tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/northern-caucasus-25373/articlesNorthern Caucasus – The Conversation2017-08-01T13:52:11Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/812812017-08-01T13:52:11Z2017-08-01T13:52:11ZWhy Russia needs troops from the Caucasus in Syria – and how they bolster Moscow’s ‘eastern’ image<p>During the early years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union made a great push to reach out to the developing world, and particularly to the Middle East and Asia. It established particularly close ties with Nasser’s Egypt and later with Syria, but didn’t do so well with others; the Chinese leadership in particular <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14682745.2010.481426">doubted</a> whether the USSR really empathised with the Global South and its anti-colonial struggle. Russia, it argued, was essentially a former colonial power, or at the very least a white European country incapable of understanding the developing world’s problems.</p>
<p>Moscow duly tried to prove the opposite by cultivating its own “eastern” identity. It sent its “easterners” on conspicuous missions abroad: Armenians and Azerbaijanis worked in solidarity committees and friendship societies, while Uzbeks and Tajiks served as ambassadors in the Middle East or played a key role as soldiers during the invasion of Afghanistan. </p>
<p>These plans to win over Middle Eastern and Asian allies were rendered moot when the USSR crumbled. But today, Russia’s push to claim an eastern identity seems to be underway once again – and nowhere more so than in Syria.</p>
<p>As media attention has shifted to efforts to oust the so-called Islamic State from its Syrian stronghold, Raqqa, the Syrian regime is struggling to govern the areas of Syria it has recaptured with the help of Russia and other backers. Particularly troublesome is Aleppo, the country’s largest city and former business hub, which was brought back under Damascus’s full control in December 2016. Enter Russia, whose help has already turned the tide in the Syrian regimes’s favour. </p>
<p>Russian military police are now helping to beef up security in Aleppo and other areas. They are drawn in part from the Russian Northern Caucasus, in particular from the predominantly Muslim republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia. In December 2016, a Chechen battalion was <a href="https://youtu.be/oEpYOAo0LCQ">dispatched</a> to Aleppo, returning from its tour in March 2017; in February 2017, <a href="https://ria.ru/syria/20170213/1487860594.html">Ingushetia</a> sent a group of soldiers to provide security to Russian military facilities. Finally, in April, another detachment of Chechen troops boarded a plane to Syria, deemed to stay there <a href="http://polit.ru/news/2017/04/19/chechen_army">until August</a>.</p>
<p>To listen to the state-backed media, this would seem like proof that Russia’s “eastern” identity is as self-assured as ever. Outlets such as RT stress that these military policemen are particularly welcomed in Syria, where they are supposedly greeted as fellow Sunni Muslims, while <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/375551-chechen-soldiers-patrolling-aleppo/">Russian experts</a> claim that they can more easily empathise and communicate with the local community. </p>
<p>While there might be some truth to these claims, there are rather “harder” interests behind Russia’s Syrian strategy – both on the side of the federal government in Moscow and on the side of the Caucasian republics involved. </p>
<h2>Quid pro quo</h2>
<p>The Syrian conflict is not overly popular in Russia. Ever since Russian troops directly intervened, <a href="http://www.css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/RAD175.pdf">media coverage</a> at home has been huge, with every effort made to portray the intervention as a humanitarian and anti-terrorist mission. But at best, the Russian public is largely uninterested – and apathy could quickly sour into outright opposition if a significant number of Russian lives were lost on the ground. </p>
<p>Sending military forces from the peripheral republics minimises this risk. Most Russians see the republics and their populations as a huge social, political, and economic burden; if Chechen or Ingush lives were lost, this would hardly have an effect on public opinion in Moscow or St. Petersburg. </p>
<p>The republics also have something special to offer: experienced troops who have operated before in theatres characterised by terrorist threats and are particularly well prepared for the Syrian arena. On top of this, as political scientist Aleksey Makarkin told Russian business channel <a href="http://www.rbc.ru/politics/13/02/2017/58a1c09e9a79475806d0095d">RBK</a>, both Chechnya and Ingushetia are desperate to attract and keep Russia’s attention. Being among the poorest republics, they badly need central government support, especially since the Kremlin has increasingly <a href="http://afpc.org/publication_listings/viewArticle/3561">diverted funds to Crimea</a>.</p>
