This lecture is about the origins and the history of the group that we now know as ISIS. Of course in this course we've spent a long time talking about Al Qaeda and what it believes, where it came from. And I want to talk about this group, ISIS, that has really emerged in recent years and has caused such horror and confusion, I think, among many, about how it relates to Al Qaeda and why this new, horrific, vicious group arose. So the question is, where did ISIS come from? And really, we need to go back to the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003. As many of you know, Iraq was a very divided country both ethnically and on a sectarian basis. Ethnically, it's split between ethnic Kurds who lived in the north, the mustard color on this map, and Arabs who were living in the western and southern part of the country. And within the Arabs, they were severely divided religiously, with the Sunnis in the central portion of the country, and also a heavy presence in Baghdad, and the Shia, which you can see from the chart, comprise a majority of the country, 60% living in the south. Now, Saddam Hussein, who governed the country, was a Sunni Arab only representing 20% of the Iraqi people, essentially a minority dictatorship. And of course the same power for so many decades. He was extremely oppressive to both the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south. Now, when the United States invasion occurred in 2003, followed by an occupation run by this gentleman, Paul Bremer, was essentially became the pro-council. The person who was running the day to day operations of the United States occupation in Iraq took power and made two vital mistakes. The first was to totally disband the Iraqi Army. Of course this is an Iraqi Army made up of Sunnis, all loyal to Saddam Hussein. And second, to de-Ba'athify, to essentially make illegal the Ba'ath party that Saddam Hussein had run, again, comprised almost exclusively of Sunni Arabs. And the message being that if you were a part of the Ba'ath Party, that you are not going to be able to be employed in the new Iraqi government for the foreseeable future. So what did this create? It created a large number of disaffected Sunnis who had either previously been in the Army or in government positions, that saw no future for themselves in the new Iraq that was emerging. And indeed felt that they might well be persecuted by the Shia majority, who was going to run the country once there were free elections and they as a majority took control. That there was fear among Sunni population that they would be persecuted by the new Shia who would be in charge, of course, of the police, the government, the security services and the new army. Put into this mix this individual, Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Zarqawi was born in Jordan, had a tumultuous youth, in and out of jail, petty criminal. Ultimately radicalized and became an adherent of the violent radical Islamist ideology that we have been studying. In 2003 he was located in Iraq, but had no significant connection with Al Qaeda and bin Laden. Although ultimately he did essentially pledge allegiance, pledge bay'ah to bin Laden after the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003. He forms a terrorist group called Al Qaeda in Iraq, which we use as an acronym AQI, and he was part, not the entirety, but part of this insurgency that rose in Iraq from the Sunni Arab population against both the government that was emerging, and the United States occupation. And Zarqawi was essentially the terrorist wing of this insurgency, he was the leader of it. Some examples in the early days of this insurgency. The bombing of the United Nations complex, killing the leader of the UN mission there, and essentially damaging the great effort of the global community to try to reconstruct and rebuild In Iraq after the war. Essentially, the United Nations civilian side pulled out after this horrific bombing in 2003. Three years later, Zarqawi was not only trying to combat the United States' presence in Iraq, but also to start of a sectarian war, a war between the Sunni and the Shia. That Al Qaeda believed it could take advantage of and bring foment unrest and lead to the creation of a Sunni Islamic entity inside of Iraq. So it bombed this sacred Shia shrine in Samarra, the golden mosque there in 2006. Again, this is part part of the Reign of Terror. These are just two examples, but we're talking about many, many hundreds of bombings, killings, intimidation terrorism by this organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq, AQI, led by Zarqawi. By 2006, this violence had become so severe that it really did amount to a sectarian civil war inside Iraq. And you can see this graphic from the beginning of 2005 up to its height in 2006, literally 3,500 acts of violence, killing per month in Iraq during this time period. Now, turning points in this civil war. Zarqawi was eventually killed by US forces in a air raid after intelligence had finally been able to gather his whereabouts. And ultimately you know about the surge that President Bush ordered following the 2006 elections. Essentially creating a new strategy in Iraq that included an increase, not the decrease many were calling for, but an increase in troop levels in Iraq, and a brand new