The ISIS Solution. How Unconventional Thinking and Special Operations Can Eliminate. Radical Islam

Transcription

1 The ISIS Solution How Unconventional Thinking and Special Operations Can Eliminate Radical Islam Brandon Webb, Jack Murphy, Peter Nealen, and the Editors of SOFREP.com St. Martin s Press New York

2 The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

3 Contents Introduction 5 Chapter 1. The Establishment of the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) 13 Chapter 2. A Forensic Look at the ISIS Organizational Structure 45 Chapter 3. Unconventional Solutions Past and Present 67 Chapter 4. Large- Scale Military Action Against ISIS 79 Chapter 5. Our Conclusion 97 Chapter 6. Bonus: What You and Your Friends Can Do to Combat ISIS 104 Appendix: The Military- Industrial Complex and State of U.S. Special Operations 113 Notes 118

4 It always seems impossible until it s done. Nelson Mandela

5 Introduction American foreign policy strategies in a post-9/11 world have been opaque at best, and recently the unhinged plan is playing out on the world stage in countries like Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Ukraine. If you ask average Americans on the street what our strategy is to defeat Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, or any other fracture of radical Islam, it is likely that you will get different answers from everyone. Any good strategy in an organization, even big government, can be easily understood and is widely known by the people in the organization, in this case, the American public. Ask people at Apple what their company stands for and what the company strategy is, and chances are you ll get straight, unified, and coherent answers. This is the problem with American government, and the bureaucracy that surrounds it today, and it crosses party lines. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will responsibly end the war in Iraq so that we can renew our military strength, dedicate more resources to the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and invest in our economy at home. The Obama-Biden plan will help us succeed in Iraq by transitioning to Iraqi control of their country. The Obama-Biden Plan, Change.gov 1 Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of

6 values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world s population Nobel Committee Statement 2 The irony of Obama s Nobel Peace Prize is also not lost on the editors of SOFREP.com. While his predecessor admittedly did him no favors with the lack of planning post Iraq invasion, Obama s supporters cannot ignore that he has waged a secret war across the globe that has led to destabilization in states like Libya, and civil war in Iraq and Syria. The president s supporters have to deal with the harsh reality that if there were a Nobel War Prize, Obama would be a clear choice for the nomination today. The president recently announced that we don t have a strategy for dealing with ISIS. It s too soon to say what steps the United States will take against ISIS in Syria. I don t want to put the cart before the horse, Obama told reporters during a White House news briefing. We don t have a strategy yet. CNN, September 4, If we have been in a war against terror for more than a decade and still don t have solid strategies for dealing with radical terrorism, then what have we really been doing the last thirteen years? It s a good question to ask yourself, and at least the president was telling the truth when he said we don t have a strategy for ISIS.

7 Crescent Map (World History Maps: Patterns of Interaction) Introduction to ISIS

8 The Islamic State in Iraq and al-sham, known derogatorily as Daash among its adversaries in Iraq, did not form in a vacuum. It was founded in 2003 as Jama at al- Tawhid wal-jihad (Group of Monotheism and Jihad), by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian, and in October 2004, Zarqawi pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, renaming the organization Tanzim Qaidat al-jihad fi Bilad al-rafidayn or, more simply, Al Qaeda in Iraq. Under this moniker, the group fought Coalition forces and Iraqi Security Forces for the bulk of the American occupation phase of the war. In October 2006, the group renamed itself again, this time as the Islamic State in Iraq, under Abu Omar al-baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-masri. As ISI, the group was still the primary Al Qaeda affiliate in the region, and it was instrumental in forming and deploying Jabhat al-nusra, which was formally founded as Al Qaeda s affiliate in Syria. In 2013, ISI renamed itself yet again, as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-sham (the Levant) and, in so doing, declared that it held overall command over Jabhat al-nusra. The resulting feud, although arbitrated by Al Qaeda s emir, Ayman al Zawahiri, has still not been resolved.

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10 Fertile Crescent, 1914 (Le Monde Diplomatique) Just as the organization itself has not come out of a vacuum, its strategy and tactics have not developed in a vacuum, either. There is a consistency in its approach going back to the days of Zarqawi. So who or what is ISIS or IS? It can be argued that Al Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) are one in the same both organizations spring from the same radical interpretation of Islam, and they are closely connected in many ways. This is not a group to be defeated in a traditional sense; it s an ideology that has gained massive popularity in the Middle East and beyond. If the Islamic State goes unchecked, it will not be long before the IS shows up on America s doorstep. In fact, in many ways it already has, we just haven t seen the effects yet. We are in your state We are in your Cities We are in your streets You are our goals anywhere. #AmessagefromISIStoUS, Twitter 4 Polarization, religious bias, and public opinion influence the halls of power in American politics. Making decisions based on bias and popular opinion (what do the polls tell us?) is not leadership and is large problem with our current government. The War on Terror has never been bigger than it is today. Americans need to wake from their deep slumber and notice that they have been manipulated to choose sides, conservative or liberal, right or left, and that this has been done by our own leadership and with the mainstream press feeding off it like sharks in bloodied seawater it s news entertainment at its finest in the twenty-first century.

11 The Internet is a powerful tool to pressure the system for change. In the last part of this book we tell you how to start using it for good. Americans need to embrace independent and optimistic thought leaders, people who get stuff done (doers, not talkers), and crash through the brick walls of bureaucracy. Reject decisions based on popular sentiment and question reactionary strategies. The Objectives of This Book This book has two goals: to introduce and explain ISIS, and to present new definitive thinking with the ultimate goal of making radical Islam radicalism of any sort, for that matter out of fashion. We need to make it not cool. There s a saying in the Special Operations community: Don t complain about something unless you are prepared to present solutions to the problem. The editors of SOFREP.com are not here to complain; we are here to offer real strategies when current leadership presents reactionary solutions based on popularity and traditional methods. These traditional methods have failed, and the proof is in the rise of ISIS itself. Have we defeated Al Qaeda yet? More air strikes from U.S. naval warships will not win people over to a new way of looking at America and the free world. America must cross a new bridge in order to change its way of thinking toward foreign policy and dealing with radical Islam. Our current strategy, led by George W. Bush and carried forward by Barack Obama, has produced a stalemate on the global chessboard with the Islamic State (IS) and radical Islam.

12 If we don t design and plan our own future, it will be designed for us the same way ISIS has been designing and defining its future in the Middle East in a post- American Iraq. If the world has learned one thing since September 11, 2001, it s that tolerance and peace cannot be achieved with the current approach to radical Islamic ideology, which promotes change through violent terror. This book presents new thinking on the issue. We don t claim to hold all the answers, but we are prepared to lead a conversation toward new and unconventional strategic thought that is focused on long-term solutions to wipe out violent terror as a popular movement.

13 Chapter 1. The Establishment of the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) ISIS (Vali Nasr)

14 Strategy is the overall plan of action to achieve a measurable goal. It is the series of actions on a theater-wide scale that contribute to victory or defeat. While ISIS has released several documents and videos giving some ideas of its strategy, even more can be determined by examining their targets, their actions in multiple spectrums of warfare, politics, and information, and their history. ISIS has stated its goals in several places, including the recent propaganda video Flames of War. At the beginning of Flames, the narrator states that ISIS is a mission that would herald the return to the khilafah [caliphate] and revive the creed of tawheed [monotheism/islam]. It was the establishment of the Islamic State nourished by the blood of the truthful mujahideen to unite the ummah [referring to the entire Islamic religion] on one calling, one banner, one leader. 5 The goal of pretty much every violent Islamist group has been the establishment of an Islamic State. This was a stated goal of AQI before it became ISIS, and before it declared itself actually to have achieved the goal of creating such a state in 2014, when it changed its name again to simply the Islamic State, and declared Abu Bakr al-baghdadi to be Caliph Ibrahim, a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. (Although the man behind the kunyah [alias] of Abu Bakr al-baghdadi is believed to have been born in Samarra, not Baghdad.) From 2003 to 2012, AQI/ISI was unable to go head-to-head with the conventional Coalition forces in Iraq. As a result, their strategy was limited by their logistics and available combat power. They attacked Coalition forces with mostly indirect fires and improvised explosive devices, while simultaneously attacking infrastructure, conducting terror operations to dissuade the populace from supporting the Coalition-backed Iraqi

15 government and to demonstrate the inadequacy of both that government and the Coalition forces to keep them safe, and attacking the Iraqi Security Forces and government officials in order to break down the government s resistance by way of terror and assassination. Improvised explosive devices (a fancy term for what had been called bombs for decades of terrorist attacks up until 2003 Iraq) began appearing, targeting American and British vehicles, shortly after the collapse of Saddam s Iraqi Army. Initially constructed primarily from the leftover military munitions that Saddam s people had cached all over the country, they were effective terror weapons that had a similar effect on Coalition forces as the booby traps employed by the Vietcong in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 70s. In fact, some of them were set up identically; a report from 1967 described a landing zone near Da Nang that the Viet Cong had sown with 155mm artillery shells to be detonated by command wire. Most of the early IEDs were more 155mm artillery shells set off on command by simple electrical detonators, triggered by an insurgent watching from nearby. The IEDs, coupled with mortar and rocket attacks, all of which could be placed and triggered easily, followed by the emplacers and triggermen getting away quickly and unencumbered, were designed to wear down the occupying forces. Without the combat power to defeat an adversary in a stand-up fight, the militant turns to bleeding him slowly. It is a death by a thousand cuts, with each cut being a dead or maimed soldier or Marine. The steady attrition, regardless of how high the actual body count was served a moral and political purpose beyond simply killing kufars (infidels). The insurgents believed and history has generally shown them to be right that the steady diet of

16 funerals and missing limbs would turn the distant American populace against the war. While Islamist propaganda tends to paint the Western reluctance to continue in the face of such casualties as softness and cowardice, their leadership likely didn t care, as long as it worked to drive Coalition forces out of the country. Not all IEDs were necessarily aimed at Coalition forces. Markets, government buildings, and Shi a mosques were all considered valid targets to the AQI bombers. In fact, AQI began such a focused campaign of violence aimed at Iraqi Shi a that the organization was rebuked by Osama bin Laden himself, who remonstrated that the Shi a were still brother Muslims. While it is likely that this was largely due to an apparent alliance of convenience with Iran (most of the components for explosively formed penetrators that were used in IEDs in Iraq increasingly around came from Iran, and Zarqawi had actually worked out of Tehran for a time), the hatred between radical Sunni and Shi a has not abated much since the initial split. In fact, in early 2004, an Al Qaeda operative by the name of Hassan Ghul was captured on the Iraq-Iran border, bearing a letter from Zarqawi to Al Qaeda s leadership in Afghanistan, proposing the instigation of a Sunni-Shi a civil war to forestall elections in Iraq. 6 It is apparent that the organization has maintained that antipathy to the Shi a; even after the immediate goal of creating enough instability to frustrate the Coalition powers, their determination to fight the Shi a has only hardened, to the point that certain Salafist clerics in 2013 declared that the Shi a are worse than infidels. How this fits in with the group s overall strategy will become clear later. Infrastructure was another major target during the occupation, with oil pipelines being hit repeatedly during late This had the dual purpose of hampering the fuel-

17 intensive operations of the Coalition as well as contributing to the insecurity of the country and its income. The attacks spiked again in late But it wasn t just the oil infrastructure that was targeted. Water plants were sabotaged, and the electrical grid already fragile, as anyone who patrolled through the Iraqi countryside at the time could attest came under attack on multiple occasions, often coinciding with elections. Again, all these attacks increasingly disrupted everyday life, demoralized those of the populace that still cooperated with the Coalition and the Iraqi government, and further undermined the government. If the Iraqi Security Forces couldn t secure vital infrastructure, why back them? Finally, there were the attacks on the government and Iraqi Security Forces directly, usually through ambush, IEDs, and assassinations. Violence tended to increase near elections, with judges, politicians, and police chiefs being special targets, but constant low-level attacks on any ISF continued regardless. In late 2005, a company of Iraqi Army soldiers, having left their weapons in their armory, headed home on leave in a bus. The bus was ambushed and all the soldiers killed. Just like the rest of the terror and harassment attacks, this had a purpose beyond just killing people for wearing the IA uniform; it served as a warning to anyone who would work for the Coalition or the Iraqi government. It would be disingenuous to attribute all of the Iraqi insurgency to AQI. At the time, there were a great many splinter organizations laying bombs and running ambushes. How much interplay there was among all the various insurgent groups is hard to say, and many of them still fought among themselves, especially between the Sunni and Shi a groups. However, while Coalition forces remained in Iraq, the various groups still had a

18 common cause: expel the Westerners from Iraq. This was the primary focus for AQI as well as the Shi a Sadrist militias and the various other Islamist organizations on both sides of the sectarian divide. Following the rise of the Sawha militias in Anbar province, AQI s activity dwindled. Its attempt at governing in the Sunni Triangle backfired, as the tribal leaders rapidly became disillusioned with their heavy-handedness and turned against them. (The beginning of the Awakening actually had even more to do with disrespect shown toward the same tribal leaders by the Salafists than just with their restrictive laws. Even though the tribes might not mind strict sharia in fact, some might welcome it, especially when faced with the increasingly obvious corruption and sectarian/tribal favoritism coming from Baghdad the blatant disrespect shown by the murder of Sheikh Abu Jassim and the subsequent refusal to allow his burial was the breaking point.) The killing of Zarqawi by a U.S. air strike in 2006 also caused the group to restructure, and the Islamic State in Iraq was born. However, while the tactics were changing, and the pressure from the Iraqi government, Coalition forces, and the Sawha militias was driving the group farther underground, the strategy remained the same. It is possible that some of the reduction in violence was due to a perception that U.S. departure was imminent; there had been a great deal of political rhetoric in the United States for years about an exit strategy, and presidential candidates were already debating staying or pulling out. Although it comes from Afghanistan, the saying, The Americans have the watches, but we have the time, applies. All the insurgent really has to do is outwait the occupier.

19 Sunni Shi a (Institute for the Study of War) Whatever the perception in the United States, or in Baghdad, for that matter, just judging by ISIS propaganda, the 2012 withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from Iraq was seen as a validation of the wait them out strategy. In fact, during the VICE News

20 embed with ISIS in Raqqa, Syria, the ISIS media officer says, Don t be cowards and attack us with drones. Instead send your soldiers, the ones we humiliated in Iraq. 7 Despite the fact that the insurgents didn t win most (if any) firefights, the fact that they were still there and still fighting while Coalition forces were gone meant, to them, that they d won. Now that the infidels were gone, it was time to move to the next stage in the strategy. At first, very little changed. It becomes apparent just how much damage was done to AQI by the Coalition forces, the Awakening, and the Iraqi Army when you consider that it took over a year for much more movement to occur after U.S. forces left. The bombings continued, as did the assassinations. Slowly, steadily, the campaign ramped back up. At first it was the same sort of low-level terror campaign that it had always been. Suicide bombers and small groups of gunmen predominated, hitting schools and police stations. It began to intensify, however, in April During the same week as the Boston bombing, in the lead-up to a new round of elections, ISI struck hard, killing almost three hundred people in a week. Thirteen candidates for the elections were killed; the top judge in Fallujah, Maarouf al Khubaisi, was assassinated in a market; and one of the Sawha leaders, Sheikh Majid Saad, was shot to death in his own garden. 8 That week in 2013 was, if anything, the primary sign that the Iraqi Security Forces was not up to the challenge of dealing with ISI. The violence continued to escalate, and the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police were unable to stop it. It was a confidence booster for ISI and a validation of the strategy of eroding the effectiveness of

21 the Iraqi Security Forces through terror as well as convincing the populace that the government could not protect them. It is apparent that during this period, ISI, while continuing the terror campaign against the ISF and the population that sided with the government, had turned toward increasing its numbers and building up its strength. Beginning in July 2012, the group s emir, then going by the kunyah Abu Du a, announced the Destroying the Walls campaign, aimed at breaking as many jihadists out of Iraqi prisons as possible, while continuing the terror aimed at the general populace and security forces. In his audiotaped statement, Abu Du a said, We give you glad tidings of the commencement of a new phase from the phases of our struggle, which we begin with a plan that we have dubbed, Destroying the Gates. We remind you of your top priority, which is to release the Muslim prisoners everywhere, and making the pursuit, chase, and killing of their butchers from amongst the judges, detectives, and guard to be on top of the list. 9 The campaign, like most guerrilla warfare, didn t focus only on jailbreaks, though they were a central part of it. The first attacks occurred only two days after Abu Du a s message and hit more than twenty cities, killing over one hundred fifteen people. The first major jailbreak occurred in September, in Tikrit. The Tasfirat prison was attacked and more than one hundred prisoners freed. In July 2013, simultaneous attacks were launched on Taji and Abu Ghraib prisons, freeing another five hundred from Abu Ghraib, including several high-value targets. As recently as September 2014, more prison attacks took place, including an abortive attempt to storm the Camp Justice prison in Kadhimiya in northern Baghdad.

