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Fawaz A. Gerges
A History of ISIS (2016)
Chapter 2 — pp.78-83
[1] An important letter from bin Laden's deputy, Zawahiri, addressed to Zarqawi was intercepted by the United States when, in
the summer of 2005, they got hold of an envoy of Zawahiri's. The document, dated July 9, 2005, helps shed further light on the
thinking of bin Laden and Zawahiri and highlights the major differences and disagreements between Al Qaeda Central and
Zarqawi's branch. It is worth highlighting its major points. At first, Zawahiri showers Zarqawi with praise for his courage, his
willingness to stand up to Islam's enemies, and his two-pronged strategy— removing the Americans from Iraq and establishing
an Islamic emirate in Iraq, or a caliphate, if possible.
[2] The tone changes, however, when he reminds the Jordanian chief that "the strongest weapon" in the jihadists' arsenal "is
popular support from the Muslim masses in Iraq, and the surrounding Muslim countries. So, we must maintain this support as
best we can, and we should strive to increase it." In the absence of popular support, Zawahiri argues, the jihadist movement
would be crushed; therefore, the challenge is to co-opt the Muslim masses and not alienate them, an implicit criticism of
Zarqawi's actions: "And it doesn't appear that the Mujahedeen, much less the al-Qaida in the Land of Two Rivers [Iraq], will lay
claim to governance without the Iraqi people. Therefore, I stress again to you and to all your brothers the need to direct the
political action equally with the military action, by the alliance, cooperation and gathering of all leaders of opinion and
influence in the Iraqi arena. I repeat the warning against separating from the masses, whatever the danger."
[3]The crux of Zawahiri's letter unpacks Zarqawi's sectarian road map, which is, in Zawahiri's opinion, highly counterproductive for gaining the hearts and minds of the umma. Although Zawahiri says he agrees with Zarqawi's vision of the Shia as
enemies, he warns him that the majority of Muslims do not comprehend this inevitable confrontation and could not even
imagine it. He cautions Zarqawi that ordinary Muslims who admire his jihad in Iraq oppose the attacks on the Shia, particularly
their mosques and especially the mausoleum of the Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib Mosque. Zawahiri also urges his junior partner to
desist from attacking the Shia and Iranian interests, because scores of jihadists and their families were either in detention in Iran
or under house arrest after they escaped to Iran following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The implication is that
Zarqawi's confrontation with the Shias and Shia-dominated Iran would trigger a counterresponse by Iran against the jihadists, a
point that shows a policy of coexistence between Al Qaeda and Iran. Instead of directly confronting Zarqawi and ordering him
to desist from attacking the Shias, he poses a series of questions that he says are being asked by jihadists and their supporters
about the correctness of Zarqawi's conflict with the Shias:
[4] Is it something that is unavoidable? Or, is it something that can be put off until the force of the mujahed movement in Iraq
gets stronger? And if some of the operations were necessary for self-defense, were all of the operations necessary? Or, were
there some operations that weren't called for? And is the opening of another front now in addition to the front against the
Americans and the government a wise decision? Or, does this conflict with the Shia lift the burden from the Americans by
diverting the mujahedeen to the Shia, while the Americans continue to control matters from afar? And if the attacks on Shia
leaders were necessary to put a stop to their plans, then why were there attacks on ordinary Shia? Won't this lead to
reinforcing false ideas in their minds, even as it is incumbent on us to preach the call of Islam to them and explain and
communicate to guide them to the truth? And can the mujahedeen kill all of the Shia in Iraq? Has any Islamic state in history
ever tried that? And why kill ordinary Shia considering that they are forgiven because of their ignorance? And what loss will
befall us if we did not attack the Shia? And do the brothers forget that we have more than one hundred prisoners—many of
whom are from the leadership who are wanted in their countries— in the custody of the Iranians? And even if we attack the
Shia out of necessity, then why do you announce this matter and make it public, which compels the Iranians to take counter
measures? And do the brothers forget that both we and the Iranians need to refrain from harming each other at this time in
which the Americans are targeting us?
