Islamic State Flag
Der Spiegel had an excellent article on how ISIS rose to power, based on files recovered from the ex-Baathist spy master who planned most of its structure and early strategy.
It boils down to two main themes. First, ISIS set up charity offices in the territory it would later try to seize. The men assigned to those offices were tasked with finding out who the most important people in the area were and marrying into the most important families, if possible.
When ISIS went active, they had complete files on the power structures of every area. They knew who had power, who was likely to oppose them, and, to put it crudely, where they lived. Their enemies knew next to nothing about them, but they they were able to bribe, blackmail or kill anyone who was in a position to be useful or pose a threat.
Second, and especially interesting, the initial ISIS force was comprised almost entirely of people not native to Syria. On the face, this seems like a bad idea, but lack of local ties, combined with ferocious operational security, meant that ISIS could move its troops from place to place and the locals couldn’t easily track those movements.
ISIS soldiers who were local would have talked, their movements would have been easy to track. Foreigners with few to no local ties, not so much.
As a result, ISIS was able to make a small army effectively much larger than it seemed. They would march almost all their troops to the next theater, and because their enemies didn’t know it, they couldn’t take advantage.
The result of this was that ISIS’s local enemies, the local elites, were often unable to effectively oppose them (since they got dead or blackmailed if they did). Additionally, ISIS possessed operational flexibility their armed opposition didn’t have.
The entire article is worth reading if you’re interested in how ISIS rose and worth thinking on how it could be applied elsewhere, or stopped. It’s also an excellent reminder that the best of the forces rising in the Islamic world are staffed and run by people who are brilliant and not to be underestimated. (They ought to be the best; a very harsh Darwinian selection has been run on them. Slip up, wind up dead.)
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Monster from the Id
I and others were kind of getting away from the designated topic of the “3 kinds of rich folks” thread. Thanks for giving our deviation its own thread.
Also, thanks for the explanations. I guess that part of my brain has always assumed that the main reason the USA drew the Korean War and lost the Vietnam War was that North Korea and North Vietnam had another nuclear-armed superpower backing them up, so we couldn’t just unleash the “kill ’em all and let Haruhi sort ’em out” genocide weapons and be done with it. (Haruhi forgive me for even thinking such things–we’re not a nice species, are we?)
Tom
Yep Darwin was harsh on them, many leaders were killed because a low ranker got caught and blabbed when pressed. That is how Zarqawi, two of his wives, and newborn daughter got blasted, but even then he had a successor already in the wings and the decision to take him out rather than surround his house and offer him a chance to surrender backfired. Big time.
Now the leaders don’t tell anyone where they stay and have mobile HQs like the Romans did, but highly redundant so that the organization can take appalling causalities but still function.
A Western Force taking the causalities they do would disintegrate.
Ken Hoop
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/bushs-clueless-rjc-speech/
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-27/george-w-bush-bashes-obama-on-middle-east
Bush takes no responsibility, but I should add, Obama ultimately justified the war to the troops, the war he had originally opposed.
He told them they had “won,” had brought a “stable” “democracy” to Iraq. Neither was true at the time he said it, and in little time, the sweep of ISIS proved him even more wrong.
Meanwhile the Cheneys were quoting him in their own revisionist justifications for destroying an unthreatening “enemy”, while saying he had “lost” the “victory” he himself had
boasted about, by leaving too soon.
As long as Israel/Saudi and the war profiteers piggybacking on the purchased policy holds sway, the US can only continue wreaking havoc in the Mideast. Just now Obama is sanctioning the Saudi slaughter in Yemen.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/no-end-to-the-war-on-yemen-in-sight/
With AQ getting the benefit.
Ian Welsh
Yes, in part I put this article up so that folks could have the ISIS conversation here, should they so desire.
S Brennan
“US bombing of alleged ISIS targets inside Syria [is] in support of the terrorist organization…truth is that the United States bombing supports ISIS, increasing its gains and hold on power..[earning it] the label, Al-Qaeda’s Air Force…strikes were launched against Syrian oil refineries, bridges, civilian neighborhoods, warehouses, agricultural centers, and grain silos. Others were made strategically against infrastructure that was set to soon be taken back by the Syrian military after long-fought battles with the terrorists….Likewise, the US bombing campaign in Iraq has had much more to do with protecting Western-owned oil fields and death squad herding than eliminating ISIS. In fact, Iraqi armed forces and government officials have repeatedly revealed that the US military has actually been supplying ISIS during the entire course of the bombing…Western mainstream press paint the Iraqi claims of American assistance to ISIS as “conspiracy theories” [but] reports that the bombing campaign has resulted in a stronger ISIS presence in Iraq and Syria..”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/al-qaedas-air-force-united-states-and-saudi-arabia/5445560
“the forces rising in the Islamic world are staffed and run by people who are brilliant and not to be underestimated. They ought to be the best; a very harsh Darwinian selection has been run on them.”
Or,
Possibly they were unnaturally “selected” in the US Gulag system initially set up under Bush and brought to fruition under Obama…and by “selected” I hope everybody can 2 & 2 together.
Everythings Jake
Oddly comparable to (although a perverted form of) what one of the more successful contemporary Union organizers did: a power structure analysis.
Behind the News Interview
markfromireland
In other words they did what every other successful Islamist movement including Hizballah did.
In other words they did what every other successful Islamist movement including Hizballah did.
mfi
Brian
The Sendero Luminoso of Peru also spent nearly ten years, in some areas, infiltrating communities and compiling power structure analyses. Over 30 years later some of them are still hiding out in the bushes…