Welcome to Islamic State 101: What Makes ISIS Tick
The Islamic State, however, is unique from any other Islamist terrorist group on the planet. It has demonstrated an unparalleled capacity to hold and administer territory despite the constant danger of U.S. airstrikes, as well as an ability to create and maintain an extensive system of taxation, extortion and oil production to finance its operations and compensate its fighters. It has demonstrated talent in the social media space, where battlefield successes are broadcasted to young, disillusioned recruits all over the world. ISIL’s massacre on the streets of Paris, as shocking as the attacks were, is just the latest escalation in violence that the group has exhibited every day in Syria and Iraq.
ISIL’s Money Making Machine
The Islamic State’s capture of crude oil fields in Deir ez-Zor and its ability to produce and transport the oil to middlemen and smugglers along the Syria-Turkey border is the most graphic illustration of how the organization makes its money. Before the United States increased the pace and scope of its air campaign, the U.S. Treasury Department estimated that the Islamic State made roughly $1 million per day in profit from oil sales (that estimate now stands at $500 million per year , according to the Treasury Department)—a cash flow that any terrorist organization could only dream of. Operation Tidal Wave II, launched by the counter-ISIL coalition in late October, is designed to degrade that revenue stream significantly; as of November 24, 2015, U.S. and French aircraft have destroyed or damaged hundreds of trucks that ISIL has come to rely upon to transport its oil to the border.
Oil, however, is not ISIL’s most profitable enterprise. Taxes on local businesses, on truckers who drive through ISIL-controlled territory, on bank transactions and deposits, as well as extortion of the local population are the preferred means to pay the salaries, overhead costs, service delivery and administration of the Islamic State’s caliphate. Taxes on a single truck of goods can range as low as $200 to as high as $1,000 depending on the load. Pharmacies in Mosul are taxed on every prescription drug that is sold to customers. Business owners get shaken down for money if they want electricity or plumbing services. And if the Islamic State is fortunate enough to take a city with historical antiquities, those artifacts are horded and eventually sold for hefty profits—another windfall that has generated tens of millions of dollars for the organization.
Recruitment capacity
Obama administration officials insistently remind the American people and U.S. allies that the Islamic State is not “ten-feet tall.” With the right combination of air power, professional boots on the ground that are from the local community and a worldwide attempt to stifle their finances, the group’s territory will eventually shrink to the point where the caliphate is no longer a large patch of territory but rather a scattershot, temporary occurrence.
Deliberately downplaying ISIL’s military and financial prowess may be good public relations from a political point of view, but it has done nothing to significantly block the journey of thousands of recruits from the Middle East, the Caucasus and Europe into Syria and Iraq to sign up with the organization. Indeed, the strength of the organization depends on its large collection of foreign fighters who have chosen to make the journey to Syria and Iraq. In one of the most extensive studies into the Syrian civil war’s foreign fighter phenomenon, Richard Barrett of the Soufan Group estimated in June 2014 that approximately 12,000 foreigners from 81 countries are either fighting with the Islamic State or some other radical extremist faction on the ground. ISIL’s bankroll and slick propaganda in jihadist media circles have allowed the organization to attract many of those recruits.
Washington’s claim that roughly 10,000 ISIL fighters have been killed over the first twelve months of the counter-ISIL operation is of little solace given the fact that the CIA’s assessment of ISIL manpower (20,000 to 32,000) is roughly the same as it was when the war began. To put it bluntly: ISIL’s attraction to young Muslims in Europe, Russia, the Central Asian republics and the Middle East is so powerful that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been able to sustain his overall force level despite thousands of coalition airstrikes and billions of dollars spent by the United States, Europe and other members of the sixty-plus member coalition.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Past
ISIL’s proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is not some mysterious figure that popped up in jihadist circles recently. The man has been fighting in the name of jihad for the past decade, first as a religious emir in ISIL’s predecessor organization Al Qaeda in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom and then as the overall commander of the Islamic State of Iraq (another ISIL predecessor group) after U.S. Joint Special Operations Command raided and took out two of Baghdadi’s superiors in 2010. Since that date, Baghdadi has been on the list of specially designated global terrorists, the UN Security Council’s Al-Qaeda sanctions committee, and a prime target for the U.S. counterterrorism community. The United States wants Baghdadi out of action so badly that Washington has offered a $10 million reward [11] for any information that assists in the discovery of his location.
