Islamic State

Islamic State
Motto	"Remaining and Expanding"
Formation	2003
Type	•  “terrorist” •  front
Interest of	Jürgen Todenhöfer, Paul Williams
Member of	Donald Trump/Conspiracy theories
An "Islamic fundamentalist terrorist" organisation closely affiliated to al-Qaeda.

The Islamic State (IS), formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the State of the Islamic Caliphate (SIC), is a jihadist group, widely regarded as a terrorist organisation. In its self-proclaimed status as a caliphate, it claims religious authority over all Muslims across the world and aspires to bring much of the Muslim-inhabited regions of the world under its direct political control, beginning with territory in the Levant region, which includes Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus, and an area in southern Turkey that includes Hatay. The group has been officially designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, and has been described as a terrorist group by the United Nations and Western and Middle Eastern media sources.

The group, in its original form, was composed of and supported by a variety of Sunni Arab terrorist insurgent groups, including its predecessor organisations, Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) (2003–2006), Mujahideen Shura Council (2006–2006) and the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) (2006–2013), other insurgent groups such as Jeish al-Taiifa al-Mansoura, Jaysh al-Fatiheen, Jund al-Sahaba and Katbiyan Ansar Al-Tawhid wal Sunnah, and a number of Iraqi tribes that profess Sunni Islam.

ISIS grew significantly as an organisation owing to its participation in the Syrian Civil War and the strength of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Economic and political discrimination against Arab Iraqi Sunnis since the fall of the secular Saddam Hussein also helped it to gain support. At the height of the 2003–2011 Iraq War, its forerunners enjoyed a significant presence in the Iraqi governorates of Al Anbar, Nineveh, Kirkuk, most of Salah ad Din, parts of Babil, Diyala and Baghdad, and claimed Baqubah as a capital city. In the ongoing Syrian Civil War, ISIS has a large presence in the Syrian governorates of Ar-Raqqah, Idlib and Aleppo.

ISIS is known for its extreme interpretation of the Islamic faith and sharia law and its brutal violence, which is directed at Shia Muslims, indigenous Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac Christians and Armenian Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Shabakis and Mandeans in particular. It has at least 4,000 fighters in its ranks in Iraq who, in addition to attacks on government and military targets, have claimed responsibility for attacks that have killed thousands of civilians. ISIS had close links with al-Qaeda until 2014, but in February of that year, after an eight-month power struggle, al-Qaeda cut all ties with the group, reportedly for its brutality and "notorious intractability".

ISIS’s original aim was to establish a caliphate in the Sunni-majority regions of Iraq. Following its involvement in the Syrian Civil War, this expanded to include controlling Sunni-majority areas of Syria. A caliphate was proclaimed on 29 June 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — now known as Amir al-Mu'minin Caliph Ibrahim — was named as its caliph, and the group was renamed the Islamic State.

Supported by Western Intelligence

In July 2014, it was reported that the Islamic State was created by the CIA/MI6/Mossad and that Israel is using it as a front organisation

Former employee at US National Security Agency (NSA), Edward Snowden, has revealed that the British and American intelligence and the Mossad worked together to create the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Snowden said intelligence services of three countries created a terrorist organisation that is able to attract all extremists of the world to one place, using a strategy called "the hornet’s nest".

NSA documents refer to recent implementation of the hornet’s nest to protect the Zionist entity by creating religious and Islamic slogans. According to documents released by Snowden:

"The only solution for the protection of the Jewish state 'is to create an enemy near its borders'."

Leaks revealed that ISIS leader and cleric Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi took intensive military training for a whole year in the hands of Mossad, besides courses in theology and the art of speech.

Bankrolled by Saudi Arabia et al

US President Barack Obama’s authorisation of airstrikes on ISIS targets in Iraq serves as an opportunity to remind ourselves which countries are bankrolling the deadly terror group. The answer: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar – three of the United States’ biggest allies in the region.

On 16 August 2014, Obama announced limited airstrikes to slow the advance of ISIS fighters and help members of the Yazidi religious minority group who were forced to flee into a mountainous region in the north of Iraq to avoid slaughter. However, the administration has failed to put pressure on several (Persian) Gulf states that are directly responsible for helping ISIS gain a foothold in Iraq in the first place. As the Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin documents:

"The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now threatening Baghdad, was funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, three US allies that have dual agendas in the war on terror."