[5] To lessen the blow, Zawahiri concludes on a personal note, saying that he had himself learned the hard way to avoid reaction
and to keep focused on the key target: "And this is a lifetime's experience, and I will not conceal from you the fact that we suffered a lot through following this policy of reaction, then we suffered a lot another time because we tried to return to the original
line. Zawahiri also warns Zarqawi that his beheading and slaughtering of hostages is bad propaganda that only plays into the
hands of their enemies. He reminds him that the propaganda battleground is as important as the military battlefield and that the
jihadist movement is in a race for the hearts and minds of the umma: "And we can kill the captives by bullet. That would
achieve that which is sought after without exposing ourselves to the questions and answering to doubts. We don't need this.
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[6] Ironically, Zawahiri concludes his letter by imploring Zarqawi to provide Al Qaeda Central with a payment of $100,000
because the United States had cut off many of its sources of income, a request that shows an important shift in the balance of
power between the parent organization and the Zarqawi group. The correspondence between the leaders of the two groups,
along with leaks and public statements by their respective supporters, exposed a conceptual and operational rift between the two
camps that they had carefully tried to keep under wraps. But with Zarqawi's continuous escalation of violence and savagery, the
signs of estrangement and discord became hard to dissimulate. Zarqawi's formal response to bin Laden and Zawahiri's pleas
came in an audiotape speech a few months later in which he declared "total war" not only against the Shias but also against the
Sunnis who took part in the newly reconstituted Iraqi governments' His declaration only formalized what his suicide squads had
been doing through the shedding of blood. In his brazen speech in September 2005, Zarqawi stated that his "organization has
decided to declare a total war against the Rafidite [rejectionist, a derisive term for the Shia] Shi'ites throughout Iraq, wherever
they may be," and "whoever is proven to belong to the Pagan [National] Guard, to the police, or to the army, or whoever is
proven to be a Crusader collaborator or spy—he shall be killed. Furthermore, his house shall either be destroyed or burned
down, after the women and children are taken out of it." He even threatened to slaughter Sunni tribes if they collaborated with
the US-led coalition or the nascent Iraqi regime. "There are only two camps—the camp of truth and its followers, and the camp
of falsehood and its Shi'ites. You must choose in which of the two trenches you lie," Zarqawi concluded.
ZARQAWI'S GENOCIDAL ANTI-SHIA IDEOLOGY
[7] Zarqawi was a sectarian psychopath who harbored a genocidal worldview against the Shias. In a policy memo to bin Laden
and Zawahiri intercepted by Kurdish forces and published by the US State Department in February 2004, Zarqawi depicts the
Shias as an existential enemy and calls on religion and history to validate his claim: "The Qur'an has told us that the
machinations of the hypocrites, the deceit of the fifth column, and the cunning of those of our fellow countrymen whose
tongues speak honeyed words but whose hearts are those of devils in the bodies of men— these are where the disease lies, these
are the secret of our distress, these are the rat of the dike. "They are the enemy. Beware of them. Fight them. Shaykh Ibn
Taymiyya spoke with truth and honesty when he said this." He continues by calling the Shias "the insurmountable obstacle, the
lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy, and the penetrating venom." Zarqawi belonged to a new
wave of Salafi-jihadists who are obsessed with identity politics and the struggle to purify Islam and Islamic lands of apostasy.
The Shias top their list of real and imagined enemies.
