June 20-2014
The force that has recently overrun a large part of northern Iraq was founded several years ago as Al-Qaeda in Iraq to fight the US occupation of Iraq, the Shiite politicians who were rising to the fore after the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the Iranian-backed Shiite militias that were gaining ground.
It drew support from Sunni towns and tribes in northern and western Iraq.
But many in the Sunni leadership grew disillusioned with the group’s brutality and came to fear it was taking power away from the traditional Sunni leadership.
The US Army began approaching Sunni leaders and convinced them that the US military would not be staying in Iraq and that Al-Qaeda in Iraq was a far greater threat to Sunnis than the United States. The Sunni leaders then worked with the US military to push back Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
With the uprising in Syria, the group moved there and became one of the main groups battling President Bashar al-Assad, who was tabbed as a Shiite and Iran supporter.
The group then changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham. Sham is Arabic for Damascus and also for greater Syria, which is usually taken to include Syria and Lebanon, known in English by the French term Levant.
The group’s name is thus known in English as either the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
About a year ago, it refused to take instruction from the parent Al-Qaeda group and was formally dismissed from Al-Qaeda.