ISIS Still USA

If you're asking did the US form, equip and train ISIS my answer is an emphatic no. Still, there are conspiracy theorists out there who might contend otherwise. But then there are some who believe 9/11 was a government plot. Ah well.

I do believe, however, that the US had a big hand in creating the conditions that enabled ISIS to emerge. This is a classic example of how to invoke the Law of Unintended Consequences.

When the US led Coalition drove Saddam from power they moved quickly to establish an interim civil government structure pending the formation of a permanent Iraqi political authority. They made several decisions that might have seemed right at the time but they backfired spectacularly. 

First they decided to purge the Ba'ath party from the government. Now under Saddam the Socialist Ba'ath party had been used by the minority Sunni Muslims as an instrument to extend their power throughout the regime.  Basically membership in the party was a prerequisite for holding coveted positions in the Iraqi civil service. 

Consequently, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)  had eliminated the core of experienced senior bureaucrats, thus seriously undermining the continuity of vital services to the Iraqi people. Simultaneously, this move alienated the Sunnis, who were fearful that they would lose their privileged status and be subject to a Shiite dominated government.

The CPA committed another misstep as they tried to cobble together a new constitution and provisional Iraqi political authority. Here they attempted to insert into prominent positions a number of Iraqis who had been living in exile in the United States. By doing this they managed to alienate everyone, regardless of religious affiliation, who rejected these people as outsiders and American backed outsiders at that.

Third, they committed possibly the most fatal error by disbanding the Iraqi armed forces. Thousands of trained soldiers were tossed into the street with no employment prospects. By this time there were already a number of resistance  organizations forming. Among them was an organization calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). A solid number of the disbanded soldiers drifted into various largely Sunni factions, including the ISI. 

By about 2008-10, the resistance was in full swing  The ISI began to build momentum, extending into Syria as well. With a little arm twisting and plain bargaining some of the resistance groups folded into ISI which ultimately became ISIS. Their ranks were augmented by many former Ba'athists and by now very angry soldiers.

In summary, the US and their Coalition partners created a lot of resentment and open anger among the Sunni population by some well intended but ultimately unfortunate decisions. As I said at the beginning, they invoked the often fatal Law of Unintended Consequences that contributed to the rise of ISIS.  

Now history is always 20/20 and it's easy to cast aspersions upon the US. Yet the CPA was in a bind and had to make some hard judgements on the ground. They might have foreseen the downstream consequences but they were, after all, only human. Now we have to live with the consequences.

This was when AQI re-emerged as ISIL, finding a foothold among the disenfranchised Sunni population while simultaneously growing in the eastern part of Syria while Syrian security forces were busy putting down their insurrection.

To review:

ISIL was born Jama'at al Tawhid to collapse the Jordanian government sometime before 1999.

Jama'at al Tawhid existed in Iraq before the US invaded.

Jama'at al Tawhid became AQI during the US occupation but focused mainly on oppressing the Sunni population and exterminating the Shi'a population.

AQI was effectively eliminated by 2008.A number of different nations were instrumental in the creation of the political vacuum that allowed groups like ISIS to establish a fixed presence in the region. If one were to look at the past two decades objectively, one cannot deny that the US - among others - were a major factor in the formation of ISIS. They didn't do this deliberately, though; it's simply one of a number of unintended consequences.

While there are quite a few answers that go into details how the U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East in the last 15–20 years contributed, I think the cornerstone was laid by the UK and the USA in the 50ies of the last century.

Iran, a very influential country in the region, had a democratically elected government. It got there through its own efforts, the first country like that in the Middle East. (Israel didn’t quite get there through its own efforts…) And what did the UK and the USA do? Topple that pesky democratic government, to reinstate a monarch, of all things: 1953 Iranian coup d'état.

Now imagine the Middle East with a democratic Iran since 1953. I think it is safe to say that it would be different. Pretty much every country in the region is a dictatorship, in one way or another. They are in the middle of a century of revolutions, upheavals, and back in the 50ies, the revolutionary philosophy was somewhat leftish: “power to the people”. Where I come from, that’s a whole lot better than the revolutionary philosophy in that area during the last 30 years or so: fundamentalist Islam.

If we had given the democratic movements in the 50ies their space (and — heavens forbid — maybe even our support), there may not have been a wave of fundamentalist Islam. In my opinion, fundamentalist Islam is a result of the need to fight oppression. So, by fighting (and helping fight) democratic movements some 60 years ago, we laid one cornerstone for the rise of fundamentalist Islam.

We can devide ISIS into 3 groups

1. Top leaders: nobody from the public knows who they are. They represent 1 to 2 percent of ISIS. They are formed from iraqi (mainly Al Baath) and iranian secret services. There is a small penetration from western countries on this level
2. 2nd level leaders represent 5–7 percent: these are Khawarij. These are the controllers/leaders of ISIS troops. They are also penetrated from different secret services mainly Russians and Americans
3. Soldiers: theses are a group of misleaded people. They are either real ignorants or very young (under 19). These kind of people are easy to manipulate

Who created them? Point 1 will answer

However, such big thing could never be created without the green light of USA

If you go back 20 years in history, the exact same thing happened in Algeria

1. Military dictature oppressed te population to force the maximum number to join the rebellion
2. Government took thousands of people to prisons, tortured and killed thousands
3. One day, 4000 men miraculously escaped from a high security prison. They were a mix of authentic rebels and secret service agent who were being tortured so the story will work
4. These 4000 joined the rebellion, unified at that time
5. Few months later the rebellion split into 2, then 4, then X goups
6. The new X-1 goup started to make massacres killing thousand of civilians in the name of Islam
7. Government was oppressing civilians to keep the “shock doctrine” working
8. Civilians hated the original rebellion
9. The government “successfully” made peace treaty with all X-1 groups
10. These X-1 new groups collapsed
11. X-1 groups’ rebels started to surrender
12. X-1 groups’ rebels were surprised to see that their leaders, their most pious camarades, sitting in military bases, wearing military uniforms, smoking cigarettes and loughing at their faces. “You have been screwed, dude”

Egyptian government tried and still trying the same strategy, but it seems they understood Algeria lesson

Somehow similar story happened in Afganistan during Russian invasion

Another very similar story is happening in Libya

Syrian gov tried the same thing at the beginning of the rebellion, but people understood the Algerian lesson. Nobody carried weapons untill after 6–7 months when some official army officers split