[8] In the memo Zarqawi explains that he relies on "Orientalists" to indict Shia Muslims for treachery, a fifth column within the
Muslim body politic that allegedly impeded the emancipation of Europe by Muslim armies. It is useful to quote Zarqawi at
length here to give the reader a glimpse of his thinking:
One of the Orientalists spoke truth when he said that had the [Shia] Safavid state not existed we in Europe would today be
reading the Qur'an just as the Algerian Berber does. Yes, the hosts of the Ottoman state stopped at the gates of Vienna, and
those fortifications almost collapsed before them [to permit] Islam to spread under the auspices of the sword of glory and
jihad all across Europe. But these armies were forced to return and withdraw to the rear because the army of the Safavid state
had occupied Baghdad, demolished its mosques, killed its people, and captured its women and wealth. The armies returned to
defend the sanctuaries and people of Islam. Fierce fighting raged for about two centuries and did not end until the strength
and reach of the Islamic state had waned and the [Islamic] nation had been put to sleep, then to wake up to the drums of the
invading Westerner.
[9] From the beginning, Zarqawi's strategic goal was to trigger all-out Sunni-Shia Islamic war and mobilize and co-opt Sunni
opinion. In the policy brief, Zarqawi clearly reiterated that he prioritized the fight against the Shias and pledged to savagely
attack civilian and religious targets, thus provoking the Shias to retaliate against the Sunnis. This, he added, would wake the
Sunnis from their slumber and force them to join the war: "The solution that we see ... is for us to drag the Shias into the battle
because this is the only way to prolong the fighting between us and the infidels." Although the Americans represented an
archenemy, the Shias, according to Zarqawi, posed a greater and a more destructive threat to the umma: "They have befriended
and supported the Americans and stood in their ranks against the mujahidin. They have spared and are still sparing no effort to
put an end to the jihad and the mujahidin": Zarqawi excommunicated not only the Shias and minorities in general but also rival
Sunnis, and he justified collateral killing of Muslims "in order to ward off a greater evil, namely, the evil of suspending jihad;
according to a statement by his group.
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[10] It is worth stressing that Baghdadi's perception of the Shias shares a similar worldview to the generation of jihadists who
consider the Shias not only heretics but also a "dagger" in the heart of the Islamic world, and both go as far as to blame the
Shias for the decline of Islamic civilization, drawing heavily on the inflammatory statements and edicts by the controversial
radical cleric Shaykh Ibn Taymiyya, a twelfth-century ultraconservative Islamic scholar who advocated a puritanical interpretation of Sunni Islam and had significant influence on contemporary Wahhabism, Salafism, and jihadism. Ibn Taymiyya is known
to have depicted the Shias as "more evil and dangerous than the Kharijis [literally: "Outsiders," the Kharijis were a group of
dissenters who, after the Prophet's death, attempted to sow doubts in the then-fragile umma]," an indication of an irrational and
visceral hatred.
Chapter Seven ― excerpts
ISIS AND THE CLASH OF IDENTITIES
[11] Of all variables empowering ISIS and like-minded Salafi-jihadi groups in Iraq and Syria, the anti-Shia, anti-Iranian factor
tops the list. ISIS has successfully developed a narrative rooted in a pan-Sunni identity that is intrinsically opposed to what it
portrays as an aggressive and expansionist Shia ideology that has infiltrated and is engulfing the Islamic world. ISIS's anti-Shia,
anti-Iranian program is the most powerful card it has played in Iraq and Syria, and it has so far proved to be a potent recruiting
tool. Salafi-jihadists have exploited a creeping communal rift that deepened and widened after the US-led invasion of Iraq in
2003. This dispute spiraled out of control after the Arab Spring was aborted and after Syria and Iraq descended into war and
chaos. It is this clash of sub-Islamic identities, a mini intra-Islamic war, that has fueled ISIS's spectacular growth. After the fall
of Mosul in June 2014 and the declaration of the Islamic State, time and again the organization's spokespeople asserted their
leadership of the umma and Ahl al-Sunna (the global Muslim community) and dismissed existing and potential rivals to this
honor as pretenders. Baghdadi and his inner circle are severely critical for the leadership of Saudi Arabia, the historic birthplace
of Islam and a bastion and leader of Sunni Islam.
