A historical context for ISIS

By Henry Seggerman

“…remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” said Barack Obama on Feb. 5 in a National Prayer Breakfast. Obama compared the terrible deeds committed in the name of Islam by ISIS to those committed in the name of Christ by Christians during the Crusades and the Inquisition. Let’s extend this by examining ISIS’s strategy in an historical context.

Redrawing Maps: In the centuries following the Inquisition, Western European powers carved up distant continents, committing genocide, enslaving millions, obliterating religions and cultures. Most borders were arbitrary, without concern for indigenous ethnicities (perfect examples: Iraq and Syria). Former colonies are independent today, but Western European powers (and the U.S.) exert enormous control over redrawing of borders anywhere, e.g. South Sudan, East Timor, Kosovo, and Eritrea. These countries object when Russia tries re-drawing borders, e.g. Ukraine, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria.

When non-state actors such as ISIS try to get in on this game, it’s even more threatening to the existing order. ISIS declared a Sunni nation overlapping Shia-ruled Iraq and Alawite-ruled Syria. But what ISIS did in Iraq and Syria is not unlike what the Kurds did in Iraq, except without U.S. support.

The Social Media Weapon: Over the centuries, the wars of conquest were waged first with fast clipper ships and more recently with heavy bombers and guided missiles. Today’s most effective weapon, however, is social media, platforms like Twitter and Facebook. That’s because they are instantaneous and worldwide, they can foment new national aspirations which are anti-colonial, or based on religion. Without them, Tunisia would still be a dictatorship. Social media are not bound by existing geographical borders, especially those created in the centuries of Western European colonization. ISIS uses social media aggressively to recruit, and to torment its enemies.

Making Women Inferior: ISIS has captured female non-believers and turned them into sex slaves for its fighters. Boko Haram, in Nigeria, which has pledged allegiance to ISIS, does the same. This resonates perfectly with the unrelenting Western narrative on the inferior station granted to women throughout Islam. ISIS knows France outlawed the hijab in public schools. Its unrepentant answer to the Western critique of its values is the niqab and sex slavery.

But outside of ISIS lands, the situation for women is hardly ideal. There seems to be a rape epidemic in India, the U.S. military and U.S. universities. While rape is a crime in the U.S. and India, the criminal justice system in both countries is chronically weak in responding because it is largely controlled by men. Rape test kits are left gathering dust by detectives. And the U.S. applies zero effective pressure on its allies: Saudi Arabia, where women drivers go to prison; Egypt, where 90 percent of girls are still subjected to genital mutilation; Afghanistan and Pakistan, where honor killings are seldom punished.

Killing Civilians: “They had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. …And I thought, my God …the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! …And then I realized they were stronger than we.” (Col. Kurtz in the film “Apocalypse Now.”)

There is no limit to man’s capacity to commit acts of ruthless violence. But bragging about it openly is unusual. ISIS portrays its violence brazenly, circulating videos for consumption worldwide. ISIS is not involved in any kind of covert murders or cover-ups of its acts of violence.

In contrast, the U.S. had no embedded photojournalists at Abu Ghraib to get shots of the prisoner beaten to death by American soldiers, or at My Lai. These images were leaked out long after the murders were committed. American military operations have been transformed in recent years to largely covert drone warfare. Corrupt U.S. legislators pushed through the Global Hawk system over Pentagon objections that its targeting is inaccurate. This has resulted in frequent civilian deaths, as drones often hit wedding parties and other innocent victims in Afghanistan and Yemen.

Governments are killing civilians all the time. China executes 2,500 civilians every year, for crimes such as drug smuggling and embezzlement. Iran executes about 700, for drug smuggling, homosexuality, and apostasy. Saudi Arabia, like ISIS, beheads. It also amputates and crucifies. A significant percentage of U.S. executions are of innocent men and women, mostly African-Americans, often involving prosecutorial fraud. The U.S. invented rectal rehydration.

Meanwhile, the world seems to have forgotten that ISIS’ key enemy, Bashar Assad, has killed about 200,000 civilians, thousands of them starved and tortured to death (photos only available due to a leak). The U.S. and Syria are both dropping bombs on ISIS, and Secretary of State John Kerry now says he may cut a deal with Assad. Somehow, ISIS’ innocent victims are judged to be more important than Assad’s.

ISIS as Sunni Nationalism: How did ISIS’ violence emerge? When Syria was a French colony, the French exerted control by installing 15 percent minority Alawis as the ruling class, and after independence, the Assads and their Alawite clique continued oppressing Syria’s Sunni majority. When Syria’s Alawite-favoring minority regime began massacring peaceful Sunni protestors, NATO dodged the intervention it had sought in oil-rich Libya. After conquering Iraq, President Bush had the bright idea of sending every Sunni soldier home with his gun, along with thousands of Sunni bureaucrats, and replaced a Sunni-favoring sectarian regime with a Shia-favoring sectarian regime. These two alienated Sunni populations came together, along with foreign fighters, in ISIS. ISIS’ very existence is in part a by-product of Western incompetence, ignoring the legitimate rights of Sunni populations.

The Mideast chessboard is always on the move. A year ago, who could believe the U.S., Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Kurds, Saudi Arabia, and even Hezbollah would effectively be in an alliance against a common enemy, ISIS? But the chessboard changes fast. Don’t forget, in 1985, Ronald Reagan entertained al-Qaeda’s precursors in the Oval Office. I would not be surprised to see ISIS’ descendants in there in the future.

The author is CIO of International Investment Advisers.