President Obama said Friday that the extremist group Islamic State is too brutal to be contained and will require the same effort that has been waged to degrade and ultimately destroy al Qaeda. Photo: Getty Images.
A mass grave is found in northern Iraq, believed to contain 15 Shi'ite truck drivers killed by Islamic State militants. Sarah Toms reports.
Islamic State has become powerful enough to threaten global security. Picture: Supplied. Source: Supplied
A YEAR ago Islamic State (IS), was considered little more than a disorganised moderately armed dusty rabble of Sunni extremists pitching street battles in the rubble of civil war-wracked Syria.
But then came the invasion of Iraq and several beheadings and world leaders including Australia's Tony Abbott are suddenly seeing not only their own citizens joining the group for an offshore fight but threatening to bring their barbaric rhetoric and warfare to the streets of Western nations.
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Shocking ... The beheading of US journalist James Foley brought Islamic State's barbarism to the world's attention. Picture: Twitter. Source: Twitter
For many, it seems incomprehensible how this could have occurred in such a short time but the origins go back years and the threat will remain for a generation. The Iraq War was considered long at eight years, analysts predict this battle could go without measure.
September 11 was considered the game changer in the terrorism fight but Islamic State is now forcing the rewriting of the rules.
ORIGINS
Formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) or alternatively Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the terror group's origins go back to 1999 although their medieval ideologue argues their struggle began centuries earlier.
It had many incarnations as a terror group but each used overt brutality including public beheadings to garnish either support or promulgate fear.
Spreading abject terrorism ... The Raqqa Media Centre of the Islamic State group. Picture: AP Source: AP
Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi began a group in the mid 1990s ostensibly to create a "pure" Islamic state in Jordan. He was arrested and imprisoned when explosives were found in his home and spent his years in prison garnishing support for his ideals. On his release he joined Osama bin Laden. He fought in the Iraq War in 2003 against American-led forces and his group was renamed Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). His reign of terror including the bombings of Western hotels and the beheading on camera of two kidnapped Americans in the Middle East ended when he was killed in a targeted US air strike on a safe house in 2006. He pioneered much of the use of social media that would later be a feature of AQI that later morphed into the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).
They continued to use foreign fighters for jihad but in April 2010 its two leaders Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi were killed in a US air strike; in total 42 leaders and financiers of the group were killed in that year. In May of that year however a new leader emerged Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who took the level of the group to new levels.
Leader of IS ... Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivering a sermon at a mosque in Iraq. Picture: AP Source: AP
He spent a year recruiting a new force including former top leaders in Iraq during the reign of dictator Saddam Hussain. Two years later he announced his arrival and intentions on the international scene.
BREAKING THE WALLS
In an internet posted recording in July 2012, al-Baghdadi vowed to retake all the gains made by Coalition forces in Iraq. This he would do he said through a campaign he dubbed 'Breaking the Walls' and include mass prison breaks to free insurgents, particularly from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, and launch a wave of terror bombings. He was true to his word, The death toll in Iraq was at one stage 1000 a month from his campaign. Hundreds of prisoners escaped jail in the raids and joined his ranks and adopted his view of creating a new Muslim state in the world and vowing death to infidels that did not follow their strict Salafist Jihadism code.
As Iraqi government forces backed by Western intelligence and military hardware sought to tackle the extremist group in Iraq, al-Baghdadi moved members to Syria to recruit more fighters in that already fractured nation. There his splinter group known as the al-Nusra Front encountered hundreds of foreign extremists particularly from Britain keen on ousting Syria's Bashar Assad. Many did not realise they had joined a terrorist group but rather saw themselves as rebels fighting an unjust government. In April 2013 al-Baghdadi released another internet audio statement announcing al-Nusra was actually made up mostly of his fighters and was merging to form ISIS. It also declared it would break ranks with the remnants of al-Qaeda which it saw as moderate to its extreme views and agenda.
British-born ... Abu hussain Al-Britani, from Birmingham, in England's Midlands, a jihadist at the centre of the movement. Picture: Supplied. Source: Supplied
AUSSIE JIHAD
In September 2013, Australian intelligence were warned by British counterparts there were at least a dozen Australians fighting with Syria's opposition forces that were being radicalised.
They had joined the Syrian National Coalition initially but then splintered off to al-Nusra/ISIS, both of which had been earlier proscribed as terror organisation by the Federal Government. But ASIO was told the dozen were just the wild bunch of the 60 idealists suspected of having travelled abroad to fight. They identified one Australian in particular who had become an ISIS leader and had been identified by locals due to his distinctive blue eyes.
Video calling for recruits from Australia ... Abu Yahya ash Shami was identified as Australian in the ISIS recruitment video. Picture: YouTube Source: Twitter
At least six Australians were already known to have died in the conflict. There were hard line internet threats being posted promising jihad specifically on Australia and financial backers for terrorist operations abroad were starting to emerge in cities including Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. But for Australian authorities, facing the dilemma of what to do with the mostly dual nationals travelling abroad via Turkey and Lebanon only to return home with hardened anti-West views, worse news was to come.
