As of 10SEP2015 Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took over as leader of al-Qaeda after the death of Osama bin Laden, sent a message accusing the ISIS leader and self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of sedition, and declared all-out war against the Islamic State however no sooner than five days after this statement Al- Zawahiri extended an olive branch saying that all Muslim’s should work together against the common enemy.
So to say the least these two organizations have complicated relations at best. This current state of hostility has not always been the case though, at one point though shaky al-Qaeda, and ISIS’s precursors were allied. To illustrate this I will take us back in time to the origins of ISIS and al-Qaeda’s relationship in Iraq.
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Though al-Zawahiri declared war upon Isis declaring al- Baghdadis caliphate illegitimate also extended an olive branch towards ISIS saying they could work together. This confusing chain of events could be his way of trying to influence what he sees as an undisciplined and misguided organization to drift towards his view of how jihad should be fought, possibly trying to turn ISIS back towards al-Qaeda’s leadership in the event of Baghdadis death. There is I believe, a certain amount of personal animosity between al-Zawahiri and al- Baghdadi which prevents them from actively agreeing on what is best for the Muslim world and how that world should be led and because of this makes cooperation between the two groups unlikely at this point. However having said this, the very fact that al-Zawahiri is attempting cooperation with ISIS is troubling. He realizes that an alliance preferably under al-Qaeda leadership would strengthen his influence for the greater battle against the west. An alliance such as this could be devastating for the west as it could give the platform and funding for the jihadists to launch more frequent larger scale attacks throughout the world and draw more radicalized followers to their cause. This is currently an unlikely situation in my view because ISIS and Al-Qaeda are actively competing against each
In the post Osama bin Laden era al-Qaedist ideology is flourishing across the Arab world. A significant development has been the rise of al-Qaeda offshoots in the Middle East. The Abdallah Azzam Brigades franchise has increasingly become a noteworthy actor in terrorism. On May 8th, 2012 Thomas Nides, Deputy Secretary of State designated Abdallah Azzam Brigades as a foreign terrorist organization (Nides, T.R. , 2012). Abdullah Azzam Brigades may have only recently been added as a foreign terrorist group; nevertheless the organization has deep roots, lethal capacity, and is capable of contributing to supplementary instability in the Middle East.
That is some of the issues that were experienced with their affiliates. Osama bin Laden was worried that their affiliates were not competent (Lahoud, et al., 2). In his eyes, they were not winning support from the public. Their media campaigns were weak and their operations were planned poorly, resulting in thousands of unnecessary Muslim deaths (Lahoud, et al., 2). Letters penned to the affiliates show evidence of his frustration. He even wrote to the leader of AQAP warning directly against expanding into Yemen and not requesting that he refocuses his efforts on attacking the United States (Lahoud, et al., 2). The leadership of al Qaeda could have avoided this mistake if they had been more communicative and influential. They should have known that if thousands of Muslims were being killed by affiliates, especially because of bad planning practice, there was going to be a tremendous backlash. They could have easily reached out and reduced the risk of it being an issue any longer. They also could have helped the affiliates with their campaigning and their inability to win over the public could have been addressed. Al Qaeda could have shown them what “right looks like”. Further, they could have united and become one, under one leadership to hopefully obtain better communication. They would have almost certainly been far more
Al-Qaeda is the parent to ISIS. Al-Qaeda translates to “The Fundament”. It is a multi-national radical group founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden and other militants who fought for Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. It has been labeled as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and quite a few other countries. The Sunni- Islamic group was based in Sudan for the early part of the 1990, they moved to Afghanistan somewhere around 1996 and went under the name of Taliban. The group merged with Jihad’s and later declared a holy war against the United States. The United States troops all but eliminated the group and killed its leaders while they were in Afghanistan, but with withdrawal of the troops in 2011, have regrouped and made a comeback. https://www.britannica.com/topic/al-Qaeda
From the time when the United States invaded Iraq eleven years ago, a noxious insurgence aeriated at numerous customs of conflict which has attested irrepressible, malleable, and tenacious strive to convey on hostility. A nation of Saddam and al-Zarqawi, Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) reins a third of conjointly Syria and Iraq in its charisma avowed bravura of war. Around the beginning of 2010, U.S. and Iraqi forces destroyed two topmost al-Qaeda and Iraq frontrunners; which then sanctioned Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to become the spearhead of an assemblage destabilized by a strenuous operation directed at culminating a Sunni uprising in the country (CNN, 2015). By virtually all provision, Iraq is entangled in civil war. In addition, ISIS has engrossed nearly twelve thousand supporters from overseas already and at least three thousand devotees are from the West (Feroli & Dulin, 2013).
