishing and promoting a
unique claim to universalism rooted in the concept of eurocentrism. Briefly
defined, eurocentrism is the ideological or politico-cultural project of the
West that buttresses and sustains Western claim to global superiority and
dominance. It articulates a hierarchical structure of power relationships, with
the West exerting its hegemony over the rest of the world. Justifications
for hegemonyor dominance are presented by incarnating Western values
of democracy, freedoms, human rights, liberal economic order etc., as universal
values which are assumed to be applicable to all societies, regardless of
cultural and racial differences between the West and the non-West.
The latest
phase of eurocentrism saw its vulgar manifestations under the George W. Bush
administration (2001 – 2009). President Bush and the neoconservatives
rhetorically justified the 2003 invasion of Iraq in the name of promoting
freedoms and human rights for all Iraqis, though the invasion eventually
ended up producing complete disasters for Iraq and for the US. The debacle in
Iraq has, in turn, sharpened
attacks on eurocentrism both
from within the West and the non-West. The IS is seen by many people, including
President Obama, as
an outcome of the
invasion of and post-occupation fiasco in Iraq.
Islam’s
own version of universalism has long pitted itself against Western Eurocentric
ideas and views. Islamic universalism centers round the idea of building and
sustaining a universal moral order. The Muslim holy book, the Qur’an (verse
30:30), emphasizes the need to engage in universal morality and instructs all
humans to follow the moral path. The creation of a universal moral order,
according to Islam, is possible if humans uphold and promote such moral values
as justice, equality, truthfulness, fairness, honesty and so on. These moral
values apply to all humans, regardless of their ethnic, cultural or linguistic
origins, and they can facilitate human interactions to establish a universal
moral order. Based on the Qur’anic moral teachings, the Muslims, beginning in
the first half of the seventh century, quickly extended the Islamic moral order
(under different caliphates) to the Levant, Anatolia, North Africa and even to
Spain and France in Europe. So Islam appeared on the World scene not merely as
a religion; it
symbolized three things: a new religion with mass appeal, a
multi-ethnic super state controlled by Islamic religious laws and principles,
and a new world order built on Islamic moral values.
From the
mid-seventh century to the first quarter of the twentieth century, the Islamic
moral order prevailed but the decline of the Ottoman Empire and its final
invalidation in 1924 opened the door for European colonial control over the
whole Middle East region. The US entered the fray after the discovery of oil in
the Persian Gulf area in the 1930s. Islamic reactions to Western control and
dominance, justified by cultural superiority flowing out from Eurocentric ideas
and views, gradually radicalized many young Muslims from Hassan al-Banna to
Sayyid Qutb to Osama bin Laden. The al-Qaeda network of bin Laden and Ayman
al-Zawahiri, which initiated the ongoing armed clash between Islam and the West
on September 11, 2001 to end Western domination over the Muslim Middle East, is
a direct outgrowth of such radicalism. The IS, a breakaway al-Qaeda group, is
the more radical, more violent Sunni militant group bent on eliminating Western
footholds from the Middle East literally and practically. It shows no shortage
of will and capacity to reestablish the caliphate not only to reintroduce the
Islamic universal moral order but also to lead the world once again.
To sum up,
the IS is a reality which may not be obliterated through military actions and
strikes. Differences between regional states and the defects in the anti-IS
coalition’s military strategy largely keep the IS running and surviving. The
existence of the IS points to a new Middle East – with the post-World War I political
map gradually broken down – and the initiation of a long ideological conflict
with the West. Secondly, Islam and the West present competing claims to
universalism with both of them having one thing in common: the impulse to hold
sway over the world. While the West seeks to achieve world dominance through
the promotion of its own set of secular values centered on human rights,
freedoms, democratic governance, free market economic system etc., Islam uses
divinely bestowed values of justice, equality, honesty, integrity, truthfulness
and so on to achieve the same. In other words, the West uses a secular path
while Islam (or militant Sunni Islam) employs a religious path to reach the
same goal. The more the IS grows bigger, the more the possibility of fierce
ideological clashes with the West to extend the frontiers of Islamic universal
moral order.
About Author:
Dr. Mohammed Nuruzzaman is Associate Professor of International Relations at the
Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait. His primary areas of
teaching and research interests are international relations theories, global
political economy, traditional and non-traditional security studies, great
powers in the global order, and politics and international relations of the
Middle East. He has published in leading international peer-reviewed journals,
including International Studies Perspectives, Cooperation and Conflict, New
Global Studies, Journal of Contemporary Asia, International Studies, and
Journal of Asian and African Studies.
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