1. 21/03/2016 3:02 pmIraq must be united against ISIS | Herald Sun
Page 1 of 3http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/iraq-must-be-united-against-isis/story-fni0ffsx-1226957907818
Iraq must be united against ISIS
The horrible brutality and effectiveness of ISIS’s rapid march through northwestern
Iraq reinforces the organisation’s propaganda as a mysterious and terrifying force.
AND so it begins. After a decade of leading an insurgency that has witnessed a
sharp spike in violence over the past two years, ISIS is now on the verge of
achieving its goal of establishing a caliphate in eastern Syria and northern Iraq.
If it can maintain a stable hold on the territory that it occupies, particularly the recent
gains of key cities like Mosul, then Iraq is no longer facing an insurgency but rather a
civil war. The distinction is critical, because the way in which civil wars are drawn to
successful conclusions depends as much on politics as on military might.
It will be clear only in hindsight whether this past week marks the beginning of the
Iraqi civil war — but what is already clear is that the defeat of ISIS, or at the very
least its containment, depends upon Nouri al-Maliki’s Iraq Government building
consensus with its Kurdish population in Iraq’s northeast, with the Sunnis in Baghdad
and its surrounds and within the occupied Sunni Triangle now occupied by ISIS. In
other words, while it is natural that the world’s attention has turned towards ISIS, it is
a mistake to focus simply upon this insurgent militia-cum-terrorist group.
The horrible brutality and effectiveness of ISIS’s rapid march through northwestern

2. 21/03/2016 3:02 pmIraq must be united against ISIS | Herald Sun
Page 2 of 3http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/iraq-must-be-united-against-isis/story-fni0ffsx-1226957907818
Iraq reinforces the organisation’s propaganda as a mysterious and terrifying force.
We would do well to reflect on what we have forgotten and recognise that ISIS is the
current incarnation of what we knew as al-Qaeda in Iraq, formed in 2004 in the wake
of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Led by the notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
the organisation styled itself as the Islamic State in Iraq — ISI. In July last year, under
current leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISI rebranded itself as the Islamic state in Iraq
and Syria/the Levant (ISIS or ISIL).
Drawing upon the imagery of historical Islamic texts that speak of an Armageddon
confrontation in “greater Syria” (the Levant) and upon romantic longings for an
imagined golden age in which the region was under the control of a single caliphate,
ISIS has used the opportunity of growing Sunni disaffection with the Maliki regime in
Iraq and the horrible chaos of civil war in Syria to control territory on a scale that al-
Qaeda could but dream of.
Baghdadi is formidable guerilla-general and terror mastermind, commanding as
many as 12,000 soldiers led by a core of seasoned al-Qaeda fighters. In July last
year he led a series of audacious raids on half a dozen prisons in Iraq holding the
worst of al-Qaeda’s militants, including the central Baghdad prison formerly known
as Abu Ghraib.
Baghdadi’s fighters blasted through tall prison walls with suicide bombers and
stormed in with assault weapons shooting locks of jail cells and breaking out
hundreds of al-Qaeda’s toughest. In 2013 he also made a play to take over the major
al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabat al-Nusra. On that last point he failed and al-Qaeda
declared that ISIS would no longer be recognised as an affiliate.
BUT in the process he gained a reputation for his forces as being even more hardline
than al-Qaeda itself. Harder than hardcore, ISIS became tremendously attractive to
foreign fighters rushing to Syria from Europe, Australia and Indonesia, with as many
as 3000 swelling its ranks, making ISIS an immediate threat to us and our region.
Part of Baghdadi’s rejection by al-Qaeda, however, goes back to the weakness that
had marked al-Qaeda in Iraq from the beginning. Leaders Al-Zawahiri and bin Ladin
had always been critical of the al-Zarqawi group because of its excessive brutality
and its obsession with attacking the Shi’ite majority in Iraq.
ISIS is never going to win the support of the Iraqi Shi’ites and for that reason is
unlikely to attempt to move on Shi’ite majority Baghdad and southern Iraq. The real
question, however, is whether it can maintain the support it currently enjoys in the

3. 21/03/2016 3:02 pmIraq must be united against ISIS | Herald Sun
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Sunni Triangle to the north of Baghdad.
It’s achilles heel is that it quickly wears out its welcome in the communities it
occupies. If it is smart it will work on delivering health, food, education and other
social services and building support but its penchant for brutal moral policing is likely
to work against it.
The key now is whether the Maliki Government can build enough support among
Kurds and Sunnis to be able to claw back some of the territory that ISIS has taken.
Tehran may well come to the assistance of Maliki, sending some of its crack special
forces units into the fight against ISIS in the north — but it will also find common
purpose with Washington in calling the Maliki regime to account and forcing it to face
the mistakes it made.
The only way forward in defeating the monstrous force that is ISIS lies not just in
confronting it on the battlefield but on undermining the social support that it currently
enjoys from disaffected communities in both Iraq and Syria.
ISIS would prefer that we focus instead on the horrible mystique of its masked
warriors but it would be a mistake, as ever in dealing with terrorists, to give them
what they want.
Prof Greg Barton is the Director, International, of the Global Terrorism Research
Centre at Monash University