[12] In his few pronouncements after his appointment as the newly anointed caliph in the summer of 2014, Baghdadi presented
ISIS as the sole guardian of Sunni interests worldwide, not just in Iraq and Syria. He went on to accuse Saudi leaders of
forfeiting their responsibility to defend Sunni Islam. "The Arabian Peninsula's rulers have been exposed and disgraced and have
lost their supposed 'legitimacy:" said Baghdadi in a thirty-four-minute audio recording in May 2015. He has consistently called
on Saudis to rally around the Islamic State against their "apostate tyrannical rulers; who fail to defend the Sunni faith and
community against the Rafidah (a pejorative term for the Shia meaning "rejecters"). Only the caliphate will bring back to
Muslims "glory, honor, rights and leadership; Baghdadi preached. Bringing down Saudi Arabia would provide an opportunity
for Baghdadi to try to assert his authority over the Sunni community by ruling over one of the most important places of Sunni
Islam, solidifying his pan-Sunni caliphate. For ISIS, the politics of identity is a ladder that has enabled the group to climb to
new heights.
[13] Conceptually and operationally, there exist important differences between Al Qaeda Central and ISIS, even though they
belong to the same Salafi-jihadist family. Bin Laden and Zawa-hiri never wavered from viewing America as the real enemy and
consistently reminded their followers that "the focus should be on killing and fighting the American people and their representatives:' According to another cache of letters and documents seized from the Al Qaeda leader's hideaway and released by
American authorities in May 2015, bin Laden urged his deputies and lieutenants to avoid diverting jihad away from the far
enemy (the United States) to the near enemy (Middle Eastern rulers or the Shia)."We should stop operations against the army
and the police in all regions, especially Yemen," bin Laden wrote in one of the newly revealed documents, imploring Al Qaeda
affiliates to only defend themselves if they are attacked. He argued that the most effective means to defeat Arab and Muslim
rulers is to alter US foreign policy and level the playing field in the region. This could not be achieved, in bin Laden's view,
without systematically "striking America to force it to abandon these rulers and leave the Muslims alone:' It is clear that bin
Laden, Zawahiri, and other top deputies preferred to attack America and its European allies and avoid Muslim infighting.
"Uproot the obnoxious tree by concentrating on its American trunk:' bin Laden wrote in a letter urging Al Qaeda affiliates in
North Africa to follow his advice. There was a strategic logic to bin Laden and Zawahiri's focus on the United States, which, in
their opinion, maintains the political status quo in the Middle East and North Africa. For them, the road to Cairo, Riyadh,
Algiers, and Jerusalem will be open after the expulsion of US influence from the region.
[14] Zawahiri's correspondence with Zarqawi, the founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, illustrated a conceptual dissonance in their
worldview. While Zawahiri urged his subordinate Zarqawi to attack the US coalition and desist from attacking the Shia and
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Iranian interests, Zarqawi doubled down on the Shia and by 2006, just before his death, had embroiled Iraq in civil war. In
contrast to bin Laden and Zawahiri, who prioritized the struggle against America, Zarqawi and his successors, particularly Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi, view the Shia and Iran as the primary enemy. In an interview on Al Jazeera, Joulani revealed that Zar-qawi
was the godfather of ISIS and had pioneered the shift in focus from the far enemy to the near enemy. According to Jou-lani,
Zarqawi consciously sucked Iran into Iraq's killing fields by repeatedly attacking the Shia. Ironically, Joulani, who fought
alongside Zarqawi in Iraq and became part of his inner circle, compared Zarqawi's strategy toward Iran to that of bin Laden's
toward the United States. According to Joulani, while Zarqawi sucked Iran into the shifting sands of Iraq, bin Laden sucked the
United States into the killing fields of Afghanistan and Iraq, a statement that perfectly contrasts the two jihadists' world-views.
