Is it true that the Islamic State was created by the United States?

The opinion is that the emergence of one of the largest terrorist groups in recent years is the US authorities. We checked how reasonably this belief.

In the evening of March 22, terrorists burst In the Crocus City Hall concert hall in Krasnogorsk near Moscow, where a concert of the Picnic group was to take place. The attackers opened fire on the employees of the site and the audience who came there, and then set fire to the building. Victims of shooting and fire steel 145 people, another 551 suffered. Responsibility for the attack Taken the Islamic State, on the resources close to the grouping of resources appeared video shot by one of the terrorists during the attack nAnd Crocus. Nevertheless, Russian Officials And Providing media Almost immediately after the terrorist attack, they began to accuse of the organization of what happened Ukraine.

March 25 in the newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" was published The column of the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Maria Zakharova. The speaker of the Russian foreign policy writes: “AllegedlyThe Americans voluntarily or involuntarily attached a hand to the creation of Al-Qaeda to create another monster-ISIS, which then began to uncontrollably perform terrible terrorist attacks around the world. ” According to Zakharova, Washington "He drove himself into a trap with stories about the fact that the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall was committed by the ISIS terrorist organization banned in Russia "an attempt to cover oneself together with the Zelensky scarecrow of the prohibited ISIS created by them.".

A week later, the secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Patrushev expressed a similar opinion. "In conditions when they can’t do anything on the field of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and NATO, the opponent from powerless increasingly resorts to terrorist methods. [...] Traces of the attack lead to Ukrainian special services. But everyone knows that the Kyiv regime is not independent and is completely controlled by the United States. It must also be borne in mind that ISIS, al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations were created by Washington"- declared Patrushev at the annual meeting of secretaries of security councils of states - members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). A similar point of view it I voiced And in August 2022.

Accusations against the United States regarding their involvement in the creation "Islamic state" Officials of other states nominated. For example, in 2017 with this statement He performed Supreme Head of Iran Ayatollah Ali Hamenya. And a year earlier, Donald Trump, then running to the position of US President, He called it "The founder of ISIS" then head of state Barack Obama.

How was the Islamic State created?

To answer this question, it is necessary to return to 2003 when the United States and its allies implemented military invasion of Iraq with the aim of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and Search In the country of chemical and biological weapons. Despite the rapid conduct of the military operation and the rapid decline in the dictatorial regime, Iraq plunged into real chaos and became one of the most dangerous countries from the point of view of a terrorist threat.

The fact is that under Hussein, representatives of the Iraqi Sunni minority dominated the country's leadership. Washington, on the other hand, relied on Shiites, which, obviously, longed for revenge over many years of humiliation. In an effort to update the country's leadership as possible, the Americans dismissed the Iraqi army, promising to create a new one from scratch, and also contributed to the ban in the country of the Arabic socialist revival that ruled for many years. As a result, thousands of officials, soldiers and officers (mainly Sunnis) turned out to be Behind the side and subsequently, they made up the backbone of various terrorist groups, bred throughout Iraq. George Bush's “Debasification Program, the younger, destroyed all the remnants of Sunni power in Iraqi society and prepared the ground for the Sunni uprising against the American occupation and the new government headed by Shiites, Convinced American analyst Robert Kremer.

One of the groups entered the next then the Jamaat At-Tauhid Va al-Jihad (The Society of Monotheism and Jihad) was one of the groups. His Created In 2002, the Jordanian militant Abu Musab Az-Zarkavi, who had close ties with the world-famous al-Qaeda terrorist network, in particular, took responsibility for terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the USA. Az-Zarkavi was personally acquainted with the leader of Al-Qaeda Osama Ben Laden, with whom he made contact in 1999 while in Afghanistan. The ideology “Jamaat At-Tauhid Va-L-Jihad” distinguished even greater cruelty and intransigence to the Gentiles and followers of others, different from Sunnism, currents in Islam, especially to Shiites. Subsequently, despite the family ties with Al-Qaeda, the leaders of the future ISIS repeatedly emphasized their autonomy from this terrorist network.

In 2006, American special services Eliminated Az-Zarkavi in ​​Iraq, and a group, which was already called Majlis Shura al-Mujakhidin by that time (“Council Shura Mujahidov ”), headed by the Egyptian Abu Ayub al-Masri. He announced the transformation of the organization into the Islamic State in Iraq, and its goal was to seize the entire territory of the country and establish the norms of Sharia (Islamic law) on it.

However, as a result of the anti-terrorist campaigns of the United States and Iraq in 2006-2007, the Islamic State of Iraq was significantly Weakened. In 2010 there was liquidated The leader of the Al-Masri group, and the command passed to Abu Bakru al-Baghdadi, who immediately headed for the expansion of the area of ​​activities of the militants controlled by him.

