Motivation and discipline alone do not explain how several hundred jihadists are able to overrun large swaths of territory defended by tens of thousands of Iraqi troops.
The emergence in Iraq of an Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)-Sunni alliance should not come as a surprise: The writing was on the wall when Sunni Iraqi tribesmen rose in protest against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government. In its recent incursion into Iraq, ISIS was assisted by scores of disenchanted Sunni Iraqi tribesmen reeling from the sectarian policies of Maliki’s Shiite government. Nor is the rapid growth in ISIS’s power surprising: In addition to extortion, ransom money and other illicit activities that terrorist groups usually engage in, ISIS has received significant sums of money from wealthy Gulf donors and attracted thousands of recruits (including American, European and North African jihadists) through its deft use of social media.
