Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Al Qaida Leadership Shuns An Affiliate

This post is the post I had intended to write yesterday but mid blog I determined I needed to attempt to dump some emotional baggage and decided this blog may be the best forum to do it.

The news of interest for me was the announcement by Al Qaida Senior Leadership and Ayman al Zawahiri that AQ was disowning the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) aka Al Qaida in Iraq (AQI) aka Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham (ISIS) aka Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Holy hell, how many names does ISIS have? Anyway, this announcement has been a long time coming and I'm not shocked at all to see it. The ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, had attempted to merge ISIS and Al Nusrah Front (Al Qaida's franchise in Syria) and assume leadership of both organizations himself. Al Nusrah refused to merge and swore allegiance directly to Zawahiri.

The merger fiasco led to an open dispute between Zawahiri and ISIS which I suspect was an open wound that was created during the US occupation of Iraq. Forming in Iraq in 2004, ISIS originally called itself The Monotheism and Jihad but changed it shortly afterward to The Organization of Jihad's Base in the Country of the Two Rivers (TQJBR...or as Coalition Forces called it, Al Qaida in Iraq). Merging with several other insurgent groups the name was changed yet again to Mujahideen Shura Council and then finally, Islamic State of Iraq. After the US left and the Syria civil war kicked off, ISI changed to ISIL.

I believe that Al Qaida Senior Leadership became increasingly frustrated with ISI starting in 2006 when the orgy of bloodshed and religious violence between Sunni and Shia escalated. AQ has never had much of a problem killing innocent people, even innocent Muslims, but to their credit, AQ never (not to my knowledge anyway) specifically targeted Muslims. Any Muslims killed in terrorist attacks were seen as martyrs to the cause and would go to Paradise. While the predominately Sunni AQ may have ideological issues with Shia Islam, the slaughter of thousands of Shia in Baghdad and all of Iraq most likely disgusted the leadership of Al Qaida.


No, I don't have any sources for this assessment and I'm too lazy to try to find any. I'm also not a Muslim scholar who can discuss the nuances of the differences between Shia and Sunni and why Al Qaida is primarily Sunni. I will use this quote though from one of my brigade intel officers, "just because someone is Shia, doesn't mean he can't be Al Qaida."


But what impact will Al Qaida's disavowing of ISIS have on the organization? I suspect non at all. During my time in Iraq AQI/ISI/whatever-they-were-calling-themselves seemed to be self sufficient and were able to recruit fighters and acquire weapons and funding without the support from any higher organization. This was more and more apparent as the war went on and ISI lost the support of (most of) the Sunni tribes and the government of Iraq became more capable. Had Al Qaida still supported ISI after the "Sunni Awakening", the organization likely would have still been a force to reckon with during my third Iraq deployment in 09-10; but by that time ISI was a shadow of its former self. Only the government of Iraq's refusal to conduct adequate counterinsurgency operations as well as the war in Syria has allowed ISIS to come back from the dead.

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