ISIS: A Black Hole in the Heart of the Middle-East – Genesis of a Western Intelligence Failure

by Patrick Bahzad

 It is this, the curse of the Evil deed, 
Giving birth to new Evil, on which it may feed

F. SCHILLER “Wallenstein”

 

 

About three years ago, almost nobody knew them, yet they were about to make a name for themselves. Ever since the onslaught on Northern Iraq and the autonomous Kurdish regions, not a single day has passed without ISIS – the so-called "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria" – making the headlines for yet another gruesome execution, bloody massacre or terrorist attack. In fact, we’ve now heard their name so often that they almost seem familiar to us.

ISIS, a reminiscence of the Demons of old

In our collective conscience, they’ve become one of those barbaric sects or groups of raiders, ghosts really – very much like the Jinns of the Quran – appearing and vanishing into the sands of the Arabian desert. In some way, they also look like a modern version of the Huns, who rode out of the steppes of Central Asia, scorching the earth under a fearsome leader, before being swallowed up again by the vastness of the lands they came from, leaving nothing but a trail of death and the memories of a long dark shadow stretching over the countries they had turned into dust.

More likely though, the fate awaiting ISIS won't be too dissimilar to that of the 13th century Hashashins sent out by the "Old Man on the Mountain" from his fortress Alamut, to strike fear and terror into the hearts of his enemies all over the Middle-East. The Hashashins too managed to challenge the powers that be, mainly Seljuk Turks, even though they were vastly outnumbered, and stroke alliances with regional outcasts like the Crusader States in the Holy Land. But then they finally got defeated and wiped off the face of the earth by a much more powerful and determined foe coming from the East (i.e. the largest Mongol army the world had ever seen).

All this, of course, is already far beyond the knowledge that the average citizen has about the Middle-East in general, and the "Islamic State" in particular. And in truth, it's not that relevant to events unfolding at the moment. Just enough to trigger repulsion and disgust at the men fighting and killing under the Black Banner carrying the seal of the Prophet, insufficient however to answer such basic questions as to who they are, where they come from and what they want.

This is what really matters though. Beyond the usual media hype about the barbaric executions and seemingly medieval lifestyle, these are men with an agenda and an organisation, military gear and logistics, as well as considerable financial means. And what we actually know about them is very little, contrary to what mainstream media and their so-called experts would have you believe. More worrying, Western intelligence is almost as clueless as CNN, and the current state of play of the anti-ISIS coalition and its achievements can bear testimony to that.

ISIS has become a Black Hole in the heart of the Middle-East. Come too close and you'll get sucked into it with no chance of escaping. Try and listen or watch and you'll get almost nothing, just some background noise. That is the scariest part about the "Islamic State", the void it seems to have built in and around its area of influence.  There are ways however to obtain information about what's going on inside this nexus. Knowing the enemy is the first step towards defeating it …

But getting there means dealing with a number of issues – local, regional and global. It also means getting into questions unpleasant for us in the West, especially the real trigger event that set in motion what is now unravelling before our eyes. The aim here is not to play the blame game, what’s done is done and there’s no way back. The only thing at stake is how to get out of this mess and how to avoid similar mistakes in the future, which won’t be an easy task to achieve.

Operation "Iraqi Freedom"

The seminal event, the one single historic development which made all this possible, is without doubt the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. This is not to say that “George W” is to blame for all that happened. In fact, he’s not. He may have been the guy in the Oval Office and, contrary to his successor, he certainly didn’t back away from controversial decisions. He looked like a leader and talked tough, but the guy in charge – if there ever was one – was the “wild man” in the office down the hallway. A wild man on the loose, without adult supervision and under the influence of a bunch of sorcerer apprentices, coming right out of the “Neo-Con” school of witchcraft and wizardry, people so full of themselves, they thought they could not only destroy imaginary WMDs, but also build a viable democracy in Iraq, promote peace with Israel and reshape the balance of power in the Middle-East. In the words of a famous RAND Corporation analyst at the time, “Iraq was the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot and Egypt was the prize”.

