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-Nguyễn Hoàng Thanh Vy soạn và sưu tầm- Page 1 of 7
From Muhammad to ISIS: Iraq’s Full Story
August2014 – Tim Urban – Wait But Why (modified)
A post about how ISIS came along.
Ingredient 1: An Ancient Schism
In 570, a long-namedbabywasborntoa prominentfamilyinMecca,a city on the west coast of what is
currently Saudi Arabia — Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib ibn Hāshim.
Today he’s just known as Muhammad.
It wasn’t until Muhammad was 40 that his life started getting strange. He had gotten into the habit of
going up to a mountain every year for a couple weeks to be alone, meditate, and pray. It was on one of
these solo retreats in 610 AD that Muhammad was for the first time visited by the angel Gabriel. As the
story goes, Gabriel told Muhammad messages directly from God over the years, which Muhammad
memorized. He would recite the memories to his followers, who would then write them down, and that
became the Quran.
Three years after the first visit from Gabriel, in 613, Muhammad began preaching the messages to the
public, in his hometown of Mecca. This did not go well. At the time, Mecca was largely made up of
polytheistic tribes who worshipped nature-related gods and goddesses, and one of Muhammad’s main
messages was that there was one god and any idols to other gods should be destroyed, which was
awkwardforeverybody.People startedreactingviolentlytoMuhammad’s growing influence, killing some
of his followers, and they may have killed Muhammad too had he not belonged to a fancy family. But in
622, whenMuhammadlearnedof an assassinationplotagainsthim, he andhisfollowersdecidedto bail on
Mecca and head to the nearby city of Medina. This journey is called the Hijra in Muslim tradition and it’s
celebrated on the first day of the Muslim year.
Muhammadand hisfollowerswouldspendthe nexteightyearsfightingoff attemptsto destroy them from
Mecca and other places, and often being ruthless themselves with those who posed a threat to Islam or
refused to convert. The thing a lot of people don’t know is that in addition to being a spiritual leader,
Muhammadwas, inessence,the general of anarmyof followersandatremendouslyeffective strategist in
growing and holding on to his leadership position in the face of lots of hostile competition.
Things ended in 630 when Muhammad and a 10 000 man army marched into Mecca and conquered it for
good. By the time Muhammad died in 632, Islam had spread through the whole Arabian Peninsula.
The Muslim world splits
The Muslimworldenjoyed20years of internal unityuntil Muhammaddied.Thenthe unityended, forever.
The problem is that Muhammad didn’t appoint a successor before he died. And because he had no living
sons, there was no obvious answer. Here’s what happened:
Group A thoughtthatMuhammad wantedthe elite membersof the Muslim community to choose a fitting
leader, or caliph, and whenever that caliph died, the elite would choose the next leader, and so on. And
Group A decided a great first caliph to succeed Muhammad would be the father of one of Muhammad’s
wives, Abu Bakr (we’ll call him Abu).
Group B disagreed. They thought Muhammad would have told them that only God can choose the
successorto leadthe Muslimworld, and that could only happen by keeping things in the family. To them,
all signs pointed to Muhammad’s cousin and the husband of his daughter Fatimah, Ali ibn Abi Talib (Ali).

Group A wasbiggerand won. Sofather-in-law Abutook over as Caliph, while son-in-law Ali watched from
the sidelines and Group B seethed.
When Abu died of illness two years after taking over, another friend of Muhammad’s, Umar, took over,
having been appointed by Abu before his death. Umar ruled for ten years before he was assassinated by
the Persians he had just conquered. Abu had also appointed Umar’s successor, Uthman, who ruled for 12
years before he was assassinated. All the while, Group B is helpless and frustrated.
But then,the elite decidedthe nextandfourthcaliphshouldbe Ali — Group B’s original guy — and for two
seconds, everyone was happy.
Five years later, Ali was assassinated, and when his eldest son Hassan became the fifth caliph, he was
quicklyoverpoweredbyanaggressive rebel force ledbyMuawiyah, who coerced Hassan out of power and
became the sixthcaliph — andGroup A and Group B wouldneverreconcileagain.WhileMuawiyahwasthe
firstof a longdynastyof caliphs,GroupB tellsa differentstory.Tothem, the leaders are more special than
merelyelectedcaliphs — they’re divinelychosenimams,and the way they see it, after an annoying three-
caliph delay, their first imam was finally in power when Ali got the job. His eldest son Hassan was their
secondimam,andwhenMuawiyahkickedhimout,Group B threw their support behind Ali’s younge r son,
Husayn — their third imam. Group A continued to ignore Group B and support their caliphs.
