On ISIL and the search for peace

On ISIL and the search for peace

(This article was first published by The Presbyterian Outlook on February 2, 2016, https://pres-outlook.org/2016/02/on-isil-and-the-search-for-peace/ ).

by Amgad Beblawi

In March 2011, I visited partner churches in Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus, Syria. The then-called “Arab Spring” had started in Tunisia three months earlier. This wave of grassroots protests subsequently swept through most countries in the Middle East, except Syria. People across the region were calling for an end to corruption and demanded greater freedoms. Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain – practically every country in the region experienced spontaneous protests – except Syria.

By that point, the question wasn’t whether Syria would join the Arab Spring, but when. All eyes were on Syria with anticipation. Islamist militants across the border in Iraq and elsewhere in the global network of jihadists also kept their eyes on Syria, and waited for the opportune time. Protests started in Syria later that month.

ISIL’s Origins in Iraq

Islamist militants had been fighting against U.S. forces in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. By 2004, militants in Iraq (both Iraqi and foreign jihadists) had organized, pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda’s leader Osama bin Laden, and became known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

U.S. forces captured hundreds of AQI militants, and imprisoned them at facilities such as Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca alongside former Iraqi army officers. The two former enemies received similar treatment by their captors, and in some cases were tortured side-by-side.[1]  After their release from the American-run prisons, many of the former Iraqi army officers readily joined AQI and its insurgency against the U.S. forces. Most of the top leaders and strategists of AQI were former officers in the Iraqi army.[2]

In 2006, AQI merged with other insurgent factions to establish the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). In 2010, former Camp Bucca prisoner Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi became the group's new leader.

Syria’s Crisis, ISIL’s Opportunity

 When the Arab Spring protests started in Syria in March 2011, ISI quickly sent its fighters across the border. For a few months, ISI was one of as many as two thousand militant groups operating in Syria. The brutal tactics of these groups left no room for moderate or liberal Syrians. Many of the moderate forces that had opposed the Assad government defected to Islamist factions. Early reports from churches across Syria described most of the rebel groups as militant and Islamist in nature, and reported that they included large numbers of foreign jihadists. On the other hand, the majority of secular and liberal Syrians who had participated in the initial peaceful protests quickly abandoned their demands for reforms, and, fearing the militant jihadists, preferred supporting the beleaguered President Al-Assad.

In this situation, it is not surprising that the majority of Syrian Christians preferred the Assad regime.  In retrospect, it is fair to say that most of the official news reports and analysis failed to fully understand the complex dynamics of the events in Syria.

By 2013, ISI had emerged as one of the leading militant groups operating in Syria. It succeeded in integrating several smaller groups, crushed some of its rivals, and recruited thousands of foreign fighters.[3] In April 2013, ISI leader Al-Baghdadi announced the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).[4] In January 2014, ISIL expelled its rival Al-Nusra Front from the Syrian city of Raqqah and claimed it as its capital, and thus became the most powerful Islamist faction in Syria.

Between February and June of 2014, ISIL swept through large swaths of north east Syria and much of Iraq. Displaying high levels of organization and skill, as well as brutal tactics, the jihadist group displaced hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis in its path, and buried its victims in mass graves.

In June 2014, after forcing the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga troops to retreat, ISIL captured the Iraqi city of Mosul. On 29 June, ISIL announced the establishment of a worldwide caliphate. Al-Baghdadi was named its caliph, and ISIL was renamed the Islamic State.

Christian Responses

What has been a more remarkable witness is the response of many Middle Eastern Christians to the violence they experienced directly from Islamist militants. Following the mass beheading of twenty Coptic Christians in February 2015 in Libya, Bishop Angaelos of the Coptic Orthodox Church urged his parishioners to “pray for those who have carried out these horrific crimes, that the value of God’s creation and human life may become more evident to them.”[5] The mother of one of these men, a simple peasant, said to news reporters, “I can’t wish [those who killed my son] evil. I pray for them that God may open their hearts and give them his light.”[6] This, too, is Christ’s commandment to love one’s enemy.

Many Christians have carried the cross and followed Jesus during this crisis. The majority of those are Syrians and Iraqis who died serving other victims of ISIL, or who refused to deny their faith. One such individual is a Dutch Jesuit priest who had been a missionary in Syria for nearly five decades. When the city of Homs came under the control of militant Islamists, Fr. Frans van der Lugt refused to leave. "If the Syrian people are suffering now, I want to share their pain and their difficulties," he told AFP in February 2014,[7] just two months before he was shot and killed by a gunman. Though some 1,400 people were evacuated from Homs, Fr. Van der Lugt insisted he would not leave the city while any of his parishioners remained.

What Makes for Peace, and What Doesn’t?

