The Origins of ISIS by Simon Mabon

Author:Simon Mabon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Iraq, Syria, ISIS, Terrorism, International Relations, Politics, Islamic Studies, 21st Century History, Terrorism, Armed Struggle, Armed Conflict, Middle East History, Middle East
ISBN: 9781786721488
Publisher: I.B.Tauris

Sunni militants re-energised in Iraq

By the summer of 2013, Iraq's major Sunni towns and cities were in open revolt against the Shi‘a-led government.38 Deteriorating socio-economic conditions along with a worsening security landscape enabled groups such as ISIS to grow in popularity and to establish footholds in Sunni communities, particularly in the western border areas of Anbar province. The border with Syria had been notoriously difficult to control, with a legacy of smugglers and tribes profiting from the lack of security and even applying their own form of governance. Controlling the border areas within the province, particularly Syria and Jordan, while maintaining tribal networks across the borders was – and remains – vital to preserving the trade and logistic routes vital to sustaining a programme of self-sufficiency.

By the summer of 2013, ISIS fighters in Iraq had asserted their authority on routes and towns near the borders in Anbar. In August of the same year, a YouTube video was posted showing the killing of three truck drivers of reported Alawite origin in the border area of western Anbar, on the main route to Baghdad.39 The man who led the execution of the Syrian drivers wore long hair, a beard and combats, in the style now synonymous with ISIS fighters. Highlighting ISIS's ideology and radical militancy, the video also showed how ISIS used its local leverage to operate in strategically important areas, with impunity.

The man who conducted the executions was Shakir Waheeb al-Fahdawi, formerly of AQI and a Camp Bucca detainee, having been arrested by US soldiers in 2006 while fighting in Anbar. Being from the al-Fahdawi tribe (Dulaymi confederation), Waheeb's roots are in Anbar province or more specifically al-Madhaiq, a small village east of Ramadi where most of his family still reside. According to a source from al-Madhaiq ‘Waheeb was a normal boy from a good family’ but was drawn to the resistance movement and became more radical following his experiences of war and imprisonment, apparently threatening ‘he would kill his own family for not supporting Daesh’.40 Following the closure of Bucca, Waheeb was transferred to Tikrit where he was to await his own execution; however, he escaped following an attack on the prison – a strategy regularly employed by ISIS fighters – in 2012. Since then, he has become somewhat of a poster figure for ISIS and, according to sources in Anbar, instrumental in organising offensives in Fallujah and Ramadi during ISIS's large-scale conquests.

Shakir Waheeb's timeline offers a useful case study of how domestic conditions have produced a local ISIS fighter, but it also highlights failures in Iraq's security apparatus. Nevertheless, in 2013 ISIS was only one of many groups vying for a foothold in Iraq and their violent actions had already drawn much criticism from within Sunni tribal and political quarters. In response to the changing conditions, alliances developed once more and in January 2014 al-Majlis al-Askari li-Thuwar al-Asha'ir al-Iraq, or Military Council of Iraqi Tribal Revolutionaries (GMCIR), officially announced its formation on Twitter. The GMCIR was composed of a

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