22 Attempting to free by force other terrorists has long been a common practice of terrorist and guerrilla organizations. If the op works, it is a good way to build up numerical strength, by both getting experienced, hardened terrorists back and recruiting some of the criminal element that might be inclined to side with the group. The Qala-i- Jangi uprising in 2001 in Afghanistan likely sprang from a similar plan. Many of the hostage situations during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s were aimed at forcing the release of prisoners. While continuing to escalate the level of violence in Iraq, ISI was aiding in the formation of a new Al Qaeda affiliate to join the growing civil war in Syria. Islamists were already beginning to co-opt the Syrian opposition, including such organizations as Jund al-sham and Ahrar al-sham ( al-sham is Arabic for the Levant ), but so far Al Qaeda had had a minimal influence there. Jabhat al-nusra (the al-nusra Front) would change that. However, shortly after al-nusra s first successes in Syria, in April 2013, Abu Du a, now using the name Abu Bakr al-baghdadi, announced that since ISI had been instrumental in standing up to al-nusra, they were now merging as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-sham. 10 Al-Nusra s emir vehemently denied the claim and petitioned Ayman al-zawahiri to intervene and determine that al-nusra was in fact an independent Al Qaeda affiliate. However, ISIS had already taken advantage of the chaos in Syria to establish itself there. The bitter feud among al-nusra, the rest of the jihadist organizations in Syria, and ISIS has continued, although ISIS has increasingly solidified its position. Now, along with the seizure of Fallujah in January 2014, 11 ISIS had shifted from primarily attacking the coherency of the government and civilian support for said

23 government to actually gaining territory. The resistance phase was over. Now the conquest phase began. Before delving into the expansion of ISIS s territory in Syria and especially Iraq in 2014, it is worth looking at its strategies for holding ground in Syria. It learned a great deal from its mistakes in Iraq during the American occupation. Al Qaeda in Iraq became known for its brutality in dealing with the local populace, to the point of being admonished by core Al Qaeda to tone things down. 12 Information operations and propaganda have been integral to the jihadist movement from the beginning, and in fact are integral to any guerrilla effort. Mao (though theft of parts, probably mostly for resale rather than insurgency, though the effect is the same, had just as much to do with the damage to water systems) Zedong s axiom that the guerrilla must move among the people as a fish swims in the sea means that the people have to have a reason to support the guerrillas, whether through fear, ideology, or ethnic or sectarian loyalty. In recent years, ISIS has shown that it can manipulate all three factors. With the establishment of ISIS havens in Aleppo, Raqqa, and Deir al-zour in Syria in 2013, ISIS began a hearts and minds campaign in the course of its governance. The primary venue appears to have been the dawa forums, where ISIS preachers met with townspeople in their havens and extolled the benefits of sharia, the bravery of the mujahideen, and the necessity of jihad. They also pandered to children, providing sweets and presents at festivals, as well as teaching them Quranic passages and inculcating them with the evils of the Alawite regime in Syria.

24 They also began distributing aid, stamped with their black flag, to refugees and protestors. The branding (and the aid, for that matter) could be construed as having been learned from another jihadist Syrian opposition group, Ahrar al-sham. Ahrar were some of the first Syrian rebels to publicize their aid to displaced people suffering from the civil war. 13 By socializing the people in their areas of control to sharia and its governance, it appeared that ISIS was determined to avoid the problems, at least in Syria, that had plagued it in Anbar. However, depending on where ISIS faced resistance, it still is not at all reluctant to apply terror as a means of control. Another facet of the information operations campaign has always been propaganda. Much of this is easily visible in any communiqué issued by ISIS leadership. The majority-shi a government of Iraq under Nouri al-maliki is regularly referred to as the Safavids, referencing the Persian Shi a Muslim Empire that lasted from 1501 to Emphasizing the split between Sunni and Shi a has been a constant in the group s propaganda since its inception, along with referencing earlier Muslim history. Although Yusuf al Qaradawi is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood rather than ISIS, his declaration in June 2013 that Shi a are worse infidels than Christians or Jews aligned perfectly with ISIS rhetoric. 14 Demonizing their enemy (often disparagingly referred to as Nusayris, equating all Shi a with a splinter group whose beliefs are a blend of Islam, gnosticism, and Christianity) hardens the resolve of fighters and supporters. It also tends to justify the intense violence visited upon enemy combatants and noncombatants alike.

25 ISIS has also embraced a constant in jihadist propaganda emulating the early history of Islam by creating a connection between Muhammad and his followers and the group. The group members, whether in ISIS or any other jihadist organization, can present themselves as the true Muslims and therefore the true authority that the people must follow. Saddam Hussein did the same thing, albeit with somewhat more of a nationalist bent, equating himself with a new Saladin (who was, ironically, a Kurd). Certain references are extremely evocative to the devout Muslim; Abu Bakr, a common kunyah, was Muhammad s immediate successor and a successful military commander. The Battle of Badr, in 624, when Muhammad and his followers routed his opponents among the Quraish, is of such importance to Muslim culture that multiple military units and jihadist organizations, both Sunni and Shi a, have been named after it. Dates are also significant in jihadist strategy, often chosen for their symbolism. Just as there is usually a resurgence of violence during Ramadan, as the jihadists seek to further purify themselves by killing infidels, so certain dates have notable significance. It is believed that Osama bin Laden chose September 11 as the date for the attack on the World Trade Center because on that day in 1683 the Ottoman Empire (the last caliphate) was turned away from Vienna by Polish forces. ISIS, in keeping with its hard-line Salafist/Takfiri ideology, has deliberately emulated as much of early Islamic history as possible. The Small Wars Journal has outlined a number of these parallels that might go otherwise unnoticed in the West, where grudges aren t held for thousands of years.

26 Many of these parallels are not necessarily explicitly stated by ISIS or its spokesmen but are actions that can be seen, in light of Wahhabi ideology, the Hadith, and the Tarikh al-tabari (The History of Prophets and Kings, one of the four elements of Islamic scripture along with the Quran, the Sira, and the Hadith), as conforming with the actions of Muhammad. The emir s choice of the kunyah Abu Bakr al-baghdadi, Small Wars Journal points out, is deliberate. Not only was Abu Bakr the immediate successor of Muhammad, especially to Sunni orthodoxy, but al-baghdadi intimates that the emir is in exile from his home, just as Muhammad was in exile from Mecca. Al-Baghdadi also connects ISIS with the Abbasid caliphate, which was based in Baghdad from 750 to When he returned to Mecca, Muhammad cleansed the idols, removing the statues of the polytheistic gods from the kaaba. Much like the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, sixth-century statues that had been erected on the Silk Road, as idols in March 2001, ISIS has begun cleansing its own territory of anything that smacks of idolatry, including Christian and Shi a shrines. The tomb of Jonah was destroyed by ISIS in Mosul, and there are concerns about the remains of Nineveh and other pre-islamic sites in Iraq. Changing the name from the Islamic State in Iraq and al-sham to simply the Islamic State, and declaring Abu Bakr al-baghdadi Caliph Ibrahim or Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi al-husseini al-quraishi is of course the ultimate statement of being the most legitimate Islamic organization. Not only is the emir declaring himself caliph, the ruler of all Muslims (Mullah Muhammad Omar, emir of the Taliban, accepted the title

27 Commander of the Faithful, which amounted to the same thing), he also is claiming direct descent from Muhammad himself. 15 Of course, it is unlikely that ISIS actually believes that simply declaring a caliphate would result in the entire Muslim world rallying to its banner (though a larger number than might have been hoped have done just that). The symbolism involved in the declarations does more to broadcast their intentions than it does to necessarily win recruits or converts, though their success has added to the weight of their claims. Although the city of Raqqa in Syria was initially taken by the rest of the Syrian rebels, dominated by Jabhat al-nusra, since early 2013, ISIS has solidified its hold on the city, eventually declaring it the current capital of the new caliphate. Raqqa has, in a way, become ISIS s test bed for their new model of hard-line Takfiri governance, and also provides an interesting parallel to Mao Zedong s initial guerrilla campaign in China. After an abortive attempt at Jiangxi, Mao established a soviet at Yan an, a remote rural city where Chinese Communist governance was worked out, that acted as a base for further CPC expansion through the country, just as ISIS is using Raqqa. 16 ISIS has also utilized a combination of military action and terror, similar to Mao s guerrilla strategy against the Chinese Nationalists. An even closer parallel is the CPC s preference for fighting the Nationalists, avoiding the Japanese during World War II. ISIS, for all its announced antipathy to the Assad regime, has done very little direct fighting with Assad s forces. It has instead focused on consolidating control of regions already wrested away from Damascus, as well as fighting the Iraqi Army on the other side of the border.

28 In early June 2014, a convoy of ISIS fighters entered Mosul and took the city. Estimates of the number of fighters ranged from four hundred to fifteen hundred. There was some fighting initially, with the Iraqi Army claiming to have killed upward of one hundred fifty ISIS fighters, but by June 9, ISIS had seized the provincial government buildings, and the Iraqi Army had fled. A new phase had well and truly begun. Although there have been no appearances or statements to corroborate the stories, there were reports coming out of the city shortly after it fell that the Iraqi commanding general in Mosul had been one of Saddam s generals before the war, and that more Baathists had either accompanied the ISIS column into the city or turned their coats. What is without dispute is the fact that the majority of the upper leadership of the Iraqi Army in Mosul fled and either ordered their men to flee or left them to run or surrender. In other words, a fifty-two-thousand-man Iraqi Army division melted away in the face of between four hundred and fifteen hundred ISIS fighters. Much like its seizure of Fallujah in 2013, ISIS took advantage of the growing split between Sunni and Shi a. Maliki s intense Shi a sectarianism in Baghdad had alienated the Sunni tribes in the north and west to the point that they no longer had any loyalty to the country left at all, and in fact, for some of them, ISIS couldn t be worse than Baghdad. The majority of the forces that took Fallujah were not, in fact, front-line ISIS jihadists, but rather tribal militias, likely from the Zobai and Fuhaylat subtribes of the Abu Issa, which had previously supported AQI during the battle for the city in Similarly, it has been reported that the majority of the forces now controlling Mosul are local tribal militias.

29 ISIS, in similar fashion to Muhammad, has exploited the loyalties and grievances of the local tribes in order to cement its own control. They have focused on the age-old Sunni-Shi a divide and let Maliki and his partisans exacerbate it in the face of their own violence, in order to break a major portion of the country away from Baghdad. To further make up for numerical disparities, ISIS has had no qualms about using terror to discourage resistance. Shortly after taking Mosul, the majority of the Iraqi Army soldiers taken prisoner were led, their hands tied and bent over at the waist, to ditches, where they were shot to death. The numbers given were on the order of seventeen hundred men executed in this manner in one incident. There were more to come. The execution of prisoners is not the only form this terror has taken. The videotaped executions of five Western hostages in August, September, and October indicated a return to the political terrorism that was practiced by Zarqawi toward several Western powers that had forces in Iraq. The threats to hostages if certain actions are not taken appear to have worked in the case of Turkey. While Turkish air strikes were reported in support of peshmerga fighters near Mosul Dam in July (an event of no little significance in and of itself, given the long-standing antipathy between Turkey and not only its own Kurdish minority but also the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan just over the border), following threats to the hostages taken in Mosul when the Turkish consulate was overrun, Turkey has withdrawn most support for combat operations against ISIS, to the point of refusing to allow U.S. aircraft to fly out of Incirlik Air Base to strike at ISIS. 18 The terror campaign, particularly the mass executions near Mosul, is nothing new. Mass killing of prisoners was one of the methods used by Genghis Khan to discourage

30 resistance to his own conquests. It has been noted that there were very few sieges during the Great Khan s advance; those mass killings were a powerful warning. While it may appear on the surface that the fighters of ISIS are just a pack of psychopaths enjoying the mass slaughter, it does in fact serve a strategic purpose. As ISIS has shifted from guerrilla raids and terror bombings to overt military operations, it has also focused on infrastructure. This time, unlike under Zarqawi during the U.S. occupation, it is focused less on destroying the infrastructure than on capturing it. Mosul Dam was one of the most significant targets; while the pundits concentrated on the danger of the dam being breached and the possibility of ISIS using the resulting flood as a weapon of mass destruction, the dam also controls most of the water flow and electrical power for a great deal of Northern Iraq. That alone made it a potent tool of control. Another target, which has not been secured due to stiff resistance, though it was reported to have fallen into ISIS s hands several times in June, is the Bayji oil refinery. Bayji is the largest oil refinery in the country and accounts for nearly one-third of the domestic energy in Northern Iraq. Aside from the financial cost of the loss of a refinery that processes more than three hundred thousand barrels of oil per day, energy control is a major strategic asset, which is why the city and refinery have been so hotly contested. 19 The more analysis that is done of ISIS s strategy, the more evident it becomes that there is nothing especially new; it is using tried-and-true guerrilla warfare strategies, pioneered by leftist movements building on the earlier history of guerrilla warfare. The

31 use of Maoist strategy suggests that the leadership has studied extensively in preparation for the current campaign. While strategy is the road map to winning the war, tactics are the steps taken to win the battles. Tactically, ISIS is still something of a mixed bag, showing considerable sophistication on an operational level, while on an individual and small-unit level, it doesn t seem to have improved much since We ll examine the operational level first. Operationally, since the beginning of the conquest phase, ISIS has been using a combination of guerrilla raids and overt maneuver warfare. Even when confronting its enemies directly, it has attacked positions of weakness and avoided strengths, and when confronted with strength, it has fallen back. The move on Mosul in June was deliberately against a weakened opponent, indeed an opponent that was probably already compromised. There is no available firsthand information on what kind of reconnaissance or espionage was employed prior to the move. However, the apparent alliance with the northern Sunni tribal groups offers an explanation. ISIS didn t actually have to put any of its core fighters into Mosul to determine the lay of the land as far as the Iraqi Army leadership or the atmospherics of the populace. It simply had to talk to the tribal groups that included people in the city. From that, they were able to piece together a sufficient picture of the rot in the Iraqi Army in Mosul and the discontent with Baghdad to risk moving on the city with fewer than two thousand fighters.