AMerica had already been at war with Al-Qaeda, but it hadn’t been as serious until these two happenings. Starting in 2001 America invaded Afghanistan until 2003.George W. Bush called this invasion the “War on Terror”. George W. Bush American president and Tony Blair British Prime Minister accused Saddam Hussein of having weapons of mass destruction. 2003-2006, was the invasion of Iraq, Osama Bin Laden was killed May 22, 2011, Al-Qaeda has recently fallen under the pressure of the terrorist group Isis. April 8th, 2013 Isis is officially considered a threat. In the beginning of 2014 Isis started to publicly behead people from different countries that threatened them. Isis members on 12 August 2014 sent an email to the family of American hostage James Foley and stated that American hostages would be killed in retaliation for the 8 August 2014 U.S. bombings of Isis U.S. incarceration of Pakistani Muslimah Aafia Siddiqui; the U.S. and its government having "no motivation to deal with the Muslims except with the language of force. Isis makes no secret of its ultimate ambition: A global caliphate secured through a global
Some believe that ISIS was formed from Al Qaeda which splinted off the organization because of different beliefs due to the Iraqi Baathist regime’s defeat during Saddam Hussein’s time frame. One that thing that is understood is that Abu Musab al Zarqawi caused a conflict with extremism when he was killed in 2006 destroying years of economic sanctions creating an opening for a new group to unleash its power. ISIS took this time to upgrade after the sectarian civil war. During this time Al Qaeda was trying to exploit the Sunni and Shia regime by conducting attacks on the Shia. Due to Al Qaeda’s goal, they failed to list to Bin Laden and Zawahiri to target western population. ISIS was able to use the Sunni people to facilitate approach to increase ideologies. ISIS has been able to win popularity of the Sunni created a center of gravity in Mosul,
Despite the fact that the war on terror was officially launched by the White House a little more than a decade ago, the main trends in the American foreign policy regarding Middle East have changed significantly in these dozen-something years a couple of times. The issue the United States of America are dealing with in the case of ISIS is something very different, both in nature and in scale. Compared to the devotion of the Bush administration to fight every single suspected organization and individual in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks, the Obama administration was and still is far more reserved about American presence and American warfare in the Middle East. After a decade of active involvement and establishment of questionable
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an Arab of Jordanian descent, having trained both himself and his followers in Afghanistan, moved into Iraq from that tattered nation in the year 2001, bringing with him the foundations on which the world’s entire perception of terrorism are now founded. A veteran of the second phase of Afghanistan’s was with the Soviet Union, he, a self-declared Jihadist, valued religious conflict and violence above all else. Although not yet in possession of recognition beyond the borders of his native Jordan, he planned to transform his cause from an effort to be forgotten to section forced into the reaches of the world’s history books. Upon arriving in northern Iraq, after having been forced out of Afghanistan after the Taliban’s fall, he, determined to revive his cause, joined forces with a Kurdish separatist group known as Ansar al-Islam, which, in English, means “Partisans of Islam.” Upon distinguishing himself with much alacrity, he became the foremost commander of that group’s Arabian sect in Iraq, an event which marked the creation of the earliest form of the Islamic State. Although he would later declare himself the leader of al-Qaeda’s Iraqi subdivision and swear his allegiance to Osama bin-Laden, it was in reality this group, Ansar al-Islam, that led to the Islamic State’s
Zarqawi believed that the Koran and Shariah should be implemented in its purist form without fail and to its fullest extent. Also in Zarqawi’s view those who deviated even the slightest from the Koran and Shariah should proclaimed apostates and be given the appropriate punishment, usually death. For example, Zarqawi viewed Shiites practices as denying the Koran’s original perfection, thus they are marked for death. This is reflected in IS’s current to policy to purify the world via execution and other means those who deviate from the Koran and Shariah. Zarqawi’s belief was that an Islamic caliphate was an achievable event within his life time whereas Osama bin Laden believed an Islamic caliphate would not be achieved with his life time.