strategy designed to try to end the insurgency. A key element of this insurgency was the Sons of Iraq. These were the tribal leaders of the Sunni Arabs who actually changed their mind, decided that they would side with the United States. They were convinced that they would be provided money, funding and security, and a role to play in a new Iraqi government that was emerging in a much stronger form in 2006. And so they flip sides and provide the United States military information about AQI and help them essentially find, kill and destroy this organization, one person at a time. And so it was what we call the Sunni awakening that helped stem the tide, and as you saw from the prior slide, bring the violence way, way down by the beginning of 2008. Unfortunately, the Shia Prime Minister, who won election, had been in office for a number of years, as this surge takes place, this is Nouri al-Maliki, began to revert to his sectarian ways. And essentially cut the program of the Sons of Iraq, the Sunni awakening, stopped providing that support. Started political and sometimes violent retribution against Sunnis, Sunni leaders, sometimes using the Shia militias that were very prevalent in Iraq at the time, and this began to raise more Sunni opposition to the Shia led government. This trend continued and was exacerbated by the draw drown in United States troops. This draw down was essentially foretold in an agreement President Bush enters in to with the Iraqi government in 2008 calling for a complete withdrawal of troops in 2011. President Obama, despite calls for keeping a troop presence in Iraq after 2011, was not able to negotiate a continued US troop presence. So he essentially implemented the agreement reached by President Bush in 2008. And there was a complete withdrawal from Iraq of US combat troops in 2011. And this opened the door to increased sectarianism and a new, essentially a second round of disenfranchisement of the Sunni Arabs. Let's dial back a couple years to this individual. Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, part of Al Qaeda in Iraq, he is captured and detained in 2005 and spends the next three to four years in an Iraqi detention facility called Camp Bucca, where he becomes even a stronger adherent of this radical ideology. And even more committed to the ideals of the Sunni insurgency, and also the Al Qaeda ideology that we have been studying. He's released in 2009 and rejoins and starts re-strengthening Al Qaeda in Iraq, which, as I mentioned, had really been decimated in the period from 2006 to 2008. So while Baghdadi is strengthening Al Qaeda in Iraq, US troops are withdrawing essentially down to zero in 2011. What happens in 2011? The Arab uprisings all across the Middle East and civil war breaks out in Syria. What is a civil war in Syria look like? This is an uprising principally by Sunnis against the Shia Alawite, which is a subsection of Shia Islam. The majority Sunnis are rebelling against the Alawite Bashar al-Assad, who he and his father and family had run Syria as a dictatorship for decades. So into this vacuum back comes Baghdadi. He essentially strengthens Al Qaeda in Iraq and goes to where the hot fighting is, which is in the Syrian civil war. Ostensibly, Al Qaeda in Iraq was supposed to join with an extremist faction that was already fighting in the Syrian civil war. Jabhat al-Nusra, some people call it the Al-Nusra Front. But when he gets there, has disagreements with the leadership and also has disagreements and philosophical with the new leader of Al Qaeda. And he essentially decides to form his own separate organization which in July 2013, he declares as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Al-Sham, with the acronym of ISIS. This is July 2013, and this organization becomes incredibly successful, both militarily and using highly intimidating terroristic tactics. It gains a lot of territory in Syria, it has a stronghold, it takes the city of Raqqa. And in early 2014, it actually sweeps into Iraq. And in a dramatic fashion it goes through these Sunni areas of Iraq that had been where the hottest battles during the US post-invasion conflict were going on back in 2004, 2005. Names that all Americans will remember, Fallujah, Ramadi, Tikrit, the home of Saddam Hussein. They take all these towns. The take Mosul, which is on the border with the Kurdish area, one of the largest cities in Iraq, and they move all the way to Baghdad, and on the verge of taking Baghdad, which would have been a huge blow to the United States and the West. At this point, the United States intervenes, supports the Iraqi government. President Obama has a condition for his support, essentially demands that the highly sectarian al-Maliki is removed as prime minister. He does, and since essentially September of 2014, the United Sates has had troops, now up to 6,000 troops, in Iraq assisting the Iraqi army, fighting very hard to regain territory and to push ISIS out of Iraq. But this is what the map at the height of ISIS's power. You can see it has territory that transcends the Iraqi-Syrian border. It has control of a swath of territory as large as states the size of Indiana in the United States, and essentially is a terrorist organization with control of territory and populations, almost much more than a terrorist organization.
