ISIS, the so-called Islamic State, grew out of a small jihadist network founded in 1999 by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It became al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, broke with al-Qaeda as it expanded into Syria, and in June 2014 declared a “caliphate” across large parts of both countries. In 2015 it launched or inspired a wave of mass-casualty attacks far beyond that territory, from Yemen and Turkey to Egypt, Lebanon and France.
This guide explains where the group came from, what it believed, which of the year’s most notorious attacks it actually carried out and which were the work of other groups, and how its territorial rule ended.
Where ISIS came from
The organisation’s roots lie in Zarqawi’s group Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, formed in 1999. After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi’s fighters became one of the most brutal forces in the insurgency, and in October 2004 he pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden, turning the group into al-Qaeda in Iraq. After Zarqawi was killed in 2006, the network rebranded as the Islamic State of Iraq.
The Syrian civil war gave it room to grow. In April 2013 its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced an expansion into Syria under the name Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS in another translation). Al-Qaeda’s leadership soon disowned it. In June 2014 the group seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and on 29 June it declared a caliphate with Baghdadi as caliph, dropping the geographic part of its name. The group also issued a claim that Baghdadi descended from the Prophet Muhammad, part of its effort to look legitimate to Muslims.
An ISIS convoy of pickup trucks flying the group’s black flags, from a widely circulated image of its 2014 advance across Iraq and Syria. (Image via The Guardian.)
At its height in 2015 it controlled territory home to roughly 12 million people, ran a budget estimated at over a billion dollars and attracted tens of thousands of foreign fighters. A CIA estimate cited in 2015 put the number of foreign recruits alone at around 30,000.
What the group believed
ISIS is usually described as a Salafi jihadist movement. Its ideology drew on an extreme reading of Wahhabism, the reform movement founded by the 18th-century cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in central Arabia. Abd al-Wahhab preached a strict form of monotheism and condemned practices such as venerating saints or praying at tombs, which he saw as idolatry. In 1744 he allied with the local ruler Muhammad bin Saud, a partnership that shaped the Saudi state.
Many analysts, including writers at the time such as former British diplomat Alastair Crooke, argued that ISIS took this tradition to violent extremes, branding other Muslims, especially Shia, as apostates who could be killed. Others caution that “Wahhabism” is often used loosely, and that most people who follow conservative Salafi teachings reject violence entirely. The overwhelming majority of ISIS’s victims were themselves Muslims, and its campaign against the Yazidi minority of northern Iraq has been recognised as genocide.
2015 attacks claimed by ISIS
Mosque bombing in Sanaa, Yemen, early September 2015
In early September, a suicide bomber struck a mosque in Yemen’s capital during evening prayers, and a car bomb exploded outside as people carried the wounded out. Early reports, including CBC’s, counted at least 20 dead. ISIS’s Yemeni branch claimed the attack, part of a campaign against mosques used by Zaydi Shia Muslims, the community from which the Houthi movement comes. On 24 September it claimed another bombing, at Sanaa’s Balili mosque during Eid prayers, which killed at least 25.
Ankara peace rally bombings, 10 October 2015
A man grieves beside a victim at the site of the twin bombings outside Ankara’s central railway station on 10 October 2015. (Photo via The Irish Times.)
Two suicide bombs exploded outside Ankara’s central railway station as crowds gathered for a rally calling for peace between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The pro-Kurdish HDP party and trade unions were among the organisers. About 109 people were killed and more than 500 injured, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in modern Turkish history. No group formally claimed it, but Turkish prosecutors attributed it to an ISIS cell; one bomber was the brother of the man behind the July 2015 Suruç bombing. In 2018 a Turkish court sentenced nine defendants to life in prison.
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
Metrojet Flight 9268 over Sinai, 31 October 2015
A Russian Airbus flying holidaymakers from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg broke apart over the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board. ISIS’s Sinai affiliate, formerly known as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, claimed it had brought the plane down. In November Russia’s security service confirmed that an improvised bomb with the force of about a kilogram of TNT had exploded in the cabin.
Twin suicide bombings in Beirut, 12 November 2015
The photograph above, as its original credit shows, is from an earlier attack: the November 2013 suicide bombing outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut. It gives a sense of the devastation such blasts leave behind.
