Syrian War-Islamic State (ISIS) Creation Timeline

Unpleasant incidents are happening in Iraq on those days: mass killing, genocide, and displacement of thousands of Iraqis from their homes by a terrorist group calls itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham or ISIS. The latter emerged as the most radical group that shows no mercy to anyone who stands in its way. The strong impact of its crimes has pushed people from around the globe to search from more information about this group and not rely only on what the media is portraying. This paper will help people who are interested in enriching their knowledge about ISIS to know more about it. It will shed the light on the origin and the root of ISIS; besides, it will incorporate the main causes that helped ISIS to rise and triumph in a very short time. Moreover, it will discuss the ideology and the goals of this group, and if they are distinct from the other Jihadist movements, and finally, it will demonstrate the elements of its power and the impact of its emergence on minorities in Iraq.

African Journal of Law, Political Research and Administration, 2024

The origins of ISIS were traced to the Arab Spring that created instability in the Middle East. This instability was exacerbated by the American-led coalition's invasion of Iraq in 2003, prompted by the 9/11 attacks. The paper aims to have an overview of the origin and goals of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the strategies employed by the U.S. and Allied Forces to make ISIS fall. A systematic literature review approach was adopted to review the selected literature. ISIS was formed out of various militant groups in the country whose goal is to establish an Islamic caliphate governed by strict Sharia law. The goal of ISIS was to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq, Syria, and beyond with a caliph as the leader of the territories, thereby eradicating state borders and governments they deemed to be illegitimate. This caliphate is to be governed by strict Sharia law. This analysis delves into the strategies used by the US-led coalition to reclaim territories from ISIS. These strategies include military strategies, economic strategies, political strategies, and social strategies. It was, therefore, recommended that to combat ISIS's ideology effectively, the United States may need to collaborate more with Muslim clerics all over the world to promote interpretations of the Quran that counter radicalization in Islam.

With its multi-pronged assault across central and northern Iraq in the past few years, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) has taken over from the al-Qa'ida organization founded by Osama bin Laden as the most powerful and effective extreme jihadi group in the world.ISIS now controls or can operate with impunity in a great stretch of territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, making it militarily the most successful jihadi movement ever. Lack of government effectiveness and the inflow of large number of arms from the conflicts nearby had a huge impact on the success of ISIS. This paper tries to explain the role illegal arms had on the sudden rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

Small Arms Survey - Dispatch n°4, 2014

Key findings of the Dispatch include the following: - Recruiting networks outside Syria do not appear to be structured. Instead, a largely bottom-up voluntary recruitment and routing process is in place. - Foreign fighters in Syria are most concerned with the political context of their home countries set in a regional perspective. The special place of Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria) in Islamic doctrine and the fight against the Syrian government’s injustices are lesser motivations. - ISIS’s strength should not be overestimated. While it has some comparative advantages, it does not maximize them, or they are outweighed by its weaknesses.

Alternatives. Turkish Journal of International Relations, 2015

Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) currently controls vast territories in Iraq and Syria with estimated population up to 5 million people. In June 2014, ISIS made a move to conquer Sunni areas of Iraq in provinces like Ninawa, Salah ad-Din, and al-Anbar. Until May 2015, there had been no significant military success combating ISIS. This paper argues that renewed Sunni insurgency in Iraq was indeed brewing for several years. ISIS campaign is described within the framework of the concept of insurgency. The text provides a comprehensive narrative of ISIS' and its organizational predecessors' insurgency in Iraq and Syria in the period of 2003-2015. As a conceptual background it utilizes a lifespan of insurgencies that argues that each insurgency must pass from proto-insurgency to large scale insurgency phase, and finally to a " conventional stage " when insurgency is strong enough to meet counterinsurgent in open battlefield. A lifespan of ISIS insurgency indeed reached tipping point and entered " conventional stage " in June 2014 when it assumed control over key Sunni areas of Iraq.

isara solutions, 2017

ISIS is regarded as the largest contemporary terrorist threat to global security. The aim of the paper is to provide an in-depth study of ISIS history, and it's Ideology. The Paper examines how ISIS emerged and rose in the region. The paper proposes that ISIS is a particular case of a radical community born from the connection of an ideological narrative, and a process of networking.

The Arab Spring is a social movement triggered by a complex set of social, political and economic factors. Despite the initial success of the Arab Spring in ousting some of the bureaucratic-authoritarian status-quo oriented regimes, mass mobilization of people could not oust all dictatorships and introduce meaningful reforms toward more democratization in the region. Worse, the mass protests that started as part of the Arab Spring later deteriorated into utter chaos and even civil war in some parts of the region. With the disappearance of state authority in those places, sub-state actors gained ground, challenging the stability and order that were once provided by authoritarian regimes through coercion. The IS’s sudden expansion has mainly resulted from large scale instability in Iraq and Syria and the disappearance of nation-state borders between the two states. The IS, which emerged as a sub-state actor, is currently in the process of becoming a proto state. Thus, this paper has two simultaneous research goals. The first is to establish the link between lack of institutionalization of the Arab Spring and its failure to bring about positive and meaningful political change in the region with the power vacuum created in the region and subsequent emergence of sub-state actors and groups like the AlQaeda in Iraq and the IS (Islamic State) in Iraq and Syria. The second is to study and evaluate the emergence and growth of the IS in conjunction with the deteriorating security situation in Iraq and Syria, and how the international involvement with the IS might have shaped the tactics and the course of action that the IS has taken since the IS captured the city of Mosul in June 2014, shocking the whole world. Assessment of the IS’s military, economic and political prospects will also be provided in the concluding section. Keywords: The Arab Spring, the IS (Islamic State), Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, Turkish Foreign Policy on the Middle East, American Foreign Policy on the Middle East.

The Syrian uprising began as a secular, nationalist struggle in 2011 but gradually devolved into a vortex of sectarian warfare with more than 200,000 dead and another 10 million people displaced. Amid the chaos, the radical Sunni Islamist groups Ahrar al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the Islamic State became the most prominent in the conflict. This thesis explores why and how the groups emerged in Syria, rose to power, and proliferated to unprecedented levels by tracing the progression of the Syrian conflict through three cycles of contestation: protest, insurgency, and civil war. Combining elements from social movement, insurgency, and radicalization theories as well as civil war literature, this thesis dissects the radical Islamist ideology, the institutional legacies from prior struggles, and the role of external sponsors and places each in the context of the Syrian conflict. History has proven that the radical Islamists fighting in Syria today are the next generation of leaders in the global jihad movement. Understanding their rise to power provides crucial insight to our future enemies. This thesis seeks to go beyond a recitation of facts and links multiple frameworks with the rise of the most powerful radical Islamist groups in the Syrian conflict.

The Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS, emerged as one of the deadliest terrorist organisations in the globe in the recent years. The organisation grew by leaps and bounds through the effective execution of modern warfare tactics such as media, violence and drug trafficking. Their effective propagation of violent tactics was one of the main reasons for their rise. This fame and rise allowed them to expand their activities to other parts of the world. This paper aims to analyse the rise of ISIS within a short time span and its consequent downfall leading to lose its grip on important fronts. The paper also details the efforts of international powers along with the regional forces in bringing a definitive and logical end to this terrorist outfit. Keywords: Iraq, Islamic State, Syria