Thiswas over1300 yearsago, and yettoday’sMuslimworldisstill completelydivided over it, and so much
of today’s Middle East strife is centered around this ancient split.
Group A are Sunnis and Group B are Shias (also known as Shi’a or Shiite).
Today’s Sunni-Shia tensions are about a lot of things, but at their very core is what happened in the 7th
century.Sunni Muslimsbelieve intheirlineof caliphs, and don’t believe them to be chosen by God; while
ShiaMuslimsrejectthe firstthree caliphsandinsteadbelieve inthe line of divinely-chosen imams starting
with Ali. Both sects agree that Muhammad is the final prophet, both follow the Five Pillars of Islam, and
both view the Quran as the holy book; but Shia are less unquestionably accepting of the Quran in its
entirety, because they believe certain parts were recounted by people other than the imams.
Here’s a chart to help clear up all of this confusion:

Ingredient 2: Straight Lines
By the beginning of the 20th century, the ancient land of Iraq (which was NOT the current nation of Iraq)
had beenpartof the OttomanEmpire for400 years. There were several ethnic and religious groups on the
land,leftmostlyfree tokeeptothemselvesandseparate fromthe others.Butwhen Germany and Co. took
on France, Britain, and Russia in World War I, the Ottoman Empire elected to be part of the “and Co.”,
which left them ultimately on the losing side. Bye bye Ottoman Empire.
During the war, Mark Sykes of Britain and François Georges-Picot of France got together with a pencil, a
ruler and a bottle of whiskey, took to the map, carving the Ottoman Empire into nations.
Regardingthe whole “severalethnic and religious groups” thing and the natural boundaries of separation
that had developed between them over centuries, George-Picot famously remarked, “Whatever.” With
pencil in hand, Sykes is quoted as, “I should like to draw a line from the e in Acre to the last k in Kirkuk.”
The thingabout creatingbordersusinga map,pencil andruler isthat it’sa terrible waytocreate borders. If
youlookat organically-createdbordersaroundthe world — those thatwere formed over time by the local
populations,basedusuallyonethnicandreligiousdivisions,andoftendemarcatedby mountains, rivers, or
othernatural barriers — they’re squiggly and messy. What’s a clear and satisfying straight-line-on-a-map
borderfor imperial powerstryingtokeepthingscleanandsimpleforthemselves is a complete disaster on
the ground across the world where the actual place is.
When borders are drawn this way, two bad things happen: 1) Single ethnic or religious groups are sliced
apart into separate countries, and 2) Different and often unfriendly groups are shoved into a nation
togetherandtoldto share resources,get along, and bond together over national pride for a just-made-up
nation— whichinevitablyleadstoone group taking power and oppressing the others, resulting in bloody
rebellions and coups. This isn’t that complicated.
But since itwasn’treallytheir problem, SykesandGeorge-Picot just went ahead with it, and over the next
few years, precise new borders were drawn, giving birth to modern day Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Jordan,
Lebanon, and Kuwait. Here was Iraq’s new situation:
Can’t see why there’d be any issue here.

A Tight Lid
Then, Iraq was like a bubbling soup inside a pressure cooker and it would spew itself all over the kitchen
unless you had one critical thing that can keep things in order: a tight lid.
The nationversionof a tight lid can be either a strong occupying power or an iron fist dictator with a scary
military machine at his whim — without one of these, your nation will fall apart (1).
The newnationof IraqcombinedIngredient1(Sunni andShiaArabs hatingeach other) withIngredient 2 (a
border that forces them into a nation together, along with a large group of Kurds) to create a tense
pressure cooker. Foryourinformation,the Kurdsare anethnicgroup,like the Arabs.Kurds follow anumber
of religions, but most of them are Sunni Muslims. So when people talk about Iraq’s groups and they say
“Sunni, Shia, and Kurd,” what they mean is “Arab Sunni, Arab Shia, and Kurdish Sunni.” (2)
Thingswere hot from the beginning, when the new Iraqis revolted against the British occupation in 1920.
