Who runs ISIS?

In an April 4 article, Liz Sly of the Washington Post Beirut Bureau, with 15 years' experience in the Mid-East including covering the war in Iraq, discusses the origins and leadership of ISIS.

The rise of the Islamic State or ISIS has caught many in the West off guard with little knowledge about the organization. We know that ISIS has been exceptionally brutal, showing no mercy or morality in how it has treated civilians as well as prisoners. The first question to be asked in understanding this enemy is "Who runs ISIS?"

The simple answer is that ISIS is run by a bunch of Islamic extremists. A closer look at the leaders of ISIS shows it is being run by former Iraqi military officers and officials. These were the military personnel who were fired by L. Paul Bremer when he headed the Coalition Occupation Authority after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Iraqi military was sent home without pay or pensions ... but they were allowed to keep their weapons. Most of these officers were members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist political party.

While Hussein was very much a secularist, the party had begun to move toward Islamic fundamentalism. An example is that beheadings became more common punishment in the two years before the U.S. invasion. After the fired Iraqi military became a backbone of the Iraqi insurgency, and with no military or police, Iraq quickly descended into anarchy.

Abu Hamza, a former local ISIS official who defected to Turkey, is quoted in the article as saying, "All the decision-makers (in ISIS) are Iraqi, and most of them are former Iraqi officers. The Iraqi officers are in command, and they make the tactics and the battle plans, but the Iraqis themselves don't fight. They put the foreign fighters on the front lines." He went on to say, "In Syria, local emirs are typically shadowed by a deputy who is Iraqi and makes the real decisions."

This is verified by analysts in Syria and Iraq, and it is theorized that the former Baathist officers are using ISIS only as a means for them to take control of Iraq. To dismiss ISIS as simply a bunch of sadistic religious nuts is to underestimate ISIS as an enemy.

Jack Dragoni attended Boston College and served in the U.S. Army in Berlin and Vietnam. He lives in Chaffee, Missouri.