Understanding ISIS

8:33 am, Sat June 13, 2015

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By Bumpy Walker

The essential society forming phenomenon in the post Columbian history of Jamaica, the Caribbean, and the Americans was the Middle Passage.

The Middle Passage was a physical cruel, heartless part of an economic system which allowed the development of Europe. This idea is articulated by the Caribbean scholar turned Statesman Eric Williams. In his thesis, which was published as “Capitalism and Slavery,” the essence of the pre emancipation Caribbean economic system was analysed: by stripping out race, morality, cruelty of plantation based slavery to demonstrate an ouroboros like (a serpent or dragon eating its own tail) economic and social system. Our pre emancipation serpent-like society economy, cannibalising its own means of production, was in the end, unsustainable, self-defeating. The more successful it became the more irrelevant it became. The excess capital it generated helped to finance the European industrial revolution, thus lifting downtrodden workers of Manchester who wanted cheaper primary products than the slave factories of the Caribbean could supply.

The physical cruelty of this forced migration from Africa to Jamaica or Peru was nothing as compared to the cleansing of African culture. As multiple peoples from the most diverse continent, in terms of both genetics and culture, were thrown together as machines that breath, languages, names, religions, art, literature and myth were removed, to the extent that only shadows and echoes remain.

This was not by design, despite the Willie Lynchers' claim of a manual for cultural or social control, rather as a secondary effect of the economic system.

The idea of the Middle Passage as a cultural holocaust should sensitise the Caribbean’s African ancestored peoples to similar cultural holocausts, much more than other countries’ cultures. After all, few other nation states have similar creation stories where massacre, rape and forced cultural / religious substitution are as central.

Taking the Fun out of Fundamentalism

ISIS, a name once associated with the incestuous Egyptian fertility goddess, is now carrying out a similar cultural realignment. Like the despot Pol Pot in Cambodia, they advocate a reset to a very specific time, the era of the Prophet being the New Year zero. Like fundamentalist of any stripe, other beliefs are demonised, with a single homogenous dogma as the truth with a single morality.

The destruction of ancient Nineveh by ISIS was an act of cultural intolerance strikingly similar to destruction of the Caribbean people’s African culture by the slave trade and colonialism. It is different from our cultural “emaciation”, in that our forced conversion was secondary to the primary driver - economics. Here religious purity and a return to 6^th century Arabian milieu is the primary driver of this forced cultural realignment.

The effective cultural enslaving of Yazidis, with its massacre of men, rape marriage of eligible females of this ancient religion by ISIS, should actively touch on our collective historical memory. The similarity is even more profound as claims of price books for brides, based on age, appearance, skills reminds one of an 19^th century auction block in Havana or Natchez..

The massacre of a people should not be seen as happening in a far off corner, as a worker in Dresden would have viewed a Jamaican plantation, but rather with a familiarity of emotional empathy gained from a common shared historical experience.

This cultural cleansing is not limited to the exotic but virtually unknown religion of the Yazidi, but minority Christian communities, long resident in what is now the ISIS sphere of influence. Shia Muslims also have felt their active disdain as well as Sunnis who don’t share the ISIS vision (1).

Following the destructions of the images in Nineveh, the world held its breath as ISIS took over Palmyra. However a communique by ISIS stated that they had not repeated the Nineveh destruction as they were opposed, not to the columns, but rather to the pagan statutes and images. True to their word they then destroyed the statue Lion of Al Liat (2) in Palmyra and released the political prisoners held in the prison close by.

ISIS or ISIL

The Jordanian Sunni Abu Musab Al Zarqawi formed the ISIS progenitor in Afghanistan as Jamaat al Tawud wa I Jihad in the 1990s. Initially funded by Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, Al Zarqawi later rebuffed the Al Qaeda leadership on a question of theology. It relocated and reinvented itself with numerous name changes in a number of locations, eventually becoming Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham in 2013. Its stated aim is to create a caliphate over all areas where Islamic beliefs are predominant (3).

One such home was Iraq. There, during the post invasion chaos, the newly re-launched organisation distinguished itself with brutal takfir killings (Muslims convicted of heresy), terror bombings against both Sunni and Shia civilian targets, as well as publicly personal beheadings carried out by its leaders. With an insurgency to contend with in the Sunni dominated areas of central Iraq, once the heartland of the Baathist state, the current Shia dominated regime has, for military and political reasons, turned to the Shia Militia for support (4). With centuries old enmities as well as post invasion issues, the militias could settle scores against the Sunnis without the oversight of the state to rein in any excess, much to the discomfort of Iraq’s principal sponsor, the United States. Thus, to the Sunni peoples, the Sunni dominated ISIS provides a bulwark against the Iraq military and the informal Shia militias (5). However, this resistance comes with a price as ISIS is equally brutal towards its own co-religionists, with massacres in Tirik and Ramadi.

