The death of the caliphate

[Cow Poke]

The death of the caliphate: Why ISIS’s huge territorial setbacks in Syria and Iraq are so devastating to the terrorist group

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Now that Mosul, the seat of the so-called "caliphate" in Iraq, has fallen, ISIS has a problem: It is a self-avowedly Islamic State without a state. And although the group retains its hold on Raqqa in Syria, where it's currently encircled by U.S.-backed Syrian forces, it's likely that it will relinquish that former stronghold too by the end of the year.

It is hard to exaggerate the scale of the problem for the group. ISIS's claim to lead the global jihadist movement rested exclusively on its territorial successes in Iraq and Syria. At the height of its powers in 2015, it commanded an area of land the size of Britain, attracting around 30,000 fighters from at least 86 countries. No other jihadist group had annexed that amount of territory before, nor recruited as many foreign citizens to its ranks, including around 5,000 from Europe.

In mid-2014, the group seemed unstoppable, rampaging across Syria and Iraq at breathtaking speed and with a violent ruthlessness that made even Al Qaeda, the group out of which it emerged and sought to eclipse, seem restrained.

Rarely a week would pass in those heady days of ISIS ascendancy without the publication of some wildly improbable story about the latest schoolgirl, doctor, grandfather or male model who had exchanged their enviable lives in the West for new ones in the caliphate.....

[rogue06]

May it Rest In Pieces

[Sparko]

Hopefully this time we will finish the job, instead of just declaring "we are done" and pulling out. That is what let ISIS come into being in the first place. Thanks Obama.

[One Bad Pig]

Hopefully this time we will finish the job, instead of just declaring "we are done" and pulling out. That is what let ISIS come into being in the first place. Thanks Obama.

We're not on the front lines this time, but we are providing significant support.

[Roy]

Hopefully this time we will finish the job, instead of just declaring "we are done" and pulling out. That is what let ISIS come into being in the first place. Thanks Obama.

It was GWB, not Obama.

"The U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement was a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States, signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. It established that U.S. combat forces would withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and all U.S. combat forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011."

[Sparko]

It was GWB, not Obama.

"The U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement was a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States, signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. It established that U.S. combat forces would withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and all U.S. combat forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011."

Yeah but Obama is the one who made it so instead of extending it or making sure we kept a presence in the area. He was quite proud of it too.

[Cow Poke]

It was GWB, not Obama.

"The U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement was a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States, signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. It established that U.S. combat forces would withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and all U.S. combat forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011."

wow

Perhaps you forgot how many times Obama hamstrung our guys by changing the rules of engagement, and by broadcasting to our enemy (the JayVee Team ) exactly what we were going to do, and not going to do. He was pretty much coaching their team.

[Roy]

wow

Perhaps you forgot how many times Obama hamstrung our guys by changing the rules of engagement, and by broadcasting to our enemy (the JayVee Team ) exactly what we were going to do, and not going to do. He was pretty much coaching their team.

wow indeed. None of that refutes the fact that GWB initiated the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Quit channelling LPOT.

[Roy]

Yeah but Obama is the one who made it so instead of extending it or making sure we kept a presence in the area. He was quite proud of it too.

Obama... Obama... Obama...

GWB signed the order to withdraw US troops, and bears some responsibility for the consequences.

Blaming Obama and only Obama is partisanship carried to insanity.

[Starlight]

It was GWB, not Obama.

"The U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement was a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States, signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. It established that U.S. combat forces would withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and all U.S. combat forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011."

True, but more important I think are the failures of the GWB administration that caused ISIS to come into existence in the first place:

The country of Iraq is roughly 2/3rds Shia and 1/3rd Sunni Muslims. Until the US invasion in 2003, the military and governments in power in Iraq had been controlled mostly by Sunni Muslims - i.e. minority groups had actually been in power. At times, e.g. under Saddam, pretty brutal oppression of the majority Shias had been performed with severe military force. Into that came the US, and tossed the minority group out of power in the country, and instituted democracy which meant the Shia majority group won the elections and gained control of the government and officially of the military. Predictably the Sunni minority weren't too happy about this and their people in the military grabbed what the could of the weapons and went to ground with them.

It was at this stage that the GWB administration could have / should have acted to solve potential problems by splitting the country up into a few regions and giving the local peoples of each region (Shia, Sunni, Kurds) control of their own regions. But the GWB administration ignored the problems. Predictably the new Shia majority government was really nasty and oppressive to the Sunni minorities that had oppressed them previously. This spiraled out of control toward the end of the GWB administration, and when Obama came to power his people did spot the problem and ordered the new Shia-led Iraqi government to tone it down, but it was really too little too late and the damage was already done. Fed up with their persecution at the hands of the new Shia-led government, the Sunni provinces of Iraq rebelled, their various military factions and religious factions banding together out of sheer necessity for survival and announced their independence from Iraq. They sought common cause with those of their own religious factions across the border in Syria, and those areas rebelled against the Syrian government, thus becoming the new Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Thus, IMO, the rise of ISIS lies absolutely squarely at the door of the GWB administration. If they hadn't attacked Iraq, ISIS would never have existed. If they had split Iraq up after they invaded, ISIS as we know it would never have existed (there would be a Sunni nation in that area but the extremists wouldn't have risen to power). Or if the GWB administration had insisted on protecting the human rights of the minority Sunni people and stopped their new democratically-elected Shia-government from persecuting the Sunnis, then ISIS would never have existed. Instead we got the worst of all worlds: Where the Sunni were so persecuted they felt they had no choice but to rebel and declare their provinces independence, where the military ex-leaders of Saddam's Iraq who had the weapons within the Sunni provinces felt forced to make common cause with fundamentalist extremists they despised, and the conditions were thus set for fundamental extremists to rise to power in what the Sunnis of the area saw as a fight for their land and their survival... leaving Obama's America with almost no choice except to bomb the people of these provinces (who, for the most part, just wanted to govern their own land) back to the stone age because the ISIS regime that was in power over them was so extreme.

And this was all pretty obvious and predictable to those who knew the area. As Dick Cheney explained in 1994:

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

20 years after speaking those words in an interview, Cheney had taken over Iraq, and his own words proved true: "if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west"... the west of Iraq split off and joined with part of Syria to become a new Iraqo-Syrian state calling itself ISIS. If only someone had warned Cheney that might happen!

[Cow Poke]

wow indeed. None of that refutes the fact that GWB initiated the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Quit channelling LPOT.

I forgot --- Obama - Chosen One --- GWB - Spawn of Satan.

Quit channeling JimL.


And if you're going to accuse me of something, at least SPELL IT CORRECTLY!!!!

[Charles]

I forgot --- Obama - Chosen One --- GWB - Spawn of Satan.

Quit channeling JimL.


And if you're going to accuse me of something, at least SPELL IT CORRECTLY!!!!

wow

[Cow Poke]

wow

If you spell it upside down it's MOM!

[Charles]

If you spell it upside down it's MOM!

I am aware of that. Though I am among those who sometimes make spelling errors since I do not write in Enlish very often.

[One Bad Pig]

It was GWB, not Obama.

"The U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement was a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States, signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. It established that U.S. combat forces would withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and all U.S. combat forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011."

You think that Iraq would somehow have agreed to US forces being in-country indefinitely? Any agreement would need to have had a deadline, as that one did. Obama's State Department didn't even try to negotiate an extension.