A chilling internet video was released with Australian ISIS terrorists calling on others to join them
Titled "There is No Life Without Jihad", the 13-minute film showed the five foreign fighters including two Aussies in a field bragging about their plans to take over Iraq and other countries.
The Australians identified themselves as Abu Yahya al-Shami and Abu Nour al-Iraqi.
"We are a State who is implementing the sharia (Islamic law) in both Iraq and Sham (Syria), and look at the soldiers — we understand no borders," one fighter said in English. A caption said he was Abu Muthanna al-Yemeni from Britain.
"We have participated in battles in Sham, and we will go to Iraq in a few days, and we will fight there, Allah permitting, and come back, and we will even go to Jordan and Lebanon, with no problems."
Known Sydney terrorist Khaled Sharrouf posted an image on Twitter of his seven-year-old son holding up the severed head of an opposition fighter, with the caption "that's my boy".
Beyond words ... Sharrouf's son holds the decapitated head of a soldier in Raqqa, Syria. Picture: Twitter Source: Twitter
Sharrouf had travelled to northern Syria with his family. The image received wide international coverage and was condemned by world leaders.
But intelligence pointed to the fact the Australians in the field were small compared with the 2000 identified from Europe directly involved in the conflict in Syria and Iraq.
ATROCITIES
A UN report this week noted Islamic fighters had carried out atrocities on "an unimaginable scale". This included beheadings, mass executions, systemic rape, torture and murder.
On June 5 at about midday, police in Iraq's second biggest city Mosul warned residents to leave work and return home for security reasons as they declared a curfew.
Fleeing from barbaric slaughter ... Peshmerga military direct traffic at a Kurdish check point, after thousands of people fled Iraq's second city of Mosul. Picture: Getty Images Source: AP
For the next four days nothing happened then with the greatest of ease up to 1300 ISIS fighters invaded the city, the main export route for Iraq oil with a population of more than 1.7 million inhabitants, and declared it their own.
It was a stunning defeat for the Iraqi military who dropped their weapons and ran without a fight leaving behind military hardware, much of it US stock, to be used by their enemies. An estimated 2400 prisoners were released from jails in the province and pledged their support for the terror group. Later that month as forces moved toward Baghdad, ISIS referred to itself in social media as just Islamic State and declared territory under its control as a new caliphate with al-Baghdadi as caliph.
Thousands were then killed who either opposed the terror group or refused to convert including thousands from minority faiths like Christians, Yazidis, Shia and Turkmen.
War ... Terrorists from the Islamic State group lead away captured Iraqi soldiers dressed in plain clothes after taking over a base in Tikrit, Iraq. Picture: Getty Images. Source: NewsComAu
Children were kidnapped and placed on the frontline to either act as sex slaves, human shields or blood banks for wounded fighters. At least 1000 civilians were killed in 17 days of the invasion. IS bragged 1700 soldiers that had surrendered had also been executed in a mass killing. Images of the killings were released through Twitter and various websites. By August IS was pushing into Lebanon and other extremist Muslims in other parts of the world including Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, China and Nigeria claimed to be uniting behind the movement. In Sinjar in northern Iraq up to 50,000 members of the Yazidis minority group was forced to flee the advancing army. As many as 900 civilians were killed, buried alive or died escaping many dying on a ridge at Mt Sinjar where they starved to death.
Then came the beheading of American journalist James Foley.
Guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time ... US journalist James Foley with a black-hooded member of Islamic State, dubbed Jihadi John, before his death. Picture: Twitter Source: AP
JAMES FOLEY BEHEADED: ISIS claims to have killed US journalist
Just doing his job ... US journalist James Foley was abducted in Syria in 2012. Picture: Twitter Source: Twitter
Senseless act that united the western world ... Foley's death at the hands of ISIS attracted worldwide condemnation. Picture: Twitter Source: Supplied
BOY RECREATES James Foley execution in sickening Twitter images
A number of Kurdish fighters were also beheaded. Then came Steven Sotloff execution this week.
A man with a British accent, believed to be Jihardi John again, warns US President Barack Obama before killing Steven Sotloff in a video. Picture: Twitter. Source: Twitter
Steven Sotloff was executed by IS — but he lived to tell the world the truth
SOCIAL MEDIA
When the Canadian photographer Yves Choquette sought out a fixer for an assignment in Syria, he apparently contacted 30 random Syrians on Facebook, inadvertently alerting then he was heading their way. He found a good recognised local fixer but then allegedly let it be known he was sorted, and identified his new paid helper and gave details of their impending movements. In the end he didn't go and it was Sotloff who ended up taking on Choquette's fixer, who had already apparently been compromised. Both were kidnapped. Choquette strongly denies the allegation made by Sotloff's friend and fellow report Ben Taub and rejects his actions were reckless or partially to blame for Sotloff's death. But the debate highlights the reach of IS which has so successfully used social media for its gain.
Western and Iraqi forces already fear their firepower but more so their reach via social media to access the like-minded across the globe.
The like never seen before ... IS's use of social media for modern jihadist propaganda. Picture: Supplied. Source: Supplied
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