On September 20th 2001, George W. Bush stood in the American congress and vowed to attack the “enemies of freedom” who hijacked two airplanes, flew them into the World Trade Center and took more than 3000 innocent lives. This was the second surprise attack on American soil after the deadly attacks of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. It too marked the whole world.

Bush differentiated between radicals and the “true message of Islam, which is good”. Nonetheless he launched the invasion of Iraq, with the intention of disarming Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, ensuring national security, making Iraq a democracy while inspiring regional transformation. Today we discover that once more America has failed on foreign soil, after Vietnam in 1965, Lebanon in 1982 and finally Somalia 10 years later. The last of these countries is now a failed state and Iraq is now mostly ruled by ruthless terrorists who claim they are soldiers of Islam, but their lawless and ruthless actions have only proved the contrary. How then did the Islamic State come to be? Here are some reasons.

Invasion of Iraq and passivity of the world

In March of 2003, the Bush-Cheney administration, Tony Blair’s government and their coalition of allies stepped in Baghdad and deposed long time serving president and dictator Saddam Hussein. The way Bush and Blair chose to build the case of the war was centred around the argument that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that this threatened the United States, its allies as well as the whole world.  There were other causes of course, like inspiring regional transformation and expanding democracy in the middle-east. But let us focus on the Weapons of Mass Destruction, that American and British soldiers left their families to search for but never found. WMD was taken as common ground for the coalition to agree on invading Iraq, but things were different in the Security Council where Russia, China, France and Germany as well as others opposed the intervention.

In November 2002, UN Security Council Resolution 1441 was adopted unanimously and “offered Iraq under Saddam Hussein “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations”. Hussein accepted and the inspections were led by Hans Blix head of United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Blix has complained that, to this day, the United States and Britain have not presented him with the evidence which they claim to possess, regarding Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. El-Baradei has also addressed personally the Security Council refuting that Iraq possessed WMD. After resolution 1441, the US, Britain and Spain proposed another resolution for Iraq which they soon withdrew because it was clear that certain Veto countries would have opposed them. If that had happened, it would have destroyed any possibility for the coalition wishing to invade Iraq.

In Kofi Anan‘s words, the Secretary General at that time: “I have indicated, (the invasion) was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal“. International law, the United Nations and the sacred question of sovereignty were not enough to stand in opposition of American primacy. In 2015, in a CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria, Mr Blair apologised for mistakes made over the Iraq war and admitted   the conflict could have   sparked the   rise of   brutal Islamic State fundamentalists. It is important to mention that the former Prime minister was the only official who took responsibility for the Iraq war in front of cameras, but in search of world peace, truth and justice are prerequisites to reinstate stability. Tony Blair also stated that “ISIS actually came to prominence from a basis in Syria not Iraq”. But no, the Islamic State was born in Iraq and not in Syria, and in the next paragraph, I will discuss the errors and inaccuracies of this statement.

Americans against American Supremacy

Mark Danner, a prominent American journalist and educator, wrote an essay entitled “Iraq: The New War” in July of 2003, warning of the prospective damage arising post-invasion of Iraq and forecasting the imminent rise of an insurgency known today as the Islamic State. In a Vice News interview, he said: “In a fact, the US created ISIS. Nothing like it existed before the American occupation. We created it, it is ours. And now we are trying to deal with the consequences”.  In his words, defeat or victory will not be judged by who controls Baghdad, but whether the war has left Americans more secure before it was taken. Unfortunately for the whole world, all that the war did was in favour of the Jihadi cause which united them and gave birth to the new self- proclaimed caliphate. The controversial decisions taken by the Bush administration ranging from dissolving the army to de-Ba’athifying the country enraged the Sunnis in the Middle-East who vowed to hunt the Americans out like they did in Somalia or with the Soviets in Afghanistan. Al- Zarqawi who led this insurgency, also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, mobilised desperate and angry troops, taking responsibility for numerous suicide bomb attacks and hostage executions. He pledged alliance to Bin Laden and led the Jihadi movement as resistance of American colonisation. He died in 2006 and was replaced by al-Baghdadi who is now the caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

Therefore, Mr. Blair was wrong. IS was born in Iraq and not in Syria due to the useless occupation of Iraq. The terrorist state also profited from the turmoil in Syria to expand its’ territory. His main argument is that America invaded Iraq, overthrew its leader, dissolved the army without disarming it, and angered Iraqis to the point of radicalising them. They were aware of the rise of this insurgency, denied it to the American public and chose to do nothing. It is the United States’ responsibility, as well as its British allies, to ensure stability when considering decolonisation.

