A Theory of ISIS

Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

Description

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has been the subject of intense scrutiny in the West. Considered by many to be the most dangerous terrorist organisation in the world, it has become shrouded in numerous myths and narratives, many emanating from the US, which often fail to grasp its true nature.



Against these narratives, Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou presents a bold new theory of ISIS. By tracing its genealogy and documenting its evolution in Iraq and Syria, he argues that ISIS has transcended Osama Bin Laden’s original project of Al Qaeda, mutating into an unprecedented hybrid form that distils postcolonial violence, postmodernity and the emerging post-globalisation international order.



This book analyses ISIS from a social sciences perspective and unpacks its dynamics by looking beyond superficial questions such as its terrorist nature and religious rhetoric. It transforms our understanding of ISIS and its profound impact on the very nature of contemporary political violence.
List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Islamic State and Political Violence in the Early Twenty-First Century

1. Al Qaeda’s Matrix

2. Apocalypse Iraq

3. From Qaedat al Jihad to Al Dawla al Islamiya

4. Modernity and the Globalised Insurgent

Conclusion: Colonialism Boomerang

Glossary

Chronology

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• Political Freedom
• International Relations
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• ISIS
• USA
• Yihad
• Al Qaeda
• Egipto
• América
• Afganistán
• 21st century
• Egypt
• Isis (disambiguation)
• Caliphate
• Abu Ghraib
• General officer
• Terrorism
• Politics
• Muslim
• Middle East
• Jihad
• Islamism
• Caliph
• Arab people
• Al-Qaida
• Image and Scanner Interface Specification
• Saddam Hussein
• Djihad
• General
• ISO 15511
• États-Unis
• Abou Ghraib
• America
• IS
• Al Jazeera
• 9
• 11
• Oussama ben Laden
• Europe
• Afghanistan

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 novembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786801708
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Theory of ISIS
A Theory of ISIS
Political Violence and the Transformation of the Global Order
Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou
First published 2018 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou 2018
The right of Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 9911 9 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 9909 6 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0169 2 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0171 5 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0170 8 EPUB eBook




