On November 13, terrorists linked to the Islamic State unleashed mayhem in Paris, killing almost 130 people and wounding around 350 in the bloodiest incident of violence in the French capital since World War II. These recent attacks are an indication of the group’s expanded global scope and the heightened threat level it poses around the world.
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“We know they are pursuing chemical weapons, but we haven’t seen anything beyond mustard and chlorine”, said Patrick Martin, an Iraq expert with the Institute for the Study of War, a military research think tank in Washington.
The president said last week that ISIS was contained and slowly but surely suffering setbacks in Iraq and Syria.
Confusion over the ISIS-versus-ISIL acronym stems from that last part – al-Sham.
You said that using IS or ISIL grants a kind of sovereignty to the group by calling it a “state”.
However, he said, USA intelligence agencies have consistently underestimated the Islamic State group, which has shown itself to be more capable and innovative than al-Qaida and has greater financial resources.
“To self-radicalized fighters living among us, their minds poisoned by Daesh’s propaganda”, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said during a press conference following the terrorist attacks in France.
They are a Jihadist militant group which emerged from radical Sunni jihadists in Iraq who fought under the banner “al-Qaeda in Iraq”. The French government explained the choice in naming as part of an effort to avoid legitimising the group by denying that it was either a state or Islamic.
– Al-Sham is a historic Islamic term for the land bordering the eastern Mediterranean.
To the relief of the brands, shops and publications which had been using the name “Isis” long before Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had so much as picked up a rocket launcher, a new name soon emerged.
This is the English translation of Al-Dawla Al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham, which is how the group identified itself after shedding its ties with al Qaida. ‘Look at us, we’re here, we’re strong, look at what we’ve managed to do, we’re legitimate.’ For people who speak Arabic, it will not be lost on them what Daesh really means. And not insignificantly, referring to Daesh as ISIS or the Islamic State or the Caliphate is a grave insult to the hundreds of millions of Muslims who do not subscribe to their brutally extremist views.
The French government’s use of the Arabic acronym, however, also creates an Orientalising connotation. I don’t necessarily have a problem with Daesh. In the wake of deadly attacks by the group in Paris that left more than 120 dead, U.S. Ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman is the latest to announce he will now be among those using the Arabic name.
Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti said after European Union defence ministers met on Tuesday in Brussels that she ruled out an intervention in Syria but did not exclude stepping up support operations in Iraq.
“The worldwide community must rally around that spirit”.
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However, these figures do not necessarily reflect the situation on the ground. It includes Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. In March 2015, the president of the global Committee of the Red Cross put the figure at more than 10 million.
