4 ms·

The Arab Spring revolution became the Syrian Civil War, which became IS. Don't take away the agency of people in other countries to be evil, just because you be

• dragonwriter 10y ago
  > The Arab Spring revolution became the Syrian Civil War, which became IS. No, the Islamic State in Iraq, which arose in Iraq before the Arab Spring, became the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (and later simply the Islamic State) after sending offshoots to fight in the Syrian Civil War, and then reintegrating those offshoots. But it is a mistake to say that the Syrian Civil War "became" IS; before the Arab Spring and Syrian Civil War, the Islamic State in Iraq was already a substantial armed force holding territory and heavy weapons, most of which were taken from the Iraqi military, which it became as it grew up fueled largely by resistance to the US occupation (and, for a while, its temporary attachment to the al-Qaeda brand as "al-Qaeda in Iraq", which was useful when al-Qaeda was the most visible brand in Islamist opposition to the U.S., though eventually they outgrew the need to be a franchise of a foreign brand.)