Baghdadi landed himself in a U.S. military prison at Camp Bucca in February 2004 when U.S. forces picked him up in Fallujah while traveling to the home of a Sunni insurgent commander. After spending ten months in U.S. custody, Baghdadi was released and eventually made his way to Damascus in order to complete his doctoral in Islamic studies, which would come in handy in the future as he climbed up the AQI latter. A stint as the Islamic State of Iraq’s Sharia Committee supervisor would help propel him to the very top of the organization when Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Umar al-Baghdadi were killed by U.S. Special Forces.
Since being the emir and caliph of the Islamic State, the organization has regenerated itself from a backwater Sunni militant group ensconced in Mosul by U.S. and Iraqi forces into a worldwide jihadist menace sitting on hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of dollars, ruling an area of Iraq and Syria the size of Indiana.
The Saddam-ISIL connection
Less than a month after U.S. forces drove the rest of Saddam Hussein’s army from Baghdad, the Coalition Provisional Authority that was set up to temporarily administer Iraqi affairs in preparation for elections signed two orders that would, in hindsight, prove to be an accelerant to an anti-American insurgency. Mid- and senior-level members of the Ba’ath Party, regardless of whether they were in the upper echelons of Saddam’s regime, were stripped of their jobs and prevented from holding political office in the new Iraq. The defeated Iraqi army, meanwhile, was disbanded by provisional order—a decision that threw thousands of men out of work, but with their firearms still very much intact.
In hindsight, those CPA orders would have a far more lasting effect. Twelve years later, the Islamic State has tapped into the military talent of Saddam’s former officer corps and in many instances has placed these very same men in key roles of responsibility. ISIL’s campaign to weed out potential informants or troublemakers within its territory has been implemented by former Iraqi army officers—the same officers who were fired from their positions when the United States rolled into Baghdad. An extensive report from Liz Sly of the Washington Post, which includes interviews with several ISIL defectors, captures a scene where mysterious Iraqi men with their faces covered sentence one of their fighters to house arrest. “All of the decision makers are Iraqi,” the defector recounts, “and most of them are former Iraqi officers. The Iraqi officers are in command, and they make the tactics and battle plans.”
Indeed, this account is bolstered by documents that have been picked up by Iraqi forces on the battlefield. One of them—a 31-page study that laid out in intricate military detail how the Islamic State could resurrect itself in Iraq and bolster its strength in Syria—was written by a former Iraqi intelligence officer from Saddam Hussein’s time. ISIL’s recruitment of former Iraqi officers may seem strange given the fact that Saddam Hussein’s regime was commonly considered secular. But for Baghdadi, men who have longstanding military backgrounds are valuable assets that the organization could exploit against a Shia-dominated Iraqi army that is despised by much of Iraq’s Sunni population.
A new way to inspire jihad
Although it is widely documented that tens of thousands of foreign fighters have crossed the Turkey-Syria border in search of the group, Muslims in the West don’t need to travel thousands of miles to become a part of the Islamic State. By opening up its arms to any disenchanted or troubled individual who is willing to sacrifice himself in the name of the caliphate, ISIL has changed the way that future Islamist terrorist works will fight jihad.
For those who are either unable or unwilling to hop on a plane to Turkey and drive to its southern border, young men and women in Europe or the United States can still attract ISIL’s support through acts of individualized violence. In other words, you can be a part of the caliphate without traveling to the caliphate at all.
Lone-wolf terrorism, where a self-radicalized individual who is not a formal member of a terrorist group decides to conduct an attack on his or her own, has become one of the top concerns of the FBI. The Islamic State, however has only made the lone-wolf phenomenon worse by trading respect and membership in the caliphate for an attempted attack on a western target. Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, ISIL’s top spokesman and day-to-day manager, has incited young Muslim men in the West who may be tired of their circumstances to take matters into their own hands. No religious justification is necessary, Adnani argues, because the justification is always there. “Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict. . . . Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling.”
To boil it down: the Islamic State is open for business to anyone who is able to kill a westerner. If the old Al Qaeda under Osama bin Laden was guarded and insular (cherry-picking the most dedicated and elite recruits for admission), the Islamic State under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is adopting a far less discriminatory tactic. Those who are willing to pick up a gun or a knife and kill an American, French or Brit are granted the entry into the organization. A recruit doesn’t need to possess special military training or advanced religious knowledge to become a servant of the caliphate; all that needs to be done is to show the fortitude to kill an infidel.
Daniel R. DePetris is an analyst at Wikistrat, Inc., a geostrategic consulting firm, and a freelance researcher. He has also written for CNN.com, Small Wars Journal and The Diplomat.
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