WASHINGTON — ISIS is not a guerrilla organization that popped up out of nowhere, figured out how to hold onto territory, and take on the Iraqi and Syrian armies all by themselves, says Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive multi-issue think tank in Washington.

ISIS is powerful, she argues, because the group enjoys political and military support from the Sunni communities in Iraq that were left defenseless against the Shiite-dominated government the United States put into power following its occupation of Iraq in 2003.

“The Sunni, who are a large minority, around 20 to 25 percent, have been kind of isolated from any kind of access not only to major power but to any part of [Iraqi] society,” Bennis said in July at Busboys and Poets, a restaurant and community organizing spot in Washington.

“So there’s a great deal of antagonism towards the government, and for a lot of people there’s a sense of, ‘Look I don’t like these guys, but maybe they can be the one force that can fight back,’” she said during a discussion of her […]