The youth led Arab Spring rebellion against the secular Arab state in Syria also provided the opportunity for ISIL to expand into Syria. It was an easy hop over the border where ISIS once more proved (like it had in Iraq) to be motivated and militarily capable of not merely holding its own but expanding the territory over which it holds sway.

Channel your internal Che

By basing itself in in central Iraq it has, by design or accident, followed the principle that Che Guevara tried unsuccessfully in Africa (Congo) and in South America (Bolivia) of placing a revolutionary centre in a strategic location, thus giving itself potential for expansion into various states and build cross border allies (6). In addition the development of a local administrative system also follows the principles of the wandering Argentine!

To date no state has recognised the de facto ISIS state in Syria-Iraq. Despite strategic flexibility, it is effectively surrounded by enemies. Herein lays either its weakness or its strength. It has no need to compromise on the purity of its philosophy to sustain alliances. Its enemies, in terms of geography, are the Quasi-Kurdish state, Turkey, Iran, the Assad Syrian state and the fast disintegrating Iraq with its various militias. As it is militarily holding its own and expanding it is capturing the materiel necessary for its further expansion (7). No political state can remain stable for long, however, without having allies to protect its borders, to trade on an equitable basis with.

To compensate for this lack of formal state alliances, the ISIS approach is reminiscent of the franchising model for business expansion by reversing its brand into pre-existing Islamist resistance groups in Libya (8), Yemen (9) and Nigeria (10); in areas of political instability where Islam is at the centre of local social and political conflict.

While the world is focused on the Levant branch, ISIS now lays claim to controling a swath of prime Mediterranean beachfront real estate, from West Benghazi to East Misrata, and is reputed to have killed up to 50 Coptic Egyptians in the past months. No doubt this African branch owes much of its success to the fact that it exists in the buffer region between Tripoli and Tobruk where two competing governments claim legitimacy over Libya. In addition there are indications that there may have been an ISIS connection with the Museum bombing in Tunisia.

Administration and economics of Isis

It is easy to dismiss members of Islamic state as violent nihilists. However they have demonstrated they are militarily superior to most forces that opposed them; the exceptions being the Kurdish Pashmerga forces that are pushing them back slowly. In my opinion, however, once the Kurds have recovered their lost territory, they will stop advancing as they could use the ISIS regions as a buffer between themselves and the rest of Baghdad controlled Iraq. Why? For the Kurds, this is a political necessity to ensure their future independence.

ISIS has established a political administrative structure. In the Levant branch there is a central government with a Caliph (Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi) who is advised by specialised councils (Shuras) on social, military and internal security issues, with power devolved down to provincial and district structure having similar command structures. There are indications that social services and education systems are being sustained in the regions that they have control over.

Since it parachuted into Iraq, ISIS has been exporting oil from the fields under its control. It was reputed to have contracted employment agencies in Dubai to recruit specialists to maintain their extractive infrastructure. In addition it has applied a 50 % tax on local businesses.

Maybe the best way to analyse ISIS is to take the same approach as Eric William used to analyse Caribbean slave society. Strip away the righteous horror, then examine the administration and economy in the territory it controls.

Musing

It is easy for the intellectually lazy, to condemn all of Islam, based on the acts of ISIS. It needs to be highlighted that most of its victims have been Muslims and its main opponents have been Muslim dominated administrations. Nor is it fair to see ISIS as the sole tormentor of the people. Last week the Assad regime deliberately barrel bombed a crowded market in Al Bab a town in Syria under ISIS control (11) Indeed there would not be as keen a support for ISIS had the governments in the regions where it now operates provided the economic wherewithal and political plurality to their citizens

It is not hard to remember that, until very recently, the mainstream western press viewed the Shia led Iranian Islamic revolution with similar disdain, now reserved for Sunni dominated ISIS. Given the hydrocarbon and human resources available in its current spheres of influence, it is not a big leap to see a stable ISIS state in the near future. At the moment there is no viable military solution, due to a dysfunctional nature and political disunity of the forces that oppose it.

How then will ISIS deal with local politics if it survives this initial period or revolutionary fervour? After all, the original Caliphate did not survive two post Prophet rulers. How will the Israelis react if ISIS threatens the fragile stability of Lebanon? How will the Iranians react if ISIS controls the border regions of Iraq-Syria with Iran?

All Blacks – White Fern

Nevertheless, spare a thought for the people of Aotearoa, or New Zealand, who in an attempt to differentiate themselves and their flag from their perpetual antipodean rivals, the Australians, were going to adopt the Silver Fern as the national flag or symbol. Unfortunately it bears a striking similarity to that of the ISIS flag! (12).

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