Criminal minds

Criminal minds

The sweep of the Islamic State (ISIS) through Sunni Iraq in 2014 was, in part, the result of many poorly conceived policy decisions dating to the earliest days of post-invasion Iraq. The abolition of the Iraqi army, the badly executed process of de-Baathification, the incarceration of Baathists and terrorists together, and the corruption of the Maliki government all stirred enormous anger among the Sunni population. These resentments fermented in the toxic brew of Syrian chaos that incubated ISIS, an environment outside the control of the United States and NATO. 

ISIS overcame the Iraqi security forces because it combined the skills of Al-Qaida of Iraq (AQI) with those of top former officials of Saddam Hussein, experienced in smuggling and illicit trade. The profits of its criminal activities and effective use of corruption have equipped it with more tanks than those deployed by some leading NATO members. ISIS has modern and sophisticated weaponry, and recruits personnel internationally through advanced media campaigns and messaging on Twitter and other forms of communication. With its flexible and innovative business strategies, ISIS cannot be dislodged solely through military bombing campaigns or even boots on the ground. 

ISIS’ rapid advance in Sunni Iraq was surprising to the U.S. government, which did not expect the complete and immediate collapse of Iraqi security forces. Yet the resentments among the Sunni population and the displaced Baathists accumulated for over a decade, making them unwilling to fight ISIS. Moreover, the corruption of the military in the region made it incapable of defending the Sunni population.

The United States is focusing on state actors, whereas the most significant threat in the Middle East is non-state actors such as ISIS. We need to understand that we face a new kind of threat that does not come from countries but from criminalized terrorist groups that behave like multinational illicit businesses. Our challenge is to not only cut off their funds but also to undermine their global recruitment and marketing strategies. In other words, we need to respond to them as we would a successful business competitor. This requires policies that are not dependent solely on military force but on diverse branches of government working together in cooperation with the private sector.

As I was concluding my book “Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime and Terrorism” in October 2013, I predicted – based on extensive interviews with military personnel (many in top decision-making positions), policy advisers and local experts in the region – that the greatest threat to the United States would come out of Syria. Approximately nine months later, ISIS left Syria and took over Sunni Iraq.

Post-invasion policies The Sunni population dominated the military and governance structures of Hussein’s Iraq. His Baathist party controlled the levers of power. To make sure his ruling elite never returned, much effort was made by U.S. military leadership in Iraq to disband the structures that helped him rule. It dissolved the Iraqi army in May 2003, a decision that was never carefully analyzed before implementation. Five years later, it was already clear to many senior U.S. officials that the Sunnis who had once led the army would become a powerful insurgency that would be directed against American forces.  

The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, led by the United States, promoted a comprehensive policy of de-Baathification. Unlike U.S. efforts to de-Nazify Germany after World War II, in which officials’ pasts were carefully reviewed and not everyone was removed, de-Baathification in Iraq was sweeping and without the vetting of individuals. Rather, there were mass removals of Sunni personnel, the only ones with experience in governmental administration. Wholesale dismissals of former Baathists without hearings and due process fostered resentment and resulted in a nonfunctional government.  

Camp Bucca, a huge prison that once held 100,000 prisoners, was the seedbed of ISIS. In  “Dirty Entanglements,” I explain that prisons are no longer institutions of control, but corporate headquarters for crime-terror interactions. Camp Bucca served this function when, in 2007, the overcrowded facility was filled with extremists. Prisoners were separated along religious lines: Sunnis together and Shias together. From this came the strange merger of incarcerated ex-Baathists with jihadis that is now the contemporary ISIS. The jihadis acquired administrative skills from the former Baathists with years of administrative experience governing Iraq under Hussein. The jailed Baathists, angry at their incarceration, found common cause with the religious extremists. Hence ISIS, incorporating former senior government officials, has more highly skilled personnel than al-Qaida and any other jihadi organizations that preceded it.

The leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, spent years in Camp Bucca. He assumed a position of authority within the prison and was called on to mediate disputes. His incarceration and the authority he enjoyed gave him access to prisoners who became the leaders of ISIS. Seventeen of the
Islamic State’s 25 top leaders spent time in U.S. prisons between 2004 and 2011. 

