Iraq militants announce new Islamic state
Oren Dorell, USA TODAY 6:28 p.m. EDT June 29, 2014
An al-Qaeda breakaway group that seized large swaths of Iraq in recent weeks declared Sunday the creation of a new religious state in Iraq and Syria, as it continued to repel government forces in Tikrit, the hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
The militant group called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant announced it will now be known as The Islamic State.
A spokesman for the new entity, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, said the group's chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, remains its leader, and called on residents in areas under its control to swear allegiance to al-Baghdadi and support him.
The announcement could force other jihadist groups to either join or fight the group, which lays claim to billions of dollars in assets, scores of communities and operations that extend into Turkey and Lebanon, said Charles Lister, an analyst at the Brookings Doha Center, a think tank.
"The Islamic State's announcement made it clear that it would perceive any group that failed to pledge allegiance an enemy of Islam," Lister said. "Already, this new Islamic State has received statements of support and opposition from jihadist factions in Syria."
The group, which was disowned this year by al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri, has developed an elaborate bureaucracy and an efficient model of governance, providing modern social services together with medieval justice. And it has supporters in Jordan, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, Lister said.
"This could well be the birth of a totally new era of transnational jihadism," he said.
The group, which gained control of much of northern Syria during that country's civil war, fought U.S. troops as al-Qaeda in Iraq during the U.S. occupation.
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Iraq militants announce new Islamic state
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And so it begins?
Islamic Caliphate, Round 2?
