#isis: the Largest Threat to World Peace Trending Now

• Citation: Vol. 30 No. 2
• Publication year: 2015

#ISIS: The Largest Threat to World Peace Trending Now

Annalise Lekas

#ISIS: THE LARGEST THREAT TO WORLD PEACE TRENDING NOW

Abstract

This Comment details the void in international legislation with respect to the world's largest threat to peace currently, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Territorial boundaries ground the international legal system, inhibiting the armed intervention required to successfully combat ISIS. The United Nations (U.N.) Charter permits armed intervention in self-defense or collective self-defense and armed intervention sanctioned by the Security Council, but neither model allows States to defeat ISIS. Without armed intervention to stop the expansion of Islamic militants, terrorist organizations like ISIS will continue to flourish. The U.N. Security Council is required to maintain international peace and security and therefore, the Security Council must set clear standards that allow States to combat ISIS with the force of law. First, armed intervention must be a last resort that is limited to threats involving a high severity and probability of mass atrocities. Second, armed intervention must serve a common interest—preventing gross human rights violations and safeguarding international peace and security. The international legal system must evolve to solve the ISIS problem.

Introduction

"They threaten us and beat us if we try to resist. Often I wish they would beat me so hard I will die. But they are cowards even in this. None of them have the courage to end our suffering."

—17-year old Yazidi girl held as a sex slave by the Islamic State.¹

The suffering of young Yazidi women at the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is unending.² ISIS captures, tortures, rapes, and sells the women into slavery, leaving the members of the Yazidi, an Iraqi monotheistic

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religious minority, wishing they were dead.³ Apart from targeting Yazidis, the Islamic militants practice indiscriminate warfare, rounding up all non-believers from Iraqi Christians to Turkmen, Shiite Muslims and fellow Sunni Muslims.⁴ As daily death tolls multiply, the number of Muslims seduced into militancy simultaneously increases.⁵ ISIS wishes to establish a State that encompasses the Arab World.⁶ The self-appointed leader of the Islamic State, Abu bakr al-Baghdadi, spreads his sermon, urging Muslims to return to their religious obligations by waging a holy war in the name of Allah.⁷

ISIS is the most deadly terrorist organization operating today and the greatest threat to world peace, amassing more fighters, more funding, and more territory than any other terrorist movement.⁸ The Islamic State's fanaticism and disciplined organization is similar to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the

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Nazi Regime.⁹ On top of employing tactics of intimidation and public punishment, ISIS aims to exterminate entire categories of people.¹⁰ The group's unparalleled ability to transmit its message, control hundreds of square miles in Northern Syria and Northern Iraq, and impose harsh Shari'a law sets the terrorists apart from Al-Qaeda.¹¹ Despite ISIS' dominant presence, it is most successful against those who cannot or will not fight back.¹² Therefore, the real issue is whether the international legal system is prepared to stop this large-scale suffering and worldwide threat.

From the Nuremberg trials to the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the international legal system has increasingly recognized individual criminal liability for waging wars of aggression and crimes against humanity.¹³ The progression of international law demonstrates a commitment to protecting human rights over national sovereignty.¹⁴ Further, the preamble to the United Nations (U.N.) Charter reaffirmed human rights as foundational to the organization's mission.¹⁵ Now, the ICC serves to bring perpetrators of international crimes to justice, a notion that once seemed unimaginable on an international scale.¹⁶ However, despite immense advances, the international community struggles to suppress self-initiating terrorist organizations like ISIS.¹⁷

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Islamic terrorist organizations like ISIS rely on a misguided interpretation of the teachings of Islam, violating basic principles of the Islamic faith to justify unimaginable crimes.¹⁸ The militants thrive on being called murderers by "apostates" because they believe it is a privilege and a pleasure to fight to uphold the tenets of Islam established by the Prophet Muhammad, which makes defeating ISIS so difficult.¹⁹ The eradication of terrorist organizations like ISIS will require a long-term strategy.²⁰ This Comment will argue that the confines of international law, from U.N. Charter provisions, human rights law, and theories of humanitarian intervention to the ICC, make it difficult to take the action required to put an end to ISIS.

