State collapse rather than ideology alone explains the rise of the Islamic State. Discuss with reference to post-2003 Iraq.

The Islamic State (IS) grew out of a network that Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi set up in Baghdad in 2002. It became Al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) in 2004 [2]. Its jihadist ideology came before the war. However, the collapse of the Iraqi state after 2003 is what turned a fringe network into a proto-state that ruled cities.

State collapse as the enabling condition

• Regime change without a plan: the UK's Chilcot Inquiry found that planning for Iraq after Saddam was wholly inadequate [1]. Dismantling the Ba'athist state and army created a security vacuum and left many trained soldiers without jobs.
• Sectarian fracture: Shia parties rose rapidly, and many Sunnis felt shut out of power. AQI exploited this by bombing Shi'a shrines to provoke civil war [2].
• Hollow security forces: after U.S. troops left in 2011, a weak and politicised army could not hold Sunni areas. ISIL seized Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, in June 2014 and displaced hundreds of thousands of people [3].
• Spillover from Syria: Syria's civil war gave the group an ungoverned rear base. In 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced a merger with Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria to form ISIL [2].

Why ideology still matters

• Salafi-jihadist doctrine gave the group cohesion, a caliphate story and foreign recruits. Zarqawi pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden in 2004 [2].
• Ideology explains the group's extreme sectarian violence, in which Iraqi civilians bore the brunt [2]. Ordinary insurgents do not behave this way.
• The ideology also survived setbacks. After Zarqawi's death in 2006, the group renamed itself the Islamic State of Iraq and kept fighting [2].

How the two interact

• Collapse provided the opportunity: territory, weapons, recruits and grievances.
• Ideology provided the motive and organisation: it turned that vacuum into a "caliphate."
• The same doctrine exists in many places, but it has built a territorial state only where states have failed.

IS is therefore best understood as ideology exploiting state failure: doctrine supplied the motive and collapse supplied the opportunity. Lasting counter-terrorism must rebuild inclusive institutions in security, justice and political representation, not rely on military force alone. This is the aim of SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions), and it is the surest guard against IS returning.