Owen Bennett-Jones: How should we think about the Caliphate?

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But this wasn’t any kind of ending. The battle-hardened remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq, together with other groups of militants who had fought the US occupation, decided on a makeover, renaming themselves the Islamic State of Iraq. The new group made steady progress after the Americans pulled out in 2011, and at the start of this year, under Baghdadi’s leadership, took over most of two towns which the US had made huge efforts to secure: Fallujah and Ramadi. These were major symbolic victories that helped establish Baghdadi’s reputation as the world’s foremost jihadi leader. Unlike al-Qaida’s Zawahiri, he was winning battles on the ground.

Things were also moving ahead in Syria. In the summer of 2011, when it looked as if the Assad regime in Damascus might not survive, Baghdadi sent a member of the Islamic State in Iraq, Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, to set up shop next door. The democratic opposition to Assad was exhausted; within months al-Joulani was taking and holding territory in northern Syria. In January 2012 he publicly announced the existence of what he called Jabhat al-Nusra. For a year al-Nusra enjoyed steady gains, partly because the Assad regime realised that if it allowed the jihadis to take territory the West would change its view of the Syrian conflict. So the government forces chose to focus their fire on the Free Syrian Army rather than the jihadis.

After seeing Joulani’s gains in Syria, Baghdadi decided to assert himself. In April 2013 he changed the name of the Islamic State of Iraq to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and soon announced a merger between Isis and al-Nusra. Joulani saw it as a hostile takeover. There are many versions of why the two men fell out, from a clash of egos to irreconcilable policy differences. According to one story Baghdadi ordered Joulani to bomb a hotel in Turkey where some of Syria’s democratic opposition leaders were meeting. Fearing that his Turkish supply lines would be jeopardised, Joulani refused and Baghdadi took umbrage. Policy towards Iran was another area of disagreement. Some senior Isis members complained that al-Qaida had a policy of not attacking Iran; al-Nusra accepted it but Isis didn’t want to. Whatever the precise reasons, the disagreements led to fighting between Isis and al-Nusra and Joulani appealed to Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s leader, to adjudicate. Zawahiri declared that al-Nusra was al-Qaida’s official affiliate in Syria, and that Isis had severed ties with al-Qaida. He urged the group to restrict itself to fighting in Iraq – a suggestion Isis rejected out of hand. Zawahiri may now have some regrets but he also knows that Baghdadi may eventually fail – because of his reliance on extreme violence if for no other reason.

It was a lesson al-Qaida learned the hard way. September 11 had set the bar very high and it was difficult to see what would count as a spectacular al-Qaida attack in the years that followed; the organisation found that it had to use ever more violence or risk being left out of the headlines. The strategy of escalation finally unravelled in November 2005 when suicide bombers attacked three hotels in Amman. In the space of a few minutes more than fifty people were killed, including several members of a wedding party. The next day there were protests in the streets: the demonstrators condemned the killings and chanted slogans in favour of King Abdullah. Zawahiri drew the obvious conclusion, but other jihadis failed to understand the value of restraint. Every time a jihadi movement has won power it has lost popularity by failing to give the people what they want: peace, security and jobs. In Afghanistan, for instance, the Taliban had considerable public support when it came to power in 1996 after years of civil war: many Afghans were glad of the stability the Taliban offered. But Mullah Omar’s administration was so violent and so little concerned about worldly matters that by 2001 most were pleased to see him go. Other jihadi administrations have faced similar problems. In 2009 the current leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, Mullah Fazlullah, won control of the Swat Valley, just a few hours’ drive from Islamabad. His practice of murdering opponents and leaving their bodies to rot in the main square of the valley’s biggest town, Mingora, so disgusted the local people that they supported an army offensive against the militants. Similar things have happened in North Africa, where no jihadi movement has been able to hold on to power.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n14/owen-bennett-jones/how-should-we-think-about-the-caliphate