In the Middle East, 2014 was definitely the “year of the Caliphate,” as ISIS went from one of many rebel factions inside Syria to a nation-state in its own right, with territory spanning roughly half of Syria and half of neighboring Iraq, declaring the land a new “Caliphate” and their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new caliph.
It wasn’t insignificant territory, either. From taking Ramadi and Fallujah in January to sacking the huge city of Mosul over the summer, ISIS has gone after big targets, and seizing $500 million from the Mosul central bank quickly became the best funded jihadist faction on the planet.
ISIS’ 2014 success also secured them some significant new alliances, with factions pledging loyalty to them in Egypt and Libya, and a growing recruitment surge that has followed the US-led war against them.
Several months in, the US war hasn’t amounted to much on the ground, with ISIS losing a handful of minor towns, while seizing a number of others elsewhere. In Syria the war has centered around destroying oil infrastructure, while the Assad government shifts its focus to other, smaller rebel groups.
While ISIS’ biggest gains came in spurts, and most of the time they were just consolidating newly-captured territory, there’s no denying 2014 was a major win for them, and going into 2015 the group will be looking to keep that momentum.
In Syria, the ISIS focus will probably continue to be on Kobani and other minor targets, with an eye toward eventually moving on the contested city of Aleppo. In Iraq, the ambitions are clearly much bigger, with the group having gotten its territory extend to the outskirts of Baghdad, increasing pressure on the Iraqi capital.
Iraq and Syria are where the biggest battles will doubtless be happening in 2015, but ultimately ISIS is also hoping to expand into other nations, with Lebanon and Jordan both likely near-term targets, and their successful recruiting worldwide meaning they could have a sudden presence virtually anywhere.
Our Empire morality gone kill crazy — A stench in the nostrils of all the world you see
Does this mean that seducing another man’s wife, that this will not be our standard of pleasure forever? And our capitalist Empire enabling us to be enriched upon the misery of anyone less educated, both at home and abroad, it to be our days of wine and roses gone forever?
Jun 14, 2014 America's Allies Are Funding ISIS
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now threatening Baghdad, was funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, three U.S. allies that have dual agendas in the war on terror. The extremist group that is threatening the existence of the Iraqi state was built and grown for years with the help of elite donors from American supposed allies in the Persian Gulf region. There, the threat of Iran, Assad, and the Sunni-Shiite sectarian war trumps the U.S. goal of stability and moderation in the region.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/…
ISIS in Iraq: A CIA-NATO “Dirty War” Op? June 25, 2014
For days now, since their dramatic June 10 taking of Mosul, Western mainstream media have been filled with horror stories of the military conquests in Iraq of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, with the curious acronym ISIS. ISIS, as in the ancient Egyptian cult of the goddess of fertility and magic. The media picture being presented adds up less and less. Details leaking out suggest that ISIS and the major military ‘surge’ in Iraq – and less so in neighboring Syria – is being shaped and controlled out of Langley, Virginia, and other CIA and Pentagon outposts as the next stage in spreading chaos in the world’s second-largest oil state, Iraq, as well as weakening the recent Syrian stabilization efforts.
http://rt.com/op-edge/168064-isis-terrorism-usa-c…
If the US was really intent on destroying IS, wouldn't it cut off ties to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and all who fund it? Of course we know that that will not happen. That article that Mr. Lincoln refers to says that the three countries mentioned all have "dual agendas in the war on terror." As the Daily Beast is a mainstream US publication, it would never add the US to that list.
I think the ISIS bubble will be hard to sustain.
Being a "nation-state" is a bit like marriage; it needs consent from society.
ISIS is a tribe overlaid on nation-states, somewhat similar to the US's political parties being tribes overlaid on a federation of states. In both cases the tribes have little respect for the structure that they operate within or its form of governance and display outright animosity towards their co-inhabitants who don't subscribe to their particular brand of reality.
In both the Middle East and the US the official governments need to resort to increasingly violent and repressive means to preserve their dominance over the warring tribes.
Deep down and everywhere we're all just human beings doing what we do best.
Anndoc makes some good points. The key here is in the headline: momentum. IS had a lot of that in 2014 as it was new and exciting. Winning attracts others. In this case, the hordes of unemployed and disaffected Muslim youth, mainly boys and young men. There are millions of these in the Middle East and some elsewhere. They are unhappy, mainly unemployed and unemployable, deeply frustrated in many ways due to sexual mores and envy of what they see others have.
So they are prey to IS and others who capitalize on the romantic aspects of the IS experiment. Heavily laden with religious hatred also (nothing like labeling your enemies heretics to engender ultra violence against them). So these poor souls travel to Turkey and later to Syria/Iraq. Then they play at being warriors. But IS has now looted everything to take. Income streams are dropping. Weapons and ammo are being used up and not readily replaced. Medical care and basic services are lacking and disappearing. The initially somewhat sympathetic populace is now disenchanted, disliking arrogant foreigners dishing out arbitrary "justice." Paranoia is likely growing. Homesickness and disenchantment can only grow among recruits. Captured IS fighters receive no mercy and news gets around. "Warriors" are then trapped between their own commanders and hostile enemies.
The existing IS leadership will only see more failure and disillusion. Discipline will worsen and repression creates its own resistance. Leadership splits, assassinations, targeted attacks and religio-ideological splits will grow. Most religious rebels require continued battlefield success to sustain their causes. When Allah changes sides, support quickly wanes.
IS could conceivably change its tune and try a new, less warlike strategy. It has reached its likely maximum territorial expansion. The looted wealth either gets replenished or the poor get even poorer.
2015 may well see IS disappear as current leadership splinters or is killed off. There is no second team or backup leadership. Bewildered foreigners in a strange, hostile land will be easy pickings.
As the truth of the reality of the naïve IS fighters filters out to their homelands, new supporters will hesitate and the momentum of 2014 will smash into the harsh wall of reality. 2015 will likely see the end of this movement as it stands now.
If we're on the right track, Muggles, then the search will soon be on for a new boogeyman.
While it is is possible that the "Islamic State" will cease to exist it is also possilbe that it will prove more durable than its many critics are willing to admit. Non-state actors such as Hamas, Hezbollah and The Taliban have faced many severe challenges and yet have endured. There is no real reason to think that the "Islamic State" will also not manage to hang on for the fore-seeable future. Its successes in the year 2014 may be hard to equal but are quite respectable accomplishments nonetheless. And, even if its current leadership were to be eliminated such an eventuality would hardly guarantee the sudden decline of the "Islamic State".