The British acted as a lid and crushed the revolt (3). After Iraq achieved independence and the British lid
left,aseriesof militarycommanderstookoverthe lidduties,stompinganumberof revolts and killing each
other in coups from time to time. In 1968, the Sunni Ba’ath Party took over, under the leadership of new
president Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and his ambitious vice president and general, Saddam Hussein.
By 1979, Saddam’sinfluence hadgrownto the pointwhere he waskindof runningthe show, and finally he
went to al-Bakr and was like, “You know what two cool things are? Murder and retirement. You know? I
thought maybe you’d want one of those? And you could choose?” and al-Bakr stepped down, bringing
Saddam Hussein, the tightest lid of them all, to power. A lot of things sucked about the 24-year rule of
Saddam, but Saddam’s worst crimes happened during the wars he started and their aftermath (4).
Worried that the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran would inspire rebellion in Iraq’s Shia majority, Saddam
launched into the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, which killed over 100 000 Iraqis. Iraq’s Kurds, who have never
wanted to be a part of Iraq, seized the opportunity in the chaos to try to form their own autonomous
country,at times receiving support from the Iranians. The attempt failed, and toward the end of the war,
Saddamembarkedonthe al-Anfal Campaign,asystematicgenocideof the Kurdish north. One of the worst
moments came in 1988, just as the war was winding down, when residents of the city Halabja were
overcome by the smell of sweet apples after war planes flew by overhead, and then people and animals
starteddroppingdeadall overthe cityfrom gas poisoning.The gassing caused more deaths than 9/11. The
entire al-Anfal campaign killed between 50 000 and 180 000 Kurds.
Barely had time to take a shit after the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam started the Persian Gulf War by invading
Kuwait for its delicious oil reserves. This, as I learned from my third grade teacher, did not go well for
Saddam, and again, Iraq’s oppressed groups, the Shia and the Kurds, tried to take advantage of the
situation by attempting to overthrow Saddam. Many suggest that the George H.W. Bush Administration
misledthe KurdsandShias into believing that the US was behind their uprisings and would protect them.
Saddam responded by crushing the uprisings, killing 80 000 – 230 000 people in the process.
Saddam was a brutal ruler, but under his iron fist, Iraq was mostly a stable country.
2003: Off Comes the Lid
Say whatyou wantaboutthe BushAdministrationandtheirdecisiontoinvade Iraqandoverthrow Saddam,
but one thingisfor sure:Theywere very,verywrongwhen they thought it would be a quick and easy war.
Theyknewtheywere removingalid,buttheyseemedtothinkitwasoff a tupperware containerof cookies,
not a pressure cooker. And their plan to replace the wrought iron lid with a fresh sheet of democracy
cellophane would have worked fine if it were a tupperware container of cookies. Just not if it were a

pressure cooker. Sothere’sthe US,suddenlymiredinhellandchaosforeightyears,trying to fix a situation
they weren’t prepared to fix, and which would ultimately be the Iraqi people’s problem, not theirs.
As unfortunate as the bloody years of US occupation were for everyone involved, by being there, the US
was acting as a lid of some kind. Then, in 2011, the US left.
A Perfect Storm
Instability is the fertile soil that bad, scary things grow out of, and Iraq then had a new prime minister, a
newgovernment,anunfamiliar constitution, and an amateur, recently-trained army — not exactly stable.
(a) The power pendulum had also just swung for the first time in decades. For any living Iraqis, a Sunni
governmentandsuppressedShiamajorityisall theyknow.Suddenly, in 2006, Iraq had a new government,
ledbya hard-line Shia,Nourial-Maliki.A logical observerof historywouldprobablysuggestthatitwouldbe
a wise move for al-Maliki to be inclusive of Sunnis regardless of the past since the country was not in a
stable situation. Al-Maliki did just the opposite, arresting Sunni leaders, discriminating against Sunni
civilians, and targeting Sunnis disproportionately for torture and violence. All of this exacerbated the
instabilitybymakingthe governmentlessunifiedandcompetent,creatingrage in the Sunni populous, and
weakeningthe loyaltyof amilitary,partof whichhatesitsowngovernment.The anti-al-Maliki feelings are
so strong that many normally-peaceful Sunnis find themselves sympathizing or even supporting violent
anti-government terrorists.