32 There were a number of voices at the time of Mosul s fall opining about the flight and/or turning of Iraqi generals in Mosul, up to and including Maliki, saying that there was a conspiracy to hand over the city to ISIS. A group called the Jaysh al-tariqa al- Naqshbandiya, a Sunni militia that has in the past campaigned to end the Safavid occupation of Iraq, started putting up posters and producing videos suggesting that Izzat Ibrahim al-douri, one of the most notorious of Saddam s Baathist Party loyalists, who was never captured, had led ISIS forces into Mosul and was going to be the new Ninewa provincial governor. These claims have proved to be nothing but propaganda (al-douri has not appeared in Mosul to anyone s knowledge, and the video where he addressed the people of Mosul showed a frail seventy-year-old man struggling to read a prepared statement), but they are illustrative of how ISIS has used tribal alliances. The al- Naqshbandiya has not always been on good terms with ISIS, yet they are now allies. And while al-douri may not have been directly involved, there are definitely Baathist elements involved in northern Iraq. 20 ISIS has therefore used not only maneuver warfare in taking Mosul but also tribal and sectarian proxies as force multipliers. ISIS has kept its field forces light. While it has captured plenty of Syrian and Iraqi armored vehicles in recent months (many of the Iraqi vehicles U.S.-supplied), there have been few if any reports of them actually being used in frontline combat, at least in Iraq. The given figures for targets hit once the U.S. air strikes began in August include very little in the way of armored fighting vehicles. While most of the images of captured U.S. and Russian armor were from parades in Raqqa, it appears that most of such vehicles have been pulled back to ISIS havens in Syria to be used to defend against the Syrian regime and the group s rivals in the rebellion. 21

33 There is good reason for this. Keeping forces light makes the ISIS forces maneuverable and hard to spot and hit. Keeping to up-armored Humvees and pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, heavy machine guns, or automatic grenade launchers allows them to move with greater speed. Main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles can rarely manage much more than forty-five miles per hour on the road (in fact, the Abrams, of which ISIS captured quite a few, has an engine governor that keeps it from traveling faster than that). Even up-armored Humvees, most of which are likely fairly worn out by now, can manage close to sixty miles per hour. Another key to ISIS s flexibility has been its logistics. The group has captured a great deal of matériel, and fuel is no exception. Keeping to light, fast forces reduces the fuel requirements. An Abrams tank requires five hundred gallons of jet fuel to cover 265 miles. A Toyota HiLux, by contrast, can cover about five hundred miles on one twentygallon tank of gasoline. Add in the considerable maintenance requirements of tracked armored vehicles, and the decision to use technicals makes even more sense. In addition, whether planned for or not, once the air campaign began, ISIS s light, fast operational profile enabled the group to scatter and go low profile more easily when the jets flew overhead. The veteran fighters had plenty of experience hiding from American aircraft before 2012 and Syrian aircraft in the years since. In a country with a lot of small and midsized pickups on the roads, it is considerably easier to hide a pickupcentered force than large armored vehicles. So the ISIS fighters are light and fast on the battlefield and can exploit weaknesses quickly once identified. In maneuver warfare, the terms are gaps and

34 surfaces. Gaps are weak points where an enemy s line of resistance can be penetrated; surfaces are strong points. ISIS consistently avoids surfaces and goes for gaps. ISIS initially avoided confronting the Kurdish peshmerga after taking Mosul, preferring to launch attacks on the demoralized Iraqi Army. While they certainly exploited the Sunni-Shi a split and the unwillingness of Shi a troops to fight for Sunni cities in the north, the terror campaign exemplified by the mass executions of prisoners in Mosul was also calculated to break the Iraqi soldiers will to resist. With their fellow Iraqi Army soldiers having crumbled in the face of ISIS s advance, and then seeing what happened to those who were taken alive, the effect on morale, and therefore the will to resist, was devastating. The fact that the prisoners who were marched to their deaths did so without a single sign of defiance toward their captors cannot have done anything but further drive home the message that ISIS was invincible. That in and of itself was a powerful weapon. When faced with stiffer resistance, however, the ISIS fighters did not show any reluctance to fall back. The Bayji oil refinery, a major strategic asset, became a target within days of the fall of Mosul. Initial reports said that the ISIS fighters had actually seized the refinery. However, when faced by an Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service counterattack, they faded. The importance of the refinery has led to continuous attacks in the weeks and months since, but as long as the Iraqis defend it with any kind of tenacity, the ISIS attackers continue to fall back. Once the drive against the Kurds began, primarily as ISIS went for Mosul Dam, their blitzkrieg-style maneuver tactics became that much more obvious. As light and fast

35 as the ISIS forces were, they were facing equally lightly armed peshmerga. The peshmerga, for all its reputation for ferocity, is a lightweight mountain militia, and had been underequipped for some time, due to political disputes with Baghdad (Maliki had refused to pass on at least one major arms and munitions shipment intended for the Kurdistan Regional Government and the peshmerga). The peshmerga fighters in the north were also not well situated. The majority of their forces were concentrated near Kirkuk, which the Kurds quickly occupied once the Iraqi Army fled the city in the opening days of the ISIS offensive in June. It should be noted that the two main political parties of Iraqi Kurdistan, the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) and the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party), are run by the Talabani and Barzani families, respectively, and those two families and parties have a long-standing feud with each other. No sooner had the United States put up a no-fly zone over Northern Iraq in the 90s, getting Saddam off their backs, than the PUK and KDP embarked on a five-year civil war. While the two parties have effectively united to form the Kurdistan Regional Government, the feud remains, and each party runs its own half of the peshmerga, which can damage cohesion another weakness for ISIS to exploit. When ISIS turned its offensive against the peshmerga, its fighters first advanced on Sinjar, reportedly attacking the city from three directions. They had prepped the battle space for weeks, attacking peshmerga forces with complex ambushes and artillery, as well as destroying the Badush bridge in order to limit peshmerga mobility. 22 While the Kurdish authorities denied that the peshmerga had fled Sinjar without fighting on August 3, it is apparent that, given the attacks to degrade their position in the district, the Kurds did indeed break when the ISIS attack finally descended.

36 In the following days, ISIS drove the peshmerga from Makhmour and finally took Gwer, fifteen miles from the Kurdistan Regional Government s capital of Erbil. Reports indicated that, coupled with artillery bombardment, the fast, mobile ISIS forces were finding weak points in the Kurdish positions, driving through and then attacking the peshmerga from the flanks, if not shattering the defending unit with the initial penetration. (Reliable frontline reports have been difficult to obtain; both ISIS and the Kurds have a vested interest in pumping up their accomplishments, or saving face, depending on the situation. The Kurds have, for instance, made a great deal out of the shortages of ammunition when it comes to their forces withdrawing in the face of ISIS attacks. This is certainly an issue, especially considering the efforts by the Maliki government to keep anyone not Shi a Arab Persian disarmed, but it is just as likely that the shortage provides a convenient excuse for cutting and running. Without eyes on the actual situation, it is difficult to be sure, but there have been notable examples of the peshmerga overstating their own offensives.) ISIS has also consistently employed combined arms, in spite of its light, fast operational profile. Although the inventory is unknown, and changes daily depending on captures or losses, ISIS is known to have mostly truck-based mortars and towed howitzers. It has captured several self-propelled artillery pieces, which it has shown in parades in Raqqa, but, like the tanks, they appear to be kept in safe havens in Syria rather than being employed on the front lines in Iraq. ISIS has used these supporting arms in Iraq for both harassing fire and direct support prep fires for attacks, on the offensive as well as guerrilla raids within enemyheld territory. As recently as this writing, harassing attacks on checkpoints of a few

37 mortar rounds have been daily occurrences. 23 Most Kurdish positions in villages were shelled before being overrun. In Syria, ISIS has used the heavier artillery pieces to facilitate extended sieges of Syrian government positions. The most notable in recent months was the base held by the Syrian Army s Division 17, just outside Raqqa, which ISIS stormed in late July. 24 The Syrian Army appears to have held up far better than the Iraqi Army has, so it makes sense to save the heavier weapons for the Syrian front. An example of the use of artillery prep fires for a guerrilla raid is the September 18 attack on the Camp Justice prison in Baghdad. The initial attack, aimed at the prison itself, consisted of a mortar barrage, though aimed not only at the prison. More rounds landed on the Aaima floating bridge to the north, and the Sunni Endowment farther north of that. (The attack failed; the suicide bombers who were intended to breach the prison complex were captured.) ISIS has continued to utilize suicide bombers, both of the foot-mobile and suicide VBIED (vehicle-borne improvised explosive device) variety. During the attempted raid on the Camp Justice prison, the courtyard was breached by a suicide VBIED, and two individuals with suicide vests were arrested before they could get to their target. The fact that they were arrested rather than detonating suggests they were willing to be martyred to get to the target, but when the mission went bad, they lost the will to commit suicide. The question is, is this now ISIS policy, or did the suicide bombers chicken out? There is no way to know absent the Iraqi Security Forces interrogation records, which we do not have.

38 The use of suicide bombers and IEDs appears to be continuing previously observed trends going back to AQI they are being utilized as both terror weapons and breaching tools. Absent their targets, the roadside bombs aimed at Coalition convoys are no longer used; VBIEDs have been directed at political targets, one of the more recent ones being the Badr Organization headquarters in Baghdad on September 18. (The Badr Organization is a Shi a militia that has taken a lead role in resistance against ISIS.) Others have been set off in high-traffic areas of majority-shi a neighborhoods. In fact, the low-level terror bombing campaign in Baghdad continues. The primary battlefield use for suicide VBIEDs appears to be breaching defenses. The fall of the Division 17 base near Raqqa was reported to have begun with a suicide VBIED to the gate. A similar tactic was employed in the Destroying the Walls attack on Abu Ghraib in 2013, and as many as eight suicide VBIEDs were used in the attack on the Baiji oil refinery on September The concept appears to be to use the explosion to breach whatever physical defenses are on site and then to overwhelm the defenders with the force of the explosion, placing follow-on attackers at an advantage. (This is not a new tactic, nor one limited to ISIS. The attack on the Ariana Hotel in Kabul in 2011 was initiated by a suicide VBIED at the gate.) A truck can carry far more explosives than any rocket, and the suicide driver provides terminal guidance. While there have not yet been reports of up-armored suicide VBIEDs in Iraq, ISIS has been utilizing them in Syria. Again, this appears to be a sign that the heavy weapons are being reserved for use against the Syrian Army, signifying a certain contempt for the Iraqi Army and peshmerga alike. The first up-armored VBIEDs appeared in late 2013, apparently used by Jabhat al-nusra. A large truck, usually a tanker or commercial dump truck, is loaded with

39 explosives, and heavy steel sheets are welded to the cab to protect the suicide bomber from small-arms fire as he advances on the target. ISIS s suicide bombers appear to be mostly foreign recruits, such as Moner Muhammad Abu-Salha, a twenty-two-year-old Floridian who detonated himself in an uparmored dump truck in Syria in April. 26 The frontline fighters do not appear to be chosen as suicide bombers, suggesting that ISIS has a central core of semiprofessional mujahideen, with the newcomers being the first to be considered expendable. This is, of course, sensible, as the experienced fighters are more valuable than the newcomers coming from elsewhere who have never fought. Reports of what the would-be suicide bombers are being promised suggest that, in fact, ISIS is recruiting disposable cannon fodder for just that purpose. Abu-Salha painted a picture of a far better life as a mujahideen, and a hedonistic paradise awaiting those who were killed in jihad, with an emphasis on the beauty of the women waiting there. It appears tailored to appeal to young, impressionable men who are dissatisfied enough with their life to be willing to throw it away. Although many of the legends of the Ismaili cult of Hashishin have been determined to be little more than anti-ismaili propaganda, there appears to be a decided resemblance between the propaganda stories about the Ismaili assassins, who used public murder as a tool of terror and intimidation, often with the assassin sacrificing his own life to take out his target, and the modern-day suicide bombers. Whether this is a deliberate appropriation of the stories of the indoctrination of new Ismaili fedayeen is unclear, but it is an interesting parallel. If it is, the fact that Sunni Salafists are willing to copy Shi a Ismailis also demonstrates a pragmatism that might be belied by their propaganda.

40 One of the elements of truly successful maneuver in warfare is decentralized command. Pioneered by the German Bundeswehr, largely under Moltke, the technical term is mission-based tactics or Auftragstaktik. In mission-based tactics, the overall commander gives his subordinates a general set of orders, akin to, Here is your target, here are your assets, go get it done. In the U.S. military, it is referred to as commander s intent. Although the Germans elevated it to an art form in land warfare, its use is much older; Lord Nelson frequently gave his ship captains a desired end state and then let them fight as they saw fit in pursuit of that goal. ISIS appears to be using mission-based tactics and orders. From what has been determined, the commanders in the field get a general picture of which city or village to target and then decide how to attack the objective. This has had the effect of giving ISIS a very small SIGINT signature; the orders are simple enough that they can be easily passed by courier or a short phone conversation on a disposable cell (ubiquitous in Iraq). Again, ISIS has apparently learned the lessons from the last decade, where an overt signals signature tends to draw guided missile or bombs onto the transmitter. By going low-tech while simultaneously allowing subordinate commanders significant leeway to pursue their objectives, ISIS can continue to pursue a sophisticated and widespread maneuver warfare campaign on at least two fronts, while evading the higher-technology solutions of its enemies in the West. So, on an operational level, we have a light, fast, maneuver-based organization that uses decentralized command to coordinate its actions with the fewest possible signals. Whoever are calling the shots (there are a number of theories that Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi is little more than a figurehead, given his lack of known military experience

41 and the sophistication of the group s offensive), they have studied warfare and know what they doing on strategic and operational levels, making up for their weaknesses by playing up their strengths and capitalizing on terror to degrade their enemies will to fight. On a small-unit level, although there are no reliable firsthand after-action reviews, there is a lot of video footage coming out of Iraq and Syria. By watching the ISIS troops in action, we can determine several things. For example, an excerpt from the Flames of War propaganda video shows the storming of a Syrian radar installation. While the ISIS fighters stay under cover while their rocket-propelled grenade gunners engage the Syrian tanks outside the installation, once the tanks are down, the fighters are seen running upright, in no particular formation, across the open field between their initial position and the wall around the installation. Several are firing as they go (it can be assumed that they are attempting to suppress the enemy, but there is no real use of sights or even stocks). Once at the wall, they are bunched up and shooting over the wall or through holes knocked in it, again often without appearing to aim. The brief attack on the Division 17 base outside Raqqa documented in the VICE News report on ISIS shows much the same thing: The ISIS fighters are shooting at the Syrian soldiers without using the sights. This is nothing new. Most of the insurgent small-arms fire aimed at American forces in Iraq tended to go high, and buttstocks often were removed from AKs. There is a belief among some Muslim fighters that preparation or even marksmanship practice is impious, that it is a sign of a lack of faith that Allah will make them victorious. As such, there is a tendency to spray and pray, in a very literal sense.

42 If their individual tactics are so sloppy, how have they been so successful in recent months? Their operational-level sophistication has had a great deal to do with it, especially the use of terror and the courting of disaffected Sunni groups in the north. The other factor is, of course, the level of opponents they have been facing. While ISIS has fought the Assad regime in Syria, the majority of frontline fighting has until recently been done by the Islamic Front and Jabhat al-nusra. In Iraq, their primary adversaries have been the Iraqi Army and the Kurdish peshmerga. The Iraqi Army almost immediately dissolved in the face of ISIS s advance in June. The peshmerga, while generally considered better fighters than their southern Arab neighbors, are a mountain militia, not an army. They have little in the way of heavy weapons, no armor to speak of, and their go-to strategy (which has kept them from being wiped out more than once) is, When it starts to look really bad, head for the hills. As much as the Kurds have steadfastly refused to cower in the face of Islamists or anyone else, they were ill equipped to deal with ISIS and were being pushed back, no matter how hard they thumped their chests (the Kurds do a lot of that). It was air support, and munitions being finally delivered that Maliki had sat on and refused to pass on to the Kurds, that turned the tide and enabled the peshmerga to break out and push ISIS back south, eventually retaking Mosul Dam and more territory to the south. The Iraqi Army situation is more complicated than the peshmerga situation. Instilling military professionalism in the Iraqi Army has been a near-impossible task for the last eleven years. Of course there are always exceptions, the officers or soldiers who genuinely care about their country and about being good soldiers, but the majority have

43 been about as militarily competent as the terrorists. There are several reasons for this, some political, some cultural. Politically, the Shi a-dominated Maliki government had become so corrupt, and so sectarian, that the Sunnis serving in the Iraqi Army didn t feel that they owed the Baghdad government anything anymore. ISIS might be made up of bastards, but they were at least Sunni bastards. So why should Sunni soldiers die fighting other Sunnis for a Shi a government that had put them down for years? Similarly, the Shi a soldiers didn t see the point of fighting and dying for Sunni towns. In a recent interview, an Iraqi Army officer states that while the Iraqi Army under Saddam was held together by fear of Saddam, it is now fractured by competing political, sectarian, and tribal loyalties. 27 Culturally, this is a problem that most Arab armies have faced, and few, if any, have overcome. In the country briefings before deploying U.S. soldiers to Iraq, it was outlined how the local loyalties go family, faith, clan, tribe, and then, somewhere along the line, country. This applies to their soldiers just as much as to the everyday civilians living out in the cities and villages. Without loyalty to much of anything beyond sect and tribe, no fighting unit is going to hold together. It s been said that Arabs are, by and large, amoral familialists, that they don t form solid bonds with anyone who is not a blood relation (again, as with all cultural and political generalizations, there are exceptions). Since most units are not made up of one single tribe, there goes unit cohesion. If things are going well, it still manages to muddle through. As soon as things start to go south, however, such as your leadership bugging out ahead of anywhere between four hundred and fifteen hundred ISIS fighters in pickup trucks 28, it becomes, Screw this, I m not dying for these assholes, I m out of here! 29

44 In summation, the Islamic State in Iraq and al-sham has managed to apply timetested lessons of guerrilla warfare, terror, and maneuver warfare in order to capitalize on the particular political and cultural weaknesses of its enemies in the region. Although the individual fighters might not measure up from a purely military perspective, the organization s operational and strategic acumen has managed to make up for its groundlevel weaknesses to make it the most formidable threat in the Middle East today.