<p>But there’s something else going on, too – and Chechnya in particular has specific interests in mind. </p>
<h2>Playing it safe</h2>
<p>As Russian newspaper <a href="https://www.novayagazeta.ru/news/2016/12/20/127616-v-chechne-formiruyut-dva-batalona-dlya-otpravki-v-siriyu">Novaya Gazeta</a> reported, it seems the Chechen government’s military strategy includes an element of retribution: the soldiers it’s sending to the Middle East to join the pro-regime effort are drawn from families who have already seen a member leave to fight on the other side. </p>
<p>One military commander seemed to back this up in an ambiguous TV interview: while highlighting the <a href="https://youtu.be/DM7POPWmYn8?t=1m55s">all-Russian</a> and multi-faith identity of his troops, he also stressed that they were sent to Syria to <a href="https://youtu.be/DM7POPWmYn8?t=15m30s">redeem the Chechens’ reputation</a>.</p>
<p>In effect, the republic has its own small foreign policy, and so long as it sticks mostly to Moscow’s line, both parties have something to gain: Russia can use Chechnya’s semi-independent operations to open a second <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/fr/originals/2014/01/chechnya-mideast-diplomacy-muslim-outreach-ramzan-kadyrov.html">diplomatic channel</a> to the wider Middle East, while Chechnya can strengthen its position vis-a-vis the central government and Middle Eastern countries, and <a href="https://www.levada.ru/2017/05/31/16053/">improve</a> its status among disdainful Russians. In one recent PR stunt, Chechen diplomacy helped to <a href="https://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2913468">free</a> a Russian girl held by Turkish authorities after she attempted to cross into Syria.</p>
<p>Whether all this will pay off for Russia, its republics, and Syria remains to be seen. While Russian military police might have strengthened security for now, Aleppo is still under the sway of various militias and paramilitaries, who’ve filled the void left by regular armed forces when they moved on to Syria’s other front lines. The Damascus government is <a href="https://www.irinnews.org/analysis/2017/06/22/aleppo-militias-become-major-test-assad">stepping up its efforts</a> to crack down on these groups, but they remain a problem.</p>
<p>The Russian discourse around these police missions bears a remarkable resemblance to the Soviet Union’s approach to the Middle East, including its exploitation of Soviet Muslims to pursue its goals there. As in the past, rather than an exuberant embrace of an eastern identity, this is a political manoeuvre. </p>
<p>In contrast to Soviet times, however, the republics are pursuing their own agendas much more openly, especially Chechnya, which genuinely fosters a Muslim identity under the leadership of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/23/putins-closest-ally-and-his-biggest-liability">Ramzan Kadyrov</a>. Still, for Russia as a whole and for Chechnya in particular, what looks like a geopolitical play for other countries’ sympathies or mere identity politics is in fact a matter of dicey domestic considerations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81281/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philipp Casula receives funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>By sending troops from the North Caucasus to Syria, Russia is returning to its old habits.Philipp Casula, Visiting scholar in Russian Studies, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/758692017-04-06T18:13:46Z2017-04-06T18:13:46ZRussia’s domestic terrorism threat is serious, sophisticated and complex<p>The April 3 bombing on the St Petersburg metro was the highest-profile terror attack on Russian soil since a suicide bombing at Moscow’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12268662">Domodedovo airport</a> in January 2011. According to Russia’s <a href="http://nac.gov.ru/hronika-sobytiy/v-metro-sankt-peterburga-proizoshel-podryv-neustanovlennogo.html">National Antiterrorism Committee</a>, at least 14 people were killed and 49 injured by an improvised explosive device; further casualties were prevented when a <a href="http://www.news24.com/World/News/st-petersburg-bomber-also-set-second-bomb-20170404">second device</a> was disarmed at another station. Days later, another bomb was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/06/explosive-device-st-petersburg-residential-building-russia">found and defused</a> in a residential building.</p>
<p>The prime suspect is reportedly Kyrgyzstan-born Russian citizen <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-blast-metro-investigation-idUSKBN1770ZT">Akbarzhon Jalilov</a>, who was identified on CCTV and died in the attack. </p>
<p>The use of explosives and the success of the attack despite heightened security measures – President Putin was in St Petersburg at the time, and national newspapers <a href="http://izvestia.ru/news/675917">Izvestiya</a> and <a href="http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3261184">Kommersant</a> both reported that the security services had advanced warning that an attack was planned – makes it unlikely he acted alone. Indeed, Russian authorities have detained <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/06/explosive-device-st-petersburg-residential-building-russia">three people</a> suspected of being involved in the bombing. </p>