Now, that analyst may have been sacked after his famous PowerPoint slideshow, and not everybody in the room understood what he meant exactly at the time, but to the Neo-cons and the proponents of the "Project for a New American Century" (PNAC), one thing was clear: in 2003, America had a window of about 20 to 25 years in which it could reshape the world without any serious challenger getting in its way. It turned out, the window didn’t last 10 years and it didn’t even take a challenger to make the whole thing crumble like a house of cards. All it took was for institutional America – D.C. at its worst – to take the easy road of Hubris and believe its own spin doctoring and politically correct narrative.

Forget about the “Mission Accomplished” lie. Forget about the calamitous management of Paul Bremer, the Roman style Pro-consul in Baghdad, whose first two decisions were to dissolve the Baath party and the security apparatus in Iraq. Forget about the fight against a growing and more lethal insurgency that was being infiltrated by Jihadi elements like Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi’s “Al Qaeda in Iraq”. Forget about the horrendous Battles of Fallujah One and Two. Forget about the disastrous Abu Ghraib torture scandals.

Those were only the symptoms. The real cause however lay elsewhere. But to senior staff in the White House, it mattered more that the disease could into a lethal cancer, threatening the re-election of the President, if nothing was done to secure a credible victory. Thus the search for a saviour began. A hero had to rise ... A warrior figure, inspiring but sophisticated. A military man, with brains and a PhD. A new face to put on a new policy enabling America to get out of the Iraqi quagmire.

That's how the strategy of the “Surge” was developed in 2007, not just out of military need, but out of the political necessity to give America and "George W." the victory that had already been proclaimed three years earlier. And it worked. Don’t ask how … You probably don’t want to know about cordoning of Baghdad to cut of the supply lines of the Sunni insurgents and let Shia death squads get about their dirty business, ethnically cleansing whole neighbourhoods and making sure the areas in which American casualties were highest would be taken over by forces less hostile to the liberators from the New World.

Nouri al-Maliki, or the sabotage of the American reconstruction effort

To be fair, America didn't get much help from the governments it put in place after Saddam was toppled. Ahmed Challabi, the man those in charge in D.C. had already dubbed the "George Washington" of the new Iraq, turned out to be a corrupt businessman with dubious ties to the Ayatollahs in Tehran. He quickly fell out of favour with his sponsors. Once engaged on a slippery slope however, things have a tendency to get from bad to worse. So it shouldn't have come as a surprise that the politician who was handpicked to preside over the destiny of the fragile Iraqi democracy did as bad a job as could have been expected of Challabi.

Nominated as Prime-Minister in May 2006, after careful screening by the CIA and the State Department, Nouri al-Maliki proved a devastating choice in the long-run. Sure, he had a sectarian agenda – promoting Shia dominance wherever he could – which perfectly fit the short-term US goals in the region. But he helped deepen the rift with the increasingly unhappy Sunni minority. He contributed to the strategy of the "Surge", as he was told to, but when the funds and the timeline ran out, he put an end to the "Awakening" movements in Anbar province in particular, despite his American allies pleading with him to keep the 85 000 Sunni auxiliaries on his payroll.

Instead, he chose to terminate them in 2009, stopping the cash flow that had made this alliance possible. The success of the "Surge" in this part of Iraq had relied largely on rallying the local tribes, turning them into allies against what was left of Zarqawi's "Al Qaeda in Iraq", at the time a broken organisation whose leaders were either dead or in prison. Maliki's decision made sure this tactical success would never materialize into long-term strategic victory, with the tribes of Anbar province turning their back on Baghdad and being left out in the cold by their American backers, who were preparing to gradually exit Iraq.

The perfect conditions were being set for a power vacuum, either out of sheer incompetence or out of a machiavellic plan, designed by some Evil genius with a real vision for what should happen next. Conspiracy theorists will probably favour the second option, but to be honest, chances are slim that this is the case here. More often than not, incompetence combined with some "dumbass" planning that goes horribly wrong is the most likely reason for the mess we – the West – tend to create wherever we overthrow governments for the sake of defending purely what we consider our own interests.

After all, let's not forget that the fuse that lit the current Middle-Eastern powder keg was the attempt at another regime change, this time against the Baathist government of Damascus. In Syria, what had officially started as one more version of those peaceful "Arab Spring" revolutions quickly mutated into a bloody civil war, with backers on both sides generously pouring petrol over the fire. Play with matches and you get burned, play with matches in a gas station and you can set the whole neighbourhood on fire. And so it happened. The US and the Western world in general, but also the oil monarchies in the Gulf, decided they had had enough of Bashar al-Assad. Time to go, dude … The Alawites, the Shia in Lebanon, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation begged to differ though.