45 Chapter 2. A Forensic Look at the ISIS Organizational Structure The battles are many, and the names used are varied. But the goal is one: a Crusader-Rafidite [Shi a] war against the Sunnis. Abu Musab al-zarqawi Make no mistake, we are fighting a religious war. U.S. Army chaplain, Mosul, September 11, 2005

46 (Lang SOFREP.com) Origins and Organizational Structure The origins of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, formal name ad-dawlah al- Islāmiyyah) have roots in Jama at al-tawhid wal-jihad and Al Qaeda in Iraq s (AQI) failures in securing the nation of Iraq as a bedrock for Salafist militancy. These

47 organizations were largely the genesis of Abu Musab al-zarqawi as a central thought leader following his activities in Pakistan. Zarqawi s scale of influence both strategically and operationally is debatable within the intelligence community, but within the open source realm, as well as the group s own propaganda, he remains at the forefront of both Jama at al-tawhid and AQI historical narratives. Following Zarqawi s death in June 2006, AQI transitioned its name to the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), seeking to nominally distance itself from the larger Al Qaeda (AQ) organization and appeal primarily to the local Sunni minority groups. This distance was nominal in light of the ISI s leadership under Abu Ayyub al-masri, a key member of AQ. Following al-masri s death in 2010, the organization continued to operate primarily in Northern Iraq and through cross-border efforts from Syria with facilitation from Iran. 30 ISIL eventually arose from the merging of fighters within Syria and AQI members that had crossed into Syria. Rhizomes ISIL s organizational structure is well built and reflects the transition from a series of small groups under a nominal umbrella to a cohesive organization with clear objectives and intent. The group has structured leadership and reflects a series of business processes as functional components of an operational organization seeking results from its militant activities on the ground. Nevertheless, it is in a constant state of flux, particularly as it attempts to fill the governance void in Iraq. Abstractly, the best representation of ISIL is a rhizomatic organization as articulated by the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In botany, rhizomes are underground stems of a plant with roots that

48 extend from its core. Deleuze and Guattari explain concepts outside of a strict linear definition that reflected botany s rhizomes: As a model for culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the original source of things and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those things. A rhizome, on the other hand, is characterized by ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles. 31 ISIL s leadership respects and notes its origins (particularly via its propaganda) but is less concerned with history than with the inputs and outputs of its current existence. It is a nonlinear organization that has a degree of centrality derived from function and sociocultural discrimination as related to Islam, nationality, and experience within the Salafist community. However, this is not the sum of its parts. Despite ISIS s structured top-tier leadership, its holistic structure is very nonlinear, lending itself to the nature of mutualism that is characteristic of rhizomatic entities. The organization seeks agility and fluidity, and integrates and separates people and qualities based on their utility in relation to organizational growth. In the future, were the organization to diminish in size, it would simply adopt a different format. Much like the origins of ISIL are in Jama at al-tawhid and AQI, ISIL will continue to attempt to survive and grow. This abstract model is key in characterizing ISIL and in dispelling paradigms that reject exclusionary hypotheses. Examples: The Sunni-Shi a divide prevents Iran as well as Bashar al-assad from facilitating ISIL. ISIL will not accept assistance from the

49 People s Republic of China. ISIL and AQ are existentially at odds. Since it is impossible to prove a negative, any logical analysis of the group should begin with a degree of scientific positivism that inductively conceptualizes every one of these possibilities. In fact, there is evidence that Iran has in the past and currently facilitates Al Qaeda, as noted by the U.S. Rewards for Justice program s Wanted note on Yasin al-suri. 32 Since we can conclude that some members of ISIL are former members of AQI or ISI, it logically follows that Yasin al-suri will conditionally assist ISIL. Additionally, and speculatively, Assad may receive a percentage of revenue from the sale of illicit black market oil sold by ISIL to fund its own operations. Further, as Musa al-gharbi argues, drawing the United States into the conflict in fact substantiates Zarqawi s claims of a Western-Shi a conspiracy to kill Sunnis. 33 In order to survive, ISIL s leadership will evaluate any and all opportunities in relation to their mid- and long-term goals. Finally, the nature of this model is particularly relevant when considered in parallel with noted Syrian Abu Musab al-suri s long-standing strategy of the open front jihad as outlined in his two-volume The Global Islamic Resistance Call. Al-Suri discusses Islamic jihad from 1963 until 2001, defining most of these efforts as military failures. He particularly notes that a large portion of this failure was the result of the regional, secret, and hierarchical nature of the movements. Much as rhizomes should be considered a modern construct befitting our age of information propagation, al-suri argues that times have changed and we must design a method of confrontation, which is in accordance with the standards of the present time. His well-argued solution is the jihad at open fronts belonging to the whole Islamic nation. In the section The Military Theory of the Global Islamic Resistance Cell, he notes,

50 The conclusion which we have arrived at now, is: That the basic axis (al-mihwar al-asasi) of the Resistance s military activity against America and her allies now, must lie within the framework of light guerrilla warfare, civilian terror (alirhab al madani) and secret methods, especially on the level of individual operations and small Resistance Units completely and totally separated from each other. However. along with this I say: Any alteration of the balance of power in favor of the Resistance and the jihad, which minimizes the effects of American control in areas which fulfills the requirements of the Open Fronts, which I will present, will again make the issue of open confrontation for the purpose of liberating land, settling on it, and establishing the starting points or seeds for a legal and political entity for the Islamic power, a goal that one must pursue whenever the opportunities arise. 34 The discussion of rhizomes and open front can appear both confusing and rife with cognitive dissonance when viewed by Western eyes, particularly as ISIL transitions from rhizome to state construct. However, within the cultural paradigm of the Middle East, this is not unusual. It is a typical occurrence in political, social, and family life. The key idea to take from this is that it is difficult to characterize ISIL as a static snapshot in time; it should be viewed as an evolving organism striving to survive. Most important, it is a human-driven organism where not all decisions are logical, but all decisions are rational within the rational choice theory of international relations. If ISIL is indeed following the strategy of open fronts, as it appears to be, then our answer should be to assess it as a rhizomatic entity. As of this writing, it would then appear that ISIL has

51 liberated land, settled on it, and begun sowing the seeds for transition to an Islamic power. Structure In the future, ISIL s structure will likely reflect the older organizational structure of caliphates, specifically that of the Umayyad Caliphate, with conditional modifications to more closely align itself with contemporary Salafist ideology. This is supported by evidence of a structure growing within the existing rhizomatic nature of the group as told by notebooks found in Yemen of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula s (AQAP) own carefully constructed plans for building a caliphate 35. Although the groups are distinct, the cross-pollination of ideas is not unusual in the melting pot of online forums and transitions of fighters from one group to another. Thus we can expect to see emirs or walis correspondent to their function within the organization. An example of this is outlined at Caliphate Online, a blog whose only author is listed as AK and notes his location as the UK. 36 The author has created an organizational structure reminiscent of the structure the intelligence community has noted in AQI prior to its evolution into ISIL. The overarching control of ISIL as it becomes less agile will likely be in the form of a governing body with a head of state that retains a significant amount of control but shares this control with a house of representatives. This body will be an amalgamation of parliamentary monarchy and theocratic presidential authoritarianism. It is unlikely that ISIL will allow the election of their leader but may concede the need for representation as long as there is a sharia-style framework

52 of laws to enforce Salafist ideals, thus creating an artifice of representation for its constituency. With the establishment of this leadership, it will template infrastructure based on ministries that reflect governance. If ISIL is successful, it is possible that the government of Iraq (GOI) will be absorbed and restructured to reflect ISIL s idea of a caliphate as the easiest road toward a new government. To understand what this government will look like, one needs only look at the current structure of the GOI and note where modifications can be made to increase and consolidate power under the caliph. Currently, the core of the ISIL organization probably looks much like a war cabinet, still retaining emirs as titular heads of components of the network, with no service components or unified combatant command leadership. However, it likely has a director or directors, joint chiefs of staff, military intelligence, weapons procurement, and regional commands. It stands to reason that the same is true for logistics and finance. Each of these may have the appointment of an emir. In summary, there are certainly core elements to this leadership that are appointed based on experience or Islamic credentials or a mixture of both. However, as the organization is traced out to its operational components, the lines of command and control become less clear. The outermost nodes of this network still very much align themselves along the open front strategy: fighting and bargaining with opponents and allies to gain as much as advantage as possible. Successes and failures are then reported upward to the core. Much of the West s existing knowledge of the leadership is based on media sensationalizing or isolating key figures. This is a true representation not of the

53 structure of the group but rather of facets of the organization that have distinguished themselves enough to be noticed. Institutionalization and Consolidation Institutionalization and consolidation is an issue Eric Selbin identifies in his book Modern Latin American Revolutions. Selbin uses institutionalization and consolidation as mechanisms for social revolutionary processes. He applies this to Socialist revolutions, but this problem also applies to ISIL if it expects to succeed. In essence, they are two problems that ISIL must overcome to effectively transition from a rhizomatic entity to a state. According to Selbin, institutionalization and consolidation are two paths revolutions should follow in the period following political victory. 37 If ISIL does indeed succeed at the land war in Iraq and declares victory, this is not the end of its struggles. It will have an extremely limited amount of time to begin to accomplish the duties of a state. It must demonstrate the ability to transfer political power from the previous government (the GOI) to its own political structure. Consolidation is fundamentally the support of the population. The clichéd term hearts and minds is a double-edged sword. Once ISIL establishes itself as the governing body of Iraq, it can no longer rely only on fear to coerce the populace into support. In order to maintain any longevity, it will require the participation of the population to execute the duties of a state that it has struggled to establish. The constituency of ISIL will need to go to work at state and commercial workplaces to begin the process of rebuilding Iraq. Unless it shores up support for its regime, ISIL will

54 quickly find itself at the pointy end of the spear of a dissenting group that has splintered away due to its dissatisfaction with the manner in which ISIL governs. Even if this consolidation occurs in the short term, without active participation in the process itself and without a vested belief in a future that includes their needs, the citizens of this new Iraq will rebel against any government ISIL erects. ISIL will also need to institutionalize its process. In other words, ISIL will have to identify its ideological framework and transition it into facets of governance. How will it provide health care? What sort of system of education will it have? How will the public works function? These are just some questions among many that will need to be answered. In light of these questions, ISIL will need to retain its ideology or else risk compromising its core tenets by satisfying the demands of a constituency. Thus far, it seems unlikely that ISIL will compromise its core tenets. Unlike groups in the past, ISIL has thus far relied on a self-declared vision of a brighter future for all Muslims who fit into the Salafist mold. If it cannot actually run the institutions of state in that mold, it is just as unlikely to succeed as if it does not consolidate popular support. Speculating further, ISIL will need then to acquire international partners to assist in executing these institutional demands. ISIL will certainly attempt use its current relationships with strategic actors such as Saudi Arabia, the People s Republic of China, Russia, and Iran and build these into state relationships as part of its foreign trade portfolio. Given its current predilections, the organization will avoid as much trade with the West as possible. It s unclear whether this will be enough to satisfy their import and export requirements. However, ownership of the fifth-largest proven oil reserves is a powerful bargaining chip in the international community. ISIL will try to circumvent any

55 attempts at undermining the legitimacy of its statehood. If it abides by its current ideological standards, it will declare all other types of states apostates and attempt to reverse international standards to reflect its own concepts of statehood. Since most modern states trace their origins to the Treaty of Westphalia, it will likely first attack the nature of that treaty and declare its lack of Islamic origin or support. It will also attempt to conduct strategic communication and information operations that seek to undermine other Muslim nations, particularly those closest geographically, in order to begin the process of annexing the rest of the Levant. So far, ISIL has no record of success in transitioning any of its current processes into a state that it envisions, let alone a Western style of government that will be acceptable or even palatable to the international community. A state has more legitimacy than an organization that is not recognized as having acquired statehood by the international or even regional community. ISIL may be successful militarily, but there seems little likelihood of its success as a state. Thus using IS for Islamic State is invalid. It is likely ISIL realizes this. It may already be considering with whom it will negotiate and bargain to create a palatable (by its standards) power base. Its outwardfacing component (the one that faces the international community) will make gestures of compliance and potentially peace with several cohorts. These gestures will be theater only. ISIL will do this when it provides the most advantage. If ISIL assesses success against Baghdad, this is when it will begin creating secret power-sharing agreements with the GOI, leveraging its wins against the GOI. However, its inward-facing component will seek the most fanatical, militant, and political members to run its political offices, ensuring that its ideological roots do not become watered down in the ensuing

56 negotiations. The new government will be dominated by ISIL and have smaller groups of former GOI parties. ISIL when then proceed to slowly remodel the existing infrastructure toward its ultimate goals. ISIL is not likely to negotiate as long as it sees itself failing at the hands of the United States and possibly the GOI. The core belief of most ISIL fighters is they can continue fighting indefinitely in one form or another. However, they recognize that the same cannot be said for the assumption of governance. This is not a recommendation to avoid military action against ISIL; rather, the expectation for success should be clear when considering committing ground forces. As Henry Kissinger commented on our efforts in Vietnam, The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, fighting in their own country, needed merely to keep in being forces sufficiently strong to dominate the population after the United States tired of the war. We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process, we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The North Vietnamese used their main forces the way a bullfighter uses his cape to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance. 38 It would behoove our administration to have a clear goal, with steps to achieve this goal, in place prior to committing ground troops in this effort. Key Figures

57 It is important to note that it is normal for Western journalists and analysts to attribute a cohesive and hierarchical structure to the ISIL network. Our cultural paradigm abhors a vacuum of organization, yet in order for ISIL to survive and transition to a state, it must remain agile enough to repel efforts at its disintegration. Thus, the group likely does not make the same assumptions of stable command and control that the West places on it. Rather, it creates a structure that emphasizes utility to the nth degree. This emphasis then requires that group members acknowledge their expendable nature (via martyrdom or otherwise). Constructions by analysts and journalists consistently reflect a top-down hierarchy that is at best temporary. A representation of this can be found in percolation theory. Percolation theory in complex systems and mathematical graph theory attempts to represent the behavior of connected clusters in a random graph. Frequently clusters form as the result of shortest-path behavior. ISIL is much more likely to reflect this behavior than the artificial structure of a military hierarchy. Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-badri, aka Abu Du a, Abu Bakr al-baghdadi It seems highly probable that Abu Bakr al-baghdadi is at best a political figurehead; much of the information on him appears to derive from the group itself. The exception to this is the official State Department designation posted in 2011 listing him as Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-badri, aka Abu Du a. The State Department (probably as a result of derogatory data from the Department of Defense) attributes the destruction of the Sunni Umm al-qura mosque to Baghdad. 39 Assuming this is true, it lends credibility to his hagiography and supports estimations of his ability to lead ISIL. What is not clear, other