<p>Still unclear, then, is whether the attackers had the help of an organised group – and there are many organisations that could be considered plausible instigators. </p>
<p>An obvious candidate is the so-called Islamic State (IS), which has drawn <a href="https://www.gazeta.ru/army/news/9721685.shtml">plenty of recruits</a> from across the country. Some of them have remained in Russia, and the group is now set on inspiring attacks globally as its strongholds in Iraq and Syria come under pressure. It has also claimed multiple attacks in Russia to date, as well as targeting Russian interests abroad – most notably <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/isis-plane-attack-egypt-terrorists-downed-russian-metrojet-flight-from-sharm-el-sheikh-islamic-state-a6893181.html">downing a Russian passenger jet</a> over Egypt in October 2015.</p>
<p>But IS is far from the only terrorist group that attracts Russian-speaking recruits. North Caucasians and Central Asian radicals have <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2016.1215055">joined</a> a range of al-Qaeda-affiliated and independent radical Islamist groups fighting in Syria and Iraq, many of whom are hostile to Russia.</p>
<p>Furthermore, although it has been under heavy pressure from the Russian state in recent years, the North Caucasus continues to deal with low-level insurgent violence. The most senior surviving insurgent leader, Chechnya’s <a href="http://www.rferl.org/a/north-caucasus-insurgent-leaders-rewards/28091381.html">Aslan Byutukayev</a>, is a former head of the reconstituted Riyadus Salikhin group that, as part of the Caucasus Emirate, was responsible for multiple suicide attacks, including that on <a href="http://ria.ru/spravka/20120710/696130713.html#ixzz2rJAvOjWQ">Domodedovo airport</a>.</p>
<p>Pressure on the domestic insurgency has driven a number of key rebel commanders out of the region. Many have relocated to Turkey; after the metro attack, news agency Rosbalt <a href="http://www.rosbalt.ru/piter/2017/04/04/1604461.html">claimed</a> investigators were pursuing their involvement as one of two main theories, citing increased activity among these leaders. The other main grouping under suspicion, it said, is far-right nationalism: groups in St Petersburg are known to have close links with their Ukrainian counterparts, and have used explosives in previous attacks.</p>
<p>To make things more complicated, not all of these groups are mutually exclusive. Most of the rebels still active in the North Caucasus are <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2016.1215055">aligned with IS</a>, while multiple groups have links running through Turkey. That there are so many potential culprits at work gives some indication of the scale of the threat Russia faces.</p>
<h2>Sophisticated attackers</h2>
<p>Another particularly telling aspect of the St Petersburg attack is its relative sophistication. Since the inception of IS, groups led by or affiliated to it have used a range of methods, including sophisticated car and truck bomb attacks. Turkey has lately been hit by several co-ordinated incidents that caused considerable casualties, including the <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkish-airport-massacre-will-further-imperil-a-nation-on-the-verge-of-crisis-61836">Ataturk airport attack</a> in June 2016 and the Istanbul nightclub attack on New Year’s Day 2017. </p>
<p>Elsewhere, IS has targeted airliners and used co-ordinated suicide attacks and marauding shooter attacks, as well as mass hostage-taking with suicidal intent, as happened in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/paris-attacks-there-is-no-simple-explanation-for-acts-of-terror-50704">2015 Paris attacks</a>. But the group has also claimed responsibility for unsophisticated attacks using mundane weapons such as knives, as well as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-and-why-vehicle-ramming-became-the-attack-of-choice-for-terrorists-75236">lorries and cars</a>. These are low-cost, easily accessible tools that can cause havoc easily, and IS is apparently relying on them more and more – presumably in a bid to outmanoeuvre counter-terrorism strategies.</p>
<p>IS has claimed responsibility for several attacks on Russian soil, which have mostly been at the unsophisticated end of the spectrum. An <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-islamic-state-idUSKCN10T25S">August 2016 incident near Moscow</a> and a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-chechnya-shooting-idUSKBN1470L3?il=0">December 2016 attack in Grozny</a> both saw policemen attacked with hand-held weapons. A 4 April attack on police in Astrakhan, claimed by IS two days later, appears to have followed a <a href="http://izvestia.ru/news/678047">similar pattern</a>. A number of the IS-linked <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-dagestan-idUSKCN0Y50Q4">attacks</a> occurred in the restive North Caucasus republic of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20593383">Dagestan</a>, a focal point of regional violence where it’s hard to distinguish between targeted terrorist acts and day-to-day instability.</p>