Enter Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi

Meanwhile, Bin Laden successor Ayman al-Zawahiri had smelled blood from his cave in the Tribal areas of Pakistan and quietly set about to start of a new Al Qaeda franchise in Syria, with the help of his already burgeoning Iraqi branch, the "Islamic State in Iraq", led by Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi. An interesting figure this Baghdadi, whose real name is actually Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri. In 2010, he took over from another al-Baghdadi, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, although by no means a family relation of his. In Iraq, studying Islamic law in Baghdad for at least four years gives you the right to add this distinction to your name. Thus one Takfiri scholar took over from another, but with the second "al-Baghdadi" the organisation would reach a whole new dimension.

In truth, his biography doesn't read like the CV of a superhero of Jihad and not much is known about him with absolute certainty. But he started preaching a conservative brand of Islam even before the fall of Saddam and joined the insurgents in the city of Fallujah, where he was captured by American troops in 2004. He never fought a battle himself though.

One of many future ISIS leaders to have spent time in "Camp Bucca", a somewhat bizarre episode in his life, on which we shall reflect in another piece, he certainly was holding enough of a grudge against the US already, when the al-Bufaraj tribe decided in  2007 to order the beheading of his wife (a member of that tribe herself), as a sign of good faith and allegiance to the Americans. Sometimes it doesn't take much to drive a psychopath over the edge and, admittedly, decapitating someone's wife is not exactly the best way to ensure future cooperation and peaceful coexistence.

It didn’t take that long for Baghdadi's ISI to come back with a vengeance. By the time Iraqi prime-minister al-Maliki had disbanded the Awakening Councils while the US forces were scaling back their presence, Baghdadi decided it was time for a game-changing reversal of alliances.

Negotiations were held, deals were struck and in the end, just like the disbanded Iraqi army of 2003, the jobless "Sons of Iraq" and other Awakening Councils' militias provided the backbone for a resuscitated Al Qaeda movement. Herein also lies one of the specifics of ISIS – ISI at the time – that still distinguishes the organisation from its former Siamese twin Al Qaeda Central: the dogmatic, Islamic component is not the only one featuring prominently in its power structure, far from it. Former Baath members and Iraqi military, as well as tribal militiamen who had fought to destroy the Jihadi threat in Iraq a few years earlier were also part of it.

ISI on the offensive  

In October 2010 finally, Baghdadi's troops went on the offense, in their very own particular style. They blew up a church during mass, killing 58 people on the spot. In the months that followed, central Iraq was hit by a wave of violence it hadn't witnessed since the early days of the American invasion.

Car bombs, suicide attacks, gun fights, grenade explosions … The Maliki government didn't know what hit them and neither did the US intelligence agencies trying to figure out what was going on. The orgy of death finally reached its climax in December 2011, when simultaneous explosions in all Shia neighbourhoods of Baghdad left 60 people dead and more than 200 injured.

The soon to be Caliph of a new "Islamic State" had made quite an impression in his home country. But this was only the beginning of something much bigger and the looming civil war in Syria, again a development encouraged and sponsored in part by Western interests, gave him an opportunity he couldn't have dreamt of.

Comments

[Harper]

Just to complement an excellent assessment: ISIS shura council, sharia council and military council--the governing structure--is comprised of Iraqis only. Baathist officers from the Naqshbandi Brotherhood run the military council, with Chechens as key unit commanders. This is an Iraqi phenomenon first--Sunni. Syria is a vital safe haven , but for the ISIS leadership from awl-Baghdadi down, this is about Iraq and the American and Iranian betrayals.

[Charles I]

Thanks, pertinent point I hadn't adverted to.

[Patrick Bahzad]

You're absolutely right in your comment. I didn't want to get too much into details about internal structure but I concur with your statement. Regarding the personal curriculum of some prominent ISIS figures - like Abu Omar al-Shishani (aka Tarkan Batirashvili) - I will get more into this when addressing the power structure of the ISIS-state like entity.
Fundamentally, what you point to is very important though and a crucial difference to the competing Al Qaeda franchises ... And potentially a weakness that could be exploited.