58 than the two known photographs, is how Abu Du a transitioned to Abu Bakr al-baghdadi following his alleged detention. Furthermore, his predecessor, Abu Omar al-baghdadi, was a myth who grew and disappeared almost from the moment that Abu Bakr al-baghdadi arrived onstage, which appears to be approximately five years ago. This designation of leadership seems purposely structured to appear to be the carefully seeded growth of a future martyr on a par with Osama bin Laden. If, as his history suggests, he was indeed interned at Camp Bucca, then the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) likely has his prisoner docket on file as part of the judicial process of internment. (Logically this is the source of one photo.) Yet the USIC is unwilling or unable to disclose its contents. At present, very little of his history can be corroborated, and he has grown very rapidly out of obscurity into the de facto leader of ISIL. His appearance at Great Mosque of al-nuri in Mosul is particularly notable because he wore a black turban, suggesting direct attribution to the bloodline of the Prophet Muhammad, and he led Jummah prayers. If ISIL is indeed attempting to build a myth, what better place to start than leading prayers as a descendant of the Prophet in Mosul? The location will provide the latitude to increase his local acceptance and, later, can clearly be pointed to as a key moment in history on the road to ISIL victory. Adding to this are operational units that suggest the West has hunted men by this name for several years. We either arrested or killed a man of that name about half a dozen times, he is like a wraith who keeps reappearing, and I am not sure where fact and fiction meet, said Lieutenant-General Sir Graeme Lamb, a former British Special Forces commander who helped U.S. efforts against Al Qaeda in Iraq. There are those who want

59 to promote the idea that this man is invincible, when it may actually be several people using the same nom de guerre. 40 We agree with Lieutenant-General Lamb. We believe this is an individual who earned some credibility at the edges of AQI and was then interned at Camp Bucca as a minor combatant. During his internment, several operational commanders took note of his zeal and saw his enthusiasm as a mechanism to create a mythos that would serve their operational needs. Having a fictional reoccurring leader means that this mythos can be transferred to any individual bland enough to fit the basic requirements of the myth s history. By now, ISIL well understands the DOD s find, fix, and finish mechanics, so creating a dangle/mythos would ostensibly force the United States to divert forces to eliminate this figurehead. However, his loss would not create power vacuum within the organization, and the operational components would continue functioning. Of course, this fits very much in line with al-suri s open front strategy as well. Abu Ali al-anbari According to the Telegraph, information derived from a USB stick indicates that Abu Ali al-anbari is a major figure within ISIL. 41 He appears to manage operations in Syria under ISIL control and was a major general under Saddam Hussein and likely is from Mosul. There also are indications he was previously a member of Ansar al-islam. This appears to corroborate information that former members of Saddam Hussein s regime are working with ISIL to control Iraq. It also suggests that Baathists are assisting ISIL, since almost

60 every flag officer under Saddam was committed to the Baathist Party as a vetting mechanism. Taha Sobhi Falaha, aka Abu Mohammad al-adnani Abu Mohammad al-adnani is the head spokesman for ISIL. He is also very likely either the second or third most important individual in the organization. According to the State Department designation, it was al-adnani who actually declared the creation of the Islamic Caliphate [State]. 42 He is of Syrian origin and is a titled emir within the organization. His rhetoric also seems to have spawned the temporary schism between Al Qaeda and ISIL, where each has laid claim to ownership of the global jihad. 43 This schism likely will not last for very long, as each group sees how a mutualism will benefit the greater cause. Indeed, it is likely that the Khorasan Group, senior AQ members in Syria, will be the primary arbiter of any issues and will ultimately resolve the dispute with senior members of ISIL. The group will likely attempt to reconcile this along clearer lines of operation between Jabhat al-nusra and ISIL. Tarkhan Batirashvili, aka Omar al-shishani Al-Baghdadi and al-adnani are strategic and political animals occupied primarily with overall growth of their organization. Their responsibilities can be considered benign when compared to Omar al-shishani, arguably the most dangerous of these key figures. Al-Shishani is at an operational level and controls a vitriolic brand of fighters that occupy

61 a key role within ISIL. His fighters are exceptionally competent and are used as storm troopers or shock troops when assaulting urban areas in Iraq. They effectively execute sweep, clear, and hold operations. Once in hold phase, secondary elements of ISIL then further secure the target urban area with either greater numbers and technicals or mechanized units. This kind of operation route du jour for standing military indicates that ISIL has evolved over years of combat and retains at least enough operational military leadership to teach small unit tactics in conjunction with larger military elements. Not yet combined arms, but a step above spray and pray tactics followed by consecutive retrograde actions. Omar al-shishani s nom de guerre indicates he may be of Chechen origin, but he is more likely Georgian. He may have received a poor nom de guerre, since many less educated Salafists automatically throw any Eastern-born Muslim into the Chechen category. However, it may be of his own choosing. According to the Web site Al-Akhbar English, and supported by investigations conducted by the BBC into his background, al- Shishani was born in 1986 in Pankisi Gorge region of Georgia and drafted into the Georgian military. He was apparently very impressed by conversations with an unidentified Saudi national, who recounted the exploits of Chechen Thamir Saleh Abdullah al-suwailem. This motivated al-shishani to join the jihad against both Russians and Americans. On arriving in Syria, he formed the Army of Emigrants and Partisans in March 2013 and began a his jihad against the Syrian regime under the al-nusra Front banner. According to Al-Akhbar English, in late 2013 Twitter began disclosing growing rifts in the various jihadi groups in Syria, including al- Shishani s. Al-Shishani decided to separate himself and half of his unit from Jabhat al-

62 Nusra and pledge allegiance to ISIL. Allegedly this split was at least partially motivated by fear for his own life if he did not join ISIL. 44 According al- Shishani s decision was at least partially influenced by Hajji Bakr, a now deceased prominent figure who may have aided in Abu-Bakr al-baghdadi s rise to prominence within ISIL. The men described here are a very short list of key players within ISIL. Surprisingly, after a decade in the region, there is little Western open source material available in the media about them. More important, a full list of ISIL s key players is worth a book itself when combined with effective open source analytics. The Baathists And what of the Baathists? There is a noticeable dearth of Western media coverage on the list of former Saddam Hussein regime members who reside in Syria. Ostensibly, the West has painted Baathists as a secular entity. Contextually this should be qualified as secular in comparison to Salafists. Baathists are generally Sunni. However, as a matter of identity, most claim party loyalty first. This does not dispel the notion of most Shiites that it is a party comprised primarily of Sunnis. This is a key concept, since many analysts claim that Baathists are generally at odds with Al Qaeda due to its secular nature. In fact, Baathists will work with any temporary ally that will assist them in removing a GOI that has no desire to reconcile with Baathists. Four former regime members immediately come to mind: Izzat Ibrahim al-douri, former head of the Baathist Revolutionary Command Council; Mohammed Younis al-ahmed, former aide to Saddam Hussein and

63 former member of the Political Guidance Directorate of the Iraqi Army; Sayf al-din Fulayyih Hassan Taha al-rawi, former Iraqi Republican Guard chief of staff; Tahir Jalil Habbush al-tikriti, former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Of the four, two are particularly notable. Izzat Ibrahim al-douri Izzat Ibrahim al-douri remains a key figure in contemporary Iraq, despite a history reaching back into Saddam Hussein s regime. He is seventy-two years old and is likely the leader (or at the very least a key member) of the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, or Jaysh Rijal al-tariq al-naqshabandiya (JRTN). Al-Douri s absence following the toppling of Saddam Hussein can probably be attributed to a hasty border crossing into Syria, where he remained with fellow Baathists to watch subsequent U.S. operations from afar. Initially, it appeared that his influence within JRTN was to counter both the United States and AQI. However, in 2009, Lieutenant General Raad Majid al-hamdani met with representatives of Izzat Ibrahim al-douri to discuss the future of former military Iraqi Baath Party members in Iraq and their peaceful return home. During this meeting, the representatives suggested that control of the remnants of the Iraqi Baath Party (as opposed to the Syrian Baath Party) be divided among several former Iraqi military officers and in particular between al-douri and Mohammed Younis al-ahmed. Both sought to return to Iraq and reconcile with Prime Minister Maliki s Dawa Party. However, Maliki adopted a hard-line stance against this proposition. 45

64 As a result of the GOI s stance against Baath elements, it is highly likely that al- Douri began to engage ISIL as it grew in prominence, perhaps with the expectation that early adoption within ISIL would guarantee a small place for Baathists within any future government. The nature of this assistance is likely both a logistical facilitation for crossborder operations and military experience garnered from his many years in the Iraqi military. According to Dr. Michael Knights, JRTN appears to have maintained a tight relationship with ISI and other Salafi terrorist groups, trading on Al-Douri s Islamist credentials, including his Return of Faith campaign during the last decade of Baathist rule. In some cases, this has led to JRTN carrying out attacks on behalf of ISI, or where ISI has been allowed to claim the lion s share of the credit due to ISI contributions (usually money or suicide attackers). JRTN has facilitated the movement of ISI fighters. Notably, ISI leader Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi and ISI war minister Abu Ayub Al- Masri were killed in Tikrit, Saddam s home town and one of the major JRTN power bases. 46 According to Brett McGurk, deputy assistant secretary for Iran and Iraq, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, House Foreign Affairs Committee, The JRTN is a militant offshoot of the Iraqi Baath party, and together with AQI, designated under U.S. law as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Its resurgence added to the instability in Sunni areas, fueled mistrust in Shia areas, and facilitated the rise and entrenchment of ISIL, particularly in border regions of Ninewa province. Today, ISIL and JRTN appear to be

65 working together in some areas, but with vastly different agendas this partnership is likely to be short-lived. 47 Clearly, Baathists are not above working with ISIL, since there is a long history of their assisting even a nascent ISIL with operations that work in their favor. So it seems that Mr. McGurk s statement contradicts the facts. Mohammed Younis al-ahmed Mohammed Younis al-ahmed was a close aide to Saddam Hussein, and following the ousting of Saddam, he too migrated quickly across the border to Syria. There were uncorroborated rumors he took several billion dollars with him. Mohammed Younis al- Ahmed has a long-standing dispute with Izzat Ibrahim al-douri and may have been key in the ostensible ejection from the remains of the Iraqi Baath Party in Al-Ahmed remains in Syria and likely continues to fund groups that seek to undermine the GOI. It is possible that he is much more actively involved than al-douri. These individuals would likely not be central had Syria remained stable as Iraq attempted to consolidate power and rebuild itself. However, in the wake of the Arab Spring and the destabilization of Syria, it is worth asking about their current status. Are al-douri and al-ahmed assisting fellow Baathist Bashar al-assad? Are they the engineers of Assad s attempts to force the United States to support him? The military prowess of ISIL is substantial when compared to previous efforts by AQI. Are they assisting in a type of military adviser role established during the ongoing conflict in Syria?

66 The Architect Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, better known as Abu Musab al-suri, has been called the most dangerous terrorist you ve never heard of. For ten years, his address has been whereabouts unknown. He has been listed as still in a Syrian prison, released, or dead. According to Foreign Policy, On Feb. 2, [2012,] plugged-in online jihadists confirmed that one of the jihad s most original and respected theoreticians, Abu Musab al-suri, had been released from a Syrian prison. 49 Yet senior Al Qaeda leaders up until last year used rhetoric suggesting they believed he remained in prison. Aron Lund at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace spoke in 2009 with members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, who said that they had information that Abu Musab was being held in the Palestine Branch, a Syrian military intelligence compound in southern Damascus that has long been infamous for the torture of high-value political prisoners. 50 If Abu Musab al-suri remains in prison, he has likely heard about the death of his longtime companion Abu Khalid Al-Suri and is primed to be the voice of reconciliation between the sparring factions of the Jabhat al-nusra Front and ISIL. Video footage shot in June 2012 depicts members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) holding Brigadier-General Munir Ahmad Shlaybi, head of the Palestine Branch prison, alongside Major-General Faraj Shahadeh al-maqet. 51 If the FSA was able to capture the head of the Palestine Branch prison, one wonders how long this prison will remain intact. Even in prison, al- Suri s influence will continue to impact ISIL for the foreseeable future. His release would be a major victory for any group committed to seeing him free.

67 Chapter 3. Unconventional Solutions Past and Present The key to fighting and winning an insurgency is having the greater will. Resources and technology will get you only so far if you don t have the will to use them. You need the will of your countrymen and the political leadership, and not only the will but also the trust of the military leadership. That will and trust is transferred to the junior leaders on the ground through decentralized operations. Cobus Claassens, a commander of Executive Outcomes airmobile Fire Force of light infantry in Sierra Leone, recalled South Africa s war in Namibia: You would find that a platoon commander... would be given a piece of land half the size of England to patrol and dominate with his 30 men. And he had to figure out, after being given a block on a map and enough ammunition to sustain his men... how to do this. This is how I grew up. Claassens argued that this same emphasis on decentralized decision-making was present in EO. For instance, he recalled that, Our [senior] command element encouraged the guys on the ground, meaning junior officers and senior enlisted men, to make tactical-level decisions on their own. 52 That kind of trust needs to be enforced from the top down. The reliance on technology, blue force tracking, and real-time or near-real-time communications has cultivated an institutional stagnation of innovative thinking and leadership. The leader on the ground knows that everything he does or fails to do is being observed by his entire rating chain, which discourages him from taking risks or coming up with creative and unorthodox solutions to problems he encounters.

68 The leadership needs to trust the guy on the ground to get the job done without looking over his shoulder. And the guys on the ground need to be able to trust their leadership to provide overhead cover so they can accomplish the mission, no matter the costs. The following ideas are variations on operations that have proved successful in a wide range of military situations, against adversaries that run the gamut from conventional armies to insurgent and guerrilla fighters. Most of these were conducted by a few men outnumbered and surrounded and alone, deep behind enemy lines. Many times their only lifeline was a radio and overwhelming air power aimed like a laser by those at the tip of the spear, and sometimes their only advantage was their wits, training, and the balls to risk it all. As the British Special Air Services motto states: Who Dares, Wins. No matter what the mission or what the war, they were all conducted by men who were independent and unconventional thinkers, men who were willing and able to make the decision on the ground independent of higher command s input. They were given a mission and then the latitude to accomplish it, however they saw fit, with the full trust of everyone above and below them. Strongpointing Historical: Vietnam During the late days of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) was able to run supplies almost unimpeded up and down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The jungle had been deforested, but most of the camps along the border had been emptied and torn down as the United States was handing over the fight to the South Vietnamese Army (SVA).

