MIDDLE EAST REPORT ISIS Fall 2015 ■ Number 276 MIDDLE EAST RESEARCH & INFORMATION PROJECT Fall 2015 No. 276 Vol. 45 No. 3 Middle East Report (ISSN 0899-2851) is published four times a year (quarterly) by the Middle East Research and Information Project, 1344 T St. #1, Washington, DC 20009. UP FRONT 5 Eritrean Afars: The Refugees You Never Hear About Dan Connell POSTMASTER Periodicals postage paid at Washington, DC and additional mailing offices. Send all address corrections to MERIP, 1344 T St. NW #1, Washington, DC 20009. ISIS MAILING The magazine is mailed periodicals class in North America to the rest of the world. Send address changes to MERIP, ARTICLES 12 A Jihadism Anti-Primer 1344 T St. NW #1, Washington, DC 20009. Subscriptions are $42 Darryl Li per year for individuals, $150 for institutions. Overseas postage additional. Other rates on inside back cover. 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Bishara Printing McArdle Printing Contributing Editors Lila Abu-Lughod, Joel Beinin, Azmi Bishara, Sheila Carapico, Dan Connell, Beshara Doumani, Kaveh Ehsani, Selima Ghezali, Sarah Graham-Brown, Rema Hammami, Deniz Kandiyoti, Isam al-Khafaji, Ann Lesch, Zachary Lockman, Tim Mitchell, Mouin Rabbani, Reem Saad, Simona Sharoni, Susan Slyomovics, Salim Tamari, Graham Usher (1958–2013), Oren Yiftachel, Sami Zubaida MERIP Board of Directors Sheila Carapico, Dan Connell, Darryl Li, Norma Claire Moruzzi, MOISES SAMAN/MAGNUM PHOTOS SAMAN/MAGNUM MOISES Chris Toensing The no-man’s land between Kurdish and ISIS-controlled territories in southern Kirkuk, Iraq, in 2014. Editorial Committee Kamran Ali, Cemil Aydin, n early June 2014 the world was shocked by news of the fall of Mosul, the third Asef Bayat, James E. Bishara, Andy Clarno, Omar largest city in Iraq, to jihadi militants loyal to something called the Islamic Dahi, Kevan Harris, Toby Jones, Anjali Kamat, Arang State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. The conquest was rapid—soldiers of the Iraqi Keshavarzian, Darryl Li, Miriam Lowi, Alex Lubin, I army dropped their weapons and fled rather than resist the ISIS advance. It was David McMurray, Norma Claire Moruzzi, Nadine alarming—the jihadis captured tanks, artillery and other heavy weaponry supplied Naber, Mezna Qato, Curtis Ryan, Zakia Salime, Jillian Schwedler, Nada Shabout, Nazanin Shahrokni, to the Iraqis by the United States. And it was unmistakably consequential—it Jeannie Sowers, Joshua Stacher, Chris Toensing, sounded a clarion call that the conquerors not only aspired to build the “state” Jessica Winegar under whose banner they fought but also were executing a plan for doing so. Weeks later a previously little-known preacher named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself head of a caliphate, the Islamic State, and demanded the Copyright © July–September 2015 fealty of Muslims worldwide. ISIS had not come out of nowhere. Dark tidings of its establishment of Taliban- Middle East Research & Information Project like rule in Raqqa and other Syrian locales had swirled for months, and in the spring of 2014 its fighters had crossed into Iraq to capture Ramadi and other Printed in the USA by McArdle Printing. towns. But the fall of Mosul made ISIS a central preoccupation of the global www.merip.org media and prompted the US and allied governments to announce a new phase of the “war on terror.” Since then, though its territory in Iraq and Syria has begun to shrink, ISIS has haunted the world stage, the perpetrator of choreographed outrages, the enslaver of women, the looter of antiquity and the purveyor of vicious sectarianism, all trumpeted with evident glee via videotape and social media. Bands of jihadis from Afghanistan to Libya to Yemen have sworn oaths to the would-be caliph, and thousands of recruits have streamed to ISIS-controlled lands from Europe and the Middle East. These legions number perhaps 35,000 in total, and they are not all combatants, but ISIS has There would be no ISIS had there been no US invasion of Iraq. weathered US and allied bombing to construct a state-like apparatus centered in Raqqa. It has taken credit for terror attacks across the Arab world, in Bangladesh and Turkey, on a Russian airliner over Sinai, and in cafés and a concert hall in Paris, France. Despite its prominence in the headlines, the ISIS phenomenon is still somewhat opaque. It is difficult and exceedingly dangerous for journalists to report from inside its ambit. In its own steady propaganda, ISIS fancies itself the herald of apocalypse, contributing to conspiracy theo- ries about its provenance and wild speculation about its capacities. Even its name is in doubt: Should it be called the Islamic State, as it wishes? The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, as per a literal English translation of its initial Arabic designation? Daesh, as per the Arabic acronym? We will call it ISIS, simply because this term is most widely used in English-language media. What is ISIS, and where does it come from? ISIS is frequently described as an offshoot of al-Qaeda, in order to locate the group at the extreme end of the jihadi spectrum, which in turn is at the fringes of Sunni Islamism, both in terms of its puritanical or salafi doctrine and its rigid enforcement of same. This description is both correct and somewhat beside the point. It is true that ISIS regards itself as promoting the Islam of the Prophet Muhammad and arrogates to itself the right to decide what that Islam is. ISIS denigrates the enormous body of Sunni jurisprudence that came after Muhammad’s time as deviation and reviles Shi‘i Islam as heresy. Like al-Qaeda and its ilk, ISIS justifies its violence against non-Muslims with the idea that they are infidels (kuffar) and its attacks on Muslims, including its stage-managed murders in the name of religion are alien Sunnis, with the notion of takfir or excommunication. And and abhorred. Most of the victims of ISIS violence are it is certainly true that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam Muslims, and most of those engaging ISIS on the battlefield as understood by the vast majority of Muslims at present are Muslims, as well. and in centuries past. Its claim to the caliphate is almost But political factors are more important in explaining universally rejected; its pretensions to pure belief and prac- why ISIS appeared when it did. The first appellation of the tice are derided; its moral policing is feared and despised; cells that became ISIS was al-Qaeda in Iraq.