The shadow of the past: the rise of the Islamic State and a return to instability

Abstract

The events of summer 2014 in Iraq and Syria took the world largely by surprise. A
relatively unknown group began to unleash a campaign marked by excessive torture
and brutal tactics in order to declare an Islamic caliphate. They quickly became
known as the Islamic State. Since then, the group have dominated newspapers and
media channels throughout the world. However, little attention has been paid to the
origins of the group or what fuels their campaign. This project aims to explain the rise
of the Islamic State through a historical account of numerous critical factors which
triggered a reactionary sequence of events that led to the rise of the IS, as well as the
spread of regional instability. By positing that foreign interventions, declining military
relations, failures of government and the systematic abuse of human rights contributed
to the creation of space in which extremist forces could grow, this project shall
develop the basic theory that ‘history matters’.