[Babak Makkinejad]

So, the Naqshbanid Sufi order in supplying the officers of ISIS.

And that order finds nothing wrong with the practices of ISIS.

I hope those who think that "Sufis" are some kind of dead-dog liberal alternative to the Shia or Sunni will take notice of this.

About the "Iranian betrayals" - I find it really funny.

[Babak Makkinejad]

ISIS is Al Qaeda with brains, per your observation.

[Patrick Bahzad]

l'll leave the responsibility of that statement to you but I don't think I said or wrote anything along those lines. Besides it's really not the point I'm making either. The purpose is to try and give an insight into the buildup and development of ISIS, whatever I may think about them, and giving clues as to where their weaknesses may be (in piece to come hopefully soon).
To be perfectly honest I think Al Qaeda will outlast them, so much for the brains ...

[Lars]

Given the paternity of this mess by Mr. Cheney, maybe we should just refer to this nefarious bunch as "Dicks"?

Now Mr. Obama, his Senate Democratic cohorts and the congressional GOP have a new opportunity to get things even more wrong.

[toto]

The only thing I would add to this excellent essay is a mention of Iranian meddling in Iraq. Not as destructive as US meddling, of course, but perhaps not negligible either.

Example: Is it possible that things would have gone better if Iyad Allawi had been allowed to form a non-sectarian government after winning the elections? We'll never know, but as the author notes, ISIS drew much manpower from disgruntled Sunnis victimized by Maliki's sectarian policies.

[alba etie]

All
Is there any hope of getting the core Baathist command elements in ISIS to switch sides against al Baghdadi ?

[turcopolier]

Patrick Bahzad

A truly grand essay, we are pleased that you are a member of the committee. pl

[Phil Cattar]

Great essay.I completely agree that the invasion of Iraq looking for imaginary WMD was the father of ISIS..............The only thing I would add to the motives of the neocons is I believe a number of them hoped to make a little money off the invasion.

[Patrick Bahzad]

There's always hope ...
The question, beyond the actual feasability of any such enterprise, is how far are we willing to go to drive a wedge between the formerly secular baathist element and the religious Takfiri component in the ISIS leadership.
In plain English, what can we offer that would make them change their mind ?

[Patrick Bahzad]

You're right on principle. For clarity sake, the topic at hand being ISIS, I didn't want to incorporate the aspect of the Iranian policies towards Iraq.
Tehran has won great influence over Iraq, but with regard to the development of ISIS itself, one might argue that you would have had enough disgruntled Sunnis even without a Nouri al-Maliki in charge.
The Iranians wanted to create and maintain a certain 'strategy of tension', but one that was kept under control. Bogging down the US in some protracted low intensity war, and still being there if needed as a not so honest broker, knowing that they could also turn on the heat if they so decided.
But again, there are many players at that poker table, substituting Allawi for Nouri would not have necessarily been a game-changer.

[alba etie]

Phil Cattar
Vice President Cheney's KBR made a big pile of money - even if was in a 'blind trust " ..

[alba etie]

Patrick Bahzad
If we can assume the Sykes Picot map is no longer alive , perhaps we could then take a brand new view our interest in the region. If we could offer al Douri and the other Baathist leadership that Bremer turned out a return to power in al Anbar in the context of some federation of the former Irak - perhaps that might work . There would be a state of Kurdistan also in this Irak federation as well as Shiastan I suppose. Perhaps ISIL- Daash has concentrated the minds of the regional governments whereby some type of new post Syke Picot map could be made to work . of course there would be many regional leaders that would be opposed to doing this- but it seems unless and until there is a successful political solution to many of these long standing historical grievances we will just have more al Baghdadis come on the ME scene. Of course there would be many regional leaders opposed to a political solution starting with our dear friends and allies Erdogan & Natanyahu . On the other hand if President Obama gets his nuclear freeze deal done with Rouhani perhaps that provides an opening . Hope does Spring Eternal - we shall see.

[Babak Makkinejad]

None.

You are witnessing the birth of a new state.

