Among Arabic speakers, the most common choice is the acronym Daesh, or Da’ish, essentially the Arabic version of ISIS, but with quite negative overtones. The Guardian notes that ‘in Arabic, the word lends itself to being snarled with aggression. As Simon Collis, the British ambassador to Iraq, told The Guardian’s Ian Black: “Arabic speakers spit out the name Da’ish with different mixtures of contempt, ridicule and hostility. Da’ish is always negative.”’
Not surprisingly, some news outlets, governments, analysts and others have been reluctant to use the term ‘Islamic State’ to describe the militants seeking power across large parts of Iraq and Syria. They believe that using the term would give credibility to the violent extremist organization’s claim that it is a real state, a caliphate or Islamic state that somehow has authority over the world’s Muslims or at least is deserving of recognition as a state. For those who do use the term, the reasoning seems to be grounded primarily in pragmatic considerations: if this is the title the organization has given itself, we’ll use it for now, but using it doesn’t imply any endorsement.
But the term ‘Islamic State’, or IS, without the geographic specificity of the earlier ISI and ISIS versions, does have a propaganda purpose. The organization’s name change was not arbitrary; indeed it was announced in the context of the declaration of a caliphate – not as a religious vision for end times but in today’s real world, in real territory, in which it is governing real cities populated by real people. National Public Radio quoted a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff analyst who described the name change to Islamic State as ‘a very potent area of propaganda, because ISIS has attracted potentially thousands of foreign fighters, and none of these foreign fighters see themselves as terrorists. They see themselves as knights. They see themselves as mujahideen. They see themselves as freedom fighters…So they’re very interested in fighting for the Islamic State.’
Over time the brutality of ISIS rule and its inability to provide for the basic needs of the populations it controls will certainly undermine its support. But in the meantime, the claim of creating a whole new society, an Islamic State, however brutal it may be, has played a major role in encouraging the large-scale recruitment to ISIS-controlled territory not only of fighters but also of doctors, engineers, computer nerds, indeed whole families from around the world.
Did ISIS emerge because Obama pulled troops out of Iraq?
Many political opponents of the Obama administration, including (though not limited to) supporters of even more robust US military action in the Middle East, claim that the seemingly sudden emergence of ISIS was the direct result of the pullout of US troops from Iraq. This notion gained traction because of the timing of the two events. ISIS’s powerful military sweep across northern Syria and then into Iraq began just over a year after the last US troops left Iraq in December 2011. But the troop withdrawal was not the reason for the rise of ISIS in either Iraq or Syria.
ISIS’s re-emergence in Iraq after a period of relative quiescence in 2009-10 came in response to the escalating anti-Sunni sectarianism of the Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad that was still armed, paid and supported by the US even while troop numbers were being reduced.
Before that, the origins and influence of ISIS in Iraq lie in the invasion and occupation of that country, which began in 2003 under George W Bush, not in the 2011 withdrawal of US troops. ISIS emerged in Iraq in 2004, as one of numerous Sunni militias fighting against the US, British and other coalition forces and later against the so-called Iraqi Interim Government.
As the anti-occupation war became increasingly sectarian, the Sunni AQI/ISIS continued to clash with the Shi’a-dominated, US-backed Iraqi government.
In 2006 and 2007, the Bush administration sent thousands of additional troops during the so-called surge in Iraq and organized the Sunni Awakening movement. ISIS had not joined the Awakening movement, but it was significantly weakened in the 2007-08 period, when it lost support of Sunni communities and tribes, many of which were taking money from the Awakening movement and pulling back from the military struggle. When the US turned over responsibility for paying the Sunni tribes to the Shi’a-dominated – and increasingly sectarian – Iraqi government, the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki stopped payments and escalated attacks against Sunni communities. Inevitably, the sectarian tensions increased and set the stage for the emergence of what amounted to a Sunni revolt against the government and an increase in Sunni support for ISIS.
Large-scale fighting started again by early 2009, and ISIS re-emerged as a major force, this time within the renewed Sunni uprising. Its target was primarily the Shi’a government, which had already signed an agreement with the Bush administration requiring the withdrawal of all US troops and all Pentagon-paid military contractors from Iraq by the end of 2011.
The new Obama administration actually reopened the withdrawal plan, trying to convince Iraq to allow up to 20,000 US troops to remain, but the negotiations foundered over the question of impunity. Prime Minister al-Maliki was reportedly in favour of keeping US troops in Iraq beyond the deadlines. But Iraq refused to grant Washington’s demand that US troops be assured of absolute immunity for any war crimes they might commit, and without that impunity, presumably knowing that US troops would certainly continue to commit war crimes, the US refused to keep any troops in Iraq.
The repression by the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government increased, the Sunni uprising escalated, and full-scale sectarian war resumed, with US participation through the end of 2011 and without the US starting in 2012. War continued, and ISIS played a major role in the sectarian battle. Under US pressure, in August 2014 al-Maliki was replaced by another politician from the same Shi’a party.
New prime minister Haider al-Abadi talked a more inclusive line, including announcing that his government would stop bombing Sunni communities, but he did little to change the sectarian practices of the military and police agencies, and thus the sectarian pressures continued. Sunni former generals, Sunni tribal leaders and others continued to resist the repression. Many of them continued their alliance with ISIS, seeing it as the strongest opposition to the US-backed government. Using a combination of conventional military tactics and the brutality it had become known for, including kidnappings, beheadings and sex slavery, ISIS fought against both Iraqi government forces and civilians: Shi’a, Christians, Yazidis, even Sunnis who did not accept its extremist interpretation of Islam. The Sunni revolt continued even as ISIS moved to consolidate its seizure of land and expansion into Syria, which would define the regional war for years to come.
Whatever the beliefs and intentions of ISIS leadership, its revival and renewed Sunni support – which made possible its rapid success within the Sunni revolt in Iraq – were directly linked to the continuing sectarian marginalization and repression against Sunnis by the US-backed and Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad. So the origins and rise of ISIS stem from the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, not the belated withdrawal of US troops.
Where does ISIS get its money from?
Along with selling oil it produces from oilfields and refineries in territories it has seized, ISIS relies on several other sources of funding, including taxes levied on businesses within, and transporting of goods in and out of, cities, towns, and areas under its control. As ISIS consolidated its governance in northern Syria and western Iraq after declaring itself the Islamic State ‘caliphate’ in 2014, it began to operate as if it were an actual government. While some of this was purely for appearances, ISIS did begin to issue commercial, building, and drivers’ licences to carry out at least the basics of running public utilities, the operation of schools and medical facilities, and to collect taxes.
Taxes took the form of official-sounding taxes that any government might assess for commercial or other actions, as well as straight-up extortion. That reportedly included ISIS skimming money off the top of salary funds the Iraqi government is still paying to civil service workers in ISIS-occupied Mosul. Since ISIS took control of the central bank