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The Complexities of Middle-East; the Breakdown of State Mechanism; and the Dynamic of the Rise and Growth of ISIS

2020; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.2139/ssrn.3521044

1556-5068

Saroj Kumar Rath,

Global Peace and Security Dynamics

Syria’s complex internal conditions particularly since 2010 paved the way for civil war inside the country. Bashar al-Assad’s intricate schemes to subdue the impending ‘Arab Spring’ and remain cling to power resulted in the deaths and destructions of immense proportion inside Syria. Assad’s employed virtually every conceivable fighter starting from frontline soldiers to cyber hackers to civil police and bureaucracy to crackdown protest against his power. Assad succeeded in sticking to power but Syria entered into a spiral of civil violence. The growing civil unrest and official atrocities in neighboring Iraq were further fueling the crisis in Syria. The situation was ripening for the takeover of militants from whatever civil governance left with their leaders. It is in this background al Qaeda in Iraq spread its arm through the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. Cross-fertilization of a host of other militant groups, former soldiers who had been fired from their jobs, unemployed local youths and those who had suffered the atrocities of authorities made a robust gang to overrun the existing government. This gang fortunately bestowed by highly capable leaders, which became the dreaded Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki adopted anti-Sunni policies to the detriment of his own fate and government, which paved the way for Sunni Awakening and rising of ISIS. Similarly, neighboring countries Gulf countries particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in their quest for an extended Sunni principality in Iraq and Syria supported the Sunni extremists who later became ISIS and who are now posing threat to the very regime which created the monster. The US and west simply gone by their profit motives and adopted dangerous policies in Iraq, which forced the Iraqi Sunnis, the al Qaeda and former Baath party supporters to take corrective measures. The West supported opposition parties in Syria, who were became future ISIS. Combinedly all these factors, which formed part of statecraft in their respective sphere had facilitated in the propping up of ISIS.