The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS (4 page)

Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. airstrike, and al-Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers, better known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), renames itself the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). In what comes to be known as “the Anbar Awakening,” Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar Province turn against the brutal AQI/ISI jihadis and ally themselves with the U.S. and the Shia-led government of Iraq.

2007

“The Surge” of U.S. troops in Iraq.

2010

The self-immolation of a Tunisian vegetable cart proprietor who has been abused by the police sparks the Arab Spring.

2011

Arab Spring protests spread to Syria, Syrian President Bashar Hafez al-Assad attempts to suppress them with violence, and civil war breaks out. Jihadis associated with the Islamic State of Iraq travel from Iraq into Syria to take part in the fight.
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In December, the last U.S. troops leave Iraq. President Barack Obama, celebrating the withdrawal as a “moment of success,” claims that “we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq.”

2012

Obama draws a “red line” but takes no effective action on the war in Syria, other than to arm anti-Assad “rebel” groups that are often aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq.

2013

Reports emerge of Islamic Sharia law being imposed in areas around Raqqa, Syria, held by rebels fighting against Assad’s government.
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The Islamic State of Iraq renames itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant/al-Sham (ISIL or ISIS), signaling its claim to Syrian territory. In July, hundreds of jihadis escape from Abu Ghraib and another prison just outside Baghdad, and ISIS claims credit, boasting the long-planned prison break was effected using suicide bombers and a dozen car bombs.
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2014

JANUARY

Taking advantage of clashes between the Shia-controlled government of Iraq and Sunni tribes in Anbar Province, ISIS seizes control of Fallujah. Asked by an interviewer for the
New Yorker
about the jihadi flag flying over the city, where Americans had sacrificed so much in 2004, President Obama compares ISIS to “a jayvee team.”

FEBRUARY

ISIS and al-Qaeda officially split.

JUNE

ISIS begins a lightning offensive across northern Iraq with the bombing of a police station south of Samarra.
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The jihadis seize Iraqi population centers and gain control of territory on the border between Iraq and Syria. Mosul, the capital of Nineveh Province and one of the largest cities in Iraq, falls to ISIS, demonstrating the weakness of the Iraqi armed forces (who are routed despite outnumbering the jihadis fifteen to one),
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leaving significant American military materiel and approximately half a billion dollars in ISIS hands, and creating as many as half a million refugees. The jihadi group bulldozes the border between Iraq and Syria and, on June 29, ISIS declares a new caliphate, renaming itself the Islamic State.

JULY

The new Caliph Ibrahim (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) gives his inaugural speech, rallying the worldwide Muslim ummah to fight “the camp of the Jews, the crusaders, their allies, and with them the rest of the nations and religions of kufr [unbelievers], all being led by America and Russia, and being mobilized by the Jews.”The Islamic State attacks Kobani in the autonomous Rojava region of Syrian Kurdistan; in the next three months, three hundred thousand Kurds from this area will flee into Turkey.
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AUGUST

ISIS routs Kurdish Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq and perpetrates a genocidal campaign against the Yazidi religious minority, driving tens of thousands from their homes into the Sinjar Moutains—where hundreds of children die from thirst and exposure to the elements—carrying out forced conversions and massacres, and making thousands of women sex slaves. The U.S. begins bombing raids against ISIS; Peshmerga and Iraqi forces recapture the Mosul dam, but not the city of Mosul. On August 14, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen aligns itself with the Islamic State. On August 18, a video is posted to YouTube showing the beheading of American journalist James Foley—and threatening to kill Steven Sotloff (a threat that is carried out two weeks later).