The New York Times recently published an op-ed piece in which Thomas Friedman argued that ISIS is made up of three loose factions. In summary, Mr. Friendman argues: One faction comprises the foreign volunteers. Some are hardened jihadists, but many are just losers, misfits, adventure seekers and young men who’ve never held power, a job or a girl’s hand and joined ISIS to get all three…ISIS’s second faction, its backbone, is made up of former Sunni Baathist army officers and local Iraqi Sunnis and tribes, who give ISIS passive support…[and] the third ISIS faction is composed of the true ideologues, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. They have their own apocalyptic version of Islam. |
To put it mildly, the Islamic Republic’s foreign policies since 1979 have not endeared the Shiite nation to its Sunni neighbors. It has sought to export its ideology across the region through funding terrorist networks, broadcasting Shiite propaganda, and stirring religious extremism in various nations. Feeling defenseless against the Islamic Republic’s political and ideological “expansionism,” many Sunni extremists – mainly funded by Saudi Arabia – sought to counter Iranian influence in the region. As the war in Syria escalated, and as the Islamic Republic poured more resources into the war-torn nation in support of Bashar al-Assad, extremists fueled by Saudi money and anti-Iran or anti-Shiite sentiments surged into Syria, and eventually Iraq. Their cause was certainly aided by the passive support of former Baathists. As Mr. Friedman has correctly pointed out, Sunnis who ruled Iraq for generations simply cannot accept that Shiites are now in power.
It is these Iran-hating, Sunni Baathist, adventure seeking, loser ideologues, who created a coalition that ultimately became the “Islamic State.” And while distinguishing the three factions identified by Mr. Friedman are essential for the West’s understanding of IS, I believe that understanding the anti-Iranist or anti-Shiite elements within IS are as fundamental.