ISIS Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was proclaimed in April 2013. ISIS is a group of Sunni jihadists led by 43-year-old Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the nom de guerre of Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarri. Baghdadi fought in an armed rebellion in western Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003, and was captured by U.S. forces in 2006. Upon his release towards the end of the decade, Baghdadi rejoined al-Qaeda affiliates in Iraq. ISIS seeks to create an Islamic state in eastern Syria and northern Iraq based on sharia law. Thus far, the group has captured territory from the fringes of Aleppo in eastern Syria to Falluja in southern Iraq to Mosul in the north. There has been much conjecture about the size of this group. According to Londons Guardian newspaper, ISIS was thought to have around 6,000 members prior to seizing Mosul and Tikrit. But the conquest of key Iraqi cities has undoubtedly inspired many jihadis, both in and outside Iraq, to join. The roots of ISIS are in Iraq, but the group was greatly influenced by its experiences fighting in Syria, says Kamran Bokhari, vice-president of Middle Eastern and South Asian affairs for the geopolitical intelligence firm Stratfor. ISISs etymology can be traced to al-Qaeda in Iraq, which arose in response to the U.S. invasion in 2003. The group was active in the insurgency in Iraq, but when civil war broke out along sectarian lines in Syria in 2011, many ISIS members crossed the border to fight with other al-Qaeda-affiliated groups against the Shia Alawite regime of Syrias President Bashar al-Assad. In 2013, ISIS came into a conflict with fellow jihadists, says Bokhari. ISIS hit a dead end in Syria, because it was fighting on two fronts – both the Assad regime and its allies as well as rival rebel groups that were relatively moderate, says Bokhari. As a result, It decided it was in its interest to go back into Iraq.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 11:40:03 +0000
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