Analyst: ISIL Abuses Weakness of Countries to Gain Ground
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An American political analyst said the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group takes advantage of regional crises to broaden its activities, saying the militants focus mainly on the regions over which the local governments have lost control.
In an interview with the Tasnim News Agency, Jeffrey Kenney, professor of religious studies at DePauw University, said the extremist groups operate “within the context of failed nationalism”.
For instance, he said, the armed extremists started their activities in crisis-ridden Afghanistan and then shifted their operation to Syria when a civil war erupted in the Arab country.
Similarly, the radical groups targeted Iraq following “the Western intervention” and the consequent eruption of a civil war there, Kenney explained.
What is clear is that extremist groups succeed whenever the “modern nation states” start to get weak or fall apart, he noted.
“And once there is no political coherency any longer, once the government cannot in any way control its territory, once citizens (are) divided over against each other, it is very easy for these groups to go in and to create even more problems and to associate themselves with one group over another,” the professor noted.
The ISIL is a militant group in Iraq and Syria believed to be supported by the West and some regional Arab countries. The terrorist group claims as an independent state the territory of Iraq and Syria, with implied future claims intended over more of the Levant, including Lebanon, occupied Palestine, Jordan, Cyprus, and Southern Turkey.