[Amir]

I agree. How would the Saddam loyalists (does not equate to Iraqis) have expected "loyalty" from a nation that suffered a 1,000,000 casualty at their hand. The official and unofficial statements about the final war aims was to fight and remove "Saddam and Saddamian" (Saddam loyalists a.k.a. Ba'athists).

[Pierre Marlais]

The lesson here is to keep soldiers paid so they don't revolt or go fight for someone else who can pay them. If leaders, planners, plotters, politicians, and neo-cons cannot understand that simple rule, they are forever cursed to fail. Even the Romans understood that two thousand years ag - armies fight on full stomachs. ISIS is a paycheck for most, and some want an adventure, because in a completely broken part of the world (economically, politically, socially, religiously and ethically-morally) feeding yourself and your family is all that counts. "Who's your Baghdahdi?" That's what the Big Dog taught us from the 1990's White House. The relative quiet in this part of the world was maintained so long as DC literally air-dumped tons of US Dollars on the ones who would spread it around that area. Many human problems can be covered up long enough by throwing gobs of money-currency at them. Remember money, currency and income are just legal-accounting fictions that we can create "out of thin air from nothing" and these powerful and interrelated fictions grease human activities around the world so long as they serve as widely-accepted and trusted (1) means of exchange and (2) unit of account. To better understand these fictions, debt, money, currency, income, banks, taxes, finance and similar topics, please visit www.i-globals.org.

[Dubhaltach]

In reply to Patrick Bahzad 12 February 2015 at 05:06 AM

"In plain English, what can we offer that would make them change their mind ?"

And even if you had something to offer why on earth would they believe one word of the offer?

Dubhaltach

[Charles I]

Recognition of THEIR own Caliphate!

[Patrick Bahzad]

Sure Alba, in a perfect - and reasonable - world, everything you say could make sense. Thing is: 1) we can't undo the past (and the legacy of past mistakes unfortunately weighs in heavily on any sustainable solution), 2) there are regional actors who would be impacted by any of the things you mention, 3) there are conflicting interests at work in the US administration itself, which would try to nullify any move made in a direction they don't want to go.
Finally, regarding your comment about having Baghdadis around, you're right: never underestimate the predictibility of stupidity, meaning there's likely to be more Baghdadis to come I'm afraid.

[alba etie]

Babak Makkinejad
A birth of a new nation - what will that nation look like in it's end end state ?

[Patrick Bahzad]

First of all, Dubhaltach, I don't have anything to offer that's of any interest to ISIS !
Second, there are several elements in your equation:
1) who would make an offer ? and who would vouch for it ?
2) if it's makes them change their mind, it means they already bought into it somehow
3) any offer would depend on the circumstances it's being made at the bargaining table, i.e. whether you're in a position of power or not.
finally, who says they're not waiting for some kind of offer that would legitimize their territorial and statehood claims ? What they got today could be lost tomorrow, if they don't get any guarantees ... Don't think for a second they don't realize that in the long run, the bank always wins (and they're not the bank in this analogy) !

[alba etie]

Patrick Bahzad
Yes it appears there are many past mistakes that would keep a reasonable solution from happening such as a Federated Union of Iraq. Clearly Turkey , Iran , & Syria would not want an independent Kurdistan . And of course the USA neocons are still hellbent on invading Persia so obviously there would be great angst here if we tried to shift strategic footing to Iran vs Israel BUT - would that be worse then having a Wahhabi Caliphate come to maturation- that would threaten negatively all the regional players security anyway ? Otherwise it is just foreign policy insanity - repeating old behaviors and not expecting another al Baghdadi to show up . At least we should try a reasonable regional frame work - if nothing else to stop Erdogan from importing radical Wahabbi fighters to the Levant .

[Patrick Bahzad]

Spoken with the voice of reason Alba, but reality is a multifaceted conundrum ... What you preach for the ME, you'll have to deliver also, let's say, Ukraine ... You want to forget Sykes-Picot, redraw the map ? Why not, but then you gonna have to give the Russians a good reason why they can't redraw the map of Ukraine. As long as it's rationale, and suits the locals, why souldn't that be acceptable also.
Thing is, what may be acceptable to us - in theory - in one area would go against our policies in other regions.
Don't forget China and Taiwan, the Spratley and Senkaku islands. I could go on ... the list of potential frictions between major international players is quite long when you start drawing up a list !