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A Theory of ISIS A Theory of ISIS A Theory of ISIS Political Violence and the Transformation of the Global Order Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou First published 2018 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou 2018 The right of Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 9911 9 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 9909 6 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7868 0169 2 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0171 5 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0170 8 EPUB eBook This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America Contents List of Figures vii List of Tables viii List of Abbreviations ix Acknowledgements x Introduction: The Islamic State and Political Violence in the Early Twenty-First Century 1 Misunderstanding IS 6 Genealogies of New Violence 22 Theorising IS 28 1. Al Qaeda’s Matrix 31 Unleashing Transnational Violence 32 Revenge of the ‘Agitated Muslims’ 49 The McDonaldisation of Terrorism 57 2. Apocalypse Iraq 65 Colonialism Redesigned 66 Monstering in American Iraq 74 ‘I will see you in New York’ 83 3. From Qaedat al Jihad to Al Dawla al Islamiya 88 Mesopotamian Recentring 90 Into Levantine Battle 96 State-Building from Franchise to Region 100 4. Modernity and the Globalised Insurgent 124 Remixing Violence 126 Imperial Reconnections 146 The 1970s Redux 158 vi . a theory of isis Conclusion: Colonialism Boomerang 166 Return to Sender 170 Future Pasts of IS 178 Pensamiento Nuevo on Terrorism 185 Glossary 190 Chronology 192 Notes 219 Index 244 List of Figures 3.1 The changing contexts of transnational Islamism 112 4.1 The biformity of the Islamic State 156 5.1 Lineages and temporalities of IS 168 List of Tables Al Qaeda’s major transnational operations, 1995–2005 55 Al Qaeda’s franchises, 2004–14 61 3.1.1.1. Evolution of IS 90 3.2.1.2. The seven layers of IS 101 3.3. Pledges of allegiance and/or support to IS 115 3.4. Wilayas (regions) of IS 119 4.1. Attacks led or inspired by IS, 2014–17 138 List of Abbreviations 9/11 Al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States, 11 September 2001 AQAP Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula AQI Al Qaeda in Iraq AQIM Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb CIA Central Intelligence Agency FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation GWOT Global War on Terror ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross IS Islamic State ISI Islamic State in Iraq ISIL Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant ISIS Islamic State in Iraq and Syria PFLP Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine UN United Nations UNSC United Nations Security Council Acknowledgements This work closes a series of three books on the transformation of political violence in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, which I embarked on in September 2001. This transnational trilogy has been concerned with the nature and meaning of the groups Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and the wider contemporary radical Islamist movement they belong to. The first volume, Contre-Croisade: Le 11 Septembre et le Retournement du Monde (the original edition is subtitled Origines et Conséquences du 11 Septembre) was written in French (an Arabic version was released in 2010 but it remains untranslated in English) and published in 2004 as I was in the process of moving from Geneva to Boston in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks (having previously lived for ten years in New York). That work sought to document in as much details as possible the 9/11 attacks and inquire as to their significance in the longer-term history of relations between the Islamic and Western worlds. The second volume sought to expand the investigation from the attacks to the group behind them, widening both the scope and lens of the issues at hand. Researched during a second stay at Harvard University (the first one was in 1996–7 at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies) at the Programme on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, of which I was the associate director in 2004–8, and where I led an international research project on Transnational and Non-State Armed Groups (TAGs), Understanding Al Qaeda: The Trans- formation of War came out in 2006 (an expanded second edition was released in 2011 and a coda was added in 2013 as a chapter in the book An International History of Terrorism co-edited by Jussi Hanhimaki and Bernhard Blumenau). Understanding Al Qaeda positioned itself against the overemphasis on Al Qaeda’s religiosity, proposing an alternative reading anchored in three concepts it sought to introduce, namely Al Qaeda’s ‘militarisation of Islamism’, ‘transnationalisation of terrorism’ and ‘democratisation of responsibility’ (concepts discussed