The Caliphate

Lawrence Wright at The New Yorker on ISIS’s brutal strategy in Iraq. “The Islamist storm passing through Iraq right now has been building up since the United States invaded the country in 2003, which unleashed longstanding sectarian rivalries that spilled over into civil war. But the appalling brutality currently on display, initiated by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, is more than a carnival of revenge. Al Qaeda under Osama bin Laden and his lieutenant—and successor—Ayman al-Zawahiri did not see Iraq as a likely candidate to become a Sunni Islamist state,” Wright writes. “The crippled condition of Al Qaeda’s core after 9/11 left the field free for Zarqawi to wage his own brand of jihad. Guided by certain Islamist thinkers who believed that attacking Shiites would draw Sunnis to their cause, Zarqawi concentrated his violence on native Iraqi Shiites, not the American military. The strike has been so sudden and surprising that other forces haven’t yet responded, but they will. And then the long-sought goal of Zarqawi and his progeny—a vast war inside Islam—will become a reality.”