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    Islamic State: Rewriting History
    Islamic State: Rewriting History
    Islamic State: Rewriting History
    Ebook223 pages4 hours

    Islamic State: Rewriting History

    By Michael Griffin

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    This book takes the long-view by analysing Islamic State's beginnings in Iraq to their involvement in the Arab Spring and through to the present day.

    The world is watching IS's advance through the Middle East. The US risks being drawn into another war in the region despite its experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. IS are creating catastrophic waves across the region, but it is still unclear what lies behind its success.

    Michael Griffin uncovers the nature of IS through investigating the myriad of regional players engaged in a seemingly endless power game: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Iraq, which have all contributed to the success of IS by supplying arms and funds.

    He foregrounds the story of the uprising against President Assad of Syria, the role played by the Free Syrian Army, Islamist groups, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, the chemical weapons attacks in 2013 and the House of Commons vote not to impose a no-fly zone over the country.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPluto Press
    Release dateOct 20, 2015
    ISBN9781783717125
    Islamic State: Rewriting History
    Author

    Michael Griffin

    Michael Griffin is a writer, editor, political analyst and specialist on the Taliban and Al Qa'ida. He regularly comments on the war in Afghanistan for BBC World, Sky and Al Jazeera. As editor he has worked for Transparency International, International Alert, Small Arms Survey and ODI. He is the author of Reaping the Whirlwind (Pluto, 2003) and Islamic State (Pluto, 2015).

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      Book preview

      Islamic State - Michael Griffin

      cover-image

      Islamic State

      Islamic State

      Rewriting History

      Michael Griffin

      First published 2016 by Pluto Press

      345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

      www.plutobooks.com

      Copyright © Michael Griffin 2016

      The right of Michael Griffin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

      Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Text design by Melanie Patrick Simultaneously printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America

      Contents

      List of Acronyms/Abbreviations

      Timeline

      Preface

      1. The Great Escape

      2. Zarqawi’s War

      3. The First Caliph

      4. Clear, Hold and Build

      5. The Successions

      6. Springtime for Qatar

      7. The Road to Damascus

      8. Prince Bandar’s Last Adventure

      9. Knights of the Silencers

      10. Treasure of Babisqa

      11. Chain of Custody

      12. Game of Thrones

      13. Paradise Square

      14. Birth of a Nation

      15. Twitter Caliphate

      16. Call of Duty

      17. Inside the Whale

      18. Euphrates Volcano

      Postscript: Saddam’s Ghost

      Notes

      Index

      Map 1

      Map 2

      Map 3

      List of Acronyms/Abbreviations

      Timeline

      Preface

      Heroes are in tombs, real men are in prison, and traitors are in palaces.

      Seifeddine Razgui¹

      It seemed a good idea to track the development of the Islamic State (IS) from its origins in the US occupation of Iraq to the present, before it disappeared behind the smokescreen of its own vicious celebrity, leaving footnotes, like breadcrumbs, for those following other lines of enquiry in the labyrinth of disinformation and corrupted faith within which it operates.

      Thus, in theory, a contour map might emerge of a movement that seems perfectly and hermetically sealed against the invasive curiosity of outsiders, tending to preserve the quintessential secrecy required of a group that derives a vast amount of its awe from the ability to inspire defeatism among its foes through gestures of raw cruelty and religious braggadocio.

      There were points of comparison between IS and the rise of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan 20 years earlier, and at first glimpse IS seemed just as shrouded in calculated obscurity and religious obscurantism as the Pashtun militia had once been. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s empowerment of the Taliban – and Al Qaeda – found echoes in the struggles of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to harness the Syrian revolution to their own designs, a rivalry that might credibly have spawned a proxy force, like the IS, to devour popular resistance to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and dissipate its democratic aspirations in the futile pursuit of a totalitarian Islamic state.

      But there the similarities end. Still newcomers to the play-book of international jihad, Qatar and Turkey had neither the will nor the funds to sustain the monster IS ultimately became, even by misadventure, while Saudi Arabia, with the benefits of hindsight after 9/11, had effectively ring-fenced donations by its more reckless donors to minimise just the type of blowback that now threatens the kingdom.

      IS, moreover, eclipsed Al Qaeda as a threat to the West by re-casting its focus on the Shia and other non-Sunni communities, and sublimating the energies of the international recruitment pool towards building a visionary caliphate – rather than the overthrow of any state. More intriguingly, IS has never seriously menaced Israel, apart from beheading Steven Sotloff, a freelance journalist with Israeli citizenship, indicating a tacit understanding between the Islamic state and the Zionist state not to meddle in one another’s affairs.

      This, and the broader complexity of a proxy war

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