The Islamic State The Islamic State A Comparative History of Jihadist Warfare Anthony Celso LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2018 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data Names: Celso, Anthony, author. Title: The Islamic state : a comparative history of Jihadist warfare / Anthony Celso. Description: Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018014961 (print) | LCCN 2018018418 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498569798 (electronic) | ISBN 9781498569781 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: IS (Organization) | Middle East—History— 21st century. | Jihad. | Islamic fundamentalism. | War—Religious aspects—Islam. Classification: LCC HV6433.I722 (ebook) | LCC HV6433.I722 C45 2018 (print) | DDC 363.3250956— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014961 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America For Alicia, Diana and Jezebel Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: The Islamic State in Comparative Context 1 Jihadist Insurgency: Failure and Destruction Breed Regeneration 2 Islamic Regression, Jihadist Frustration, and Takfirist Hyper Violence 3 The Islamic State’s “Fifth Wave” Islamist Worldview 4 The Islamic State’s Impact on Jihadist Insurgency in Iraq and Syria 5 The Islamic State’s Reorientation of Jihad in Egypt and Libya 6 The Islamic State’s Impact on the Jihadist War in Nigeria and Mali 7 The Islamic State’s Totalistic War against the West 8 The Jihadist Forever War: Six Key Conclusions Index About the Author Acknowledgments This book builds upon the past scholarship of many noted authorities. Among those, the ideas and research of Jeffrey Kaplan, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Aaron Zelin, Jacob Zenn, Michael WS Ryan, Brian Fishman, William McCants, Fernando Reinares, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi and Thomas Hegghammer have been particularly influential. They have provided the corpus of ideas and body of research without which this book is impossible. Comparable gratitude must also be extended to the research done by The Long War Journal, The Institute for the Study of War, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, Elcano Royal Institute and the Jamestown Foundation. The quality work done by these institutions is without peer. Finally, the support I received from my colleagues (Dr. Bruce Bechtol Jr. and Dr. William Taylor) has encouraged me to write this book. Introduction The Islamic State in Comparative Context The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) resurgence from its near 2010 defeat and its later territorial extension across the Levant was a significant development. The Syrian civil war and the power vacuum left by the American disengagement in Iraq after 2011 enabled ISI to reconstitute its terror network.1 Freed from American influence the Iraqi regime led by Nouri al-Maliki pursued a sectarian agenda that alienated the Sunni minority and allowed ISI to present itself as their defender. Baghdad’s anti-Sunni policies became the wellspring of ISI’s popular support. From 2011 to 2014 ISI’s terror and insurgent campaigns degraded Iraqi security forces allowing the organization to conquer territory.2 Capitalizing on Assad’s poorly defended eastern border with Iraq, ISI forces expanded into Syria. With Damascus’s near abandonment of its border with Iraq, ISI steadily displaced other rebel groups. Constructing a ministate around its administrative capital Raqqa, ISI was able to create a transnational network later renamed as Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).3 ISIS’s formation generated shock waves across the region. By summer 2014 ISIS routed the Iraqi army and seized territory in Northwest Iraq occupying Mosul and much of Anbar Province. ISIS punctuated its territorial conquests with high-profile massacres of Shi’ite soldiers and Iraqi Yazidi communities.4 In late June 2014 ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani announced the creation of a caliphate (called the Islamic State—IS) and an end to colonial-era borders.5 Since August 2014 a US-led coalition of sixty nations has uprooted IS’s reign across the Levant. By late 2017 Mosul and Raqqa were conquered. The IS’s ability to withstand the coalition’s military assault for over three years was remarkable. Destroying and degrading the caliphate was difficult. This accomplishment should not be confused with the destruction of IS’s terror- insurgent movement. It endures. The network’s global reach is highlighted by its terrorist attacks in Paris, Sousse, Barcelona, Manchester, London, New York, Stockholm, Nice, Brussels, Dacca, Berlin, Beirut, Sana, Istanbul, St. Petersburg, San Bernardino, Orlando and Ankara. The movement’s continued violence even after the demise of its transnational state in 2017 suggests resiliency. The IS’s ascent is unequalled among jihadist organizations. Its June 2014 caliphate creation satisfies an extremist aspiration that has endured since Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk’s 1924 abolition of the Ottoman Empire. Such a desire was considered a long-term goal by virtually all jihadists. Based on his formation of a transnational jihadist state IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (self- proclaimed as Caliph Ibrahim) controversially demanded the loyalty of the Muslim world and urged their emigration [hijrah] to his caliphate.6 Though its leadership of the Islamic extremist movement is contested by the Taliban and its Al Qaeda (AQ) allies, the IS is the world’s most preeminent jihadist organization. The group’s threat to the international order transcends all other terror networks including AQ. Its proto-jihadist state eclipsed the nineteenth-century Sudanese Mahdist regime that also threatened Western interests. Its policy of baqiya wa tatamaddad [remaining and expanding] drove it to conquer territories in pursuit of its state-building project.7 This book analyzes the IS within a comparative framework of past jihadist experiments. Modern jihadism is notable for its failures making IS’s state-building project puzzling. The Islamist record in the 1980s and 1990s is especially dismal with jihadist movements in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Algeria defeated by security services. What accounts for IS’s success in light of these debacles and will the IS’s movement endure? These two questions shape this study. By employing a comparative framework the book overcomes the limitations of singular studies of terror movements. Though rich in theoretical and empirical detail, books by William McCants, Loretta Napoleoni, Charles Lister, Patrick Cockburn, Michael Weiss, J. M. Berger and Jessica Stern offer us an important snapshot of IS without putting its development within a larger comparative context.8 Works by Daniel Byman and Jason Burke are limited to a comparative assessment of AQ, the IS and their affiliates without putting them into a deeper framework.9 It neither effectively explains the resiliency and growing brutality of jihadist insurgency. A comparative model offers a richer canvass for exploration of why IS succeeded and others failed. The IS’s accomplishments, moreover, may be connected to previous failures. The network’s adaptive strategy compensates for the shortcomings that have impaired past jihadist insurgencies. Evidence