<p>The St Petersburg attack, on the other hand, was more sophisticated: The perpetrator was clearly able to build at least one viable explosive device – even if the second <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-blast-bomb-experts-idUSKBN17720F">failed to detonate</a> – and possibly received training in making them. He was also able to do what he did despite the fact that the authorities apparently had intelligence of some sort about this specific attack, and despite widespread awareness that a terrorist incident of some sort was likely – as with London, a question of when rather than if. </p>
<p>All this goes to show that Russia faces some very serious domestic terrorism threats. The group or groups behind them are clearly able to inspire, enable and/or support attackers from afar; the question is whether they can provide the training and equipment required for mass-casualty attacks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75869/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Youngman is an ESRC-funded doctoral student at the University of Birmingham</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cerwyn Moore is an academic based in POLSIS, College of Social Sciences, at the University of Birmingham and ‘Actors and Narratives’ Programme Director in the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats, an independent ESRC centre with funding from the UK security and intelligence agencies. He declined to provide a profile picture.</span></em></p>From the Islamic State to North Caucasian rebels and far-right nationalists, Russia is facing overlapping extremist threats.Mark Youngman, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of BirminghamCerwyn Moore, Senior lecturer in International Relations and Programme Director for the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/554372016-03-02T19:05:50Z2016-03-02T19:05:50ZOut of the ashes of Afghanistan and Iraq: the rise and rise of Islamic State<p><em>Since announcing its arrival as a global force in June 2014 with the declaration of a caliphate on territory captured in Iraq and Syria, the jihadist group Islamic State has shocked the world with its brutality.</em></p>
<p><em>Its seemingly sudden prominence has led to much speculation about the group’s origins: how do we account for forces and events that paved the way for the emergence of Islamic State? In the final article of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">our series examining this question</a>, Greg Barton shows the role recent Western intervention in the Middle East played in the group’s inexorable rise.</em></p>
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<p>Despite precious little certainty in the “what ifs” of history, it’s clear the rise of Islamic State (IS) wouldn’t have been possible without the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. Without these Western interventions, al-Qaeda would never have gained the foothold it did, and IS would not have emerged to take charge of northern Iraq.</p>
<p>Whether or not the Arab Spring, and the consequent civil war in Syria, would still have occurred is much less clear. </p>
<p>But even if war hadn’t broken out in Syria, it’s unlikely an al-Qaeda spin-off such as IS would have become such a decisive actor without launching an insurgency in Iraq. For an opportunistic infection to take hold so comprehensively, as IS clearly has, requires a severely weakened body politic and a profoundly compromised immune system. </p>
<p>Such were the conditions in Goodluck Jonathan’s Nigeria from 2010 to 2015 and in conflict-riven Somalia after the fall of the Barre regime in 1991. And it was so in Afghanistan for the four decades after conflict broke out in 1978 and in Pakistan after General Zia-ul-Haq declared martial law in 1977. </p>
<p>Sadly, but even more clearly, such are the circumstances in Iraq and Syria today. And that’s the reason <a href="http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Global-Terrorism-Index-2015.pdf">around 80% of all deaths due to terrorist attacks</a> in recent years have occurred in five of the six countries discussed here, where such conditions still prevail.</p>
<h2>An unique opportunity</h2>
<p>The myth of modern international terrorist movements, and particularly of al-Qaeda and its outgrowths such as IS (which really is a third-generation al-Qaeda movement), is that they’re inherently potent and have a natural power of attraction. </p>
<p>The reality is that while modern terrorist groups can and do operate all around the globe to the point where no country can consider itself completely safe, they can only build a base when local issues attract on-the-ground support. </p>