At least two circumstances contributed to this. First, taking place in 2011 conclusion American troops from Iraq. Secondly, events "Arab spring"In the early 2010s, which, among other things, led to a real vacuum of power and the Civil War in neighboring Syria, where the militants of the" Islamic state of Iraq "began to penetrate rapidly.

In April 2013, al-Baghdadi renamed grouping in the "Islamic state of Iraq and Levant". By June 2014, she was at the zenith of her power, then ISIS changed the name to the Islamic State (to emphasize that its area is not limited only to Iraq and Syria), the controlled organizations of the territory were declared a “caliphate”, captured in the north of Iraq, the city of Mosul, the capital of the “Khalifata”, and al-Bagdadi-his “caliph”.

In subsequent years, thanks to the efforts of the International Coalition, led by the United States, as well as the actions of the Russian army, the Islamic State was defeated and divided into several autonomous Vilayats (branches). Today, there are at least seven of them: Syrian, Iraqi, Khorasansky, West African, Sachel, Central African and East Asian.

The organization of the terrorist attack in Crocus is attributed to the branch of the Islamic State in Afghanistan “Horasan Vilayat” (aka “IG - Khorasan”). Although IS took responsibility for the attack, the group did not focus anywhere that the attack was committed by this vilayat.

So did the United States participate in the creation of ISIS?

To date, there is not a single documented evidence that Washington has been directly involved in the creation of this organization. According to experts, we can only talk about mistakes in the foreign policy of the United States in the Middle Eastern direction, which led to the rise of a number of terrorist groups, including ISIS.

How Notes The Liva-American expert Favaz Jergges, the invasion of the Iraqi territory of the coalition troops led by the United States and their subsequent occupation of Iraq caused a fracture in Iraqi society, and so fragmented and toured by many years of economic sanctions and war. Moreover, the destruction of the United States of Iraqi Institutes, especially the dissolution of the BAAS party and the armed forces, created a vacuum that caused a fierce power struggle.

Author of the book "Black flags: elevation of ISIS", Laureate Pulitzer Prize Jobi Warrick also Indicatesthat the “Islamic state” arose as a result of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but does not say that the American authorities directly participated in the creation of the group.

In addition to the chaos and the invitationion that reigned in Iraq after the overthrow of the Hussein regime, the Americans indirectly contributed to the elevation of ISIS by the fact that, for example, in 2004 Freed out the future leader of the Al-Baghdadi group from the Bukka filtration camp, and in 2013, several hundred ISIS militants Runned From the controlled USA of the Abu-Graib prison near Baghdad. But even in these cases there is no evidence that Washington acted intentionally, trying to create or strengthen terrorist movements in the Middle East.

At the same time, in parallel to errors in Iraq, the elevation of ISIS was also facilitated by the American policy in Syria to overthrow Bashar al -Assad. How He supposes Iraqi expert Ayad Jamal ad-Din, weakening of the regime in Damascus, the transfer of weapons and other assistance to the opposition Syrian Free Army by the United States were useless, since all this only benefited ISIS both in Syria and Iraq.

Against this background, conspiracy theories began to spread, the supporters of which are sure: the US mistakes, which first led to the appearance, and then to strengthen ISIS, were not random.

Probably the most popular of these theories Founded on non -existent The sections from the book of the former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “Difficult Choice”, which in some Arab sources are known as “Password 360”. In these excerpts, which spread in 2014 in social networks, Clinton allegedly talks about how, being a Secretary of State, she led the implementation of the Washington plan to create ISIS in order to destroy the despotic rulers of the Middle East and replace them with more supple Islamic leaders.

According to another conspiracy theory, ISIS was created as a result of an operation under the code name “Shershny Nest”, which was conducted by the CIA, British intelligence Mi6 and the Israeli Mossad. This information was allegedly received from the former CIA employee and the American National Security Agency (ANB) Edward Snowden and was presented, in particular, Iranian media and officials as corresponding reality. However, later this version was repeatedly refuted, since Snowden never had access to such documents.

Thus, we can definitely say that mistakes in the foreign policy of the United States in the Middle East contributed to the rise of ISIS and a number of other jihadist groups in the region, but this does not mean that the Americans directly participated in their creation. The documents proposed as evidence indicating Washington and its allies of certain special operations on the establishment and development of terrorist groups were fakes during the audit.

Photo on the cover: Screenshot Wilson Center

Half truth

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. The Guardian. ISIS: The Inside Story
2. The Atlantic. The True Origins of Isis
3. Is it true that the Ukrainian Embassy through Facebook recruited residents of Tajikistan to the international legion?
4. Is it true that the photo shows the young Usama bin Laden in Oxford?