Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

Barry Buzan’s thought has shaped constructivism and International Security Studies since the 1990s. In this paper, it is argued that ISS does insufficient justice to the case of the Iraqi Kurdish military counterattacks and wider societal mobilization against ISIS. The paper introduces the concepts of spontaneous and semi-spontaneous securitization, where the referent object of securitization is not the nation state or even the Kurdistan Region but the more traditionally defined community and its individual members, plus religiously or ethnically defined groups that are under the protection of the regionally dominant identity community. Worryingly, in Sunni Arab areas such as Mosul, insurrection and semi-spontaneous securitization has been an aspect to how ISIS captured that city. Further theoretical problems such as the securitization of immigration in Buzan’s theoretical framework, are exposed and applied to the case of ISIS and Iraqi Kurdistan. Research for this article took place during on the field visits to Erbil and the KRI in 2016 by the author and his team of HDF General Staff Scientific Research Centre.

News took wing recently, ISIS is responsible for the migration pressure afflicting the Western World, furthermore ISIS wants to send terrorists among the mass of immigrants into Europe and America, where they – as a “third column” – are going to carry out terrorist attacks, similar to 9/11, at the proper time. This news generated serious debates and emotions in the Western World. Some people say, the threat sould be taken seriously, others claims the ISIS is not able to carry out such well co-ordinated action, and the Western countries has to let in all of the immigrants indiscriminately, apart from the fact, if we are able to integrate them or not.