Why ISIS Fights
Why ISIS Fights by Martin Chulov, The Guardian
… Now, close to 1,500 years later, have come waves of fighters who paid strict heed to these prophecies – and see the rise of Islamic State as a crucial turning point in a centuries-long battle of civilisations. For their purposes, the “Persians” today are not simply Iran, but also the Alawite regime that controls Syria and the Shia militias from around the region who have come to its defence.
The jihadis started to arrive in the summer of 2012, more than one year into Syria’s war, which had by then started to tip in favour of a ramshackle opposition that was locked into ousting Bashar al-Assad at all costs. Over the following six months, the foreigners came from all points of the globe, gradually asserting their will over opposition groups that were failing to press home their early gains on the battlefield and offered no convincing plan for the type of society that would eventually emerge from Syria’s ruins…
This is the story of why men from all over the world have chosen to fight in a brutal and apocalyptic war; of what drew them to the battlefields of Iraq and Syria; and of what has kept many of them there as Europe and the west have scrambled to stem the flow, first of their own nationals fleeing to join Isis and now of millions of refugees fleeing the other way…