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Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Islamic State and Political Violence in the Early Twenty-First Century
Misunderstanding IS
Genealogies of New Violence
Theorising IS
1. Al Qaeda s Matrix
Unleashing Transnational Violence
Revenge of the Agitated Muslims
The McDonaldisation of Terrorism
2. Apocalypse Iraq
Colonialism Redesigned
Monstering in American Iraq
I will see you in New York
3. From Qaedat al Jihad to Al Dawla al Islamiya
Mesopotamian Recentring
Into Levantine Battle
State-Building from Franchise to Region
4. Modernity and the Globalised Insurgent
Remixing Violence
Imperial Reconnections
The 1970s Redux
Conclusion: Colonialism Boomerang
Return to Sender
Future Pasts of IS
Pensamiento Nuevo on Terrorism
Glossary
Chronology
Notes
Index
List of Figures
3.1 The changing contexts of transnational Islamism
4.1 The biformity of the Islamic State
5.1 Lineages and temporalities of IS
List of Tables
1.1. Al Qaeda s major transnational operations, 1995-2005 55
1.2. Al Qaeda s franchises, 2004-14 61
3.1. Evolution of IS 90
3.2. The seven layers of IS 101
3.3. Pledges of allegiance and/or support to IS 115
3.4. Wilayas (regions) of IS 119
4.1. Attacks led or inspired by IS, 2014-17 138
List of Abbreviations
9/11
Al Qaeda s attacks on the United States, 11 September 2001
AQAP
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
AQI
Al Qaeda in Iraq
AQIM
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
GWOT
Global War on Terror
ICRC
International Committee of the Red Cross
IS
Islamic State
ISI
Islamic State in Iraq
ISIL
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
ISIS
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
PFLP
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
UN
United Nations
UNSC
United Nations Security Council
Acknowledgements
This work closes a series of three books on the transformation of political violence in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, which I embarked on in September 2001. This transnational trilogy has been concerned with the nature and meaning of the groups Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and the wider contemporary radical Islamist movement they belong to. The first volume, Contre-Croisade: Le 11 Septembre et le Retournement du Monde (the original edition is subtitled Origines et Cons quences du 11 Septembre ) was written in French (an Arabic version was released in 2010 but it remains untranslated in English) and published in 2004 as I was in the process of moving from Geneva to Boston in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks (having previously lived for ten years in New York). That work sought to document in as much details as possible the 9/11 attacks and inquire as to their significance in the longer-term history of relations between the Islamic and Western worlds. The second volume sought to expand the investigation from the attacks to the group behind them, widening both the scope and lens of the issues at hand. Researched during a second stay at Harvard University (the first one was in 1996-7 at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies) at the Programme on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, of which I was the associate director in 2004-8, and where I led an international research project on Transnational and Non-State Armed Groups (TAGs), Understanding Al Qaeda: The Transformation of War came out in 2006 (an expanded second edition was released in 2011 and a coda was added in 2013 as a chapter in the book An International History of Terrorism co-edited by Jussi Hanhimaki and Bernhard Blumenau). Understanding Al Qaeda positioned itself against the overemphasis on Al Qaeda s religiosity, proposing an alternative reading anchored in three concepts it sought to introduce, namely Al Qaeda s militarisation of Islamism , transnationalisation of terrorism and democratisation of responsibility (concepts discussed afresh in Chapter 1 in this volume). That work dealt, secondarily, with an unpacking of the modus operandi of Al Qaeda (the so-called regional franchises and their meaning) and the non-linear nature of the group s war. Overall, the book was an argument about the transformative, not merely innovative, nature of Al Qaeda s materialisation and Osama Bin Laden s project.
The present volume began in August 2014 with a policy paper - ISIS and the Deceptive Rebooting of Al Qaeda , researched and written at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, of which I was the deputy director and academic dean from 2014 to 2017 - and an invitation by the students of the Middle East Initiative at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Azra Avdagic and Olivia Mathys. The lecture I delivered before the students in September 2014, Understanding ISIS: The Islamic State, Al Qaeda and Post-Modern Globalised Violence , is the basis of this book. Earlier versions of some of the arguments were published in various forms in The Muslim World , Project Syndicate , Open Democracy , The Conversation , Les Clefs du Moyen-Orient , Le Temps and Al Monitor . The ideas contained here were also aired in a number of venues over the years since the 2014 policy paper and lecture, at conferences and colloquia where I benefited greatly from the thoughtful comments and searching questions from audiences at the Fletcher School in Boston, the University of Exeter, Sciences Po Paris, Sciences Po Grenoble, the University of Saint-Joseph in Beirut, the University of St Andrews, the City University of New York, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Overseas Development Institute in London, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, the Africa Studies Centre in Leiden, the New School in New York and the Rockefeller Centre in Bellagio, the University of Milan, the University of Geneva, the George C. Marshall Centre for Security Studies, the Egmont Institute in Brussels and the United Nations University in Tokyo. I warmly thank my hosts at these institutions, respectively, Nadim Shehadi, Klejda Mulaj, Bertrand Badie, Jihane Melhouf, Karim Bitar, Bernhard Blumenau, Thomas Weiss, Sara Pantuliano, Shalini Randeria, the late Stephen Ellis and Benjamin Soares, Erin McCandless, Mariele Merlati, Matthias Schulz and Ozcan Yilmaz, Joerg Kuntze, Sebastian Einsiedel, Marta Cali and David Malone for their invitations, hospitality and conversation.
I am particularly indebted to the Graduate Institute in Geneva, where I found a rich and congenial intellectual home in the International History Department. I thank my colleagues at the Institute for the rich exchanges I had with them, notably Philippe Burrin, Davide Rodogno, Gopalan Balachandran, Jussi Hanhimaki, Riccardo Bocco, Alessandro Monsutti, Keith Krause, Andr Liebich, Andrea Bianchi, Carolyn Biltoft, Andrew Clapham, Jean-Fran ois Bayart, Paola Gaeta, Gilles Carbonnier and Isabelle Schulte-Tenckoff. Debates with the students at the Graduate Institute in my classes on political violence and on state-building and war-making were invariably inspiring and I thank them all for their intelligent and refreshing engagement, and I extend my appreciation to the staff at the library of the Graduate Institute for their valuable and efficient assistance in locating key works. Cherished conversational partners I had on these issues included Ahmad Khalidi, Fran ois Burgat, Bertrand Badie, Melissa Finn, Adam Shatz, Christophe Bourseiller, Nadia Marzouki, Eric Degila, Maha Yahya and Anthony Samrani. Other friends and colleagues who supported me with their encouragement or by sharing ideas include Oliver J tersonke, Dominic Eggel, Victor Santos Rodriguez, Adrien and Nathaniel Burkhalter, Gyula Csurgai, Katia Papagianni, Bruce Fudge and Christophe Rime, and I thank them for their intellectual camaraderie. For his confidence in and support of this book, I extend my full gratitude to my editor at Pluto Press, David Shulman, a true gentleman. Finally, Matthew Bamber, a brilliant young scholar working on the state-building aspects of the Islamic State, provided valuable research assistance and expertly shepherded the chronology of events, and I thank him for his excellent collaboration.
My most inexpressible debt is to my father and mother, and to my family whose unconditional support was always the single most precious source of sustenance. I dedicate this work to them, the balms of my soul, my beloved wife Shainese, and my cherished children Bahiya, Kemal and Zaynab, with all my love.
Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou
27 July 2017
Introduction
The Islamic State and Political Violence in the Early Twenty-First Century

Madam, your imperial Majesty gives me life back by killing Turks.
Voltaire, Letter to Catherine II of Russia, Ferney, France, 30 October