ISIS, The Great Enigma
Created Friday November 27 2015
By Alfonso Elizondo
The terrorist group name ISIS comes from an acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and Syrias the acronym for the group’s full Arabic name comes from the initials of and Daesh in Arabic refers to Isis, the name of an Egyptian divinity assumed both by Cleopatra III, as Cleopatra VII, the latter being the celebrated Queen of Egypt in the Ptolemaic period. 25 years ago it also became the name of a pharmaceutical giant from California that apparently will have to change their name because of the fall of its shares on the Stock Exchange after the most recent attacks in Paris.
The terrorist group ISIS has done everything possible to make fun of the great powers and world leaders and lead them into attacking each other. It seems determined to instigate the fury of democratic countries and create a support for the creation of a major international coalition, causing the public to support a military action that could potentially destroy it.
The recent terrorist attacks in France, the shooting down of a Russian place in Egypt and the attacks in Turkey aimed to achieve objectives in the short, medium and long term, creating fear and boosting recruitment within its ranks to unleash a wide apocalyptic war. Everyone in the world is listening to a message ·from these terrorists that the only way to be safe from their actions will be to wipe them out.
Although the group operates according to the logics of murder and depravation, it continues to progress rapidly, while on the other hand it doesn’t show any lack of a coherent strategy, which reveals its careful operation planning done within the highest levels of its leadership in Raqqa. According to the French Government collected data from the video where ISIS claimed responsibility for the Paris attack, there’s evidence that such attacks were carried out because France had taken part into the anti-ISIS coalition. However, it sarcastically points out that the group would have liked to see more strength and determination coming from the coalition, fight, and mocks President Hollande calling him the French Idiot.
Linked to this same event is the laughable case of the Syrian passport found next to the body of a suicide bomber, which arises the question of what kind of terrorist would bring his passport to an attack. According to ISIS, they chose Paris because they see it as the capital of vice and prostitution, in addition to the city being the capital of Europe where the presence of a large number of Muslim believers in Islam and other non-believers have been generating wide tensions in the city. On top of this, it has welcomed countless refugees mainly from Syria.
In the Miami Herald and the World Politics Review, the columnist Fride Ghitis noted that the choice of ISIS to pick Paris could be explained by multiple reasons. First, the passport found near the body of one of the terrorists was a way of provoking the West to make them turn their backs against refugees and it sought to provoke France, NATO and Europe to fight against ISIS and so that the public would revolt against the Muslim population and the refugees.
It seems that ISIS wants a war between Islam and the rest of the world, with Muslim allies as a way to expand its caliphate. ISIS wants Muslims around the world to go to war against the modern world, seeking to stop the flow of Syrian refugees escaping to the West, as they consider shameful that Muslims would flee their utopian Islamic State.
These shortcuts also suit ISIS’s intentions to seem brave and efficient in carrying out massive operations, since it is with this strong image that they have achieved increased recruitment among their groups and consolidated its leading position as jihadist group, beating their great rival Al Qaeda. Moreover, ISIS had taunted the United States and Great Britain by publicly beheading citizens of both countries and in doing so, risking everything they had achieved, including part of the territory in Iraq.
On the other hand, Russia has been fighting in Syria avoiding targeting ISIS positions until after the attack on their plane in Egypt and now in Turkey. Knowing full well that after the destruction of their planes, Putin would overturn Russia’s weapons against ISIS, and that’s exactly what has happened. Now Putin and the West seem to be working together against ISIS.
The same has happened in Turkey with Isis carrying out suicide bombings that put president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an uncomfortable position, as in a first moment he did not want to help the West in its fight against ISIS. It seems like the Islamic State is risking everything it has to create the conditions for an international attack against themselves, coming from the United States, Russia, France, Turkey and the NATO allies.
This indicates that the long-term goal of ISIS is not so much building a state and governs a territory but that in fact it has an apocalyptic vision. A self-destructive strategy that seems puzzling, but confirms the hypothesis of many scholars on this issue who claim that Isis long-term vision I is to unleash a final battle between East and the West: a final suicide mission where everyone is involved.
Addendum: This hypothesis of an apocalyptic goal has been perhaps the fundamental reason why Obama, Israel and the UK do not know how to deal with this situation and what the next step should be. And neither do Russia, Turkey and Iran. The old plan of Washington to create a terrorist group led by Osama bin Laden to justify their crimes in the Middle East went sour when they themselves killed the puppet they had created. Now that his ghost has been replaced by ISIS, they have no idea what will happen next. But it is undeniable that ISIS cannot be controlled neither by the United States nor by the rest of the world.