ISIS Pros And Cons

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was kicked out of the terrorist group al-Qaeda for not recognizing Ayman al-Zawahiri as their leader. Instead ISIS saw Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as their leader. ISIS is very focused on acquiring more land from Iraq and Syria, and to do so they use methods much harsher than that of al-Qaeda’s methods. They are much more violent, strict, and ruthless. ISIS is very rich from oil refineries and ransoms, which raise hundreds of millions of dollars used to fund their government that is strictly based off of Islamic religion. ISIS has been recruiting jihadists through social media and pulling them in because recruits are offered a way of life and a chance to do something powerful. In their ultimate goal of achieving
The United Nations is trying to decide what to do about it. It was suggested to give Syrian rebels weapons to fight against ISIS. However, this is tricky because with rebel groups being untrustworthy, they are constantly switching from side to side, and some switching from their rebel group to ISIS. They can’t be given weapons because if they switch to ISIS, they will be stronger to fight against Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, US, UK, and countries of the United Nations, which would be awful. Also, weapons given to rebels have also been stolen by ISIS. Assad and ISIS are enemies, so fighting Assad might empower ISIS. In the same way, fighting ISIS could strengthen Assad. Middle Eastern countries like Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are all for arming the rebel groups to fight ISIS, however. They only hold this position because they fear that ISIS will take land and take lives from their countries just like they did to Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. UN countries from the West, Europe, and Middle East have another idea; airstrikes. But some countries don’t want to send an airstrike because it will enrage the members of ISIS and cause them to strike back harder. But before an airstrike can be made possible (which UN charter allows), they have to make sure Russia approves of it first, since they have veto power in the Security Council. Russia has used its veto power in the UNSC before because they disagree with the US’s methods of dealing with
Although they have the US, UK, and Netherlands agreeing with them, most countries do not want an airstrike on the Syrian government. Most importantly, Russia is too close with the Syrian government. They are one of Syria’s largest weapons suppliers. Russia is going to be a problem in getting an airstrike to Syria and ISIS for three reasons. They have veto power in the Security Council, they disagree with America’s methods of dealing with Middle Eastern countries (the airstrike was America’s idea), and Russia doesn’t not want to topple the Syrian government because they have made $4 billion dollars off of them from selling weapons. France would largely try to convince Russia to allow the airstrike on the Assad regime and ISIS. They would explain that ISIS could start terrorizing Russian citizens if they are not stopped. And explain the power vacuum that would be caused by not taking out both Assad and ISIS. If they don’t agree we’ll have to go on to convince countries opposing to striking Assad and ISIS in case we need to overrun the Russian veto. It is not likely that we can convince other