ISIL was founded in 1999 by Jordanian Salafi jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It gained global prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive. In June 2014, the group proclaimed itself a worldwide caliphate and began referring to itself as the Islamic State.
About Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in brief
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a militant Islamist group. ISIL was founded in 1999 by Jordanian Salafi jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It gained global prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive. In June 2014, the group proclaimed itself a worldwide caliphate and began referring to itself as the Islamic State. ISIL is known for its videos of beheadings and other types of executions of both soldiers and civilians, including journalists and aid workers. The United Nations holds ISIL responsible for committing human rights abuses, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. In 2015, ISIL was estimated to have an annual budget of more than US$1 billion and a force of more more than 30,000 fighters. On 31 October 2019, ISIL media announced that Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was the new leader of theIslamic State, after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed himself by detonating a suicide vest during the US Barisha raid in the Syrian rebel-held Idlib province of Syria four days previously. ISIL continued to lose territory to the various military forces allied against it. By December 2017, the Islamic state controlled just 2% of its maximum territory. In December 2017,. Iraqi forces had driven the last remnants of the IslamicState underground, three years after the group captured about a third of Iraq’s territory.
By March 2019,. ISIL lost one of their last significant territories in the Middle East in the Deir ez-Zor campaign, surrendering their \”tent city\” and pockets in Al-Baghuz Fawqani to the Syrian Democratic Forces after the Battle of Baghuz Fawqani. In April 2013, having expanded into Syria, ISIL adopted the name ad-Dawlah al-Islā-Shām ‘l ‘Irām. As al-Shams, the name ISIL is an acronym of ISIL’s name, which has not been considered so great a relevance so far. While the distinction between the two and the other acronym has been the subject of debate, the use of either one or the other is not considered to be of great relevance. The Islamic State is believed to be operational in 18 countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, with \”aspiring branches\” in Mali, Egypt, Somalia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The group has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the U.N. and has been criticised for committing ethnic cleansing on a historic scale in northern Iraq. It has been compared with the Greater Levant or Greater Syria, a region often compared with a region in which the group’s name has been translated as al-Sham or Greater Iraq and Syria, which is an Arabic acronym of the word al-Islam f-shām al-Irqah lāq- waqah. The U.S. government and various governments, and mainstream Muslim groups vehemently reject its statehood.
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This page is based on the article Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 04, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
