Oxford University Press Inc ISIS in Iraq: The Social and Psychological Foundations of Terror

"When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi climbed the stairs to the pulpit in the Al Nuri Mosque in Mosul on 29 July 2014 to declare the re-establishment of the caliphate, it was, in many ways, the most important symbolic moment in the rise of a group of Islamist militants who just three years earlier had been a bedeviled cadre of guerillas fighting for their survival in the deserts of Iraq. This band of dogged extremists had gone from near extinction in 2011 to controlling a segment of territory roughly the size of Great Britain in 2014. Not only had they survived and thrived as a fighting force, now they had created their own proto-state"-- The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) gained control over large swathes of Iraq in the summer of 2014 at a breathtaking rate. At the time many rightly wondered how ISIS was able to claim so much territory in the Sunni-dominated portion of Iraq so quickly. Just as unexpected, however, was the downfall of ISIS; by 2017, their hold on the region had crumbed with ISIS focusing on avoiding complete annihilation. This book explores the social and psychological factors behind how ISIS was able to rise in Iraq, control most of it, and why most of that population eventually turned on it. Synthesized by some of the foremost experts on terrorism, the analysis is based on a unique array of public opinion data from surveys, focus groups, and interviews. The authors explain why some Iraqis acquiesced to ISIS while others opposed it, why ISIS lost the hearts and minds of Iraqi Sunni Arabs, and ultimately how this contributed to its battlefield defeats. The in-depth face-to-face interviews with ISIS members are a particularly rich source of data, supplementing empirical findings to draw lessons as to what individual and societal-level factors contribute to radicalization and what can be done to counter radicalization and support deradicalization. Autorid: Munqith Dagher, Karl Kaltenthaler, Michele J. Gelfand, Arie Kruglanksi, Ian McCulloh