<p>Consider al-Qaeda, which is in the business of global struggle. It wants to unite a transnational <em>ummah</em> to take on far-off enemies. But it has only ever really enjoyed substantial success when it has happened across conducive local circumstances. </p>
<p>The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s provided an opportunity uniquely suited to the rise of al-Qaeda and associated movements. It provided plausible justification for a defensive jihad – a just war – that garnered broad international support and allowed the group to coalesce in 1989 out of the Arab fighters who had rallied to support the Afghans in their fight against the Soviets. </p>
<p>Further opportunities emerged in the Northern Caucasus, where local ethno-national grievances were eventually transformed into the basis for a more global struggle. </p>
<p>The declaration of independence by Chechnya in 1991 led to all-out war with the Soviet military between 1994 and 1996, when tens of thousands were killed. After a short, uneasy peace, a decade-long second civil war started in 1999 following the invasion of neighbouring Dagestan by the International Islamic Brigade. </p>
<p>The second civil war began with an intense campaign to seize control of the Chechen capital, Grozny. But it became dominated by years of fighting jihadi and other insurgents in the Caucasus mountains and dealing with related terrorist attacks in Russia. </p>
<p>In Nigeria and Somalia, Boko Haram and al-Shabaab now share many of the key attributes of al-Qaeda, with whom they have forged nascent links. But they too emerged primarily because of the failure of governance and the persistence of deep-seated local grievances.</p>
<p>Even in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda struggled to transform itself into a convincing champion of local interests in the 1990s. After becoming increasingly isolated following the September 11 attacks on the US, it failed to gain support from the Afghan Taliban for its global struggle.</p>
<p>But something new happened in Iraq beginning in 2003. The Jordanian street thug <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/07/the-short-violent-life-of-abu-musab-al-zarqawi/304983/">Musab al-Zarqawi</a> correctly intuited that the impending Western invasion and occupation of Iraq would provide the perfect conditions for the emergence of insurgencies. </p>
<p>Al-Zarqawi positioned himself in Iraq ahead of the invasion and deftly rode a wave of anger and despair to initiate and grow an insurgency that in time came to dominate the broken nation. </p>
<p>Initially, al-Zarqawi was only one of many insurgent leaders intent on destabilising Iraq. But, in October 2004, after years of uneasy relations with the al-Qaeda leader during two tours in Afghanistan, he finally yielded to Osama bin Laden’s request that he swear on oath of loyalty (<em>bayat</em>) to him. And so al-Zarqawi’s notorious network of insurgents became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). </p>
<h2>From the ashes</h2>
<p>Iraq’s de-Ba'athification process of May 2003 to June 2004, during which senior technocrats and military officers linked to the Ba'ath party (the vehicle of the Saddam Hussein regime) were removed from office, set the stage for many to join counter-occupation insurgent groups – including AQI.</p>
<p>Without the sacking of a large portion of Iraq’s military and security leaders, its technocrats and productive middle-class professionals, it’s not clear whether this group would have come to dominate so comprehensively. These alienated Sunni professionals gave AQI, as well as IS, much of its core military and strategic competency.</p>
<p>But even with the windfall opportunity presented to al-Zarqawi by the wilful frustration of Sunni interests by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Maliki">Nouri al-Maliki’s</a> Shia-dominated government from 2006 to 2014, which deprived them of any immediate hope for the future and confidence in protecting their families and communities, AQI was almost totally destroyed after the Sunni awakening began in 2006. </p>
<p>The Sunni awakening forces, or “Sons of Iraq”, began with tribal leaders in Anbar province forming an alliance with the US military. For almost three years, tens of thousands of Sunni tribesmen were paid directly to fight AQI, but the Maliki government refused to incorporate them into the regular Iraqi Security Force. And, after October 2008 – when the US military handed over management of these forces – he refused to support them.</p>
<p>The death of al-Zarqawi in June 2006 contributed to the profound weakening of the strongest of all post-invasion insurgent groups. AQI’s force strength was reduced to several hundred fighters and it lost the capacity to dominate the insurgency.</p>
<p>Then, in 2010 and 2011, circumstances combined to blow oxygen onto the smouldering coals. </p>
<p>In 2010, the greatly underestimated Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a local Iraqi cleric with serious religious scholarly credentials, took charge of AQI and began working to a sophisticated long-term plan.</p>
