Title: #ISIS# and the Potential for Defection in Syria
Place of publication: West-Kurdistan
Publisher: Rojava Center for Strategic Studies .NRLS
Release date: 2024
ISIS represents a new model emerging from the crises resulting from the failure of the nation-state project that emerged at the beginning of the 21st century. This project, which sometimes aligned with liberalism and at other times with a form of socialism, failed to create a creative and new civilizational pattern for the Middle Eastern countries. Instead, it veered towards despotism and attempted to assimilate other cultures into a nationalist ideology that sought to expand into the territories of neighboring states.
For ISIS, the topic of our research, it represents another link in this chain of splits, including its break from Al-Qaeda and its internal divisions following its defeat in Baghouz in 2019. During the period when the organization was relatively strong, there were reports in 2016 from defectors about internal disagreements concerning the takfiri fatwas of some of the organization’s extremist jurists.
This situation, along with other factors that will be discussed later, indicates that ISIS is susceptible to the phenomenon of “disagreement leading to division, discord, enmity, and finally accusations of takfir.” This forms the main hypothesis of the research, which will be used to determine its indicators and analyze its factors to develop an understanding of the potential for a leadership fracture within ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
The research will employ a descriptive-analytical methodology, supported by inferential methods, to reach conclusions that support the hypothesis and predict the future of the organization. The study will systematically and hierarchically focus on the new operational status of the organization, its organizational structure, and its security doctrine, with a special emphasis on security events related to its conspiratorial operations. This will lay the groundwork for the second part of the research, which will involve categorizing and analyzing numerous indicators and evidence of internal division, as well as factors that enhance the potential for splits, based on related observations and opinions.
Based on this analysis, the third section of the research will be divided into two parts. The first will address the organization’s expected policy response to its internal crisis through efforts to mend internal fractures. The second part will explore the responses of local institutions and communities to the organization, considering it both as a crisis in itself and as a source of regional crises. This will involve examining local defensive policies as challenges that threaten the organization’s survival. The conclusion of the research will present a summary, key findings, and preliminary recommendations.[1]