The Islamic State, also referred as ISIS or ISIL, where its roots can be followed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, with the financial support of Osama bin Laden and his Islamist terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, Zarqawi in 1999 formed a jihadist group, Jama’at al- Tawhid wal-Jihad (“Islamic State”). Zarqawi ruthlessly attacked civilians and destroyed religious sites in an effort to ignite a war between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims (“Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)”). Zarqawi and his successor, who started a militant group called Islamic state in Iraq (ISI), were killed. After the death of both al-Qaeda leaders, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took control over ISI, he preyed upon the religious divide between Sunnis and Shi’as to stir up mistrust and recruit more fighters to his group (“Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)”). “[Baghdadi] staged a series of suicide bombings and high-profile attacks in Iraq...he also formed another militant group, the al-Nusra Front, to battle the government forces of President Bashar al-Assad”(“Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)”). Towards the end of 2013, ISIS and ISIL began to get involved in the Syrian Civil war, and even though they are against the government, they also continue their policy of violence towards civilians and in many cases considered worse than the tyrannies inflicted by Assad’s regime and his
ISIS appeared as a small Iraqi associated of Al Qaeda about a decade ago. After 2011 it recreated between Iraq’s growing violence and the criminality of Syria’s
These days, when a news channel makes a report on a terroristic attack or issue, the anchors are most likely talking about ISIS. If a poll was given across the U.S asking what people thought of when they thought of modern terrorism, the majority would say ISIS. If that same poll was given before the rise of ISIS, however, the obvious answer would be Al Qaeda. Throughout the 2000’s, Al Qaeda and terrorism were synonymous terms. One could not have one without the other. So, the question must arise: What happened to Al Qaeda? This question is easier asked than answered. Al Qaeda rose to power through the late twentieth and early twenty-first century very effectively and rapidly, but they lost that power just as quickly by divisions in violent Islamic radicalism.
As late as 2012 during the Sunni protests, many protestors distanced themselves from ISIS. According to Abu Risha, they have been fighting Al Qaeda in Anbar for the past six months, but need Americas support. ISIS military campaign was devoted to the assassinations of the Sunni leaders that fought against them, so they could eliminate the leaders who could continue to rally Iraqi Sunnis against ISIS. As a result, the mainstream Sunni nationalist and ISIS agendas are greatly divided, which will soon manifest itself into greater conflict as it currently does in Syria. ISIS is as strong as it has ever been with thousands of jihadists freed from Iraq’s jails, half a billion dollars looted from Mosul’s banks, and is flushed with international support and recruits, which makes the Sunni-on-Sunni struggle in ISIS held territory harder to uproot terrorist organizations in the territory it has acquired without outside assistance and organization. This struggle will become a sectarian war as according to Ardolino and Roggio, without quick political accommodation and direct Western intervention, the conflict could slip into “the sectarian ghettoization and murder that characterized the worst years of the Iraq War.” (Ardolino; Roggio) This sectarian divide is inflamed by Iranian
ISIS has created much havoc through many countries throughout the world. ISIS’s emergence has triggered in the Arab-Muslim world and “searching and destroying” ISIS in its strongholds in Syria and Iraq. ISIS is triggering overdue soul-searching in Middle Eastern countries. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism. ISIS is a killing machine, and it will take another killing machine to destroy it. ISIS is very anti-pluralistic, or against letting citizens have word in decisions.
ISIS is feared mainly for their brutal nature, and they are also a revamped version of Al