<p>Elements of the strategy went by the name “breaking the walls”. In the 12 months to July 2013, this entailed the movement literally breaking down the prison walls in compounds around Baghdad that held hundreds of hardcore al-Qaeda fighters. </p>
<p>Islamic State, as the group now called itself, also benefited from the inflow of former Iraqi intelligence officers and senior military leaders. This had begun with de-Ba'athification in 2003 and continued after the collapse of the Sunni awakening and the increasingly overt sectarianism of the Maliki government. </p>
<p>Together, they developed tactics based on vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices and the strategic use of suicide bombers. These were deployed not in the passionate but often undirected fashion of al-Qaeda but much more like smart bombs in the hands of a modern army. </p>
<p>And the US military withdrawal from Iraq in late 2011, well telegraphed ahead of time, provided an excellent opportunity for the struggling insurgency to rebuild. As did the outbreak of civil war in Syria.</p>
<h2>A helping hand</h2>
<p>Al-Baghdadi initially dispatched his trusted Syrian lieutenant, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, to form a separate organisation in Syria: the al-Nusra front. </p>
<p>Jabhat al-Nusra quickly established itself in northern Syria. But when al-Julani refused to fold his organisation in under his command, al-Baghdadi rebranded AQI (or Islamic State in Iraq) Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham/the Levant (ISIS/ISIL).</p>
<p>Then, a series of events turned IS from an insurgency employing terrorist methods to becoming a nascent rogue state. These included: the occupation of Raqqa on the Syrian Euphrates in December 2013; the taking of Ramadi a month later; consolidation of IS control throughout Iraq’s western Anbar province; and, finally, a sudden surge down the river Tigris in June 2014 that took Mosul and most of the towns and cities along the river north of Baghdad within less than a week.</p>
<p>IS’s declaration of the caliphate on June 29, 2014, was a watershed moment, which is only now being properly understood. </p>
<p>In its ground operations, including the governing of aggrieved Sunni communities, IS moved well beyond being simply a terrorist movement. It came to function as a rogue state ruling over around 5 million people in the northern cities of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and defending its territory through conventional military means.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2010, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took charge of AQI and began working to a sophisticated long-term plan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Furqan Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the same time, it skilfully exploited the internet and social media in ways the old al-Qaeda could not do – and that its second-generation offshoot, al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), had only partially achieved. </p>
<p>This allowed IS to draw in tens of thousands of foreign fighters. Most came from the Middle East and Northern Africa, but as many as 5,000 came from Europe, with thousands more from the Caucasus and Asia. </p>
<p>Unlike the case in Afghanistan in the 1980s, these foreign fighters have played a key role in providing sufficient strength to take and hold territory while also building a global network of support.</p>
<p>But without the perfect-storm conditions of post-invasion insurgency, this most potent expression of al-Qaedaism yet would never have risen to dominate both the region and the world in the way that it does. </p>
<p>Even in its wildest dreams, al-Qaeda could never have imagined that Western miscalculations post-9/11 could have led to such foolhardy engagements – not just in Afghanistan but also in Iraq. </p>
<p>Were it not for these miscalculations, 9/11 might well have precipitated the decline of al-Qaeda. Instead, with our help, it spawned a global jihadi movement with a territorial base far more powerful than al-Qaeda ever had.</p>
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<p><em>This is the final article in our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historical roots of Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55437/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greg Barton is co-director of the Australian Intervention Support Hub, a CVE capacity-building initiative supported by the Australian government and based at the ANU and Deakin University. He previously led an ARC Linkage grant project researching radicalisation and disengagement from violent extremism. He is currently a research professor at the Alfred Deakin Institute.</span></em></p>The final article of our series on the historical roots of Islamic State examines the role recent Western intervention in the Middle East played in the group’s inexorable rise.Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation; Co-Director, Australian Intervention Support Hub, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.