Sustainability and finances

But how is it possible for such a ruthless non-state actor to launch a war against the world, be combated on all fronts and still be able to sustain itself? Even the ruthless and criminal Nazi empire hit its knees. Despite the Axis powers’ might, they were not able to sustain themselves when combated fiercely on all fronts by the Allies powers. The controversy is there.

Iraq and Syria are known of their wealth in oil, therefore extraction is the caliphate’s main source of income estimated between $1 million to $3 million a day by a US Treasury official. IS controls around 300 oil wells in Iraq alone. At its peak, it operated 350 oil wells in Iraq but lost 45 to foreign airstrikes. It has captured 60% of Syria’s total production capacity. About one-fifth of its total capacity is in operation. Foreign sales rely on a long-standing black market to export via Turkey. Many of the smugglers and corrupt Turkish border guards who helped Saddam Hussein to evade sanctions are helping IS to export oil and import cash. Energy sales include selling electric power from captured power plants in northern Syria; some of this electricity is reportedly sold back to the Syrian government. It sells the oil at a lower price to truckers and middle-men who are rumoured sell it illegally to the ‘oil-starved Assad regime’, Turkey and Iraqi Kurds. The fuss here is that the latter are presumed enemies of the Islamic State. That is how deep the disarray in this region is. The caliphate pays each of its fighters around $400. This is the double of the sum earned by fighters in any other rebel group, as well as Iraqi or Syrian government soldiers. IS also extracts wealth through extortions and taxations of inhabitants. Christians who have stayed in Iraq and Syria face an additional tax. To be able to sustain itself the terrorist state needs to racket its population and win allegiance in tribes to make profit. That is a weakness. The trafficking in antiquities of these rich cultural lands also amounts to an important sum of the state’s finances. Last but not least, kidnappings and ransom payments of European journalists and others are another source of income that provided the Islamic State around $20 million in 2014. This huge budget that is sourced by nothing else other than criminality and illegality but fuelled by our governments and states that we elect, allows the caliphate to pay each of its fighters around $400. This sum is about the double of the sum earned by fighters in any other rebel group, as well as Iraqi or Syrian government soldiers.

A global misunderstanding of the Middle-East

The troubling fact here is not whether this invasion led to the consequences in which such a ruthless movement arose but the fact that this terrorist state is able to sustain itself due to purchases of resources by state and non-state actors. The continuous bombings from American and Russian jets are not enough to bring down this terrorist organisation and caused too many civilian casualties. The conflict in Syria is not an intrastate conflict between the state and those who want to change it, but a proxy war between regional and world powers. The Western/Sunni front has armed and trained militias while the Eastern/Shiia front has backed Assad and stepped into the ground to assist its most strategic ally in the Middle-East.

Dan Glazebrook, regular columnist and author for The Guardian said: “The whole business about funding ‘moderate’ rebels has always been a bit of a fantasy. There is nothing moderate about what they are being trained to do. There is nothing moderate about forming a militia and then going and killing as many police and soldiers of a sovereign state as you can. The Free Syrian Army – the so-called moderate rebels – celebrated their arrival in Aleppo for example by planting 2,000-kilo bombs in the city centre and looting the city’s schools. This whole idea of moderate rebels was always a myth“. The same goes for backing a government that has blindly killed women and children.

In politics, choosing between the worst of two evils is always an imperative act but it does not stop there. The USA and the UK have created the consequences in which the Islamic State was created but the rest of the world has allowed – and is still allowing – its continued existence and self-sustainability. The importance of self-interest has not only pushed governments to allow its survival but even sometimes to fuel it and help in expanding it.

Disclaimer: This article has been previously published in the Angry Italian. ( angryitalian.com/english/islamic-state-come/)