Campaign Against Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham

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Table of Contents

Background
Terrorist Campaign
Counterterrorism Campaign
Outcome
References

Background

It is an unrecognized state and an international Islamist Sunni terrorist organization operating mainly in Syria and Iraq. In fact, since 2013, it has been operating as an unrecognized quasi-state with a Sharia form of government and headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa. It originated in 1999 in Iraq as a terrorist group “Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad” (the founder is a Jordanian Ahmed Fadil Haleila, known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) (Lukens-Bull & Woodward, 2021). In 2004, the group joined Al-Qaeda and became known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq. In October 2006, after merging with other radical Islamist groups, it was proclaimed as the “Islamic State of Iraq”.

The terrorist group relies on several Islamic ideas. The main thing is the construction of a “caliphate” on the entire territory of the planet, an Islamic state ruled by a caliph. The citizens of this state must live according to sharia – the norms fixed in the Koran and the Sunnah (the sacred texts of Muslims regulating all spheres of life) (Lukens-Bull & Woodward, 2021). In addition, the militants follow the idea of jihad, one of the fundamental in Islam. At the same time, they understand jihad extremely radically, relying on the interpretations of the Egyptian preacher of the 1960s, Said Qutb.

Terrorist Campaign

The Islamic State’s terrorist danger is genuine, yet it is sometimes overblown and commonly misinterpreted. Since its height in 2015, the Islamic State has experienced multiple losses, losing much of its territory in Syria and Iraq and most of its so-called “provinces” elsewhere in the Muslim world (Lukens-Bull & Woodward, 2021). The Islamic State, on the other hand, has proved the ability to carry out a variety of brutal terrorist acts in Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world (Giantas & Stergiou, 2018). Some of which were coordinated by the group’s top leaders and others which were carried out by low-level adherents. Individuals who support the Islamic State’s call for violence but act on their own have also targeted the United States. ISIS promotes conservative politics and religious extremism through contemporary technologies such as social media (Giantas & Stergiou, 2018). As their commanders preach a return to the early days of Islam, fighters desecrate sacred places and rich antiques.

According to its claims, ISIS has short, medium, and long-term objectives. Its short-term objective is to solidify the regions it controls in Syria and Iraq while also capturing new territory. One of its main strategies for achieving its objectives has been to incite a full-fledged sectarian conflict in Iraq between Sunnis and Shiites, which it has attempted to do by massacring Shiite civilian populations (Lukens-Bull & Woodward, 2021). This practice is utilized partially due to ISIS’s perception of Shiites as heretics deserving of death and as a tactic to provoke retaliatory assaults from Shiite militia groups, pushing Sunnis into ISIS’s arms. ISIS’s medium-term objective is to consolidate and expand its territorial control in Iraq and Syria, with the long-term goal of expanding into neighboring Sunni nations (Semati & Szpunar, 2018). It aspires to concentrate power in a continuous region to create a controllable and defensible state by moving forward in this manner.

Counterterrorism Campaign

After the Islamic State took vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria in mid-2014, the US-led coalition began bombing the group. A dozen countries have carried out airstrikes, but the United States has carried out more than seventy percent of them. Throughout 2015, the number of airstrikes rose, assisting local troops in regaining control of crucial areas: A Kurdish militia retook Kobani in Syria (Wu, 2018). In 2016, the US-led coalition increased its focus on the territories surrounding Raqqa, ISIS’s Syrian capital, and Mosul, its Iraqi stronghold. By April 2016, the coalition had carried out over 11,000 bombings, causing ISIS to retreat from 40% of its Iraqi territory and 10% of its Syrian area (Wu, 2018). Thus, the intermediate results of the success of the counter-terrorism operation were revealed.