[15] Zarqawi and Baghdadi (ISIS) are driven by a clash of identities between Sunni and Shia Islam, a conflict that fuels their
movement and provides them with recognition and acceptance among aggrieved Sunnis. Ethnically and religiously diverse
countries such as Syria and Iraq were particularly vulnerable to this kind of identity-driven conflict due to decades of
dictatorship and failed governance, a fact that was not lost on ISIS's planners. Therefore, the derailment of the Arab Spring, not
the Arab Spring itself, was a godsend to Salafi-jihadists, particularly ISIS.
William McCants
The Isis Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (2015)
(pp.145-159)
APOCALYPSE THEN AND NOW
[1] The French scholar of Muslim apocalypticism, Jean-Pierre Filiu, has argued that most modern Sunni Muslims viewed
apocalyptic thinking with suspicion before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. It was something the Shi'a or the conspiracyaddled fringe obsessed over, not right-thinking Sunnis. Sure, the Sunni fringe wrote books that mixed Muslim apocalyptic
villains in with UFOs, the Bermuda triangle, Nostradamus, and the prognostications of evangelical Christians, all to reveal the
hidden hand of the international Jew, the Antichrist, who cunningly shaped world events. But the books were commercial duds.
[2] The U.S. invasion of Iraq and the stupendous violence that followed dramatically increased the Sunni public's appetite for
apocalyptic explanations of a world turned upside down. A spate of bestsellers put the United States at the center of the End
Times drama, a new "Rome" careering throughout the region in a murderous stampede to prevent violence on its own shores.
The main antagonists of the End of Days, the Jews, were now merely supporting actors. Even conservative Sunni clerics who
had previously tried to tamp down messianic fervor couldn't help but conclude that "the triple union constituted by the
Antichrist, the Jews, and the new Crusaders" had joined forces "to destroy the Muslims."
[3] The Iraq war also changed apocalyptic discourse in the global jihadist movement. The languid apocalypticism of Osama bin
Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri now had to contend with the urgent apocalypticism of Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, the founder of alQaeda in Iraq, and his immediate successors. Iraq, the site of a prophesied bloodbath between true Muslims and false, was
engulfed in a sectarian civil war. As Zarqawi saw it, the Shi'a had united with the Jews and Christians under the banner of the
Antichrist to fight against the Sunnis. The Final Hour must be approaching, to be heralded by the rebirth of the caliphate, the
Islamic empire that had disappeared and whose return was prophesied. Because of the impending Final Hour, Zarqawi's
successor, al-Masri, had rushed to establish the Islamic State in 2006 and declare a commander of the faithful, the traditional
title of the caliph, supreme religious and political ruler of the early Islamic empire. The Islamic State was meant to be a
caliphate in all but name. Masri believed the caliphate had to be in place to fight for the Mahdi, the Muslim savior, who would
appear any day. The actual person of the caliph was an afterthought, someone practically plucked off the street. The world
wouldn't be around long enough for it to matter . . .
[4] Earlier messianic caliphates had done the same. The Islamic State's medieval heroes, the Abbasids, had swept to power on a
wave of apocalyptic fervor, and many of the early Abbasid caliphs had adopted apocalyptic titles like Mahdi. But the Final
Hour never quite came. A Sunni caliphate and a Shi'i caliphate that had both announced a Mahdi only to downplay the
apocalypse once in power. Although the messianic fervor has cooled in the Islamic State's leadership, the group's apocalyptic
rhetoric has intensified. References to the End Times fill Islamic State propaganda. It's a big selling point with foreign fighters,
who want to travel to the lands where the final battles of the apocalypse will take place. The civil wars raging in those countries
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today lend credibility to the prophecies. The Islamic State has stoked the apocalyptic fire. Its fighters died to capture the
militarily unimportant town of Dabiq, Syria, because it's mentioned in the prophecies. The Islamic State's English-language
magazine is named after the place. European fighters in the State have filmed themselves from the hillside overlooking the
town, explaining to other Europeans that they are living in the End Times.
