12 killed in shooting at satirical newspaper office in Paris

Isn't that over simplifying things a little ? Sure the are made up from some of Iraq's Islamist militias, but they are also made up of some people from Hezbollah, and Iran's revolutionary guards, in fact the troubles in Syria probably had more to do with the formation of ISIS than any other single event.

 

Not really. They originated in Iraq in 1999 as a small group that went through a couple of name changes (as they do; the stages of group formation being Forming, Storming, Normans and Performing) from Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad to Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn. During the Iraq invasion in 2003 they joined the Sunni insurgency and gained a lot of followers. In 2004 they pledged allegiance to Al-Qaida and became known simply as Al-Qaida in Iraq (IQA) to the relief of newsreaders everywhere.

In 2006, it joined other Sunni insurgent groups to form the Mujahideen Shura Council, which shortly afterwards proclaimed the formation of an Islamic state, naming it the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The ISI gained a significant presence in Al Anbar, Nineveh, Kirkuk and other areas, but around 2008, its violent methods, including suicide attacks on civilian targets and the widespread killing of prisoners, led to a backlash from Sunni Iraqis and other insurgent groups. When Syria erupted into civil war, they again seized the opportunity to join the rebel side and garner recruits and territory while eliminating the competition.

In 2013 the group changed its name again to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, when it announced its merger with the Syrian-based group al-Nusra Front. The group remained closely linked to Al-Qaida until February 2014, when after an eight-month power struggle Al-Qaida cut all ties with ISIS, citing its failure to consult and "notorious intransigence". This split highlights the difference in ideology between ISIS and Al-Qaida. The latter sees killing people as a political means to an end. ISIS regards killing infidels as an integral part of the practice of their faith.

ISIS originated in Iraq. That **** wouldn't have gone down under Saddam Hussein. First, he tolerated no fringe groups with political ambitions on his territory, like no dictator does. He didn't like Al-Qaida like Al-Qaida didn't like the secular tyrant Saddam. As the favoured minority the Sunni were doing OK under Saddam's rule and therefore had no reason to join IQA (Iran has no love for ISIS either --they are a threat to its dictatorship also. Saudi Arabia feels pretty much the same).

But now they're here and they are a HUGE problem. The media likes to portray ISIS as a bunch of mad terrorists, but they are also clever and organised. They fight like an army, they have a sophisticated propaganda and recruitment machine, they have an intelligence network and they are hammering a nation out of thin air. What news we are gleaning from what goes on inside their new Caliphate suggests a tightly organised society with infrastructure, health and social care and industry. Their websites reflect this: they are not only recruiting men to fight, but also women to bear and raise their children, and doctors, engineers, accountants, IT specialists... all the people you need for a shake-and-bake nation.

 

If you go far enough back you could probably find links to other groups before 1999, the fact is the current name "Islamic State" didn't come into being until last year. If you do want to trace the name back to the 1999 group "Organization of Monotheism and Jihad" and stop there, they didn't originate in Iraq, they originated from Jordan.

EDIT: As we can't take a straw poll of the Islamic State i think when or where the majority of them come from is largely academic, what matters is how they act or behave today and not what may have happened to them in the past.

 

The fact remains that they grew from a small fringe group to a significant organization controlling a territory of 12000 square miles in the power vacuum of Iraq.

 

Like i said over simplifying, they didn't pose a significant threat until around 3 years ago when the west mishandled the conflict in Syria.

 

They did. We just didn't hear about it because people were getting killed in Iraq, not in Western Europe.

 

Well some would say they didn't become a significant threat until they started taking land in the middle east.
The claim that they didn't because they only killed people in Iraq and not Western Europe just doesn't hold water, unless you don't consider that being an affiliate of the group responsible for 9/11 and 7/11 (Al-Qaeda) isn't considered as attacking Western Europe.

 

I would say that is a complacent view. They effectively took control of parts of Iraq back in 2008.

Well, we have to make a distinction between what Western intelligence paid attention to and what the media paid attention to. In terms of the media, deaths in Iraq don't make the same headlines as deaths in Paris.

Intelligence most likely was paying much closer attention but we wouldn't know what they know. But it wouldn't be the first time that the West was a bit complacent or miscalculated things (and to be fair, there's so many fringe groups to keep track of). My impression moreover is that there always has been a bit of political denial of what has been happening in Iraq since it's supposed to be one of our democratic successes.

