News Analysis: IS tool for remapping Arab region: Experts

The Islamic State (IS) militant group poses threats to the geography of the Arab region and constitutes "a tool for division," political and security experts have said.

"IS threatens the geography of the region, and fills the gaps created in the weak countries," Kamal Habib, expert in Islamic movements' affairs, said.

He pointed out that convulsions and conflicts that followed the Arab Spring uprisings have created "a fertile soil for the IS existence."

"The group has been established amid fragile environments," Habib told Xinhua, adding that some countries have exploited the IS to trigger more division in the chaotic region for their own interests.

He attributed the youth turnout to join the militant group to illiteracy, ignorance, unemployment and lack of confidence in their leaders.

The IS has a jihadist ultra-conservative mentality, that has built its pillars on dividing people to achieve its sovereign objectives, he added.

The division strategy is built on three stages: exhausting fragile countries, strengthening the group's influence and then empowering its existence for establishing the dreamed of Islamic State, he pointed out.

However, he insisted that the group's own ideology is not motivated by certain foreign countries.

Agreeing with Habib, Talaat Musalam, security and strategic expert, said the IS seeks to divide the Arab region," but he believes that the IS was a U.S. industry to achieve its interests in the region.

The U.S. tactics in taming the IS changed after the group deviated from the line drawn for its influence, and started to act independently, especially after controlling big share of the Iraqi oil, Musalam told Xinhua.

"Daesh (IS in Arabic) applies the same U.S. planned strategies of dividing the Arab region," the expert claimed.

The IS group, an al-Qaida offshoot which seized big parts of Iraq and neighboring Syria, has become notorious for its savage attacks on Shiite Muslims, Christians, oil resources and historic heritage.

Fighters from the IS have seized the Syrian city of Palmyra, known as Tadmur in Arabic, which is home to a UNESCO world heritage site and strategically significant with nearby natural gas fields and roads leading to Damascus, placing nearly half of the Syrian territories under the control of the the jihadi groups.

In Iraq, the IS controlled the city of Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, displacing more than 40,000 migrant who have fled the fighting-stricken area, as well as taking over other villages and cities on the Iraqi border with Syria.

The Jihadist group also controls Derna, Sirte, and parts of Tobruk in Libya, according to the Libyan diplomatic official Mohamed Faez Ibrahim.

On Friday, the IS claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Saudi Arabia, warning that more "black days'' loom ahead in a direct challenge to the rulers of the Sunni kingdom.

The mosque attack killed at least 21 people and wounded 81, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

The IS seized half of Syria, controlled Iraqi cities, carried out a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia and entered Yemen, Somali and Libya, which means "we are facing a dividing plan for remapping the region," Musalam explained.

He blamed weakness of some Arab countries and flow of funds by big Islamist groups, which has an influential dream of regaining the glory of the Islamic Empire "caliphate," for expansion of the group.

Concerning the future of the group, both experts expected the IS will remain for several years, and would not easily to go away.

Musalam, the security expert, said the group will continue to expand because of the persistent regional chaos.

"Daesh is part of the regional disorder without administrative or political mind, and works on inciting terror to restore the caliphate project," Musalam noted.

While the other expert, Habib, gave other explanation for the IS future. He said the Arab world now is exhausted; most of its big armies were "consumed."

Meanwhile, Habib ruled out that the jihadist group could control one complete country. Endit