Two suicide bombers struck a busy shopping street in Bourj el-Barajneh, a mainly Shia suburb in southern Beirut, killing 43 people and wounding around 240. ISIS claimed the attack. A third would-be bomber was reportedly killed before detonating, and Lebanese security forces arrested several suspects in the following days.
The Paris attacks, 13 November 2015
The next evening, three teams of gunmen and suicide bombers attacked the Stade de France, cafés and restaurants in the 10th and 11th arrondissements, and the Bataclan concert hall, where the band Eagles of Death Metal was playing. Some 130 people were killed and more than 400 injured, most of them at the Bataclan. ISIS claimed the attacks as revenge for French airstrikes in Syria and Iraq; the cell had been organised from Belgium. Read one survivor’s account in this story of a woman who pretended to be dead for over an hour.
Attacks often linked to ISIS that were carried out by others
Lists of 2015 terror attacks often lump together very different groups. Three widely shared events from that year were not ISIS operations, and the distinctions matter for understanding who was responsible.
Charlie Hebdo, Paris, 7 January 2015
Brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi stormed the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, killing 11 people inside and a police officer, Ahmed Merabet, in the street outside. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen and a rival of ISIS, claimed the attack. In linked attacks over the next two days, Amedy Coulibaly, who said he acted for ISIS, killed a policewoman and four Jewish hostages at a kosher supermarket. The “Je suis Charlie” memorials seen above appeared across France within hours. See also how cartoonists around the world responded.
Garissa University College, Kenya, 2 April 2015
The bodies of students killed in the attack lie in a courtyard of Garissa University College, Kenya, on 2 April 2015. (Photo via IndiaTimes.)
Gunmen from al-Shabaab, the Somali militant group linked to al-Qaeda, attacked a university campus in north-eastern Kenya, singling out Christian students. Some 148 people were killed, most of them students. Analysts such as those writing for Mail & Guardian Africa noted that al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and ISIS share a hardline Salafi-jihadist outlook even though they belong to different networks.
Shelling of Latakia, Syria, 10 November 2015
Rockets or mortar rounds hit eastern districts of Latakia, a government-held coastal city that had largely escaped the war, killing around 23 people according to a police source quoted by Russian media. Reports pointed to rebel groups, most likely the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, rather than ISIS. The strike came weeks after Russia began its air campaign in Syria at President Bashar al-Assad’s request on 30 September 2015.
The debate over who helped ISIS rise
How ISIS became so powerful so quickly has been argued over ever since. Commonly cited factors include the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the dissolution of the Iraqi army, sectarian politics in Baghdad that alienated Sunni Iraqis, the chaos of the Syrian war, and the flow of weapons and money to armed Syrian opposition groups, some of which ended up in ISIS hands. In a 2015 column for The Guardian, Seumas Milne argued that Western intervention and support for Syrian rebels had fuelled the group’s rise. That is one perspective among many, but few analysts dispute that years of war and state collapse created the vacuum ISIS filled.
The Kurdish-led forces, including women’s units, that fought ISIS on the ground in Syria are the subject of an RT documentary on Kurdish women fighting ISIS.
Video: the situation in Egypt after the Sinai attacks.
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
How the “caliphate” fell, and what remains
From 2014 a US-led coalition carried out airstrikes, while Iraqi forces, Kurdish fighters and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fought on the ground. Mosul was retaken in 2017, and in October that year the SDF captured Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital in Syria. In March 2019 the SDF took Baghouz, the last village under ISIS control, ending its territorial rule. On 27 October 2019 Baghdadi died during a US special forces raid in north-western Syria.
The group did not disappear. Cells continue to operate in Syria and Iraq, and affiliates in Africa, Afghanistan and elsewhere have carried out major attacks since. The events of 2015 remain a stark reminder of how a local insurgency can turn into a global threat, and of how many of its victims were Muslims in the Middle East.
Sources: Islamic State (Wikipedia); Wahhabism (Wikipedia); September 2015 Sanaa mosque bombing (Wikipedia); 2015 Ankara bombings (Wikipedia); Metrojet Flight 9268 (Wikipedia); 2015 Beirut bombings (Wikipedia); November 2015 Paris attacks (Wikipedia); Charlie Hebdo shooting (Wikipedia); Garissa University College attack (Wikipedia); RT on the Latakia shelling. Photos via TODAY, CBC, Business Insider, RT, Radio Australia and Daily Mail.
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