(b) The powerswitchfromSunni toShiahas broaderimplications. Inthe whole world of Islam, Sunni Islam
is the vast majority (around 90%) and Shia Islam (around 10%) is just a small side branch. But when you
look at the heart of the Middle East more closely, you can see why things are so complicated:
Suddenly, Shias are in charge of countries all the way from Iran to the Mediterranean, creating a kind of
Shia Axis. This is a great thing for the world’s largest Shia nation, Iran, and it scares the shit out of the
region’s most powerful Sunni nation, Saudi Arabia. And what’s been happening is Saudi Arabia and Iran
engaging in what is essentially a Cold War, vying for broader power. This is why Iran wants ISIS (a Sunni
group) to disappear and why you keep hearing that the US and Iran might actually agree on something
(though for different reasons). This is also why the Saudis have been rumored to have funded Sunni
resistance movementsinbothSyriaandIraq,evenpossiblydirectingfundsto groups like ISIS. Saudi Arabia
denies this, of course.

(c) Anotherreasonisthe simultaneousinstabilityof adjacentSyria (aShia-governedcountry) — creating an
unstable borderanda disjointed terrorist-fighting front without a shared national narrative to fight for. It
also allows a terrorist group to hide in one country from trouble in the other.
(d) Finally,westernpowersoftenprovidealidfromafar when things erupt somewhere — but in this case,
those powershave beengunshysince theyjust got out of a hideous war in the area and really really want
to avoid getting involved.
Whenyouadd all these together— an unstable, divided new government with an amateur, questionably
loyal army and an angry minority population who sympathizes anyone who resist the government; the
interestsof a giant neighbor, Saudi Arabia, aligned with a government overthrow; a civil war next door in
Syria;and a group of westernpowersdeterminedtostayout — youhave the perfect storm for the fiercest
of terrorist groups to emerge from the fringe and conquer.
ISIS
The beginningsof ISIS — a Sunni jihadistgroup — canbe tracedback to 1999, whenAbuMusab al-Zarqawi,
a Jordanianjihadist,startedthe groupbecause he waspissedoff aboutalot of things. After Zarqawi swore
allegiance toal-Qaedain2004, thisevolvedintowhatbecame knownas“al-Qaedain Iraq,” and was one of
those shadowy insurgent groups you kept reading about the US fighting during the war. When insurgent
activity died down after the US troop surge in 2007, ISIS seemed on the decline and disappeared from
relevance for a bit.
In 2010, after ISIS’ssecondleaderwas assassinated, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — supposedly a former scholar
of Islamic studies and a US war prisoner back in 2004 — took over and got the group back on track. He
replenishedtheirpartially-killed-off leadership with dozens of Saddam’s old Ba’athist military personnel,
whobroughtkeyexperience tothe group.Thenin2011, whenthe SyrianCivil War broke out, ISIS joined in
as a rebel force (the Shia government in Syria is the exact kind of entity ISIS wants to bring down). This
helpedtotrainand battle-hardenthe group.ISIS’sbehaviorinSyriawassobrutal and severe thattheyeven
startedcreepingoutthe otherbad guygroups,includingal-Qaeda,who finally cut all ties with ISIS in 2014.
Up until early June 2014, only those who were carefully following the news knew about ISIS. But that’s
wheneverythingchanged. On June 5th, just hours after I purchased my non-refundable flight to Iraq, ISIS
stormedintothe country,takingcontrol of the border,andstarted systematically conquering towns in the
western part of the nation. And suddenly, everyone had heard of ISIS.
Two thingswere especiallyshockingaboutISIS’sadvance intoIraq.First,the horrifying, Genghis Khan-style
way they conducted business i.e. immediately round up and execute all men of authority, in this case
anyone whowaseveron the government payroll, then execute anyone else who resisted their takeover.
Second, the fact that in city after city ISIS attacked, the Iraqi military fled the scene. This was partially
because theywere horrifiedof ISISandpartially because, as mentioned above, the Sunni members of the
army weren’tthatintofightingagainstaSunni group to defend a government they hated. So western Iraq
was folding quickly to ISIS, and by June 9th, they had captured Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest city.