69 Occasionally, just to let the NVA and the VC (Viet Cong) know that it wasn t over, MACV/SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam/Studies and Observation Group) would put together a couple of teams, load them down with mortars, heavy and light machine guns, and all the ammo they could carry on the choppers and fly in and land at one of the abandoned bases. These bases were on high ground overlooking the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and even though the bunkers had all been blown up, wire taken down, and trench lines filled in, they still provided a tactical advantage and enough supplies to build a hasty defense. As soon as they hit the ground, they worked like madmen to get the weapons operational and defense started, while the guy on the radio began calling in air strikes on the enemy down below. The only way the NVA could get rid of the eyes on the hill was to assault up the hill. Every time they assaulted up, they were taking direct and indirect fire from the.50s, M60s, mortars, rifles, and grenades from the guys higher up as well as dodging bombs and gun runs of the air power that was stacked up and being called down on them. Eventually the NVA would be able the get close enough that the air power couldn t be used, and the men would call in an emergency extraction, blow all their heavy weapons in place, and unleash everything that was overhead on the position they had just vacated. Historical: Afghanistan, Helmand Province, Marjeh, Loy Choreh Bazaar, 2009 The Loy Choreh bazaar served as an opium collection and processing center, with wellsupplied labs nearby able to refine raw opium into finished heroin, while doubling as an insurgency command and munitions storage center. According to military sources, Taliban insurgents ran a shadow government and weekly shuras (consultations) for the

70 Marjeh area from the Loy Choreh bazaar, which was one of three narcotics bazaars in the Marjeh vicinity. Afghan National Army commandos from the 205th Corps and U.S. Special Forces launched a surprise helicopter attack around 1 A.M. on May 19, when shops and buildings at the bazaar were closed for the night. (Like their historical Special Ops brethren, they went in extremely heavily armed, with four- and six-wheelers loaded down with ammo and guns.) The attack took insurgents and narco-traffickers by surprise. Afghan and U.S. forces occupied the market area and established a perimeter without resistance, but insurgents later counterattacked dozens of times over the four-day operation, calling in reinforcements from other parts of Helmand and Pakistan. Military sources say sixty-four insurgents died in the fighting, including several commanders and subcommanders. Insurgent resistance was still stiffening when U.S. Special Forces called in air strikes to destroy the narcotics and war matériel, which had been consolidated in a few buildings, on the last night of the operation before airlifting out. Shaping operations in weeks prior to the assault on Loy Choreh bazaar had destroyed three Russian-made ZPU anti-aircraft systems. The total haul from Operation Siege Engine: 18,164 kilograms of opium, 200 kilograms of finished heroin, 90 kilograms of morphine, 1000 kilograms of hashish, and 72,727 kilograms of opium poppy seed. The DEA estimated that if all the finished heroin along with the opium and morphine found there were processed into heroin, the value would be over $5 million in Afghanistan; the wholesale value in the United States could exceed $80 million.

71 Afghan and U.S. forces also found large amounts of bomb-making and war materials in buildings near the narcotics caches: 27,000 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, 700 gallons of diesel fuel, five 40-liter drums of preprimed homemade explosives, 6 pressure-plate triggers, 3 IED battery systems, 1,000 commercial electrical blasting caps, 2,000 feet of detonating cord, and 44 blocks of Iranian-made C-4 explosive. 53 Future Option 1: U.S. Special Forces, after proper intelligence preparation of the battlefield (IPB), identify the location in Northern Iraq, Syria, or somewhere along the border that has some form of significance to ISIS. The significance could be tactical or strategic value, or it could have historical or religious importance, or it could just be a location with large insurgent population anything that would make them want to stay and attack a force that dared to land in their backyard. Whatever this location, is it has to be defendable relatively quickly. Whether it s a hilltop overlooking lines of communications (LOCs) or within an insurgent-held city, the assault force needs to be able to land multiple helicopters quickly and move to a position identified to strongpoint without delay. As with the two historical examples, the assault force would move in extremely heavily, armed with multiple heavy and light machine guns, mortars, and a lot of ammo. The assault force would have to be ready to repel an attack and would continue to improve its fortifications and, if able, enlarge its area of influence.

72 The assault force would need to have continuous overhead close air support, and multiple intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) to give them every advantage against an enemy force that vastly outnumbers it. The command and political leadership would have to be willing to level every building in the vicinity of the assault force that could provide cover or concealment to an enemy buildup prior to attack. The assault force could go in with three to four days worth of water and ammunition with oncall resupply being provided by either helicopter or parachute. The exfil would be coordinated with a massive aerial bombardment to cover and mask the assault force disengaging and the helicopters approaching to pick them up. The duration of the mission would be flexible: long enough to disrupt enemy operations in the entire area, kill as many enemy fighters as possible, destroy enemy supplies, and send a message to the ISIS supporters and leadership that we operate anywhere we want and stay for as long as we want and there isn t anything they can do about it. Multiple combat camera (COMCAM) and civilian reporters could be embedded with the assault force to push the Information Operation message through news reports and via a coordinated social media campaign: 24/7 coverage, live-feed cameras, Twitter and Facebook updates, along with interviews and news reports about the attack. Cover identities could be created for members of the assault force with a full history and Facebook and Twitter accounts. The attack would be blasted across the airwaves not only in the United States but also into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Northern Iraq. It would allow us to finally get our message out and would mitigate some of ISIS s propaganda, and it would show the world that ISIS isn t as tough as it would like everyone to believe.

73 There would need to be a substantial support package for an operation like this, as well as a large Quick Reaction Force (QRF) with air assets available to act either as reinforcements or a second assault force to support the main element wherever it would be most effective. Option 2: This involves higher risk but also a higher gain. After conducting IPB, identify the place that would cause the greatest disruption to the freedom of movement of ISIS, whether in Syria or Iraq. (It needs to be in a location where the force was not in immediate danger of an attack with overwhelming numbers.) Fly in with a massive ground force and an engineering element. Air-drop heavy equipment and supplies to build a fortified base with enough engineers or Seabees to run 24/7 construction operations to build a firebase complete with artillery and a Ranger company to provide base security and local patrols, and allow multiple Special Operations Forces (SOF) elements to run long-range interdiction and disruption operations. The base would be supported by close air support and ISR, and resupplied by either airdrop or helicopter sling load operations, depending on the enemy situation. The SOF element would fly in with Ground Mobility Vehicles to conduct far-ranging movement to contact operations. Their mission is to locate, identify, and destroy the enemy. There is always the danger of this type of mission being compared to Dien Bien Phu or Stalingrad, which is why this operation is considered high risk. The ability to permanently disrupt the enemy would force it to react to us, instead of us always reacting to it, and would have the potential to cause ISIS significant problems depending on the value of the terrain that is being held.

74 Hunter-Killer Teams Historical: Long Range Desert Group, World War II, North Africa The LRDG was formed to conduct long-range vehicle patrols throughout the deserts of North Africa. Its mission was to carry out deep penetration, deploy covert reconnaissance patrols, gather intelligence, act as guides or pathfinders for covert agents or other units, and employ direct action (DA). While reconnaissance and intelligence gathering were their primary missions, they also conducted hit-and-run ambushes, raids, and harassment of the enemy. Historical: Special Air Service, World War II, North Africa The purpose of the SAS was to mount raids behind enemy lines. In the beginning, it attempted to infiltrate by parachute, but that usually ended badly. Until the SAS got its famous jeeps, it would be infiltrated by the LRDG, and even afterward the jeeps often were guided by the LRDG. Whereas the LRDG s primary mission was reconnaissance and intel gathering, the SAS s responsibility was strictly DA cause as much commotion and create as much havoc and destruction as their twisted imaginations could come up with. During one of the most successful missions, after driving for days through the desert, the SAS attacked the German airfield at Fuka. Colonel David Stirling (founder of the SAS) led the attack. His plan: Right lads, we haven t got much time. At the edge of the aerodrome form a line abreast and all guns spray the area. When I advance follow me in your two columns and on my green Very light open fire, outwards at the aircraft

75 follow exactly in each other s tracks, 5 yards apart speed not more than 4 mph. Return to the RV independently moving only by night. They ended up burning thirty aircraft and damaging more. They lost one jeep and one KIA, before they disappeared into the desert. 54 HISTORICAL: 3/3 SFG(A) Battle of Debecka Pass, Iraq, 2003 Long story short: A mounted Special Forces Group with peshmerga fighters rained death and destruction down on an Iraqi division and enabled coalition forces to capture Kirkuk and the oil fields. They were mounted in fully loaded Ground Mobility Vehicles (GMVs): GMVs were virtual war wagons, with mounts for a.50-caliber machine gun or 40 mm automatic grenade launcher, along with 7.62mm medium and 5.56mm light machine guns. In addition to the mounted weapons, each 3rd SFG GMV carried two AT-4 anti-tank rockets, a sniper rifle, either a Javelin anti-tank or Stinger surface-to-air missile launcher, 80 pounds of demolition materials, and personal weapons (M4 5.56mm carbines and M9 9mm pistols) for each SF soldier. Add to this water, food, ammunition, personal gear, radios, computers, digital cameras, GPS receivers, and fuel for 800 miles of road driving, and each GMV tipped the scales at around 12,200 pounds. These were supported by the Ground Resupply Vehicles (GRVs), affectionately known as War Pigs : 5-ton medium trucks with cut-down cabs, mounts for medium machine guns, and radios and satellite communications gear. In back were racks and stowage for

76 enough fuel, ammunition, and other supplies to let a GMV-mounted ODA [Special Forces Operational Detachment A Team] stay out an additional 10 days. The idea was for the War Pigs to deliver the required supplies to a field resupply point so that the GMV-mounted ODAs would not have to leave their observation stations. 3/3rd SFG s GRVs had some extra features, including a winch for handling 55-gallon fuel drums, a trailer hitch for towing, and one extra touch, a 60mm mortar. 55 Future With a mission like the SAS s in World War II, but armed and supported like 3/3 SFG(A) during the invasion of Iraq, Special Forces companies would be given an area of operations (AO) that was completely owned by them. No one could enter or conduct operations anywhere in there without the approval of the company commander. They would be given the AO and the mission go and kill maim and destroy. The company and detachment commanders would have the latitude to use whatever method or combination of methods they decided were most effective. With the detachments given their specific areas within the AO and managed (notice we didn t say controlled) by the company commander, the ODAs would have free rein to close with and kill the enemy however they saw fit. The higher commands main function would be to coordinate and direct whatever support was needed to whoever requested it. The company commander and the ODB (B Team) would be mobile, just like the ODAs, and able to resupply them in the field, so they could stay out longer.

77 These operations by their nature are dangerous. They would be conducted not along the front line but deep in ISIS-controlled territory in Northern Iraq and even into Syria. Although dangerous, the amount of firepower available to an ODA mounted in GMVs offers the distinct advantage of being able to unleash an ungodly amount death and destruction backed up by close air support. Along with enabling the ODA commanders complete freedom in how they conduct missions in their space, they would be given the choice of armored or nonarmored GMVs. Whatever that ODA decides, it does so willing to accept the risks because the rewards are seen as greater. Leadership has to accept that decision and fully support it, whatever it turns out to be. Like the strongpoint operation, each element would have a COMCAM, and their own cover identities to social media, as described above. Air Mobile Assault Force Historical: MIKE Force, Vietnam Mobile Strike Forces were indigenous troops (composed primarily of persecuted minorities) and led by Special Forces soldiers. Their mission was to act as a country-wide QRF to secure, reinforce, and recapture A Camps. They were also used for search-andrescue and search-and-destroy missions. Historical: Hatchet Force, MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group)

78 Hatchet Forces were platoon-size elements consisting of five Special Forces and about thirty indigenous troops, primarily Nung or Montagnards. They acted as QRFs for recon teams (RTs) that got in trouble, acted as strike forces using intel the RTs uncovered, or conducted ambushes in their AO. When two or more Hatchet Forces combined, they were called Havoc or Hornet Force, and a full SOG company was called a SLAM company (search, location, annihilation, monitor or mission). Future Call them SLAM companies. They would be similar to Task Force Raptor and Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) during the Iraq War. Each company would consist of one ODA from a SF DA company and a vetted and trusted company of either peshmerga soldiers or ISOF counterterrorists. They would be used to conduct air mobile timesensitive targets or raids. They would not focus on high-value targets or be used for capturing enemy soldiers. Their mission would be to conduct raids for the purpose of killing large groups of insurgent fighters, or destroying resources used by them. They could be used as a blocking force for the hunter-killer teams and ambush enemy forces that are attempting to maneuver around or run away. Their ability to maneuver around the battle space utilizing air assets would enable them to follow Sun Tzu s advice to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.

79 Chapter 4. Large-Scale Military Action Against ISIS Before taking any potential action taken against ISIS, the president has to consider both international and domestic American politics. He also has to weigh the consequences of any action considered against taking no action at all. Before looking at potential uses of military force against ISIS, it is worthwhile looking at the requisite considerations prior to even reaching that point. One of the quirks of democratic governments is that, unlike dictatorships, the presidents of free nations have to make direct appeals to their citizens and garner public support for their actions. Deep into Obama s second term, his administration has displayed a schizophrenic foreign policy that seeks to defer decisions on any and all international crises. Essentially, the Obama administration is kicking the can down the road for the next administration. The crisis in Iraq and Syria has now reached a breaking point, however, and kicking the can is more unpopular than picking it up and doing something with it. Indeed, failure to take action against ISIS at this juncture will result in consequences almost too horrifying to contemplate. The humanitarian crisis, which ISIS has created, already stretches across Kurdistan, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. ISIS has created more than three million refugees. It has killed and executed civilians, including men, women, and children, on a scale that can legitimately be described as genocide. ISIS has sexually enslaved women and girls as young as nine. The human rights crisis in the region has spiraled out of control. Refusing to take action against ISIS will ensure that it continues to capture territory across the Middle East. As ISIS grows in strength with each successful battle, it

80 will set up the infrastructure of something resembling a functional state. That is to say, it will become a self-funded organization making millions of dollars from oil revenue. Left unchecked, it is hard to say how powerful it could become. The dream of a pan-islamic caliphate is most certainly beyond its reach; however, it could carve out a very large swath of the Middle East for its empire. Perhaps the most frightening scenario is if ISIS is able to capture Baghdad and unseat what is left of a functional Iraqi government, and then heads south to Saudi Arabia. If ISIS were to capture the two most holy sites of the Islamic faith, Mecca and Medina, the entire Middle East might very well implode. In order to take military action against ISIS, Obama has been slowly warming the U.S. public toward the inevitable reality of troops on the ground in Iraq (once again) and in Syria. As early as 2012, the Pentagon spun up the 75th Ranger Regiment for a shortnotice deployment to Syria in order to secure weapons of mass destruction sites. The president was preparing for a direct military confrontation with Assad s forces, but for reasons not completely known, the attack was called off. Considering the amount of weight the administration places on public opinion polls, and the fact that we were in the middle of Obama s reelection campaign, it seems likely that the president did not feel he had enough public support for the action at that time. As the ISIS threat continued to grow throughout 2013 and 2014, Obama spoke publicly about military options in dealing with it. First, he mentioned providing weapons to the Kurds, then supplying training and advisers to the Iraqi government, and finally he escalated to air strikes. As of this writing in late October 2014, the notion of an overt U.S.

81 military presence on the ground is already being dangled in front of the American consciousness. Obama is waiting to gain sufficient popular support for the war against ISIS. Once he has it, he will use American military force to directly combat ISIS on the ground in Syria and Iraq. With the campaign to sensitize the American public to another war in Iraq under way, the administration also has to consider the international scene. Any action taken in the world against America or American interests is considered a win by adversarial nations, namely, Russia and China. These two nations have openly helped the Assad regime, but more frightening is the question of to what extent they have also helped ISIS, in the same way the CIA helps other causes globally. An American military engagement against ISIS may well turn into a proxy war between global powers. America must build an international coalition against ISIS. Yes, we could go it alone, but the war will appear, and will actually be, more legitimate with a coalition of partners who want to see the destruction of ISIS. This coalition will have the most clout if it includes not only Western nations but Arab and predominantly Muslim nations as well. The September 2014 air campaign was the trial balloon for a larger and more robust coalition force to be set up at a future date. Time magazine reported that the U.S. was accompanied by five Arab nations in the strikes, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Those nations all participated in, or supported, the strikes. 56 These are some of the same countries in which private donors send financial support to ISIS. However, that does not

82 mean these governments, and affluent individuals within these nations, don t want to see ISIS destroyed as much as America does. This leaves the question of Iran s attitude toward an overt U.S. military engagement against ISIS. ISIS can and will be dealt with, during or after the Obama administration the threat cannot be ignored forever. But perhaps the more important question than how to defeat ISIS is the relationship between America and Iran over the long term. Despite the great antagonism between Iran and America dating back to the 1970s, President Obama recently had a historic phone conversation with Iran s newly elected president, Hassan Rouhani. This was the first time the leaders of Iran and the United States had spoken directly since 1979, when diplomatic relations were officially terminated. It appears that the antagonism between these two states is not going away anytime soon, but with Secretary of State John Kerry openly talking about being willing to work with Iran against ISIS, these overtures represent political signaling. Although unlikely, a joint Iran United States coalition against ISIS would be historic and could pave the way for a normalization of relations between the two countries. In any case, Iran is a predominantly Shi a nation and ISIS is a Sunni terrorist group that wants to install a caliphate across the Middle East, giving Iran plenty of reason to want to see it destroyed. Using back-channel communication, the United States and Iran will probably hammer out an agreement that placates Iran and ensures that it will sit out and take no action against America during the fight on the ground, even if an overt joint operation between the two countries is out of the question.