[5] For Bin Laden's generation, the apocalypse wasn't a great recruiting pitch. Governments in the Middle East two decades ago
were more stable, and sectarianism was more subdued. It was better to recruit by calling to arms against corruption and tyranny
than against the Antichrist. Today, though, the apocalyptic recruiting pitch makes more sense. Titanic upheavals convulse the
region in the very places mentioned in the prophecies. Sunnis and Shi'a are at war, both appealing to their own versions of
prophecies to justify their politics.
This is not Bin Laden’s apocalypse . . .
HEARTS AND MINDS
[6] The Islamic State has deliberately provoked the anger of Muslims and non-Muslims alike with its online videos of
outrageous and carefully choreographed violence. It showcases the beheading of prisoners— something Zawahiri had expressly
warned against— and dumps enemy soldiers in mass graves while the camera is rolling. The State revels in gore and wants
everyone to know it. And yet it has been remarkably successful at recruiting fighters, capturing land, subduing its subjects, and
creating a state. Why?
[7] Because violence and gore work. We forget that this terrifying approach to state building has an impressive track record.
The pagan Mongols used it to great effect in the thirteenth century to conquer land stretching from the Pacific to the
Mediterranean. They were far more brutal than the Islamic State, massacring entire towns that refused to surrender in order to
discourage anyone else from resisting. The Bible says the ancient Israelites did the same in their conquest of Canaan. More
brutal too was the Saud family and its ultraconservative Wahhabi allies, who came to power three times between 1744 and
1926, when the third and last Saudi state was established . . .
[8] More recently, the Sunni Taliban came to power in the 1990s in Afghanistan by murdering thousands of unarmed civilians,
often Shi'a or ethnic minorities. After capturing cities and villages that resisted, they would line up and gun down the locals,
including women and children. According to a report on the Taliban's recapture of Bamian in 1999, "Hundreds of men and
some women and children were separated from their families, taken away, and executed; all of them were noncombatants. In
addition, houses were razed to the ground, and some detainees were used for forced labor."
[9] All these groups were savvy at working with local tribes with whom they had ethnic and religious ties. Some tribes joined
for political advantage over their rivals or because they wanted a share in the spoils. Others saw the fight as a religious duty.
Still others didn't want to resist for fear of what would follow. But allying with local tribes is quite different from appealing to
the general public. Playing nice with a tribal leader whose followers have guns is not the same thing as trying to win over your
average citizen to the cause.
[10] This is not to say that the softer approach can't work. America's own revolution is a case in point, especially when
compared to the French Revolution a few years later. The American rebels warred with British troops and avoided deliberate
attacks on civilians; in contrast, the French revolutionaries executed an ever-widening circle of "enemies of the revolution" to
subdue the public in what the revolutionaries enthusiastically called "The Terror," from which we get the term “terrorism.”
[11] Extreme brutality is not incompatible with establishing a new state. It may not be the wisest course of action, and it
probably won't create a state many people would want to live in. But that doesn't mean it won't work. Just as most people can't
imagine that brutality would be a winning political strategy, they also can't imagine that any religious scripture would justify
such a thing. Muslims and non-Muslims are equally baffled as to how anyone could commit atrocities in the name of God. To
explain it, some either assume the perpetrators use scripture cynically or that they are ignorant of its nuances.
[12] To be sure, many of the Islamic State's foot soldiers are ignorant of their own scriptures. Islamic scripture is vast,
encompassing not only the Qur'an but also the ahadith, [=plural of hadith] the words and deeds attributed to Muhammad by his
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followers. Collections of ahadith run into the hundreds of volumes, and that's just the Sunni variety. The Shi'a have their own
collections, adding more volumes to the pile. Want to find passages justifying peace and concord? They're in there. Want to find
passages justifying violence? They're in there too. Medieval Muslim scholars spent their whole careers trying to reconcile the
contradictions between them. It's extremely difficult to do, which is why early Muslims called the effort ijtihad, or "hard work."
People chuckled at the news of two men buying a copy of Islam for Dummies on their way to join the Islamic State." But having
spent two decades studying the intricacies of Islamic scripture, I empathized with their bewilderment.