When the U.S. government saw the Iran-supported Shiites assuming disproportionate power under Maliki, it did not take action addressing the grievances of the rest of the population – mainly Kurds or Sunnis accustomed to political power under Hussein. Under the Maliki government, the oil revenues of the Iraqi state went to the Shia population and a small percentage went to the Kurds in the north, but the Sunnis received almost nothing from the central government. Sunni anger was so strong that it contributed to the sectarian violence and conflict we see today, and to the unwillingness of Sunni citizens to defend the Iraqi state against ISIS. 

The failure to share revenues was only one element of Maliki’s corruption. Top positions were given to his Shia cronies, Sunni leaders were marginalized, and basic services were not provided to the large territory now governed by ISIS. Protests against the Maliki government began in the Sunni region shortly after the start of the Arab Spring. But protesters were branded as terrorists and treated brutally. In the year before ISIS’ takeover, another wave of mass protests against the Maliki government was suppressed by Iraqi security forces. These events, lightly reported in the U.S. press, are key to understanding the rising militancy in Sunni areas.

In this context, the failure of the Iraqi forces in the Sunni region to take up arms against ISIS is hardly surprising. For the Sunnis, it was a choice between two bads: a corrupt and brutal government in Baghdad, or ISIS. They chose ISIS because they would not die to support the Maliki government. 

Again, Syria was the incubator for ISIS. During the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Assad’s government gave extremists shelter and allowed them to train, receive weapons and generate funds. He must have believed he could control these elements. But that illusion was shattered when the Syrian civil war began. The chaos provided a place for various extremist groups to congeal in the organization now known as ISIS and prepare for its next phase of expansion. That expansion, initially to Iraq, now extends to groups from Afghanistan to North Africa, and most recently to West Africa. 

revenue and recruitment ISIS has succeeded in acquiring personnel, weapons and funds because it functions like a business. In fact, it is the most effective terrorist business known. Crime and corruption have been key to its acquisition of weapons, revenue generation and mobility across the region. To ensure its ongoing operations, ISIS seeks a product mix, acquiring professional services globally, forming strategic alliances, seizing targets of opportunity and making innovative use of technology. Significant revenues have allowed ISIS to buy weapons from Libya and obtain a good percentage of U.S. weapons supplied to the Syrian rebels.

The Islamic State has successfully adopted the techniques of modern marketing, using social media to not only convey its brutality but also recruit. This recruitment has worked best outside the United States, in countries where individuals can more easily access ISIS’ controlled territory. In Europe, ISIS-sponsored social media cleverly recruits among disenfranchised and often disenchanted youth. Many have criminal pasts, contributing to the particular violence of the group, highlighted by recent attacks in France and Denmark by ISIS supporters with prison records. Many recruits have been drawn to the mythical idea of the caliphate, sold to them as a paradise – an ideal that contrasts with the marginalized lives they are currently living. 

ISIS also capitalizes on its geographic location. What sets terrorist businesses apart from criminal ones is that crime is a means of achieving their political as well as their economic goals. For instance, the kidnapping of community members demoralizes society even as it generates revenue. Sales of passports and counterfeit documents provide money and mobility for fighters. But ISIS is a diversified criminal economy, and its sources of income are more diverse than those of Iraq and the countries that surround it. ISIS generates money from the illicit cigarette trade, antiquities trade, kidnapping, human smuggling and trafficking, sale of the oil from fields they control, and extortion and “taxation” of communities they occupy. U.S.-led bombing has slowed some of the oil revenue, which used to total at least $1 million a day. So ISIS is generating more money by taxing the trade in Captogon, a synthetic drug sold extensively throughout the Gulf region, where the possibility of stopping drug flows and the profits generated from this trade is limited. 

