How Long Until ISIS is Elevated to Coveted Position of “Insurgency”

In the kinds of moments we have seen repeatedly from press officials forced to defend the largely indefensible security policies of the Obama Administration, White House Spokesman Eric Schultz struggled to justify to Reporter John Karl why the White House’s decision to release 5 high-level Guantanamo Bay detainees in exchange for suspected deserter Bowe Bergdahl was some how superior in strategy and morals, to the contemplation of Jordanian officials to return a failed female suicide bomber, in exchange for a Jordanian fighter pilot captured by the Islamic State. Schultz attempted to argue that the Administration released the five, who all held senior positions with the Taliban, because the war in Afghanistan was “winding down” and prisoner exchanges are standard fare at the conclusion of a conflict. Schultz stressed that the Taliban was an “armed insurgency” where as the Islamic state was merely a “terrorist group” and the United States opposes negotiating with terrorists. Despite push back from Karl, who pointed out that there was no qualitative difference in behavior between the two groups, and that the Taliban continued to attack U.S and coalition forces making the “winding down a war” claim disingenuous at best, Schultz was apparently unmoved.

While Karl did not have the opportunity to make the point, the ludicrousness of this claim is extended further because the Islamic State is indeed an armed insurgency,easily meeting established definitions. And by any reasonable metric the Taliban engages in terrorism. This is because, of course, both groups are jihadist organizations, motivated by precisely the same goals, and operating within the strategic doctrine for how Jihad should be waged, in accordance with Shariah, which calls for both the use of terror (“…strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies of Allah… Sura 8:60) and the imposition of God’s law and governance over territory (“And fight them until there is no fitnah and [until] the religion, all of it, is for Allah… Sura8:39).

This is the problem with having a tactics-oriented strategy, rather than a strategy which orients on the enemy threat doctrine. Given time and opportunity, jihadists will always go from “terrorists” to “insurgents.” If not defeated, jihadists eventually become states, where upon (as the administration’s ongoing negotiations with Iran make clear) they are granted yet more privileges and benefits. The Islamic State is not the first band of jihadists to seize territory to further its vision of returning the Middle East to the ways of the earliest companions of the prophet (we call some of their predecessors the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.)