“Strategy is a field where truth is sought in the pursuit of viable solutions.” – Bernard Brodie[1]
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) appears in public media to be a terrorist organization bent on death and destruction. The beheading of aid-workers, the immolation of a Jordanian air force pilot, and the massacre of 250 Syrian soldiers—to name but a few instances of horror—lead the casual observer to conclude that the goal of the organization is death; that ISIS is a nihilistic organization at its core.[2] Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. ISIS is a strategic actor, with a clear goal. As the Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote nearly two centuries ago (1832), “ no one starts a war – or rather, no one in his senses out to do so – without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it [sic].”[3] The international community, however, seems relatively perplexed about the exact nature of ISIS’ goal, perhaps viewing ISIS’ violence as evidence that the organization is simply a bunch of psychopaths that are “out of their mind” as Clausewitz put it. The confusion over ISIS’ motivations are best illustrated by Major General Michael Nagata’s statement that the United States was not sure what it was dealing with: “We have not defeated the idea…we do not even understand the idea [sic].”[4] Not understanding the idea behind ISIS is highly problematic because a failure to understand ISIS means that defeating ISIS is impossible. However, deducing the goals of ISIS and the strategic logic that flows from those goals is not impossible. ISIS began as an insurgent organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq, following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. It has since morphed into a powerful state-like actor that is reshaping the Middle East. ISIS makes extensive use of modern communication technologies to profile its actions and to recruit immigrants from the west to live in, and fight for, the new caliphate. These communications, coupled with the frequent pronouncements from ISIS leadership, allow the analyst to determine the political objectives driving the organization and the interpretation of ISIS strategy. In doing so, a counter strategy can be formulated.
The paper first provides a brief overview on strategy and strategic thinking. A complete study of strategy is beyond the scope of this paper, however, in order to provide baseline knowledge for every reader a clear understanding and definition and strategy are provided. Next the paper turns to a study of ISIS’ ideology with respect to religious belief is profiled as it relates to strategic goals and tactical innovation within ISIS, including recruitment from the Western world. Finally, the paper concludes with a set of recommendations that the international community may consider implementing to thwart ISIS’ objectives.
Source: Institute for the Study of War
STRATEGY: ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS
The goal of any strategy is to achieve an objective. In the realm of military studies, strategy is how one fights and wins wars. War at its most basic form is an organized effort, involving military force, wielded by a unitary actor to achieve a political objective. War, while it may involve slaughter, is not simply slaughter. War, although seemingly chaotic and confused, is not chaos. The pursuit of a political objective differentiates war from other forms of violence. Classical definitions of war often get hung up on the idea of war as a military conflict between two states; however, this is an overly simplistic interpretation. War has indeed been waged predominately by states in the modern world (1648-present). However, empires, subnational groups, and confederations have also all waged war. War translates military effort into political outcome in a rational manner. An irrational enemy should be easily defeated, thus, it is best to assume that the opponent is a rational actor, pursuing its objectives in rational manner. This is certainly the case with ISIS, as this paper will detail.
Through the course of modern history strategists have attempted to make war more scientific in order to control war. This debate is discussed in the writings of Prussian generals Clausewitz and Jomini. For Clausewitz, war was an art, for Jomini, it could be deduced to science.[5] The United States military, while teaching Clausewitz and claiming to be informed by his writings, is a military much more in the mold of Jomini.[6] The western world, but the United States in particular, has often believed that technology removes the traditional constraints on how war is waged.[7] As Owens, a great proponent of the ‘revolution in military affairs,’ wrote back in 1995:
“theorists from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz have pointed out the value of understanding one’s enemies and the geographical-political-social-context in which they operate. What is different, however, is that some technologies – available now or soon – will give the United States an edge that approaches omniscience, at least relative to any potential opponent [sic].”[8]
This sort of ‘strategic’ thinking led to the catastrophes that were the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and the seemingly intractable conflict against the Taliban and other anti-state elements in Afghanistan from 2001-2015. Technology can provide innumerable advantages, but it is no substitute for sound strategic thinking and strategy that acknowledges that technology is not a panacea for the fog of war.
The first critical element that the strategist must address is the nature of war. The nature of war is dynamic and is contingent on the belligerents. The nature of war for Clausewitz was deduced through a study of both sides’ people, government, militaries, and the attitudes of allies and neutral actors—it was an act he thought ‘colossal’ and ‘impossible’.[9] This is why, in the end, Clausewitz believed war to be more art, than science. Just as important as understanding the enemy is to understand one’s own comparative advantage. The dominant characteristics of the actors are critical, since, “out of these characteristics a certain center of gravity develops, the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends.”[10] It is against the enemies’ ‘center of gravity’ that energies must be directed. Clausewitz identified a series of ordered centers of gravity—the military, the capitol city, the leadership, public opinion—but in reality it is far more difficult to discern the center of gravity.
