Iraq’s Downward Spiral: A Boon to ISIS

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Ever since ISIS captured Mosul in June 2014, political and military leaders in Iraq and the United States have regarded the liberation of Iraq’s second-largest city as a sine qua non for rolling back the caliphate. The campaign against ISIS has made progress on many fronts, but predictions that the army of terror would soon be dislodged from Mosul appear premature at best.

The primary reason why the assault on Mosul has been repeatedly postponed rests with Iraq’s feeble and fractured central government. Recently, demonstrators loyal to radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr raucously occupied the parliament in Baghdad. As lawmakers fled the scene, the demonstrators – chanting “you are all thieves” – called for the dissolution of the government. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the arrest of the protesters and declared a state of emergency, but the latest crisis reveals the intensifying power struggle within the political system. In the recent past, such instability has nurtured the jihadist threat.

Under Abadi’s predecessor, political dysfunction in Baghdad set the conditions for the rise of ISIS. Iraq’s central government had welcomed Iranian assistance because of its fear of abandonment by America, and this hardened the Shiite character of the regime. Nouri al-Maliki’s tenure was marked by relentless marginalization of the Sunni minority. First, the Sons of Iraq – the force that with the U.S. had vanquished ISIS’s forerunner, al-Qaeda in Iraq – were disbanded and harassed. The Iraqi army was gradually transformed into a de facto Shia militia. Sunni opposition politicians - including the deputy prime minister - were arrested, and elections were manipulated.

The Shia-dominated government’s chronic misrule now represents the greatest threat to Iraq, according to Emma Sky, a former advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority. Sky observes that the destructive politics of the “green zone” – the walled-off enclave on the Tigris river where Iraq’s political class divvy up state largesse, generally for themselves and their clients – has put in jeopardy Iraq’s entire post-Saddam order. It has alienated crucial constituencies, not least the Sunni and Kurdish minorities whose support is crucial to the liberation of Mosul.

While stationed en masse in Iraq, the U.S. army was dubbed “the defense militia for those [Iraqis] without a militia.” Today, Sky writes, “the sad reality is that Iraq has become ungovernable, more a state of militias than a state of institutions.”

Whatever its costs, the robust U.S. presence in Iraq – political as much as military – ensured a degree of Iraqi social and political cohesion that prevented the consolidation of power in Baghdad under one sect at the expense of others. It is precisely this tyranny of the majority that arose in the wake of America’s withdrawal, and that ISIS has exploited to its advantage among the aggrieved and alienated Sunni minority ever since. Unfortunately for ISIS’s enemies, this state of affairs shows no signs of abating.

 

 

 

ISIS’s Counter-Counter-Narrative

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The 14th installment of ISIS’s English-language magazine, Dabiq, devoted comparatively little space to celebrating recent bombings in Brussels, dedicating less than two pages to eulogizing suicide bombers Najim Laachraoui, Khalid el-Bakraoui, and Ismail el-Bakraoui.

Instead, ISIS devoted significantly more editorial space working to undermine international counter-narratives. The group named, disparaged and issued a hit list on well-known Western Muslim scholars and personalities in an obvious effort to intimidate them into silence. Targeted by ISIS were American cleric Hamza Yusuf, Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, diplomat Rashad Hussain, and others.

It’s a desperate move for ISIS. The group has engaged in takedowns before, often through proxies, and on informal channels like Twitter. Rarely, however, has ISIS used its formal platform to so systematically insult Western clerics. The move speaks to ISIS’s growing anxiety over recent battlefield setbacks and cracks in its own messaging. Most usefully, however, it signals the efficacy of authentic counter-narratives in combating ISIS’s perverse theological worldview.

Scholars who speak up universally against violent extremism, like some of those listed, deserve the endorsement of the international community. Just as the world spoke up to defend free speech in Paris, we should now speak up to protect the rights of these clerics who stand up against ISIS’s corrosive message of hate and violence.

Others named in Dabiq, however, teeter on the edge of legitimacy, perhaps filling the niche role by which ISIS feels most threatened. Indeed, of the 21 clerics listed, several have themselves espoused extremist and violent views not entirely at odds with ISIS’s messaging. At least one cleric has been banned from both Australia and the United Kingdom. Another has endorsed suicide bombings against Israelis.

While those listed span a range of ideologies and worldviews, each serves to defy ISIS’s claim that it is the legitimate and unifying movement for the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. Grassroots support for these targeted individuals and others serve to undermine ISIS’s message with their words and their existence, and speak to the power of community-based efforts to counter violent extremism.

These clerics are not alone. Young activists are, and for a long time have been, speaking out against ISIS’s messages. The myth that ISIS represents anything other than a violent fraction of the world’s Muslims is dangerous, harmful and — as ISIS revealed through its defensive response in Dabiq — patently untrue. As individuals, particularly youth activists, speak out and engage their communities to challenge violent extremism, they deserve the international community’s support and endorsement.

When ISIS spoke for them, they felt the need to say, “Not in Our Name.” To ISIS’s kill list, to its threats of violence and intimidation, let us respond: Not on Our Watch. Not on our watch will we allow ISIS to intimidate activists and dissidents into silence.

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