The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (Oxford Quick Reference) by Brown Garrett W & McLean Iain & McMillan Alistair

Author:Brown, Garrett W & McLean, Iain & McMillan, Alistair [Brown, Garrett W]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780191749568
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2018-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) A transnational terrorist organization based in Iraq and Syria. Known also as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and, derogatively, as Da’esh, its acronym in Arabic, ISIS renamed itself the Islamic State after the group captured the Iraqi city of Mosul and declared an Islamic Caliphate in June 2014. The origins of ISIS lie in a militant group, Jama’at al-Tawhid w’al Jihad (Organization of Monotheism and Jihad), founded by Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab Al Zarqawi in Jordan in 1999. Al Zarqawi operated militant training camps in Afghanistan and established loose links with *al‐Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but fled the country after the fall of the Taliban in November 2001 and resurfaced in Iraq in 2002.

Following the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, bin Laden named Al Zarqawi the Emir of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Al Zarqawi played a prominent role in the Sunni insurgency that developed in Iraq from 2004. During this period, several fighters who later became prominent in ISIS, including its leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, fought against coalition troops and spent periods in US detention at Camp Bucca. In January 2006, al-Qaeda in Iraq merged with other Sunni militant groups to form the Mujahideen Shura Council and, after Al Zarqawi was killed by US forces in June 2006, relaunched as the Islamic State of Iraq. The Islamic State of Iraq was strongest in Anbar Province but lost territory to the US troop surge as well as hearts and minds among swathes of Iraq’s Sunni communities of Iraq to the Awakening Councils after 2007.

Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi became leader of the Islamic State of Iraq in May 2010, one month after the death of his predecessor, Abu Omar Al Baghdadi, in a raid by Iraqi and US forces in Tikrit. Born Ibrahim al-Badri, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi had close ties to former military and intelligence officers in the Ba’ath regime of Saddam Hussein that had been ousted in 2003, and used these networks to methodically overhaul the Islamic State of Iraq’s management structure. A complex bureaucratic apparatus evolved after 2010 modelled on the intelligence agencies that had maintained the Ba’ath Party in power in Iraq for thirty-five years. A cleric himself, Al Baghdadi fused the religious elements of the Sunni insurgency with the remnants of Hussein’s regime in the waning years of the eight-year US-led *Iraq War and occupation.

Regional developments after 2011 re-energized the Islamic State of Iraq and facilitated the expansion of operations into neighboring Syria in 2013. In Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki consolidated political and military power after the departure of US forces in December 2011, and ruled in an authoritarian manner that alienated many Sunni Iraqis. In Syria, the *Arab Spring uprisings that started in March 2011 with largely non-violent demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad was violently suppressed by regime forces and by the middle of 2012 had morphed into a chaotic series of localized conflicts. Maliki’s extension of power in

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