Every day, there is a tremendous amount of stress put on the average citizen. No matter how busy you are or who you are, I believe that everyone is obligated to have a basic understanding of the world around them, especially when something like ISIS is so prevalent.
I'm sure you have all come across mentions of the Islamic terrorist group, whether it be from the nightly news, your daily dose of social media, overhearing a passerby talk about it, or even seeing a headline about it in your daily newspaper. But, do you have an understanding deeper than the fact that ISIS is a terrorist group or that they are located somewhere in the Middle East? Do you know what the letters I, S, I, S stand for? Lucky for you, I did some of my own research to help us all be more informed and responsible citizens on the topic of ISIS.
So, What does ISIS stand for?
ISIS stands for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. ISIS is a religious extremist group. Sometimes this organization is also referred to as ISIL, which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. What is a religious extremist you ask? According to Google, it is a self-righteous person that has gone too far. In this case, "ISIS" is going too far to represent their anti-Western (Western being the United States and European countries, map below of western states in red) viewpoints and they use their religion to justify their use of violence.
When was ISIS formed? The most straightforward answer is April 9 2013, however, the group has origins from many decades ago when a Jordanian named Abu Musab al-Zarqwi arrived in Afghanistan as an aspiring terrorist. He ended up creating training camps for terrorists and even was in the works with Osama Bin Laden during the Bush administration but chose not to be affiliated with al-Qaeda. He stayed in the background and shadows of al-Qaeda until the Bush administration used his presence to prove that al-Qaeda was working with Saddam Hussein. However, Zarqwi was not related at all and was really just looking to independently start his own terror organization. Months after the invasion of Iraq by the United states, Zarqwi set up the precursor to today's Islamic State, "Jama'at al-Tawhid W'al Jihad" Zarqwi's purpose was to target violence towards fellow Muslims and the Western world. Then, however, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, took Zarqwi's brand of terror group and rebranded it to fit his own personal theories and rhetorics and inflated Zarqwi's hate even more. Soon, Baghdadi would rename his group to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or as we know it, ISIS.
What does ISIS want? According to many sources, ISIS's aim is to continue taking over Iraq and create a Caliphate. A Caliphate is an an Islamic State and lead by a Caliph, who is a religious and political leader who is a successor (caliph) to the Islamic prophet Muhammed. A Caliph's power and authority is believed to be absolute. According to a VICE News documentary, one ISIS fighter even states, "we will not stop... we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House." As you can tell, complete domination and power is their end goal.
Should we be scared of ISIS? Now, I am not saying in any way from this next information that we should all barricade our houses, stock up on water and take out our guns, but there is a real imminent threat, and no matter what side of the political spectrum you reside on it can be concluded that ISIS is dangerous. To put it in perspective, in 2014, the terrorist organization called Al-Qaeda (responsible for 9-11 attacks) unaffiliated with ISIS because of their brutality. With all this being said there have been numerous false reports on social media warning against terror attacks so, as a side note, do not believe every threat you see on Facebook. Make sure to check the source as well as when it was published, as many of them are fake!
Where does ISIS control now? There are many varying view points on where exactly ISIS controls but most agree that they control the Raqqa (which is the Caliphate's de-facto capital), Mosul, Tikrit, Fallujah and the Syrian Turkish border. At first while doing my research, I thought that this does not seem like too many areas. It really puts it into perspective when looking at the maps below, red being where ISIS has full power. Keep in mind this map was produced in 2015 and since its creation, more power and domination have happened, making the range of land substantially larger.
A few days ago this map came out showing all of the places that ISIS has declared provinces in. This does not mean that ISIS has complete control of all of these areas but that if nothing is done that all of these places eventually could be controlled by ISIS.
So, what has ISIS done? Just to put everything in perspective, between the time period of January 2014 and October 2015 there have been around 19,000 civilians killed in Iraq. During this period of 21 months, there were 18,802 civilians killed with half of them being in Baghdad with another 36,245 being injured. On top of this number there were around 36,245 severely injured. 3.2 million were forced to flee their homes. This report ended in October, so keep in mind that all of those numbers are even higher now. Not all of this killing was done directly by ISIS, but a good majority was a direct impact of the threat ISIS presents or from ISIS itself. ISIS has been responsible for abusing many fundamental core human rights laws, humanitarian laws, and as whole are responsible for a mass genocide. Their killing and torture methods include beheading, bulldozing, burning alive, throwing off of buildings, and even suicide bombers and other explosive devices. There are currently (report from October) 3,500 slaves held by ISIS in Iraq alone.
On a global stand what has ISIS done?
Starting from the beginning, a New York times investigator recently put out a timeline for all of the incidents that have been directly correlated to ISIS from January 2015 and on. First, the Paris, Charlie Hebdo event (not to be confused with the Paris attacks of recently), Next was the Libya Hotel shooting, later after that was the Tunisia museum shooting. Then in April, the Yemen Mosque was bombed leaving 130 dead and many injured. In July, there was the Tunisia Beach resort shooting, and later that month the Cairo Embassy explosion. In October, things started getting more frequent relating to attacks. There was a bombing in Turkey at a peace rally and then a Russian plane attack that left 224 dead. Next was the tragic Paris Attacks. After this, the California shooting occurred. This timeline goes over a few attacks that have happened but if you want a full list of attacks spanning from 2014, check out this link. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/17/worl...
So, what should be done?
It can often be tricky as a journalist to report information without the political slant of one side or the other. So I leave the question of what should be done up to you. I encourage you to follow this phenomena and to stay informed and create your own opinions on what should be done.