83 With the political background leading up to military action covered, it s time to look at some potential actions in addition to the ones we spoke of in the previous chapter. Gulf War 3 As it dawns upon U.S. policy makers that they have underestimated the ISIS threat, it becomes clear that a full-on military engagement, including U.S. troops on the ground, is inevitable if we want to secure a decisive victory. It has also become clear that we cannot fight the war only in Iraq; to do so would grant the enemy a safe haven in Syria. Our experiences in Vietnam where the NVA and VC were able to stage out of adjacent Laos and Cambodia have taught us that we cannot attack ISIS in one place but not another. More recent experience with the Taliban operating out of Pakistan to attack our troops in Afghanistan confirms that. A third Gulf War is unlikely to involve the same type of shock and awe as the first did, and we probably won t see Abrams tanks rolling across the desert. However, we will see American armored vehicles, infantry soldiers, transport and attack aircraft, and Special Operations Forces deployed in a combined arms effort against ISIS. This type of war would largely combine mechanized infantry, light infantry, and Special Operations in tandem with U.S. air power. Our sources within the U.S. Special Ops community tell us that units are already mobilizing for action. Unfortunately, Turkey is unlikely to allow U.S. forces to stage out of its country; however, bases in Kurdistan and Iraq will be sufficient. Special Forces teams would work alongside Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi Special Operations units, which they trained during Operation Iraqi

84 Freedom. Meanwhile, Rangers, Marines, and conventional infantry units would provide the hammer while fighter jets and attack helicopters provide the anvil. Make no mistake, this campaign will not look like other recent U.S. military engagements. Hunting down high-value targets with a small strike force in the back alleys of Iraq, as was done in , will be largely a thing of the past. This campaign will look more like a blitzkrieg. ISIS forces are likely to collapse quickly under a sustained American military assault. U.S. and coalition forces will want to seize the initiative as this happens. Once an opening appears in ISIS s defenses, the U.S. military will seek to exploit it and push through as fast as possible. That said, fighting in urban terrain is dangerous. These battles take place in what the military calls nonpermissive environments. These are not cities that have some civilians living in them, but rather cities that are outright controlled by enemy forces. This means that a repeat of the scenario when the Marine Corps assaulted Fallujah in 2004 is highly likely. U.S. forces know this and will attempt to shape the battlefield so as to mitigate the need for Stalingrad-style battles, but some will happen regardless of the best efforts of military planners and intelligence professionals. We will also seek to eliminate the source of ISIS s funding. This is already under way as the U.S.-led coalition bombs ISIS-held oil refineries in Syria. These economic warfare aspects of the campaign will have to escalate to include eliminating charity funding from abroad as well. In short, this option would involve a lighting-fast campaign across Iraq and Syria that General Patton would have respected.

85 The Special Operations Option If Obama is unable to generate the necessary public support for Gulf War 3, then he is likely to opt for a low-visibility, low-profile mission that will remain at least partially out of the headlines and keep U.S. casualties to a minimum. This would mean deploying Special Operations teams that can call on air support as needed. Before Special Operations missions take place, operational preparation of the battlefield (OPB) must be completed. This has been under way for some time, although the effort has been hampered by interservice rivalry between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command s (JSOC) primary intelligencegathering unit, the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA). Quite a feud has developed between the two, including the CIA sabotaging at least one ISA operation that was to assess the viability of the Free Syrian Army as a possible partner force. Other shaping operations have been under way as well, including attempted hostage rescue missions conducted by JSOC operators staging out of a nearby country and flying in via helicopter. This operations will likely escalate, whether Obama chooses the Gulf War option or the Special Forces option, as either effort will require OPB to set the conditions for success. However, if Special Operations gets the nod to take the lead in this campaign, then JSOC is likely to escalate its operations into Syria in a effort to assassinate ISIS leaders, rescue American hostages, conduct reconnaissance for other SOF units, and sabotage ISIS logistical and leadership nodes.

86 Meanwhile, U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets) will conduct unconventional warfare alongside their host-nation counterparts, consisting mostly of peshmerga and ISOF units. In the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Special Forces teams did exactly this mission. Working by, with, and through indigenous forces, U.S. Special Forces will be likely to push ISIS from both the south and the east, driving it back toward Syria. With the Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC) heavily engaged in foreign internal defense in Afghanistan over the last several years, it is likely that MARSOC will be brought in to do the same mission as Special Forces; however, there is bound to be some consternation over this within Special Forces command. The 75th Ranger Regiment may be called upon to conduct combat parachute jumps as it did in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Combat jumps can serve as a vertical envelopment of enemy forces, surrounding them and catching them by surprise prior to eliminating them, of course. Rangers can also capture key strategic sites such as airfields for follow-on U.S. forces to land on and deploy from. This sort of rapid combat operation could see Rangers securing a airfield and follow-on light infantry and mechanized infantry coming in right behind them to steamroll ISIS positions in a surprise night attack. The Rangers could be deployed in another manner as well. In OIF and OEF, Rangers jumped into largely abandoned enemy compounds. The purpose was public relations, to show the world that America means business. The combat jumps were recorded on video and then broadcast on network television again and again.

87 Other direct-action units, like the Special Forces Commander s In-Extremis Force teams, SEAL Team 6, and Delta Force, are also likely to be deployed in this conflict and it is likely that all of these Special Ops units will compete fiercely for the opportunity to engage the targets they favor. The Mercenary Contractor Option If Obama cannot find sufficient public support for a campaign against ISIS, or if another conflict heats up elsewhere in the world, such as in Ukraine, then the administration may have to conserve military resources and/or reroute them to Eastern Europe. In this case, action against ISIS could be done via proxy forces. This would most likely also involve a small contingent of Special Operations soldiers, who would remain in safe areas and manage specific aspects of the campaign. If they were used as advisers, they would probably be placed under the auspices of the CIA for those deployments, allowing the president to claim that America does not have troops on the ground. The actual intelligence work would be conducted by freelance contractors hired for this task, as they have done all over the world throughout the War on Terror. The fighting itself would be carried out by contracted parties within Iraq and by so-called third-country nationals. Iraqi militias would be funded by the United States. These forces could be drawn from the Shi a population, which is opposed the Sunni ISIS movement, and also from oppressed groups like the Yezidi, who are itching for some payback after ISIS slaughtered them in their home of Sinjar.

88 One Yezidi source told SOFREP that if America provided them with guns and other war matériel, he could have fifty thousand Yezidi men ready to take up arms and fight at the snap of his fingers. Using mercenaries to fight our war has its pros and cons, of course. Without U.S. airpower or professional soldiers doing the fighting, this type of campaign would take years to be successful, with numerous setbacks along the way. The usual discomfort with the use of private military companies would rear its head in the press, and we could expect the entire effort to be demonized by the international community. Governments tend to freak out when private military companies are used as instruments of foreign policy or, in some cases, changing foreign policy without the oversight of their government. On the positive side, this would keep American casualties to a minimum, maybe even zero. The worst-case scenario is a full-blown war erupting in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe. If America fully commits to both wars, this would allow other actors around the world to take advantage of the situation while the U.S. military is distracted elsewhere. This would be the ideal time for China to makes moves on the Senkaku Islands or even on Taiwan. For that reason, we may employ mercenaries to deal with ISIS to keep some U.S. forces in reserve. As stated, a U.S.-led war against ISIS will not look like the Special Operations missions that General Stanley McChrystal led as JSOC commander in Iraq in years past. However, as in any military campaign, killing or capturing enemy leaders will still be a component of the over all operation. Hostage Rescue Missions

89 The first propaganda film, featuring the murder of journalist James Foley by a British ISIS fighter, carried the threat of more to come. Videos followed, showing the beheadings of Steven Sotloff, another freelance journalist; David Cawthorne Haines, a former British soldier who did security work for aid organizations; French mountain climber Hervé Gourdel; and Alan Henning, a British taxi driver who volunteered to deliver aid to Syrian citizens. The pattern seems to be that every several weeks another hostage is executed. ISIS is attempting to use these Western hostages as collateral, threatening and carrying out the killings if U.S. air strikes against ISIS continue, a signal by the terrorist organization to hijack U.S. foreign policy via asymmetrical means. As the world s only remaining superpower, with the ability to project military force around the globe, the United States is a hard target to deter. Perhaps no nation in the world can square off against America with conventional military forces. However, terrorism exploits America s weak spots. By kidnapping Americans and holding them hostage on the world stage, terrorists can also hold U.S. foreign policy hostage. This form of political terrorism was in full swing during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Terrorists would hijack an aircraft filled with civilians and then demand the release of prisoners, a withdrawal of occupational forces, or whatever other political ends they wanted to achieve. In SOFREP s interview with Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a national security adviser during the Reagan administration, he stated he believes that our counterterrorism tactics at that time were particularly aggressive and successfully mitigated the threat of this form of terrorism. But with that success, terrorist organizations changed their tactics as well.

90 Political terrorism transformed into religious terrorism. No longer were hostages taken and demands made. Instead, suicide attacks were launched. This included suicide bombings, most notably the 9/11 attacks. Al Qaeda and its offshoot organizations, such as the Islamic State of Iraq, took hostages but made no demands. They beheaded the hostages and made snuff videos of the executions to intimidate people. The reality is that political terrorism never truly went away and the threat has persisted. Every execution of American (or any) hostages is ultimately a political act, but these executions did not come with policy demands, did not involve a ticking clock or ransom money, and they were not prolonged events that took place in front of the media, as did aircraft hijackings and the Iran hostage crisis. Nonetheless, Americans being taken hostage for whatever purpose is a profound asymmetrical threat to the United States, and in order to combat it the units that make up JSOC conduct extensive training as well as performing actual hostage rescue operations throughout the Global War on Terror. The failed mission to rescue James Foley is the most recent example. Dalton Fury provides a fictional example in his novel Black Site, where captured Delta Force operators are held hostage by Al Qaeda in Pakistan. The hostages are moved around to deter the CIA s drone strike program; in essence, the American prisoners are used as human shields in a manner that manipulates how the CIA assassinates Al Qaeda leaders. With the release of pictures, we know that Bowe Bergdahl was, at least for a short time, with Badruddin Haqqani, senior commander of the Haqqani network, an insurgency group in Afghanistan with ties to Al Qaeda. Was Bergdahl used in the manner that Fury describes in his fiction? There is no way to know, but the opportunity to

91 manipulate American foreign policy and military force is always present. What we can be certain of is that in our negotiations to recover Bergdahl, the United States must have sacrificed significant political capital in order to secure his release. ISIS s horrifying execution videos clearly demonstrate that ISIS is using American hostages differently from Al Qaeda, ISI, AQI, and a number of other groups. Unlike religious terrorism, which uses vicious executions to intimidate overseas Muslims and Americans alike, ISIS is attempting to use them as political leverage. If this continues over the long term, which we expect, it will create a political and military crisis for the United States, as well as for other countries whose citizens are murdered. As the beheadings continue, the U.S. government will only be further humiliated and the situation is about to get even uglier. One of the other Americans reported to us held by ISIS is a young female aid worker who has not been publicly named. What does this mean for America, in particular the Special Operations community, when and if we go to war with ISIS? Our two units prepared for hostage rescues in denied environments, SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force, won t be hurting for work even as our war in Afghanistan dwindles and eventually ends. Postwar Considerations America often laments its own short attention span and comments on how our postgame follow-up is woefully deficient. After we withdrew from South Vietnam, the Communists

92 took over. After we shut down our covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the country descended into chaos and eventually the Taliban took control. After we withdrew from Iraq, the Maliki government s ineptness and corruption practically handed much of the country to ISIS on a silver platter. Before embarking on any new military adventure, the U.S. government needs to devote at least as much time planning for the postwar environment as they do for the war itself. This is the lesson we should have learned a long time ago, but instead we keep repeating the same mistakes. Military planners, the CIA, the State Department, and other agencies need to ask themselves not only what postwar Iraq and Syria will look like but also what they would like them to look like. A new way of thinking and a definitive approach are needed. Players whom we want running these countries should be moved around the chessboard before, during, and after the military campaign. Humanitarian aid should be planned and budgeted for, because ISIS has wreaked havoc upon the regions under its control. The U.S. government also needs to consider the wider geopolitical picture. If we go in and smash ISIS, what power structures will fill the vacuum? The Assad regime? The Iranian Revolutionary Guards? The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)? If we want to avoid Gulf War 4 ten or twenty years down the line, than we need to ensure that reasonable, rational people with actual political experience fill the void left in our wake. One of the postwar issues that will not go away is the movement toward Kurdish independence from Iraq. Kurdish nationalism has its roots in the Ottoman Empire, and has been gaining strength for more than a century. The government of Iraq has proved itself ineffective and unviable. As hard as America tried to hold Iraq together as an actual

93 state, the reality is that it isn t a state but rather a collection of tribes and sects that are at each other s throats. Considering the fact that Kurdistan is, and will be, a great ally in a volatile region, we should consider abandoning the fictional nation of Iraq as it currently exists and work with the Kurds to prepare them for their independence and entry into the United Nations.

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95 Kurdistan (Le Monde Diplomatique) Although difficult to achieve, the United States should also consider brokering a historic alliance between the Yezidi minority group in northwest Iraq with the Kurds and the ethnic Turkmen in the north. This would go a long way toward achieving stability in this region. Along with this issue, we must also consider the postwar role of the PKK. Listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department, the Kurdish Workers Party has secured a great deal of legitimacy through its active and fierce opposition to ISIS throughout Iraq and Syria. It has fought the enemy tooth and nail, and in once instance, three fighters who were out of ammunition even launched a suicide attack against ISIS tanks, blowing up the tanks along with themselves in the process. The problem is that the PKK does not see only ISIS as its enemy. With war fighting as its source of credibility, it also wants to fight the Assad regime, the government of Kurdistan, the Turkish government and, it seems, nearly anyone else who is not a party member. This will cause serious problems in a postwar Iraq. Bringing the PKK into the political mainstream and incorporating it into the Kurdish government will be difficult if not impossible. Lines of communication should be opened between the U.S. government and the PKK sooner rather than later. Its members may have conducted terrorist attacks in Turkey, but they are political actors, not irrational jihadists, so there may be an opportunity for reconciliation sometime in the future. The government of Iraq is a mess. One of the biggest contributing factors to the spread of ISIS in Iraq is the ineptitude of the Iraqi government. Every three Iraqis seem to have their own political party, the government in ineffective and corrupt, and has no

96 legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people, or in the eyes of the world. Iraqi military forces that were fighting ISIS did not all retreat as they did in Mosul. In fact, many stood their ground until the bitter end. But with the corrupt government failing to provide its own troops with food, water, gasoline, and bullets, they could hold out for only so long. Frankly, considering the mess that the GOI has created, even a CIA-installed puppet government seems preferable. Another wild card in all of this is Iran. Will Iran and its proxies sweep in to take advantage of American success against ISIS and fill the power vacuum? Will Iran help ISIS kill American soldiers as they did during previous deployments of U.S. forces to Iraq? What will be Iran s disposition via its proxies such as Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon after the war is over? This are questions that the Pentagon and the CIA should be seeking to answer now, not the day after the war against ISIS is won. With that, the United States must also consider what ISIS survivors will do after the war, as well as other Islamist groups. A strategic defeat of ISIS is not a death blow for radical Islam, and there is no reason for us to be surprised if (or, more likely, when) ISIS reemerges in some form or another Islamist group takes center stage and begins conducting terrorist attacks against whatever government or governments are put into place in the liberated regions. This is the same conundrum U.S. forces faced after the liberation of Iraq in This time around, it is critical that we do not repeat the same mistake. America must have a plan for a post-isis Iraq and Syria in order to consolidate gains.