[13] Although the Islamic State's soldiers might not know Islamic scripture very well, some of its leaders do. The caliph has a
Ph.D. in the study of the Qur'an, and his top scholars are conversant in the ahadith and the ways medieval scholars interpreted
it. There are many stupid thugs in the Islamic State, but these guys are not among them. As to whether the Islamic State uses
scripture cynically to justify whatever it wants to do, that's harder to know. It's certainly the case that the State's scholars pick
and choose scripture to suit their biases and desires. But anyone who reads and acts on scripture does that. The better question
to ask is where those biases and desires come from.
[14] First, the Islamic State's biases: The Islamic State's theology and method of engaging with scripture is nearly identical to
Wahhabism, the ultraconservative form of Islam found in Saudi Arabia. It's very different from the kind of Islam you find in
other parts of the world. In Wahhabism, religious innovation is bad; medieval scholarly authorities are respected but disregarded
if need be; outside cultural influences should be expunged; and the definition of a good believer is very narrow. Wahhabi
scholars might reach different conclusions from Islamic State scholars, but they start at much the same place.
[15] Second, the Islamic State's desires: The Islamic State's politics differ profoundly from that of most Wahhabis, who view
the Saudi kingdom as a legitimate Islamic government. As the State sees things, no Muslim-majority state in the world deserves
to call itself Islamic, which is why it set up its own state and declared a caliphate. To achieve that end, the Islamic State had to
wage an insurgency, which it justified with scripture. Still, brutal insurgency doesn't necessarily follow from Islamic scripture.
Bin Laden and other jihadists found plenty of scriptural support for waging a hearts-and-minds campaign in the Muslim world.
The Islamic State's scholars acknowledge these passages of scripture but look for ways around them or find other passages that
fit their views. Thus, the Islamic State's disagreement with al-Qaeda's leadership isn't scriptural; it's strategic. The State doesn't
believe a hearts-and-minds strategy is effective, and for the past few years it has been proven right.
This is not Bin Laden's insurgency.
A GOVERNMENT FEARED BY THE PEOPLE
[16] The Islamic State defied another bit of conventional jihadist wisdom when it declared itself a caliphate without the support
of the Sunni masses. Al-Qaeda's leaders had advised patient coalition building before declaring an Islamic state, much less a
caliphate. They looked upon the defeat of the Islamic State in 2008 as an object lesson in what not to do. But even when the
Islamic State was nearly destroyed, its idea of immediately establishing Islamic governments without popular consent caught
fire among the jihadist rank and file. When the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 created political instability, several al-Qaeda
groups leapt at the chance to establish governments even though Bin Laden warned them not to. The Islamic State also tried
again and was far more successful the second time around, parting company with al-Qaeda to realize its ambition.
[17] Part of the State's success had to do with its style of governing. There were carrots: It tried to provide public services, such
as fixing potholes, running post offices, and distributing food. It even had a campaign to vaccinate its subjects against polio."
Several of the Islamic State's former sister affiliates in al-Qaeda had attempted the same. The State also rewarded tribal allies
with a share of the spoils to buy their support. As one Islamic State commander wrote to Baghdadi, "We have focused on
bribing tribesmen and encouraging them to support the mujahids." In dealing with the Sunni tribes, the State benefited a great
deal from the tribes' anger toward the central governments in Damascus and Baghdad. Bin Laden would have approved of the
Islamic State's carrots, but he would have objected to its sticks. The al-Qaeda leader had counseled his affiliates to be lenient in
their application of the hudud, the harsh fixed punishments mentioned in Islamic scripture. To do otherwise would only alienate
the locals. The Islamic State ignored this counsel, either out of religious conviction or to convince other ultraconservatives of its
conviction. The hands of thieves were severed, adulterers were stoned, bandits were shot and crucified, all in full public view.
The Islamic State's harsh punishments subdued the locals as effectively as massacring its enemies had. Religious convictions
and political benefit are not always antithetical.