I am extremely passionate when it comes to the news and current events. Some stories hit closer to home than others and now there’s talk of a relatively new militant group ISIS, (The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) my ears have perked up. Today is after all our intependece day and I do not take any of our freedoms for granted. ISIS, formed about a year ago with origins that grew out of al-Quaeda in Iraq are known to be even more extreme. Outsiders looking in believe thousands of fighters make up the group, whose aim is to ultimately form an Islamic state across Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria. Fighting government forces in Syria, some news sources have said that ISIS has become the world’s most dangerous militant group.
Throughout the duration of the ongoing civil war in Syria, ISIS has continued to thrive and grow, making it a force to be reckoned with. Continually making military gains in Iraq, ISIS has now seized Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul and will most likely continue to seize neighboring cities. Now controlling hundreds of square miles, ISIS simply ignores international borders, and now has formed some presence from Syria’s Mediterranean coast to south of Baghdad. In a nutshell, ISIS aims to establish an Islamic state that spans the region and works to impose its own laws in the cities and towns it has seized. Imposing laws largely identified with Islam means that women will have to wear a veil in public, boys and girls are separated in school, the fast is enforced during Ramadan and music is banned completely. Rules are often enforced through brutal consequence and the laws cover both non-religious and religious parts of day-to-day life. This is not the world that I would want my daughter and grandchild to live in.
It’s safe to say that while the Islamist rebel group (ISIS) won’t necessarily have a direct effect on our lives here at home, there will be indirect consequences. While ISIS continues to seize cities across the region, oil drilling has been put on hold. Iraq is one of the largest oil producers in the world and lack of product could have economic impact of global scale. When oil becomes scarce, prices begin to climb, making oil the impetus of world-wide economic unrest.
According to a recent World Post article, “A disruption in the supply of Iraq’s oil on the world market could create a cascading effect on oil prices, already at $110 a barrel and climbing. It should be remembered that in the summer of 2008 oil’s climb to a price north of $140 a barrel was a key element in the unleashing of the global economic crisis, from which a feeble recovery is still underway. The global economy is fragile and vulnerable to another oil shock.”
What are your thoughts on ISIS and how it might affect the rest of the world? Can you see how its impact on oil could spiral into a global economic crisis?