Clausewitz believed that war was animated by three variables: violence, hatred, and enmity, each of which were subject to ‘chance’ and ‘probability’ and must be subsumed by rationality.[11] Each of these variables corresponds to an element in society—the government, the military, and the people. ISIS is a terrorist organization, akin to Al Qaeda. ISIS emerged from a terrorist organization – Al Qaeda in Iraq, but transformed with the occupation of territory in Syria and Northern Iraq into the caliphate. The establishment of a territorially defined caliphate is critical for ISIS recruitment. Since, as Clausewitz notes the passion for war is found with the people—motivated to fight, and if need be, die for their ‘state’. The military deals with probability and chance, since it is the soldier on the ground that deals with the ever-changing tactical reality of war, the ‘friction’ of war as Clausewitz labeled it. Finally, it is for the government to be reasonable—to assess objectives against resources in the pursuit of the strategic objective.
ISIS AS A STRATEGIC ACTOR
ISIS is not Al Qaeda. It is not Al Qaeda in Iraq. It is not the Muslim Brotherhood. It is not Hamas. It is not Hezbollah. There is a tendency in the western world to view jihadism as monolithic and as a pan-Muslim problem. This is incorrect. While Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network have influenced many new jihadi groups—including ISIS—these organizations are not necessarily linked, and they are most certainly not hierarchically organized. In fact, there appear to be serious rifts between ISIS and Al Qaeda.[12] This is important because each of these groups are organized differently and have different objectives—conflating them is highly detrimental since each have different strategic objectives and thus different strategies, which entail a need for differing counter-strategies. Al Qaeda, since its emergence in the late 1990s, has operated as a diffuse network of relatively autonomous cells. Al Qaeda is transnational, and tends to operate through a ‘franchise’ system, rather than direct control. The organization—although active in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kenya, Tanzania, and the United States—has no territorial base making it a fluid, post-modern entity.
ISIS, on the other hand, is a hierarchical organization composed of both civil and military units directly attached to a specified territory. Currently, the zone under ISIS administration spans from Aleppo in northwestern Syria to Raqqa and across to Haditha in central Iraq and then on towards Baji in northeastern Iraq. This is a sizeable piece of territory, with nearly eight million inhabitants. The subjugation of this territory enabled ISIS to declare a new Islamic caliphate and to move jihad from a defensive position, to an offensive one. The establishment of the caliphate is critical to the long-term strategy of ISIS, which rests on building political and religious authority to perpetuate the goals of the organization. Although western policy-makers and moderate Islamic leaders have tripped over themselves to describe the Islamic state as ‘un-Islamic’ in events to out politically correct each other, the reality is that the goals, and therefore strategy, of ISIS is deeply rooted in Islam. This is not meant pejoratively. To deny that the Crusades were an ‘un-Christian’ endeavor would be equally ludicrous. It is only in understanding how ISIS leaders interpret Islam that their objectives and strategy can be inferred.
In a nutshell, ISIS is a Sunni Salafist group (derived from the Arabic: al salaf al salih, or “pious forefathers.” Salafis believe that the actions of the prophet and his early followers are the template for all actions from war to governance to home life.[13] ISIS believes in a very strict interpretation of the Koran, extensively utilizing a precept found in the Koran called takfir (roughly ‘accusation of disbelief’). The practice of takfir identifies one as an apostate and infidel, a crime punishable by death.[14] What some Muslims regard merely as sins—wearing western clothes or voting in an election—ISIS sees as a repudiation of the Prophet’s teachings and aposty. Shiites are also all apostates, since Shia Islam is an innovation on Sunni teachings and interpretation of the Koran. The goal therefore is not just the establishment of an Islamic state, but ultimately salvation through the Sunni Salafist caliphate.
