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DAESH: A LONG DECADE OF SUNNI ARAB
ALIENATION IN IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST
Myriam Benraad
1
I
s Islamic State’s expansion in the Middle East and the broader Arab and Muslim
world still likely to be contained? This uneasy question has, for months, lingered
in all minds. Indeed, while the international coalition led by the United States
announced until recently significant setbacks inflicted on the jihadist group, now the
first world terrorist threat, in May 2015 its combatants seized the two towns of Ramadi
in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria. Daesh
2
today controls forty per cent of Iraqi territory (Al-
Anbar, Nineveh and Salahaddin provinces) and over fifty per cent of Syria (Deir Ezzor,
Raqqah, Hasakah, Aleppo and Hama). In addition to spectacular attacks, its members
have shown their absolute determination to complete both their regional and global
“caliphate”. Western capitals, for their part, are overcome by this inexorable advance and
deeply confused as to the means required to fight against this phenomenon. Pondering
the limits of the strategy implemented so far would provide a better understanding of the
nature of the enemy, which is far from obvious despite the abundance of information
available since the beginning of the crisis. Beyond its numerous despicable atrocities,
Islamic State remains a highly political, ideological and even socio-cultural entity, whose
roots can be traced back to the context of the conflict borne out of the Iraq War in 2003.
1 Researcher on Iraq and the Middle East at the Centre for International Research (CERI-SciencesPo),
the Institute for Research and Studies on the Arab and Muslim World (IREMAM) and the Foundation
for Strategic Research (FRS). Author of
Iraq, the Revenge of History. From Foreign Occupation to the
Islamic State
(Paris: Vendémiaire, 2015) and
Iraq: From Babylon to the Islamic State. Received Ideas on a
Complex Nation
(Paris: Cavalier Bleu, 2015).
2 Acronym of the Arabic
Dawla islamiyya fi al-‘Iraq wa al-Sham
(Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), used
in the Iraqi-Levantine dialect for several years and today commonplace in the West to refer to the group.