Page 633 - SSB Interview: The Complete Guide, Second Edition

Jama at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTWJ), but it was not a prominent group. Later
both men returned to Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban and on 11 September
2001, al-Qaeda attacked America. The US invaded Afghanistan and Bin
Laden fled to Pakistan and Zarqawi fled to Iraq. Two years later, the US

invaded Iraq and set the stage for the rise of ISIS.

The Americans toppled Saddam Hussein’s secular Sunni dictatorship and
disbanded the Iraqi army. Thousands of Sunni Iraqi soldiers, unemployed,

joined the insurgency. Jihadist groups saw this as the repeat of the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. Zarqawi, who was present in Iraq, seized this

opportunity to form a group. He eventually started attacks of Iraq’s majority,
Shia, sparking a Sunni-Shia civil war. Al-Qaeda, which at this point was
struggling for its existence, formed an alliance with Zarqawi’s group, which
becomes known as al-Qaeda (AQI) in Iraq. But in 2006, Iraq’s Sunnis rose up

against Zarqawi and the US killed him in an air strike. Over the years, AQI
weakened in Iraq and the US withdrew in 2011 from Iraq, which was

returning to stability.

By 2011, Iraq finally had relatively good security, a generous state budget
and positive relations among the country’s various ethnic and religious

communities. But it was squandered. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stripped
political opponents of power, appointed his cronies to run the army and killed
peaceful protesters. Most importantly, he reconstructed the Iraqi state on

sectarian lines. This exacerbated Iraq’s existing sectarian tensions.

By this time, AQI had a new leader: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi. Under
his leadership, AQI began allying with former officers from Saddam
Hussein’s army and recruited disaffected Sunnis. Around this time, Syria

erupted in Arab Spring protests that became a civil war. In March 2011,
Syrian demonstrators took to the streets to demand Bashar al-Assad step

down. Almost right away, the Syrian regime began slaughtering protesters in
an attempt to provoke a civil war.

In August 2011, Baghdadi sent a top deputy, Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, to

Syria to set up a new branch of the AQI in the country. Joulani succeeded,
establishing Jabhat al-Nusra in January 2012. The key investments in ISIS