“The new Ba’ath (Resurrection)” of Daesh Terrorist Group

Often, the word “Ba’ath (Resurrection)” puts many question marks, ranging in size and quantity, depending on the nature of the object in question, whether it is a project, or institution, or idea, or organization. The question is: “How did the world start?” Creation may be a resurrection.

This is the case with the Daesh terrorist organization, which was founded in 2004 and resurrected in 2013 and appears to be planning a new launch in the coming years. In every new resurrection, the organization senses the conditions and environment of the first creation whether it is sectarianism, corruption or lawlessness.

After “the dream of liberation becomes a reality”, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in the first week of December 2017 that it seemed like an incomplete liberation.

It is true that the Iraqi forces expelled Daesh elements from their last few strongholds and restored all the territories controlled by the terrorist organization in Iraq as well as the main cities occupied in Syria, alongside the international coalition, led by the United States grouping 80 countries. Daesh terrorist organization still does not have enough territories to call itself a “state”.

However, Daesh still has many cards, such as the attacks of lone wolves, foreign fighters returning home from Iraq and Syria, as well as branches of the organization in a large number of countries in the region.

The most dangerous scenario remains the “resurrection of the organization in Syria and Iraq,” which has been planned at least since 2016, and Daesh has been preparing for it before the loss of the city of Raqqa in October 2017, especially that “Daesh” has “a real and simulated guide” of how to resurrect an organization which is about to die.

Only a few years ago, the organization managed to revive itself after a clear defeat and the date of that resurrection should be a warning of what might come now.

This is what Patrick Johnston, a professor of political science and a specialist in terrorism research, discusses in his article “Will the Daesh organization come up again?” The article was published on the RAND Corporation website, a US-based non-partisan, non-profit research institution that develops solutions to public policy challenges.

First Resurrection of the Organization

The so-called Daesh organization, founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2003, has gone through many names over the years. The form of the organization has changed according to its need: from an underground, emerging jihadist movement, to what is like a guerrilla insurgency, then from a semi-state to a “state of caliphate” that has expanded regionally and in an unprecedented way across Iraq and Syria.

But this change was not written as the organization interacted with the surrounding circumstances; to achieve its ultimate goal of “restoring the Islamic caliphate”. After the organization lost the twin capitals of Mosul and Raqqa, the organization seemed to be re-adapting itself. However, its strategic objectives remained unchanged.

In recent statements, Daesh leaders made a clear analogy between their current situation and their ordeal in 2008, when they resorted to guerrilla and terrorism operations. At the time, they paved the way for their dramatic takeover of much of the territories of Syria and Iraq after about five years.

The statues and administrative documents of the organization, which were taken from Iraq, show that following the intensification of the military campaign against Daesh in central and western Iraq in 2008, members of the organization fled to hide in and around Mosul, and used it as a base to manage, recruit and fund cells throughout Iraq.

At the same time, Daesh leaders deployed the elements of their security and intelligence apparatuses (one of the most important apparatuses of Daesh responsible for gathering intelligence information, both inside and outside the organization, as well as planning foreign attacks globally) to assassinate Sunni political opponents, especially local forces, and including the Iraqi people and police who threatened the operational security of the Daesh organization.

They also worked on contacting Sunni Arab politicians in the Mosul area and in Baghdad to ensure that the organization reduced violence against key economic sectors in exchange for providing political and monetary support to the organization.

All these elements have achieved a fundamental goal: to provoke the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict, and thus to make a large number of Iraqi Sunnis consider Daesh their only hope. A security apparatus has intimidated its local rivals and pushed employers to help rebuild the organization’s capacities, as well as incite the Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government to overreact to the spectre of the Sunni terrorist threat. They also prompted the Iraqi government to reignite the sectarian conflict that initially helped the Daesh organization with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Then, the Iraqi-US air strike, which targeted the organization’s leaders in 2010, came. A new commander, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, pushed the building strategy forward and continued underground work to eliminate competitors and rebuild the elements of the organization and its fighters by liberating them of prisons. When the waves of the Arab Spring broke out, and civil disorders increased in 2011 and 2012, the organization rushed to send agents to Syria to establish a new base of operations. From there started the stage of Daesh’s rapid takeover of land areas similar in size to that of Britain.

The New Resurrection

Now that the US-led campaign has achieved its main goal, Daesh faces serious challenges in Iraq and Syria. It lacks traditional military capabilities and traditional manpower after its military units have been destroyed or disappeared due to internal fighting and waves of surrender. However, Daesh has already defeated similar challenges at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Although it has lost almost all of its territory, it still has very committed cadres in essence, including elements of the “security” apparatus, as well as experienced administrative officials. It also still has the “organizational and intellectual glue” that links the organization as a whole from top to bottom. No time has been wasted on the transition from the regional “caliphate” to “terrorism and rebellion”.

This new campaign has already begun to bear fruit. Daesh launched successful pre-emptive attacks in areas, previously liberated by the international coalition, such as Fallujah and Ramadi, as well as other areas that were not controlled by Daesh even at its peak, like Baghdad and Diyala, as it did in 2010 with the aim of provoking the Iraqi government to eliminate the Sunni Arabs, bearing in mind that the Sunnis are the main base of a Daesh recruits.

When the caliphate was declared in 2014, Daesh said that its strategy was to “stay and expand”, which is closer to “recovery”. While some fighters will continue to flee Iraq and Syria either to join the organization’s branches elsewhere in Asia and Africa or to go back home, others will remain in order to exploit circumstances conducive to terrorism and insurgency.

In Iraq, Daesh’s local intelligence and knowledge networks offered a good opportunity to re-infiltrate into key areas and operate secretly. Daesh’s success in the “New Resurrection” process in Iraq and Syria depends on three main factors, namely the nature and quality of Arab political governance and leadership in the Sunni areas, the persistence of sectarian policies by Shi’ite groups there, and the ability of institutions to begin reconstruction of Sunni-dominated areas which were destroyed in the war against Daesh.

In Iraq, the direct reason behind Daesh’s recent emergence was a mix of local political corruption, negligence and malignant discrimination by the Shi’ite-dominated national government. In Syria, security challenges are likely to fade at present as many Daesh fighters have fled there to safe havens in the desert. However, many of these fighters can come back if the security vacuum returns. The possibility that the security vacuum returns is high given a complex set of forces in the Syrian war, and that the anti-Daesh Kurdistan alliance started dissidence.