Officials from the Pentagon warned that airstrikes alone would not be enough to destroy the Islamic State. Instead of sending huge numbers of ground troops, the White House has focused on training, equipping, and advising local forces. The Pentagon started a program in 2014 to train tens of thousands of Syrian rebels (Burke et al., 2021). One of the approved opposition organizations that received US help was the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a mixed Kurdish-Arab force (Wu, 2018). Commanders predominantly commanded the SDF from the YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Units), which were instrumental in defeating ISIS in Kobani. The SDF, which the US back, started an operation in November 2016 to take Raqqa, the ISIS capital.

At a meeting with NATO peers in early September 2014, five mutually reinforcing lines of endeavor to degrade and defeat ISIS were presented. Providing military support to US partners, impeding the flow of foreign fighters; stopping finance and sponsorship; addressing humanitarian concerns in the region; exposing true nature are some of the lines of activity (Burke et al., 2021). The United States emphasizes that every country has a responsibility to weaken and destroy ISIS. Some allies support the military campaign by supplying weaponry, equipment, training, or advice. These allies include European and Middle Eastern countries helping with the air war against ISIS targets.

Outcome

The regional security justification aided in developing the more extensive preventive war logic in the counter-ISIS effort. Meanwhile, appeals for the United States to commit to policing security in the Middle East regularly led to an unending battle. It will take more than a demand for withdrawal to bring America’s interminable conflicts to a conclusion (Burke et al., 2021). Instead, demand for the end of America’s ongoing conflicts must be accompanied by significant policy initiatives to alter the country’s perception of its place in the world (Krause, 2018). It will also necessitate measures to alter the conditions that give rise to successful and long-lasting jihadist insurgencies and the creation and strengthening of non-military solutions capable of safeguarding American interests.

There is much area for counterterrorism policy creation and discussion that does not prioritize war as the primary response to Islamist insurgencies that are durable. Policy alternatives abound, from improving legislation to curb foreign fighter movements and undermining terrorist organizations online to economic development (Burke et al., 2021). Furthermore, it promotes better governance in places where ISIS recruits and improvements to American agencies responsible for returning prisoners from battle zones (Krause, 2018). Meanwhile, policymakers should revisit the preventative war rationale that underpins the fight against ISIS and begin the process of reinstituting publicly responsible and transparent constraints on when and how the US will undertake counterterrorism warfare.

Nations throughout the world were confronted with the difficult task of repatriating and prosecuting people who had surrendered insurgents. Both Iraq and Syria have been ravaged by conflict, with millions of internally displaced people living in camps in both countries (Krause, 2018). ISIS, meanwhile, continued to operate as an insurgent group with the potential to rebuild power. General Joseph Votel, the outgoing leader of US Central Command, issued a warning to Congress just before Baghouz fell (Burke et al., 2021). ISIS took a strategic decision to protect their families and capabilities by taking their chances in internally displaced individual camps and going to the ground in distant places, waiting for the ideal moment to resurge.

References

Burke, P., Elnakhala, D., & Miller, S. (2021). Global jihadist terrorism: Terrorist groups, zones of armed conflict and national Counter-Terrorism strategies. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Giantas, D., & Stergiou, D. (2018). From terrorism to Cyber-Terrorism: The case of ISIS.SSRN Electronic Journal, 1–32. Web.

Krause, P. (2018). A State, an Insurgency, and a Revolution: Understanding and Defeating the Three Faces of ISIS. In F. al-Istrabadi & S. Ganguly (Eds.), The Future of ISIS: Regional and International Implications (pp. 223–246). Brookings Institution Press. Web.

Lukens-Bull, R., & Woodward, M. (2021). Handbook of contemporary Islam and Muslim lives (1st ed.). Springer.

Semati, M., & Szpunar, P. M. (2018). ISIS beyond the spectacle: Communication media, networked publics, terrorism. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 35(1), 1–7. Web.

Wu, T. (2018). Landpower, time, and terrorism: A strategy of lightness in the Counter-ISIS campaign. Orbis, 62(2), 278–293. Web.

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Campaign Against Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham

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