There is a good deal of speculation about the origins and agenda of ISIS; about who funds them, trains them and arms them, and so on. Frankly, I don’t really find this type of discussion very useful. Whether you believe they are a genuine group rising up to establish an Islamic state, or you think they are a creation of Western Intelligence services; ultimately what matters is the actual impact they have had, and what can be reasonably expected to result from their strategy, within the broader context of the global power system. You can then determine whether or not these outcomes are in the interests the people of Syria and Iraq, or indeed, whether or not they even serve the articulated goals of ISIS.
We can leave aside ISIS’ significant contribution to the rivalry between rebel factions in Syria, and the impact that has had in sabotaging the effort to remove Bashar al-Assad from power. We can leave aside ISIS’ significant contribution to the Syrian refugee population. And we can leave aside ISIS’ significant contribution to effectively erasing from history the original reform agenda of the Syrian opposition movement which first took to the streets to challenge the regime. These are all important issues, but we can leave them aside in discussing ISIS because ISIS was certainly not exclusively responsible for these grave mistakes.
The most important achievement of ISIS, without question, has been the seizure of territory in Iraq, annexing it to the land they already control in Syria; basically dissolving the border. They have not toppled the Assad government, nor the administration in Baghdad, but have simply succeeded in shrinking those regimes’ territories, essentially breaking up the two countries and advancing the potential balkanization of Syria and Iraq along roughly sectarian lines
This is an accomplishment entirely welcome to global corporate imperialism, as the viability of smaller states to control their resources and dictate the terms of trade and investment to multinational corporations is extremely diminished. If a large state entity with multiple resources is fractured into several smaller independent entities, each having fewer resources at its disposal, the already overwhelming economic power of multinationals becomes amplified, and the new states will be all but helpless to resist domination. The balkanization of large developing countries like Syria, Iraq, and potentially Egypt, is unquestionably favored by capitalist imperialists.
Furthermore, the creation of new, small independent states means the creation of new armies to secure new borders and to maintain new regimes. This means a new arms race in the region which means more new customers for the defense and technology industries.
The inevitable need for reconstruction and for, essentially, state-creation, means new opportunities for corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton; new opportunities for financing and debt-creation for international banks; new pools of cheap labor and desperate new markets for the import of consumer goods. These contracts and agreements will be made according to the terms dictated by the more powerful of the two parties; in other words, dictated by the multinationals to the new states.
This does not appear to me to be a realistic strategy for the creation of an independent Islamic state.