CLARION PROJECT
by Ryan Mauro
June 15, 2014
The West needs to understand that ISIS’ motivation is explicitly ideological, Islamist and anti-democratic.
The takeover of about one-third of Iraq by the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) terrorist group is about more than establishing a miniature caliphate and base for jihad. It is a challenge to the prestige of Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri by ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who claims to be a descendant of Islam’s holy prophet and ridicules Al-Qaeda for not enforcing sharia (Islamic) law strictly enough.
ISIS (also known as ISIL, the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”) controls significant parts of northern and eastern Syria and northern and western Iraq, having taken Mosul and Tikrit. (It is now threatening Baghdad and Samarra.) This means that ISIS directly controls about one-third of Iraq, a proportion that increases substantially if you include Sunni areas of western Iraq that ISIS has bypassed on its dash towards the capital.
This is arguably the biggest victory for an Al-Qaeda-type group since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the overall Islamist cause since the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of Egypt in 2012.
Over 500,000 Iraqis—Sunnis aware of ISIS’s brutality—fled the Mosul area as the security forces melted away. Another half-million civilians were displaced earlier due to fighting in the Anbar Province. Over 150,000 Iraqi security personnel abandoned their positions as the offensive began, leaving behind uniforms and weapons. This number includes about 30,000 that fled when challenged by only 800 ISIS terrorists.
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