Apocalypse Now: Islamic State's Real Strategic Goal

Forty-five people burned alive in western Iraq. Twenty-one Egyptian Coptic Christians beheaded by the sea in Libya. Five Western aid workers and journalists executed, one Jordanian pilot incinerated, and two possibly related terrorist attacks in Western Cities. All in addition to the tens of thousands  of victims killed or forced into displacement by fighting in northern Syria and Iraq. If Islamic State is seeking to bring about signs of End Times, they are doing a pretty good job. Increasingly, policymakers are forced to take seriously the Islamic State’s self-declared mission: to bring about the Day of Judgment by sowing chaos in the world in the lead-up to the return of the Mahdi.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride Toyotas, who knew?

The only thing more terrifying than a power-hungry Islamic State that uses scripture as a pretext for brutality is one that actually believes in it. While Al Qaeda’s stated goals were largely ones of retribution against the West and its allies for perceived injuries to the Muslim-majority world, the Islamic State's doctrine has confounded policymakers due to its seemingly earnest belief that the apocalypse – and thus paradise for true believers – is at hand, and indeed can be pushed along by worldly deeds. Drawing upon Koranic texts that suggest the End Times will be signified by a battle between the armies of “Islam” and “Rome” in northern Syria (in the town Dabiq, which Islamic State already controls and has named its journal after), the Islamic State strategy of directly goading the United States into intervening in Syria and Iraq becomes much more rational. By drawing the US into battle, Islamic State would have its “Army of Rome.” And defeat of this army is just the first phase of the apocalypse.

Obama’s Foreign Policy: A Legacy of Interventionism

My colleague Colin Wolfgang recently wrote about Pres. Obama’s speech last Wednesday, in which the president announced that US airstrikes would extend from Iraq into Syria to combat the growing threat of the terrorist group ISIS(/IS/ISIL/who-cares-what-they-call-themselves-they’re-nuts). While many, including Mr. Wolfgang, point to the speech as a turning point in the Obama administration away from isolationism, it in fact continues the Obama White House foreign policy that has been in place since he took office: namely, Pres. Obama’s policy of small- to medium-scale military intervention by another name.

Whether you call it “police action,” “counterterrorism,” “targeted airstrikes,” or any of the other Obama administration euphemisms, this White House has pursued interventionist tactics in almost every global hotspot where it has encountered national security threats. The supposed difference from the George W. Bush administration has been the absence of “boots on the ground,” despite the fact that there will now be nearly 2,000 American “advisors” and who-knows-how-many special operations and CIA agents in Iraq. While large-scale military operations such as the Bush-era wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been wound down, the United States is far from an isolationist nation.

It's Just Africa: Boko Haram Sweeps Nigeria

In the months since The Global Atlas last wrote about Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Sunni jihadist terrorist group has swept the countryside in full force, with leader Abubaker Shekau declaring an Islamic caliphate in Gwoza, Borno state. This is the second such caliphate to be declared after another jihadist group, Islamic State, similarly declared an Islamic caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria. The extent of the territory claimed by Boko Haram remains in flux with a stronghold in Borno state, but Boko Haram is moving at an alarming pace in expanding the number of cities and towns under its control.

Originally engaging in selective killings and guerrilla style hit-and-run attacks, Boko Haram has shifted gears, capturing and holding territory as part of the ‘Islamic caliphate’ as well as stepping up the degree of violence in its attacks, to the extent of essentially going on killing sprees in captured territory. The marked increase in violence has prompted an exodus of the civilian population in the twin cities of Gamboru and Ngala in northeastern Nigeria into neighboring Cameroon. Among those who have been killed were Gamboru’s highest Muslim cleric and the head of the traders’ union.  In the past 24 hours, the son of Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo has been injured, shot by militants in Baza as the Nigerian army battled to stop Boko Haram’s southward expansion and recapture key towns in Adamawa state. The Obasanjo family has a long-standing commitment to a united Nigeria, and Olusegun Obasanjo fought in the Nigerian military in the late 1960s civil war to prevent the southeast region of the country from seceding to form the new state of Biafra.  

Rewriting History in the Middle East: The Yazidis [No Longer] in Iraq

State borders in the Middle East have been in flux for millennia, with the strongest ruler of the day vying for control over fertile land, trade routes, and major water sources. Today, the region is populated with many countries whose modern-day borders were arbitrarily delineated by the British-French Sykes-Picot Agreement, whose peoples have been in a constant struggle to reclaim what they believe is rightfully their land. Much of a state’s validity comes from being able to show that they have the oldest claim to the region, so what happens when a people’s physical life, when their physical history is deleted?

What happens when a city is blown to smithereens by explosive charges, as with mosques and churches in Mosul, instead of falling to salvageable ruins? What happens when an entire people is removed from their ancestral homeland, fleeing to a neighboring country, leaving no trace of their existence in the former land? Or, in the grand scheme of political and strategic interests, is the individual human story irrelevant?

The Road Back to Baghdad Part 3: The Reckoning

Early this morning US time, two 500-pound, laser-guided bombs were dropped by US forces on Islamic State (IS) targets outside of Erbil, Iraq. Overnight, the Obama administration shifted its policy of non-military intervention in the ever-expanding conflict with the Islamic State, citing both humanitarian and strategic concerns. Since June 2014, Islamic State has made several alarming advances in Iraq and Syria, claiming major cities such as Fallujah, Ramadi, and Mosul, and re-engaging Syrian government and rebel forces across the border.

Islamic State positions. Courtesy NY Times.

The capture of key territory in both countries has reinforced the extremist group’s financial and military resources, and in IS strongholds, a strict form of Islamic law is being enforced. The US airstrikes come on the heels of the displacement of tens of thousands of Yazidi Iraqis, whose religion has been deemed “devil worship” by IS and who were warned to “convert or die.” In his statement last night, US Pres. Barack Obama indicated that the decision to expand humanitarian and military aid was based on fears that “acts of genocide” may soon be carried out against Iraqi Yazidis, approximately 40,000 of whom are trapped without food or water on Sinjar Mountain in Kurdish Iraq.