The global
string of terrorist attacks linked to the Islamic State has broadened the
War on Terror’s debate over the past two years. Today, combating ISIS not only
means fighting its core in Iraq and Syria, but also supporting US soldiers in
Libya
while supporting wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Nigeria, and wherever else ISIS may be claiming attacks.
The reality isn’t so straightforward. Though ISIS has claimed responsibility
for
the deaths of over 1,200 people in attacks in 21 countries outside of Iraq
and Syria, larger terrorist organizations have arranged only a fraction of incidents
labeled as ISIS attacks. Branches with a strong link to ISIS have claimed even
fewer attacks.
In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the self-declared ISIS-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K)
was
accepted by ISIS in the Dabiq magazine, ISIS’s main propaganda publication.
American media widely
cited the pledge as evidence of its link to ISIS central.
However, according
to the Pentagon, “command and control and funding from core ISIL is limited”
for ISIS’s Afghanistan branch. Though BBC named ISIS-K’s first
leader, Mullah Abdul Rauf, as an ISIS commander, Rauf
founded ISIS-K as an offshoot from the Taliban. Commanders had called for
the split when they began to lose faith in the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Muhammad
Omar, with his long absences.
The media was even more careless with the July attack in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The New
York Times labeled it as an attack directed, and not merely inspired, by
ISIS. The NYT seems to have taken ISIS’s claim of responsibility at face value
even though Bangladeshi intelligence has pinned
the blame on Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). JMB has been “involved
in 11 recent attacks” according to the Hindustan times.
Though JMB has
pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, it has existed for
nearly two decades – far longer than ISIS – and its attackers are focused on
and from Bangladesh. Ending JMB is likely to have little impact on ISIS and
vice versa.
This does not mean that ISIS in Iraq and Syria does not have substantial international
connections. The Islamic State’s Libya branch’s first leader, Abu Nabil al-Anbari,
spent
time in Abu Gharib prison for his support of ISIS in Iraq immediately after
the country’s 2003 invasion.
But ISIS’s branches around the world presents a bewildering array of various
alliances, rather than a plot with a single source in Iraq and Syria. The Islamic
State – Sinai Province (ISIS-IP), which
took down a Russian airline in late 2015, presents the epitome of this puzzle.
Though it may
have received funding from ISIS central, individual ISIS-IP cells remain
loyal to Al-Qaeda, which has condemned the Islamic State’s brutality multiple
times.
The media is essentially lying to the…