It’s not enough that the Church responds to the needs of victims of terrorism. It is exceedingly important that the Church examines and exposes all erroneous ideologies that have led to this global crisis and/or continue to fuel the conflict. The Church must ask why an estimated 30,000 foreign young adults (including individuals from Christian background) from 80 different countries have joined ISIL’s campaign in Syria and Iraq, and elsewhere. Why do they find ISIL’s abhorrent agenda so appealing? What socioeconomic, political, and other factors caused them to be disillusioned with their own societies, discontent with their lot in life, and vulnerable to being radicalized? Do they have any legitimate grievances?

Rami Khouri, a senior policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, points to the lack of socio-economic and political rights throughout the Middle East. Certainly, decades of authoritarian rule and corruption in most Middle Eastern countries have led to secular protests of the Arab Spring as well as violent reactions and terrorism. Khouri argues that military action does not address the real reasons why so many Middle Eastern youth and young adults do desperate things like joining ISIS or risking death to escape to Europe.[8] On the contrary, it was military action, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, that helped pave the way for ISIL, as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair reluctantly admitted.[9]

Another factor is the decades-long U.S.-backed Israeli occupation of Palestine. Robert Mally, senior advisor to president Obama for the Counter-ISIL Campaign, asserts that “resolving the Israel Palestine conflict is necessary to defeating Islamist extremists,” and that “ISIS would lose a recruiting tool if the matter were resolved.”[10]

Global power struggle and foreign interests are yet another factor in ISIL’s success. When fighting started in Syria, the United Nations sent two special representatives, Kofi Annan and then Lakhdar Brahimi, to try to broker a cease fire in Syria. A power struggle between the United States and its allies on one side, and Russia and China on the other side, rendered both camps unwilling to compromise. Russia did not want to lose its last military base and long-term ally in the Middle East. The United States wanted to get rid of a regime it considered hostile. Likewise, opposite interests and hostility between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (majority Sunni nations), and Iran and Hezbollah (majority Shia), led to the former providing support to the rebels (mostly jihadist groups) while Iran and Hezbollah supported the Assad regime. All sides poured weapons and ammunitions into Syria. Thus the fighting in Syria has been described as a proxy war.

As the power struggle became more and more intransigent, Annan and Brahimi gave up the attempt to broker a cease fire, and the chaos in Syria made for a fertile field where ISIL could establish itself and became a monstrous threat to all. Ironically, all of these foreign powers are now entangled in the war in Syria and the global battle with terrorism. In a recent Op Ed, former President Jimmy Carter argued that “The needed concessions are not from the combatants in Syria, but from the proud nations that claim to want peace but refuse to cooperate with one another.”[11]

Much more can be said about socioeconomic and geopolitical factors that have led to the rise of ISIL, and why radical militant ideologies find a receptive audience among those who feel oppressed or exploited in the global arena. Suffice it to say that there is no short-term or convenient solution to terrorism. A military defeat of ISIL will not eliminate terrorism.[12] In recent years, U.S.-led coalitions killed thousands of jihadist fighters and many of their leaders, including Osama Bin Laden himself. Yet, today, ISIL is bigger and more powerful than all its predecessors, and thousands of people from different religious and national backgrounds continue to answer its call for jihad.[13] Middle Eastern churches have seen the results of Western military action in their region and have observed at close hand the ways in which that has resulted only in an escalation of violence, with untold suffering of millions along the way.  They have pleaded with Western churches to advocate against such policies.

In the midst of this global crisis, The Confession of 1967 (written at the height of a global crisis – the nuclear arms race and Cold War) reminds the Church of its calling to “commend to the nations as practical politics the search for cooperation and peace” (The Book of Confessions, 9.45). As nations pursue not what makes for peace but their national interests, the Church is called to advocate for just relations among the nations. The Church is called to speak, not only against the evil of terrorism, but also against the root causes that render so many people disillusioned and vulnerable to being radicalized.

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[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/11/04/how-an-american-prison-helped-ignite-the-islamic-state/

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-hidden-hand-behind-the-islamic-state-militants-saddam-husseins/2015/04/04/aa97676c-cc32-11e4-8730-4f473416e759_story.html

[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-baghdadi-insight-idUSKBN0OW1VN20150616

[4] Alternatively translated from the Arabic as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and also known by the acronym Da'ish or Daesh which is derived from its Arabic name ad-Dawlah Al-Islamiyah fi 'l-Iraq wa-sh-Sham.

[5] https://myocn.net/statement-bishop-angaelos-brutAl-murder-coptic-christians-libya/

[6] https://pres-outlook.org/2015/02/faiths-unite-mourn-death-21-coptic-orthodox-christians/

[7] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26927068

[8] https://www.thecairoreview.com/tahrir-forum/are-vicious-islamists-the-reAl-issue/

[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/tony-blair-says-iraq-war-helped-give-rise-to-isis.html?_r=0

[10] https://wallwritings.me/2015/12/15/rob-malley-links-isis-crisis-to-palestine-issue/

[11] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/opinion/jimmy-carter-a-five-nation-plan-to-end-the-syrian-crisis.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

[12] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/12060706/Defeating-Islamic-State-will-not-end-jihadist-threat-in-Syria-report-warns.html

[13] The word “jihad” means struggle or fight against that which is evil.