The area of Syria and Iraq they had conquered (and are still in control of) is the size of Belgium. Al-Qaeda
neverconqueredanything—theyjustkilled people. So how did ISIS do it? In addition to the perfect storm
of factors discussed above, including far more tacit support from masses of civilians than al-Qaeda ever
had, ISIS has three qualities that make them so effective:
1) They’re brutal. Noregard forhuman life isa helpful qualitywhentrying to conquer a nation. An excerpt
fromthisAmnestyInternational report details real accounts of ISIS brutality so scary it doesn’t seem real:

A witnessto onesuch masskilling in the village Solagh told Amnesty International that on the morning of 3
August,ashewastrying to flee towardsMountSinjar,hesaw vehicleswith IS fightersin themapproaching,
and managed to conceal himself. From his hiding place he saw them take some civilians:
“A white Toyotapick-up stopped by thehouseof my neighbour,Salah Mrad Noura, who raised a white flag
to indicatethey were peacefulcivilians. The pick-up had some14 IS men on the back.They took out some 30
peoplefrom my neighbour’s house: men, women and children. They put the women and children, some 20
of them, on the back of another vehicle which had come, a large white Kia, and marched the men, about
nine of them, to the nearby wadi [dry river bed]. There they made them kneel and shot them in the back.
They wereall killed; I watched frommy hiding place fora long time and noneof themmoved. I know two of
those killed: my neighbour Salah Mrad Noura, about 80 years old, and his son Kheiro, about 45 or 50.”
ISIS has officially been the deadliest terrorist group in history. In a tool that maps out the activity of the
world’s most prominent terrorist groups, when you filter by “Most Victims,” ISIS comes up first, despite
being around for less than a decade (their death count is more than double al-Qaeda’s lifetime total).
2) They’re sophisticated.ISISfunctionslikeawell-runcompany — itknowshow to recruit, it knows how to
fundraise, and it’s incredibly organized. ISIS produces a thorough and professional annual report that
detailsitskillingsandconquestsinthe same wayacompanywouldreporton itsrevenue and gross margin.
They’re also pros at social media. Aaron Zelin, an expert on jihadis at the Washington Institute, said that
when it comes to social media, ISIS is “probably more sophisticated than most US companies.”
3) They’re incredibly rich. According to Iraqi intelligence, ISIS has assets worth $2 billion, making it by far
the richestterroristgroupinthe world.Mostof thismoneywasseizedafterthe capture of Mosul,including
hundredsof millionsof USdollarsfromMosul’scentral bank.On topof that,they’ve takenoil fieldsandare
reportedly making $3 million per day selling oil on the black market, with even more money coming in
through donations, extortions, and ransom. ISIS has also gotten ahold of an upsetting amount of high-
caliber, US-made weapons and tanks used by the Iraqi army but left behind when the army fled. They’ve
even gotten their hands on nuclear material found at Mosul University.
On June 29th, ISIS just fully went for it and proclaimed itself a caliphate i.e. a global Islamic state, and
commanded all the world’s Muslims to obey Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the grand caliph. Those living in ISIS-
captured cities are getting a taste of what life in the new caliphate is like:
 Womenhave aboutas many rightsas a goldfish, barely allowed to leave the house and forbidden
from showing their faces in public.
 No smoking ever, and also no tampering with or disabling the smoke detector in the airplane
lavatory.
 If they’re not just rounded up and executed on the spot, Christians and other non-Muslims are
forced to convert to Islam, pay a hefty non-Muslim tax, become a refugee, or die. The doors of
Christian houses are marked with a ‫ن‬, a symbol that signifies that they’re Christian. Nazi-esque.
 Some reports say a fatwa (an Islamic law ruling by an authority) was issued declaring that all
women between the ages of 11 and 46 would undergo genital mutilation, a tradition meant to
suppress a woman’s sexual desire in order to discourage “immoral behavior.”
As for future goals, the short term goal is to establish an Islamic nation in the areas it currently controls,
withsome expansionof the boundaries. In the medium term, al-Baghdadi has declared that “this blessed
advance will not stop until we hit the last nail in the coffin of the Sykes–Picot conspiracy” i.e. until those
pencil and ruler lines drawn after WWI are gone and all the nations are part of the new caliphate. In the
long run, ISIS wants to expand its caliphate to the reaches of the first Muslim dynasty in 750 AD, and
beyond.

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