In addition to funding itself through criminal activity and punitive taxes imposed on the local population on pain of death, ISIS relies on a steady stream of income from countries that have bankrolled extremists for years, yet have faced zero backlash from successive White House administrations. Even evidence of direct Saudi involvement in 9/11 failed to generate any reconsideration of who America calls its friends.

"Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and that it’s coming from the (Persian) Gulf," said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Kuwait’s banking system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now Iraq."

State backing for ISIS, now the wealthiest terror group in the world, prompted former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to point the finger directly at Saudi Arabia and Qatar during a France 24 television interview:

"I accuse them of inciting and encouraging the terrorist movements. I accuse them of supporting them politically and in the media, of supporting them with money and by buying weapons for them," said al-Maliki.

In failing to call these countries to account for funding ISIS, the White House has deliberately placed the importance of isolating Iran and Syria over and above the stability of the entire region. The White House is also directly responsible for the spread of ISIS militants having backed other rebel groups in Syria which were once allied with and then taken over by ISIS. Indeed, some evidence suggests that the US even trained some of the fighters who went on to join ISIS at a secret base in Jordan in 2012. Aaron Klein was told by Jordanian officials that, "dozens of future ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents..."

Yet another US ally – Turkey – also trained ISIS fighters at a location in the vicinity of Incirlik Air Base near Adana According to a source close to former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Obama administration turned a blind eye to the fact that Turkey was equipping and then sending fighters to Syria before they went on to Iraq. The source even went on to accuse the White House of being "an accomplice" in the ISIS takeover of major Iraqi cities.

Whether or not the "humanitarian" airstrikes on Iraq are really aimed at stopping the terror wrought by ISIS, or are merely part of a ploy to create a justification for a long-awaited attack on Syria, the White House itself, as well as some of America’s closest supposed allies, all share some of the blame in aiding the growth of ISIS in the region.

Blacklisted by UN Security Council

On 15 October 2014, the United Nations Security Council took aim at ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria, blacklisting six people including the ISIS spokesman and threatening sanctions against those who finance, recruit or supply weapons to the insurgents.

The 15-member council unanimously adopted a resolution that aims to weaken the ISIS - an al Qaeda splinter group that has seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate - and al Qaeda's Syrian wing Nusra Front.

ISIS has long been blacklisted by the Security Council, while Nusra Front was added earlier this year. Both groups are designated under the UN al-Qaeda sanctions regime.

Friday's resolution named six people who will be subject to an international travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo, including ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, an Iraqi described by U.N. experts as one of the group's "most influential emirs" and close to its leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.

ISIS's swift and brutal push to the borders of Iraq's autonomous ethnic Kurdish region and toward Baghdad has sparked the first U.S. air strikes in Iraq since the withdrawal of American troops in 2011.

The Security Council resolution "deplores and condemns in the strongest terms the terrorist acts of ISIS and its violent extremist ideology, and its continued gross, systematic and widespread abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law."

British fears

A stronger Islamic State can pose direct threat to Britons at home, British PM David Cameron warned on 17 August 2014. His solution is to clamp down on the Islamists’ recruitment drive in Britain, but not to send ground troops to Iraq. In a strongly-worded article published in The Sunday Telegraph, David Cameron said that if the Islamic State grows stronger and creates a Caliphate in the Middle East, the group would project threat to Europe:

"If we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain. We already know that it has the murderous intent," he said.

Cameron, who has been criticised for the coalition government’s cautious approach to the security crisis in Iraq, called the fight against IS:

"A generational struggle against a poisonous and extremist ideology" adding that it may take "the rest of my political lifetime."

The Islamic State is gaining strength after taking control of large portions of Syria and Iraq. It is now fighting in northern Iraq against Kurdish militias while massacring and ousting religious and ethnic minorities. The goal of the group is to create a Caliphate ruled by a fundamentalist version of Sunni Islam:

"If it succeeded we would be facing a terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member," Cameron warned, referring to Turkey, which borders northern Syria and Iraq.