ISIS is also capable of strategic alliances, establishing links with other jihadi groups and helping them publicize and recruit. Many of the terrorist groups operating in Africa and the Middle East evolved out of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida central, which still operates in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. But al-Qaida has many offshoots, the best known of which are AQIM (Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb), AQAP (Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula) based in Yemen, and AQI, which evolved into ISIS. There are other, smaller terrorist groups that operate in the region too, shaped by cultural, historical and religious traditions of the communities in which they are based. In March, four groups in Africa declared allegiance to ISIS, including Boko Haram in northern Nigeria and neighboring states. Those behind the attack on Tunisia’s Bardo Museum in mid-March also professed their loyalty to ISIS.

fresh strategies The past history of U.S. engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan shows the limitations of boots on the ground, particularly those associated with the United States and the NATO coalition. Territory cannot be wrested long-term from ISIS unless local forces succeed in effectively mounting an attack. The difficulties in regaining Tikrit from ISIS reveal its significant military capacity, despite the availability of U.S. advisers to help support the Iraqi forces. 

ISIS’ brutality against the citizens of neighboring states has prompted action by several governments in the region that have not previously been active in combating it. The burning alive of a Jordanian pilot and the beheadings of Egyptian Christians on Libya’s coast have galvanized several countries in the Middle East. Bombings of ISIS by the Jordanian government and by Egypt inside Libya show that they understand the threat posed by ISIS. Their air strikes are supplementing U.S. firepower, but military force alone is not going to displace ISIS because it provides some services to citizens in areas it occupies.

The heavy financial demands on ISIS to run the territory it occupies, combined with the military campaign against it, may help dislodge it eventually, but these will not solve the long-term problem of violence and terrorism in the unstable region that now extends from West Africa through North Africa, the Middle East and extending to Pakistan and perhaps Central Asia. There are so many corrupt autocratic governments not serving the needs of their citizens that this vast territorial expanse will remain a source of extremism, terrorism and instability for many decades to come. Moreover, there are many potential fighters, particularly marginalized and unemployed youth, who can be recruited across this large and diverse region to join violent groups.

The United States faces a challenge not from states but from potent non-state actors, such as terrorists, insurgents and transnational criminals. This challenge cannot be met by the U.S. military alone, or even acting in concert with others. The new terrorism and extreme violence is a crime problem, a development problem, a corruption problem, a problem of youths without futures and one of extremist religious views. And it’s funded and facilitated by a large and growing illicit global economy. 

One approach being tried with ISIS – attacking it as a business – may be a model for the future. This approach requires cutting off its funds and limiting its access to personnel and weapons needed to maintain its organization. Fortunately, this approach, already active in the United States, is acquiring traction globally.

In a unanimous vote last December, the U.N. Security Council passed an important resolution on terrorist funding. A subsequent resolution on ISIS funding was passed in February, affirming that diverse criminal activity was the lifeblood of terrorist finance. As a result, many countries are beginning to develop legislation and mechanisms to address the financing of terrorism. 

This, however, is not sufficient. If the global community begins to address corruption, this would go a long way toward stemming the flow of individuals into violent non-state groups. Corruption drains countries of resources and makes citizens so angry that they are driven into the hands of terrorist organizations. We must go further in making sure corrupt officials do not shelter their money in safe havens, thereby denying their citizens jobs and a future.

If the traditional donors to terrorism are cut off and the criminal financing can be reduced, this may help limit it in the future. Such a counterterrorism strategy is not dependent on the military or diplomacy alone, and requires interagency cooperation of other branches of government, especially law enforcement, treasury and development agencies. 

Yet the enormous challenges we face in coming decades cannot be solved solely by government. It requires a whole-society approach, including a response by government, business, researchers and the community. Businesses are needed to help identify the illicit trade that supports terrorism and ensure that it does not facilitate the financial activity that funds it. Researchers are needed to identify nontraditional threats. Citizens need to act to prevent youth recruitment into crime and terrorism, and to develop financial alternatives for members of the community.

These are strategies that the United States can work on with a global coalition that has made a commitment to address these issues. They are less costly than large-scale military operations that have cost vast sums in lives and treasure and yielded little long-term stability. There may be a greater chance of success in combating terrorists if the world responds to them as creative and adaptable criminal enterprises. Businesses can fail if they meet successful competitors.  

 

Louise I. Shelley is a professor at George Mason University’s School of Policy, Government and International Affairs. She is the founder and director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC).