New (Middle-East) states bloom in (Jihadi) Spring

Run by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi jihadist, ISIS may have up to
6,000 fighters in Iraq and 3,000-5,000 in Syria, …nearly a thousand from Chechnya and
perhaps 500 or so more from France, Britain and elsewhere in Europe.
….Even al-Qaeda has deemed ISIS too violent. Ayman Zawahiri, leader of
the core group, has long disagreed with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS’s
leader, warning him that ISIS’s habit of beheading its opponents and
posting such atrocities on video was giving al-Qaeda a bad name.

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A century ago, the Middle-East was artificially carved up into states by the British and the French. Now it appears (as a result of nationalist movements everywhere, ho ho ho) the real states will finally take shape via numerous partitions. 

We are clear as to our own preferences: partitions are bad for the minority and also for the majority– once the genie of bad blood is poured out the bottle it will bleed the new nations dry for a long long time.

Normally it would be a straight-forward division: Sunnis and the rest, but there are a few local complications such as Bahrain which is Shia majority but ruled by Sunnis (with 5th Fleet support from Americans). Also Sunni Kurdistan seems more progressive than most and may even support the co-existence of minorities (such as Christians and Shias).

Everywhere else we can look forward to (not really) brutal ethnic cleansing and the coming-to-life of larger-than-life Sharia states. The left-liberal brigade can indicate disagreement from a distance but this much is probably true- populations everywhere are fed-up with the status quo and do not really mind the social upheavals. After all the benefits are to be measured in the long run and in the next life.
……….
WHOEVER chose the Twitter handle “Jihadi Spring” was prescient. Three
years of turmoil in the region, on the back of unpopular American-led
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have benefited extreme Islamists, none
more so than the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), a group
that outdoes even al-Qaeda in brutality and fanaticism.
In the past
year or so, as borders and government control have frayed across the
region, ISIS has made gains across a swathe of territory encompassing
much of eastern and northern Syria and western and northern Iraq. 

On
June 10th it achieved its biggest prize to date by capturing Mosul,
Iraq’s second city, and most of the surrounding province of Nineveh.
The
next day it advanced south towards Baghdad, the capital, taking several
towns on the way. Ministers in Iraq’s government admitted that a
catastrophe was in the making. A decade after the American invasion, the
country looks as fragile, bloody and pitiful as ever.




After four days of fighting, Iraq’s security forces abandoned their
posts in Mosul as ISIS militiamen took over army bases, banks and
government offices. The jihadists seized huge stores of
American-supplied arms, ammunition and vehicles, apparently including
six Black Hawk helicopters and 500 billion dinars ($430m) in freshly
printed cash. Some 500,000 people fled in terror to areas beyond ISIS’s
sway.



The scale of the attack on Mosul was particularly audacious. But it
did not come out of the blue. In the past six months ISIS has captured
and held Falluja, less than an hour’s drive west of Baghdad; taken over
parts of Ramadi, capital of Anbar province; and has battled for Samarra,
a city north of Baghdad that boasts one of Shia Islam’s holiest
shrines. Virtually every day its fighters set off bombs in Baghdad,
keeping people in a state of terror.



….
As The Economist went to press, it was
reported to have taken Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town, only 140km
(87 miles) north-west of Baghdad. The speed of ISIS’s advance suggested
that it was co-operating with a network of Sunni remnants from Saddam’s
underground resistance who opposed the Americans after 2003 and have
continued to fight against the Shia-dominated regime of Nuri al-Maliki
since the Americans left at the end of 2011.

It was barely a year ago, in April 2013, that ISIS announced the
expansion of its operations from Iraq into Syria. By changing its name
from the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) by adding the words “and al-Sham”,
translated as “the Levant” or “Greater Syria”, it signified its quest to
conquer a wider area than present-day Syria.




Run by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi jihadist, ISIS may have up to
6,000 fighters in Iraq and 3,000-5,000 in Syria, including perhaps 3,000
foreigners; nearly a thousand are reported to hail from Chechnya and
perhaps 500 or so more from France, Britain and elsewhere in Europe.




It is ruthless, slaughtering Shia and other minorities, including
Christians and Alawites, the offshoot to which Syria’s president, Bashar
Assad, belongs. It sacks churches and Shia shrines, dispatches
suicide-bombers to market-places, and has no regard for civilian
casualties.



….
Its recent advances would have been impossible without ISIS’s control
since January of the eastern Syrian town of Raqqa, a testing ground and
stronghold from which it has made forays farther afield. It has seized
and exploited Syrian oilfields in the area and raised cash by ransoming
foreign hostages.



Rather than fight simply as a branch of al-Qaeda (“the base” in
Arabic), as it did before 2011, it has aimed to control territory,
dispensing its own brand of justice and imposing its own moral code: no
smoking, football, music, or unveiled women, for example. And it imposes
taxes in the parts of Syria and Iraq it has conquered.




In other words, it is creating a proto-state on the ungoverned
territory straddling the borderlands between Syria and Iraq. “This is a
new, more dangerous strategy since 2011,” says Hassan Abu Haniyeh, a
Jordanian expert on jihadist movements. If ISIS manages to hold onto its
turf in Iraq, it will control an area the size of Jordan with roughly
the same population (6m or so), stretching 500km from the countryside
east of Aleppo in Syria into western Iraq.




It holds three border posts between Syria and Turkey and several more
on Syria’s border with Iraq. Raqqa’s residents say Moroccan and
Tunisian jihadists have brought their wives and children to settle in
the city. Foreign preachers have been appointed to mosques. ISIS has
also set up an intelligence service.




Whether in Iraq or Syria, ISIS has sought to terrify people into
submission. On June 8th, as a typical warning to others, it crucified
three young men in a town near Aleppo for co-operating with rival
rebels. It has kidnapped scores of Kurdish students, journalists, aid
workers and, more recently, some Turkish diplomats.




Even al-Qaeda has deemed ISIS too violent. Ayman Zawahiri, leader of
the core group, has long disagreed with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS’s
leader, warning him that ISIS’s habit of beheading its opponents and
posting such atrocities on video was giving al-Qaeda a bad name.




The forces best equipped to face down ISIS may be Kurdish ones: the
Peshmerga guerrillas, who have protected Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish
region for the past two decades, and the People’s Protection Units,
better known as the YPG, the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party,
which dominates north-eastern Syria. The Kurds’ regional government in
Iraq has mobilised its forces on the east side of the Tigris river,
which runs through Mosul, and may well block ISIS from heading east and
north into Kurdish territory; on June 12th the Kurds captured all of
Kirkuk city from fleeing Iraqi forces.

……

Link: http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21604230-extreme-islamist-group-seeks-create-caliphate-and-spread-jihad-across

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regards

Brown Pundits