97 Chapter 5. Our Conclusion ISIS will be defeated by the United States and a multinational coalition. In a worst-case scenario, the Obama administration will stall as long as possible and pass the buck on to the next administration. However, it seems highly unlikely that he will be able to do so, and he is already giving way to the inevitability of America s need to address the crisis unfolding in Syria and Iraq. More than likely we will be looking at a radically different situation by early 2015, including an overt U.S. military force deployed against ISIS. Even after ISIS is removed, America will be facing a larger and more difficult problem. Despite our aversion to nation building, and despite our distaste for yet another war in Iraq, the Middle East is a region of the world that the United States has not been able to extricate itself from. Whatever our political views, our military continues to be deployed to this part of the world to fight the battles for American interests. Because of this, we need to change from short-term reactions and start thinking about long-term strategies. How can we build strong partnerships and an aligned view of the future in the region? Military action has never and will never be enough. Many Americans throw their hands up in the air when discussing the Middle East and suggest that we should just use nuclear weapons turn it into a glass parking lot. Veterans understand where this frustration comes from, but it is just that, frustration, which leads nowhere and is not a realistic policy option. We might not like the idea of nation building, yet we keep finding ourselves caught up in costly entanglements in the Middle East. Unless we want to fight Gulf Wars 4, 5, and 6, we need to reassess our current approach. The aftermath of our war against ISIS will leave in its wake a massive

98 humanitarian crisis and a power vacuum that will be ripe for other bad actors in the region to fill if we don t recognize this now and prepare for it. The long-term solution to ensure that America does not have to continue fighting these wars is a massive economic program rivaling FDR s New Deal. Iraq and Syria will need education programs, schools built, and job training. Constructing and staffing these education centers is something that a Western coalition can help with. These education centers will also help counter the propaganda of radical Islam. Graduates of these programs will also need jobs.

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100 Refugees (United Nations) America and our partners can bring in experts and employ Iraqis to modernize the country s electrical network, build power plants, construct modern sewage and water systems and desalination plants, and introduce modern agricultural techniques to farmers. The entire economies of Syria and Iraq will have to be overhauled, modernized, and turned into market-driven systems that actually serve their citizens, instead of autocracies that fill the pockets of the rich, politically connected, and corrupt. The U.S. military, State Department, USAID, and non-governmental organizations will have to partner with the Iraqi people to create a true counterinsurgency campaign, one that not only kills the enemies but also prevents them from having any credibility in the first place. This new campaign will actually siphon away the sources of power, which radical Islam draws from as people begin to see alternatives. This has been the trap that many Middle Eastern nations have been stuck in since the 1960s. Communism was a failed system, and it failed the Middle East horribly. Without plausible alternatives to communism, the Middle East has been left to stagnate. The human wreckage left in the wake of this disaster has turned radical Islam into a populist movement. The defeat of ISIS will open new venues of opportunity for America, but only if we take an active role in thinking about and designing what the future looks like. In other words, our victory against ISIS will be another chance to get it right. We can reverse the polarities of terror, but it will be harder than simply defeating a terrorist organization. The old power structures of the Middle East will resist the changes that would sweep in with a U.S.-led economic reform program. The elites of these nations

101 will resent having their power base undermined as the regular men and women are empowered and given their fair shot at having a future. It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. America s foreign policy in the Middle East has been inconsistent and schizophrenic for decades. However painful it will be to engage in nation building, the alternatives are far worse. This is our opportunity to reverse the polarities of war and change the Middle East forever. The following is an excerpt from The Tree of Knowledge. The book is enlightening and powerful. A story is told of an island somewhere and its inhabitants. The people longed to move to another land where they could have a healthier and better life. The problem was that the practical arts of swimming and sailing had never been developed or may have been lost long before. For that reason, there were some people who simply refused to think of alternatives to life on the island, whereas others intended to seek a solution to their problems locally, without any thought of crossing the waters [the current state of thinking in America authors]. From time to time, some islanders reinvented the arts of swimming and sailing. Also from time to time a student would come up to them, and the following exchange would take place: I want to swim to another land. For that you have to learn how to swim. Are you ready to learn? Yes, but I want to take with me my ton of cabbages.

102 What cabbages? The food I ll need on the other side or wherever it is. But what if there s food on the other side? I don t know what you mean. I m not sure. I have to bring my cabbages with me. But you won t be able to swim with a ton of cabbages. It s too much weight. Then I can t learn how to swim. You call my cabbages weight. I call them my basic food. Suppose this were an allegory and, instead of talking about cabbages we talked about fixed ideas, presuppositions, or certainties? Humm... I m going to bring my cabbages to someone who understands my needs. 57 Suppose we think about our traditional ideas surrounding American culture and religion as our own cabbages that prevent us from new thinking toward the situation in the Middle East. How do we cast off fixed ideas and engage in new thought? Once upon a time, it was unpopular to believe that Earth was round and revolved around the sun; in fact, the church could jail you for thinking this. We would be smart to remember this when thinking about how to deal with the problems of radicalism in the world today and tomorrow. Historically, Americans have largely been optimistic in our approach to problems and our shared cultural perspective of the world. As Peter Theil explains in Zero to One, we have shifted away from definite optimism (a definitive and positive view of things)

103 toward something far more destructive, an indefinite view of the world. Social masses in America have become largely uncertain of the future, and many hold false hope that someone else will come along to fix it. As Peter Theil puts it, We have to find our way back to a definite future, and the Western world needs nothing short of a cultural revolution to do it. We believe that a cultural revolution is possible.

104 Chapter 6. Bonus: What You and Your Friends Can Do to Combat ISIS Other Solutions Worth Thinking About Initiate a U.S. government sponsored global advertising campaign to counter ISIS s own branding effort. o Hire a global advertising firm. In-house attempts by several agencies to run social media campaigns have not worked. Hire experts. o The goal is to make ISIS and radical Islam not cool anymore. o Recruit popular sports figures, political leaders, celebrities, and others to make anti-isis commercials across all forms of media (radio, TV, digital, print, social). Develop authentic community outreach programs. Most government agency outreach we re aware of has been disguised as informant hunting, and the Muslim community in America and abroad is on to this. It s time to start meaning what we say and saying what we mean. Stop profiling Muslim Arab men and women in America; it builds resentment. Profile history of actions, not skin color or religion. Reduce the Ugly American footprint in the Middle East by downsizing the large military presence there. Back Kurdish independence. Focus a massive effort on building schools and hospitals in the Middle East and other areas of radicalism. We need to win more hearts and minds and give parents

105 more options to send their kids to school. Many of the free schools available are run by conservative mullahs who preach and support a violent caliphate. Most important, change the way we are thinking about dealing with this problem! If Nike can authentically penetrate the action sports market in very small period of time, then the U.S. government can run similar campaign to combat the existing pop culture that makes it cool to support change through violence. As the United States and its coalition partners conduct air strikes against ISIS and Khorasan Group targets operating in the chaotic Syrian battle space, the various ties of jihadist fighters to their extremist ideologies must also be targeted. This chapter establishes a framework for understanding the problem of information exchange in the context of radical Islamist ideology, and proposes an outline for actions that can be taken to counter jihadist propaganda on an individual level. With more than fifteen thousand foreign fighters currently fighting under the banner of ISIS or similar flavors of violent Sunni extremist groups, many jihadists including two thousand Westerners have been attracted to the Syrian battlefield by the allure of well-publicized and easily accessible radical Islamist ideology. The global jihadist movement exemplified in Syria is a direct by-product of the rapid information exchange possible via the Internet and continues to be leveraged by jihadist organizations on a global scale to draw more followers toward radical Islamist ideologies. Current CIA manpower assessments of ISIS and its foreign fighters confirm this and highlight the significant effect that a well-produced and streamlined message can have on the right target audience.

106 It s Propaganda, and It Hurts It is through proper targeting of vulnerable audiences using mass communications and social media platforms that groups such as ISIS are able to attract not only thousands of fighters to the jihadist cause but also rally a substantial base of popular support for their grievances on a global scale. Their propaganda efforts pose a significant threat to U.S. interests and require an equally significant counterresponse. In keeping with the concept of total war propounded by the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, it is critical that a nation or entity at war engage the enemy with the full spectrum of its power mechanisms, both hard and soft. Hard power in the form of military action is the most commonly applied mechanism, but it cannot be allowed to overshadow the soft-power mechanisms also at a nation s disposal, including economic, political, social, and information. Given the significance of information exchange in the twenty-first century, the war of ideas must be fought to the fullest extent possible, in conjunction with military action. While this war of ideas has not been lost on the highly asymmetric actors within the global jihadist movement (specific groups such as ISIS and the Islamic Front, radicalized individual fighters), nations seeking to mitigate the threat of radical Islamist ideology in their homelands have thus far failed to produce any effective mass communications movements or trends that are capable of rallying a substantial base of popular support against radical Islam. Another Problem with Bureaucracy

107 Unfortunately for the United States, a centralized bureaucracy makes effective and succinct countertechniques to radical Islamist propaganda all but obsolete (read: current State Department anti-isis propaganda efforts). In order to effectively mount a succinct and well-produced effort to counter the highly effective radical Islamist propaganda, a decentralized and diverse information operations campaign must be in effect. This campaign must capitalize on the very same strengths that allow radical Islamist ideology to spread to thousands of Internet users daily, using any and all social media and information exchange platforms (forums, Web sites, chat rooms, and the like). The campaign must seek to both counter the effectiveness of jihadist propaganda abroad and in the homeland, and produce a message capable of overpowering the narrative of radical Islam in the populations specifically targeted by jihadist propaganda. Admittedly, this is a daunting task that requires extensive long-term work, but there are several actions that will yield positive short-term results. What You Can Do to Stop ISIS The effectiveness of jihadist propaganda can be mitigated through a variety of platforms and attributed to both white (openly accredited to Western or U.S. audiences, for example) and black (a fake fatwa issued by a contrived, unverifiable online imam/entity) sources. For the purpose of producing the most immediate message to counter radical Islam using available means and platforms, it is recommended that white sources are primarily used. The following steps outline the progression of development for counterjihadist propaganda.

108 1. Determine who s in the crosshairs. As a starting point for a counter to jihadist propaganda, it is critical to identify the specific target audience that will receive or be exposed to the message. There are several groups that could be targeted. While not allinclusive, this preliminary list derived from a simple analysis of current known demographics of foreign fighters in Syria identifies examples of groups that are most likely to be susceptible to the radical Islamic narrative. Disenfranchised Arab populations that are dissatisfied with their current living conditions (political, economic, financial, etc.) and are therefore more vulnerable to messages that suggest the jihadist lifestyle offers them an avenue of escape. Young and impressionable Arab males in their teens who seek validation as devout Muslims worthy of defending Islam and/or their way of life from the progressive and sinful West. Relatives or close friends of former radicals, imams, or fighters who seek to continue the jihad against the West and nonbelievers. Disenfranchised or distraught individuals who are susceptible to using violence as an alternative to peaceful, nonviolent resolution (school shooter mentality). Moderate or poorly educated Muslims who have been exposed to radicalism for a prolonged period and also harbor grievances that would encourage them to morally rationalize and justify acts of jihad against nonbelievers.

109 2. Develop the content and message. After a target audience for messaging has been selected, the next step is to develop a base of content for the campaign. While the options for content are limited only by the imagination, it must be noted that this content base and message can be organic (created and produced locally) or a variation of existing content. As there is hardly ever a reason to reinvent the wheel, successful content often uses preexisting themes, slogans, or narratives. A prime example is a parody of a previously published ISIS banner or poster, or a message that knowledgeably (and therefore credibly) refutes the claims of a known radical imam or organization. Some of the most effective campaigns are graphically produced. For example, simple designs or symbols that reinforce traditional Islamic values (meaning the most commonly accepted interpretation of moderate Islam) would hold great sway against the terror and fear-inducing banners of ISIS. 3. Identify a vehicle. The rise of the Internet and social media has spawned a wide and diverse array of options available to anyone seeking to rapidly disseminate information. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instragram, Skype, and many other platforms have been extensively used to spread jihadist propaganda to select audiences. Once a specific target audience and message have been selected to counter this propaganda, it becomes relatively easy to disperse it through these various platforms. One of the most rapid options is Twitter, which has demonstrated itself to be a valuable tool capable of swaying public opinion, from both jihadist propaganda campaigns to presidential elections. Once a vehicle (Twitter, say) has been identified, the ability of a campaign to simply share information and content becomes invaluable.

110 4. Deliver the message. When executing the counterjihadist propaganda campaign, there are several underlying themes that must be the focal point of messaging efforts. We recommend that the message adhere to the following elements: Time the execution of the campaign to demonstrate a close understanding of the target audience (exposing the target to the message before they ve been exposed to prolonged jihadist propaganda). Rely on themes that reiterate the campaign s message again and again. Provide memorable slogans, phrases, logos, symbols, and/or a brand that clearly identifies the campaign and its values. Ensure the message is engaging for the target audience, using aesthetically appealing designs. Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures The target audience has been selected, the content and message have been created or modified from existing content, a vehicle or platform for dissemination has been identified, and the message has been delivered. What does this actually look like? Here s an overview of one example, followed by several simple tactical-level solutions that would cause at least a minor level of disruption of jihadist propaganda. 1. Target audience: Male Arab Twitter users in the sixteen-to-twenty-seven age group currently living in London who have received some level of education or have recent experience with higher education and have links/access to international contacts. (The target audience was selected using publicly available data from BBC Monitoring and the

111 Department of War Studies at King s College London research on foreign fighter demographics.) 2. Content: Religious narratives that highlight moderate Islamic schools of thought and identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities of radical Islamist messaging. 3. Platform: Social media; Twitter. 4. Execution: Proxy, robot, or entity-based Twitter account(s) that has placement and/or access to the target audience network and is capable of producing twenty simple, similarly worded talking points per day in keeping with the content s theme of moderate religious narratives. Expedient Solutions Locate current ISIS propaganda (images, infographics, messages); parody or counter them using humor, challenging statements, and/or direct questions. Parody current ISIS or Islamic Front training videos. Produce informational video contesting radical extremist narrative validity. Identify online social media entities (Facebook or Twitter) currently producing or sharing radical Islamic narratives. Counter or degrade their ability to produce or share content (think denial of service, for example). Employ common Twitter techniques to trend pro-moderate Islam message. Identify common trending hashtags offering support for ISIS (for example,

112 #EyesOnISIS), then override with organic message or content. Create/produce proxy or robot Facebook accounts to counter individuals or groups known to support radical Islamic narratives. Manipulate human emotions or attitudes by displaying graphic content of ISIS activity in Iraq and Syria (effects of beheadings, kidnappings, assassinations, mass murders, etc.). Liaise with, or disseminate moderate Islamic content from, respected moderate imams or leaders in the Muslim community. Disseminate moderate Islamic content that subverts the radical Islamic narrative, using Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. Share and distribute mainstream media content decrying the radical Islamic narrative. Social media is an excellent and readily available tool for most Americans. Consider it your own real version of Fantasy Jihad share it with your friends and watch the results play out in real time on the Internet.

113 Appendix: The Military-Industrial Complex and State of U.S. Special Operations (Lang, SOFREP.com) Many are familiar with President Dwight Eisenhower s famous farewell speech, but few have read the original drafts, which include dire warnings about the future of America and what Eisenhower termed a military-industrial complex. One of the original drafts, penned by speechwriter Malcolm Moos, reads: We must never let power, implicit in this combination, endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert,