The Jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), alternatively known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has enjoyed spectacular successes overthrowing and controlling territory from northern Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad in Iraq.

Previously referred to as Al Qaeda in the Islamic State of Iraq (AQI), the group got its name in April of 2013. For a group estimated to be composed of merely a few thousand militants, the organization has secured astonishing victories over much larger armed forces. [2]

The group’s first major military success was the conquest of Raqqa in Northern Syria in March of 2013. Since that victory, ISIS has successfully gained control of the Iraqi cities of Tal Afar, Tikrit, Suleiman Beg, and Fallujah. [3]

Perhaps their most impressive and shocking achievement to date, and the one that galvanized the attention of the world back to Iraq, was the conquest of Iraq’s second most populous city, Mosul. ISIS managed to not only secure this crucial trading post proximate to Syria, but they managed to get hold of weaponry and equipment abandoned when the Iraq security forces fled the city. [4]

How is it possible such a relatively small group of rebels could manage to outmaneuver a force presence of 30,000?

Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Research on Globalization has been tracking these developments. He contends that the rise of ISIS is not a miscalculation on the part of the US-NATO alliance, but is in fact a deliberate strategy to re-engineer the region to advance their imperial aims there. He explains his thesis in part one of the Global Research News Hour.

The recent elections in Syria have been described as “meaningless” and “a great big zero” by the US Secretary of State John Kerry. He argues given the state of conflict in the Middle Eastern country that “you can’t have an election where millions of your people don’t even have an ability to vote.” [5]

The final vote posted by the Speaker of the People’s Assembly announced that the incumbent President secured a land-slide victory of over 88% with a 73.42% voter turn-out. [6]

While a dictatorial power in a time of civil war might have the capacity to gerrymander election results to his satisfaction, is there any indication that this is in fact what happened?

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization and a published author. He served as an election observer during the recent Syrian elections and discloses in the second half hour of the Global Research News Hour why he believes the elections were above board, and what role these elections, particularly the perception of them being fraudulent, serves in the broader geo-political context.