BAGHDAD — A militant extremist group’s unilateral declaration of an Islamic state is threatening to undermine its already-tenuous alliance with other Sunnis who helped it overrun much of northern and western Iraq.
One uneasy ally has vowed to resist if the militants try to impose their strict interpretation of Shariah law.
Fighters from the al-Qaida breakaway group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have spearheaded the offensive in recent weeks that has plunged Iraq into its deepest crisis since the last U.S. troops left in 2011. The group’s lightning advance has brought under its control territory stretching from northern Syria as far as the outskirts of Baghdad in central Iraq.
In a bold move Sunday, the group announced the establishment of its own state, or caliphate, governed by Islamic law. It proclaimed its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a highly ambitious Iraqi militant with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head, to be the caliph, and it demanded that Muslims around the world pledge allegiance to him.
Through brute force and meticulous planning, the Sunni extremist group — which said it was changing its name to simply the Islamic State, dropping the reference to Iraq and the Levant — has managed to effectively erase the Syria-Iraq border and lay the foundations of its proto-state. Along the way, it has battled Syrian rebels, Kurdish militias and the Syrian and Iraqi militaries.
Now, the group’s declaration risks straining its loose alliances with other Sunnis who share the militants’ hopes of bringing down Iraq’s Shiite-led government but not necessarily its ambitions of carving out a transnational caliphate. Iraq’s minority Sunnis complain they have been treated as second-class citizens and unfairly targeted by security forces.
Topping the list of uneasy allies is the Army of the Men of the Naqshabandi Order, a Sunni militant organization with ties to Saddam Hussein’s now-outlawed Baath Party. The group depicts itself as a nationalist force that defends Iraq’s Sunnis from Shiite rule.
A senior Naqshabandi commander in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad told The Associated Press that his group has “no intention” of joining the Islamic State or working under it. He said that “would be a difficult thing to do because our ideology is different from the Islamic State’s extremist ideology.”
“Till now, the Islamic State fighters are avoiding any friction with us in the areas we control in Diyala, but if they are to change their approach toward our fighters and people living in our areas, we expect rounds of fighting with the Islamic State’s people,” said the commander who goes by the nom de guerre of Abu Fatima.