afresh in Chapter 1 in this volume). That work dealt, secondarily, with an unpacking of the modus operandi of Al Qaeda (the so-called regional franchises and their meaning) and the ‘non-linear’ nature of the group’s acknowledgements . xi war. Overall, the book was an argument about the transformative, not merely innovative, nature of Al Qaeda’s materialisation and Osama Bin Laden’s project. The present volume began in August 2014 with a policy paper – ‘ISIS and the Deceptive Rebooting of Al Qaeda’, researched and written at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, of which I was the deputy director and academic dean from 2014 to 2017 – and an invitation by the students of the Middle East Initiative at the Graduate Institute of Inter- national and Development Studies in Geneva, Azra Avdagic and Olivia Mathys. The lecture I delivered before the students in September 2014, ‘Understanding ISIS: The Islamic State, Al Qaeda and Post-Modern Globalised Violence’, is the basis of this book. Earlier versions of some of the arguments were published in various forms in The Muslim World, Project Syndicate, Open Democracy, The Conversation, Les Clefs du Moyen-Orient, Le Temps and Al Monitor. The ideas contained here were also aired in a number of venues over the years since the 2014 policy paper and lecture, at conferences and colloquia where I benefited greatly from the thoughtful comments and searching questions from audiences at the Fletcher School in Boston, the University of Exeter, Sciences Po Paris, Sciences Po Grenoble, the University of Saint-Joseph in Beirut, the University of St Andrews, the City University of New York, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Overseas Development Institute in London, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, the Africa Studies Centre in Leiden, the New School in New York and the Rockefeller Centre in Bellagio, the University of Milan, the University of Geneva, the George C. Marshall Centre for Security Studies, the Egmont Institute in Brussels and the United Nations University in Tokyo. I warmly thank my hosts at these institutions, respectively, Nadim Shehadi, Klejda Mulaj, Bertrand Badie, Jihane Melhouf, Karim Bitar, Bernhard Blumenau, Thomas Weiss, Sara Pantuliano, Shalini Randeria, the late Stephen Ellis and Benjamin Soares, Erin McCandless, Mariele Merlati, Matthias Schulz and Ozcan Yilmaz, Joerg Kuntze, Sebastian Einsiedel, Marta Cali and David Malone for their invitations, hospitality and conversation. I am particularly indebted to the Graduate Institute in Geneva, where I found a rich and congenial intellectual home in the International History Department. I thank my colleagues at the Institute for the rich exchanges I had with them, notably Philippe Burrin, Davide Rodogno, Gopalan Balachandran, Jussi Hanhimaki, Riccardo Bocco, Alessandro xii . a theory of isis Monsutti, Keith Krause, André Liebich, Andrea Bianchi, Carolyn Biltoft, Andrew Clapham, Jean-François Bayart, Paola Gaeta, Gilles Carbonnier and Isabelle Schulte-Tenckoff. Debates with the students at the Graduate Institute in my classes on political violence and on state-building and war-making were invariably inspiring and I thank them all for their intelligent and refreshing engagement, and I extend my appreciation to the staff at the library of the Graduate Institute for their valuable and efficient assistance in locating key works. Cherished conversational partners I had on these issues included Ahmad Khalidi, François Burgat, Bertrand Badie, Melissa Finn, Adam Shatz, Christophe Bourseiller, Nadia Marzouki, Eric Degila, Maha Yahya and Anthony Samrani. Other friends and colleagues who supported me with their encouragement or by sharing ideas include Oliver Jütersonke, Dominic Eggel, Victor Santos Rodriguez, Adrien and Nathaniel Burkhalter, Gyula Csurgai, Katia Papagianni, Bruce Fudge and Christophe Rime, and I thank them for their intellectual camaraderie. For his confidence in and support of this book, I extend my full gratitude to my editor at Pluto Press, David Shulman, a true gentleman. Finally, Matthew Bamber, a brilliant young scholar working on the state-building aspects of the Islamic State, provided valuable research assistance and expertly shepherded the chronology of events, and I thank him for his excellent collaboration. My most inexpressible debt is to my father and mother, and to my family whose unconditional support was always the single most precious source of sustenance. I dedicate this work to them, the balms of my soul, my beloved wife Shainese, and my cherished children Bahiya, Kemal and Zaynab, with all my love. Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou 27 July 2017 Introduction The Islamic State and Political Violence in the Early Twenty-First Century Madam, your imperial Majesty gives me life back by killing Turks.
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