First, in Part I, this Comment discusses the historical development of Islamic militant groups. Then, Part II reflects facts about ISIS' activities as of April 2015. In Part III, this Comment details international regulation of armed interventions, illustrating that armed intervention in Iraq is legal within the confines of international humanitarian law, but intervention in Syria is not. Next, Part IV considers the importance of human rights law, highlighting humanitarian intervention and the U.N.'s adoption of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, which advances the "unwilling or unable rationale."²¹ This Comment emphasizes that each existing theory or doctrine provides insufficient legal principles to justify armed intervention in Syria. Additionally, Part V of this Comment recognizes that the ICC cannot deter the mass atrocities committed by ISIS. However, this Comment notes that armed

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intervention in both Iraq and Syria is necessary to stop the terrorists. Then, Part VI holds that the U.N. Security Council, under its obligation to maintain international peace and security, must implement clear standards for armed intervention to provide States the ability to overcome the ISIS threat through the force of law. First, the Security council must recognize armed intervention to stop gross human rights violations, even when the perpetrators are non-state actors. Second, the Security council must limit this mode of armed intervention to a last resort measure to combat threats with a high severity and probability of mass atrocities for the common interest of safeguarding international peace and security.

I. Dar-al-Islam, the Common "Home-land" of all Muslims: The Historical Development and Resurgence of Islamic Imperialism²²

First, Part I.A will outline the history of Islamic Imperialism and the Caliphate. Then, Part I.B will illustrate that ISIS is a resurgence of Islamic Imperialism and the Muslim Caliphate.

A. The History of Islamic Imperialism

In the words of the Prophet Muhammad, "I was ordered to fight all men until they say, 'There is no god but Allah.'"²³ This statement resonates considerably with Islamist militants and was reiterated centuries later by Osama Bin Laden: "I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad."²⁴ A post-9/11 theory attributes the attacks by Al-Qaeda to the indigenous historical trends in Middle Eastern society, which illustrate that the institution of the empire originated in the Middle East and the concept of a world empire as well as universalism are closely linked to Islam.²⁵ Muhammad spent the last ten years of his life building an unearthly empire in the name of Allah and intended to expand the empire beyond the peninsula, but his sudden death derailed his religious imperialist ambitions.²⁶

In the centuries following Muhammad's death, the Caliphate, a political-religious empire comprised of the Muslim community and governed by a

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supreme leader and successor of the prophet Muhammad called a caliph, ruled the Middle East.²⁷ From the Umayyad Caliphate to the Abbasid Caliphate and the renowned Ottoman Caliphate, later generations of Muslims remember the reign of the Caliphate as the "the golden age of pure Islam."²⁸ Ultimately, Islamic imperial rule ceased when the Ottoman Caliphate fell after World War I.²⁹ The "imperialist dream" and the "link between religion, politics, and society" created during the Ottoman Empire lasted long after its fall.³⁰ Despite a vast history of imperial rule, the Middle East Arabic speaking population never integrated or regarded themselves as one nation.³¹ Today, tensions between different factions subsist and contribute to consistent conflicts in the Middle East, which will end only with the eventual triumph of Dar al-Islam, the house of Islam.³² Militant groups, like ISIS, aspire to fulfill the open role as the leader of the Islamic world to require "all free male, adult Muslims to carry out an uncompromising struggle 'in the path of Allah' or jihad."³³

B. Reinstating the Caliphate: The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, formerly known as ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, dates back to 1999, although it claims to be a resurgence of Islamic imperialism and the Muslim Caliphate.³⁴ In the mid-1990s, a Jordanian named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi sought the creation of a "pure" Islamic State in Jordan; he was arrested and imprisoned for several years, during which time he managed to rally support for his movement.³⁵ Upon his release in 1999, Al-Zarqawi moved to Afghanistan to meet with Osama bin Laden, but he decided not to join Al-Qaeda forces.³⁶ Then, with the fall of the Taliban in 2001, al-Zarqawi fled to Iraq and set up the Party of Monotheism and Jihad, comprised largely of non-Iraqis.³⁷

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The Party gained the attention of Osama bin Laden through its bombing campaigns, targeting Iraq's majority Shiite population, which also controlled the Iraqi political system.³⁸ Eventually, the Party joined forces with Al-Qaeda as Al-Qaeda in Iraq.³⁹ Later, in...