 

While Al-Queda, whom the two killers at Charlie Hebdo, was obviously around before the Iraq invasion. Bin Laden was particularly motivated by the presence of US troops on Saudi soil, that were needed to defend Saudi Arabia and remove Saddam from Kuwait.

 

While that maybe there was also active opposition to them in the form of allied troops, they weren't allowed to gain territory unchecked.

There could be, but to claim it was our actions in Iraq in the first place that allowed ISIS to proliferate is, as i said over simplifying things.

 

Bin Laden is a whole story in itself. What would make the son of a filthy rich Saudi construction magnate with Royal ties chuck it all in to start fighting the Soviets on the fields of Afghanistan in 1979? He was described as bright, a hard worker at University and interested in poetry and football. He lost his father to a plane accident in 1967, and his oldest brother to another plane accident in 1988.

After leaving college in 1979, bin Laden went to Pakistan, joined Abdullah Azzam and used money and machinery from his own construction company to help the Mujahideen resistance in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. He later told a journalist: "I felt outraged that an injustice had been committed against the people of Afghanistan." Under Operation Cyclone from 1979 to 1989, the United States provided financial aid and weapons to the Mujahideen. It was also during this time that the US funded with money and materials the foundation of fundamentalist Madrassa in Pakistan and Afghanistan to raise the next generation of Jihadist warriors to fight the Soviets.

The training of militant groups was entirely done by the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI. Bin Laden joined the battlefield himself. It was during this time that he became idolised by many Arabs. During an interview he once told of a Soviets mortar grenade landing at his feet that failed to go off. "How did you feel?" he was asked. "I felt nothing", he shrugged.

Bin Laden was not happy with Saudi Arabia turning to the US during Saddam's invasion of Kuwait (which also posed a threat to Saudi Arabia). He felt that only Muslims should defend Muslim countries and that they should avoid involvement with the US. This caused a rift in relations between him and Saudi Arabia.

According to the CIA he was motivated by a belief that US foreign policy has oppressed, killed, or otherwise harmed Muslims in the Middle East, condensed in the phrase, "They [Osama et al.] hate us for what we do, not who we are." Bin Laden also said only the restoration of Sharia law would "set things right" in the Muslim world.

As you can see, his motivations were layered. Moreover both the Taliban and Al-Qaida germinated with the aid of US sponsorship.

 

I have to disagree with that. I am not alone in that view:

Also:

The rest of that article also bears reading.

 

And to wit, in that same article it says...

...

Sorry but what does Bin Laden have to do with the price of eggs ?

 

I agree there is a whole network of relationships, but within that it is the Iraq invasion that is a strong causal factor to ISIS' spectacular growth in that region.

Bin Laden was responding to Risky's post.

Anyway, we're digressing from the main point. Risky stated that there is something specific about violent extreme Islam that makes it so effective at creating terrorists, much more than e.g. violent extreme Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism etc. because there are so many of them --and with that he explicitly mentioned 35000 ISIS combatants. I pointed out that there are so many because we have a long history of creating the conditions in which they can proliferate (Afghanistan and Iraq).

These is nothing special about extremist Islam vs any other extremist ideology. It is the extremism that is the problem, not the religious orientation. The ideology in itself is not enough to create terrorists either. We know that the Lee Rigby killers started out as a Christian and atheist respectively; the Boston bombers started out as non-Muslim white guys, and the drinking, drug taking Kouachi brothers were Muslim in the loosest sense of the word before they converted. So obviously the ideology has to find a receptive brain to take hold. I argue that it is there that we need to put the focus: what makes some people receptive to extremist ideology and turn terrorist, while most others can dismiss it for what it is?

 

On a lighter note: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ays-birmingham-is-totally-muslim-9971378.html

Ah, Fox News...

 

Yea i don't disagree that the west's actions in Iraq had a part to play, they did, It's just not the single thing we can point to and say that's what caused it.

In fact i think it's so complicated that i wounder if the people in ISIS even know how their organisation came into being, even so called experts are a little hazy on how they came to be.

 

We are ALL guilty, them ans us. It's the seek of power that led the humanity there, it has always been the case. The seek of power, money, territory, petrol, gold, uranium, etc...

 

True dat.

That's not unusual with groups like that. Maybe they could ask Steve Emerson.

 

Came across this. Does not help Nexxo or Risky, but very much on topic :
Satire or Sarcasm

 

He's missing the point isn't he? Charlie Hebdo was ridiculing the perversion of religious belief for more sinister purposes. How does that compare to his examples of blatant racism and anti-semitism?

Or have I missed something?