Quotes from Michael Weiss

Before ISIS controlled eastern Syria, an oil well produced around thirty thousand barrels per day, and each barrel sold for two thousand Syrian pounds—eleven dollars at the current exchange rate. Local families that worked in refineries would make two hundred liras (a little more than one dollar) on each barrel they refined primitively. After ISIS took over, a barrel of oil became cheaper because it fixed the price

It didn't bode well for the new premier's tenure that in one of his first press conferences he advocated a strategic partnership between the United States and Iran in combating ISIS—a partnership that many Sunnis believed started in 2003. "The American approach us to leave Iraq to the Iraqis," Sami al-Askari, a former Iraqi MP and senior advisor to al-Maliki, told Reuters. "The Iranians don't say leave Iraq to the Iraqis. They say leave Iraq to us.

Repeatedly between 2000 and 2001, the al-Qaeda leader had asked al-Zarqawi to return to Kandahar and make bayat—or pledge allegiance—which was the sine qua non for full al-Qaeda enlistment.

In ISIS, Abdelaziz discovered new things about himself. He learned that he was violent, brutal, and determined. He beheaded enemies. He kept a Yazidi girl in his house as a sabiyya

The location for al-Baghdadi's sermon on June 28, 2014, was thus carefully chosen. He was not only paying homage to ISIS's founding father, al-Zarqawi, but also implicitly heralding the reunification of Aleppo and Mosul under the black banner of the restored Islamic caliphate.

For a year or so following his flight from Afghanistan, al-Zarqawi was based in Iran and northern Iraq, although he traveled throughout the region. He

For a year or so following his flight from Afghanistan, al-Zarqawi was based in Iran and northern Iraq, although he traveled throughout the region.

The Iraq War upset the balance of power in the region in Iran's favor," Emma Sky, the former adviser to the US military, told us. "It is common in the Arab world to hear talk of secret deals between Iran and the United States, and laments that the US 'gave Iraq to Iran.' " This geopolitical perception, Sky said, accounts for one of the primary reasons that Sunnis have been attracted to ISIS.

One of the main recruitment centers and organizing hubs for ISIS is prisons. Whether by accident or design, jailhouses in the Middle East have served for years as virtual terror academies, where known extremists can congregate, plot, organize, and hone their leadership skills "inside the wire," and most ominously recruit a new generation of fighters. ISIS is a terrorist organization

It was in the mosque that al-Zarqawi first discovered Salafism, a doctrine that in its contemporary form advocates a return to theological purity and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. Salafists deem Western-style democracy and modernity not only fundamentally irreconcilable with Islam, but the main pollutants of the Arab civilization

Bin Laden's mentor at the time was also one of Hayatabad's leading Islamist theoreticians, a Palestinian named Abdullah Azzam, who in 1984 had published a book that became a manifesto for the Afghan mujahidin. It argued that Muslims had both an individual and communal obligation to expel conquering or occupying armies from their sacred lands.

Like any government, it seeks to retain a monopoly on violence.

Also, as it came to be exposed later, some FSA-affiliated groups engaged in theft and robbery and claimed the Assad forces were behind it. As time went by, however, lawlessness became more pronounced and a major source of grievance for the local communities. Some FSA factions opted to leave the front lines and busy themselves with moneymaking activities in their areas. Factionalism, profit-making, and incompetence started to alienate people.