These religious beliefs make ISIS strategically susceptible to the use of military force in ways that Al Qaeda is not. According to Sunni law, to be a caliph a man must be moral and of good physical and mental health. He must also possess authority because authority in this legal code is derived from the enforcement of Islamic law on a given territory.[15] Without territory, there can be no caliph and caliphate. The establishment of the caliphate on 29 June 2014 was of prime importance to ISIS and it started a virtuous cycle, in their view.[16] Pious Muslims should want to live in the caliphate, thus they should (and have been) immigrating to the caliphate. This has provided ISIS with a flood of ‘colonists’ as well as new fighters. Upwards of half the ISIS military force is estimated to be from outside of Iraq and Syria. The US government estimates that around 1,000 new foreign fighters arrive in the region each month.[17] The CIA estimates 20,000-30,000 soldiers, 15,000 are ‘foreign’ recruits, mainly from Tunisia and Saudi Arabia (and other neighboring countries) but from as far afield as North America, Europe and Russia.[18] Successful recruitment of individuals full of ‘passion’ for Baghdadi’s dream to establish, and now expand the caliphate, has provided ISIS with ample military manpower that the organization has effectively utilized to advance military victories in Mosul, Raqqa, Ramadi, Tikrit and Fallujah.[19]
Military success on the ground has been critical to the success of ISIS, not in the least because it skillfully utilizes military victories and graphic murders, to create a vibrant social media image.[20] Twitter has been an important part of this effort; in fact, ISIS actually has an official app in Arabic called “The Dawn of Glad Tidings” generally known as Dawn. On the day ISIS marched into Mosul, there were over 40,000 tweets. The group uses hashtagging to amplify the impact of ISIS tweets and tweets related to ISIS objectives and strategy. ISIS is not alone is using social media, but is far more adept than its nearest competitor Jabhat al-Nusra, a branch of Al Qaeda active in Syria. Jabhat is hashtagged (i.e. #jabhat) on average 2,500-5,000 per day, whereas ISIS routinely hovers around 10,000 hashtag associations per day. The use of a hastag (#) with a key word, in this case Jabhat, then prompts the ‘tweet’ a short message including the hastag to appear in the ‘news’ feeds of users following that topic (an example tweet might be: “#Jabahat less popular on social media than #ISIS”).[21] The best study of the ISIS in the social media environment based around twitter, which is known as the ‘twitterverse’ (which means ‘twitter universe’) is from the Brookings Institution’s “ISIS Twitter Census” completed in March 2015. Among the key findings of the report are:
- From September through December 2014, the authors estimate that at least 46,000 Twitter accounts were used by ISIS supporters, although not all of them were active at the same time.
- Typical ISIS supporters were located within the organization’s territories in Syria and Iraq, as well as in regions contested by ISIS. Hundreds of ISIS-supporting accounts sent tweets with location metadata embedded.
- Almost one in five ISIS supporters selected English as their primary language when using Twitter. Three quarters selected Arabic.
- ISIS-supporting accounts had an average of about 1,000 followers each, considerably higher than an ordinary Twitter user. ISIS-supporting accounts were also considerably more active than non-supporting users.
- A minimum of 1,000 ISIS-supporting accounts were suspended by Twitter between September and December 2014. Accounts that tweeted most often and had the most followers were most likely to be suspended.
- Much of ISIS’s social media success can be attributed to a relatively small group of hyperactive users, numbering between 500 and 2,000 accounts, which tweet in concentrated bursts of high volume.[22]
The social media strategy of ISIS, however, is not just a tool of recruitment—it is also a sophisticated tool to advance military objectives. ISIS does not profile mass killings, beheadings, and immolation to simply disgust people. Instead, these graphic images inspire fear across the Middle East, that psychologically ‘soften up’ future opponents. Capitulation to ISIS may be seen as a better option than fighting. After all ISIS allows Christians living in ISIS territory to remain provided they do not resist, recognize their subjugation, and that they pay a special tax (jizya)—this is a longstanding Koranic tradition that stretches back to earlier caliphates.[23] There is no need to wage war and slaughter once those conquered subjugate themselves (one need not even convert). As such, the use of social media is an attempt to win battles even before they begin, as the Chinese strategic thinker Sun Tzu wrote, “to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”[24] ISIS also issues a range of publications in various languages including English, Russian, German, and French. Critical to these efforts are the English-language digital magazine Dabiq. Dabiq provides the intellectual foundations that legitimate the Caliphate and bring it beyond simply being a terrorist organization. Dabiq creates a narrative space for the ISIS caliphate in an effort to foment recruitment to the region.[25]
Aside from waging war online and on the ground, ISIS, like any bureaucratic state entity, has a number of mundane daily administrative concerns and therefore requires vast financial assets.[26] There are approximately eight million people living in ISIS administered lands in Iraq and Syria. With a military upwards of 30,000 troops there are salaries to be paid, munitions to be purchased, and machinery to be serviced. ISIS generates upwards of six million US dollars per day through the sale of energy assets in the local area.[27] The black-market nature of the ISIS economy makes it difficult for western governments to use traditional international financial tools that function in the legal global economy to cripple funding to the Islamic State. ISIS also receives funds from private wealthy donors across the Middle East. Saudi Arabia only made it illegal in 2013 to give donations to organization such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. Money, however, continues to flow from the Gulf, in particular from Kuwait and Qatar.[28] The US Treasury estimated that hundreds of millions of dollars from Kuwaiti donors alone have flooded into ISIS coffers.[29] As the Undersecretary of the Treasury David Cohen put it:
“Our [the United States] ally Kuwait has become the epicenter of fundraising for terrorist groups in Syria. A number of Kuwaiti fundraisers exploit the charitable impulses of unwitting donors by soliciting humanitarian donations from both inside and outside the country, cloaking their efforts in humanitarian garb, but diverting those funds to extremist groups in Syria. Meanwhile, donors who already harbor sympathies for Syrian extremists have found in Kuwait fundraisers who openly advertise their ability to move funds to fighters in Syria.”[30]
Funds generated by the ISIS state and external financial support are required to help ensure the survival of the caliphate and to gird further expansion.
ISIS is motivated by an apocalyptic scenario, but this does not mean that the organization is not also concerned by daily issues such as logistics, food, fuel and administration of areas under ISIS control. It may seem practical to dismiss ISIS ultimate strategic goal—of a decisive battle between the Islamic world (ISIS) and the rest—as nonsensical. It does not matter whether western leaders believe this. Just because one does not subscribe to ISIS’ vision of the world is not a reason to discount how this ISIS goal relates to strategy. Some evangelical Christians in the United States, for example, support Israel because they believe the presence of the Jewish state is one of the prerequisite for the Apocalypse. To non-religious (or more moderate) outsiders, both beliefs may seem absurd, but they cannot be discounted as actual drivers for policy and strategy to each respective party.[31] Most importantly, the future target of ISIS is expansion to contiguous lands, unlike Al Qaeda, which focused on the ‘far away’ enemy as a way to foment change in the Middle East.[32] This does not mean that western governments can forgo robust intelligence, border control, and proactive special operations to stem terrorist strikes at home. However, the argument that ISIS is determined to overthrow the western world should not be over-inflated.
Thinking about ISIS’ strategy one must accept that ISIS is a rational, strategic actor as outlined above. ISIS is not a nihilistic organization and they are not bent (necessarily) on global conquest and the destruction of the west. The short-to-medium term goal of the organization is based on territorial occupation in the Middle East. To reach this goal ISIS’ will focus on expansion of the new caliphate into lands contiguous to territory already held in Iraq and Syria. The territory currently governed by ISIS is integral to the survival of the regime—it is what differentiates it from network, non-state terrorist actors such as Al Qaeda and it provides legitimacy to Al-Baghdadi and ISIS that their rivals, such as Jabhat lack. Therefore maintaining this territory is critical for ISIS and expanding it is a close second. The caliphate provides the rationale for ISIS recruitment, which in turn provides the human resources necessary to fight a wider war to expand the caliphate and to protect territory already under ISIS control. The most critical center of gravity then is territory. Territory provides ISIS with legitimacy, which helps recruitment and provides the ability to fund the ISIS state and war. Thus, unlike de-territorialized networked actors like Al-Qaeda, ISIS must be dismantled on the ground. Allowing ISIS to maintain control of physical territory in the Middle East will only allow the cancer to grow, and eventually expand.
DEFEATING ISIS
ISIS, like any actor, can be defeated. The question is: how best can the international community defeat ISIS? Knowing that ISIS’ center of gravity comes from their occupation of physical territory means that it is possible to devise a strategy that addresses this issue. ISIS is only the most recent iteration of a problem that has long endured in the Middle East: the search for a successful governance template. In the post-colonial world, the Islamic countries in the Middle East have been torn between monarchical leadership and revolutions based on a Marxist-Leninist template. While the monarchies hang on to power, the failure of the Marist-Leninist projects has been fulfilled with the rise of political Islam. ISIS is the latest iteration in this effort and has the most impact. There are two viable options to defeat ISIS—direct ground involvement or containment. Max Boot, William Kristol, and Frederick Kagan, among others, have advocated direct intervention by US troops.[33]
These individuals argue that the international community and US should place troops on the ground to defeat ISIS because US allies in the region, such as Iraq and Jordan, are militarily weak. Further, they argue that using US airpower in conjunction with Iranian ground forces (or Iranian supported counter-ISIS insurgents) makes the US Air Force a de facto wing of the Iranian military and only strengthens Iran. There is no escaping the reality that Iran is growing in strength, a reality that was enabled by the destruction of Iraq in 2003 (an event that also lead to the development of ISIS). While the US and its partners need to continue to work with Iran to manage the Iranian nuclear program, they also need to coordinate Iranian actions with wider international moves. Iran is the eastern border to ISIS controlled Iraq and ‘apostate’ Shia Iran will be, over time, a target for ISIS. If the US could work with Stalin to defeat Hitler, the question must be asked: is working with Iran to defeat ISIS really impossible? The answer is clearly no, but American domestic politics complicate matters, as does Iranian intransigence. It is in the Iranian national interest to see ISIS defeated. But Tehran will also be angling at every opportunity to fill the vacuum left behind by ISIS. This is of course a huge risk for the Americans—but it is one that perhaps Washington needs to take. The Obama Administration hopes that a nuclear deal with Iran will increase the space for better US-Iranian relations, but if the agreement fails, it will be difficult to see how Washington can capitalize on what will probably be gains for Tehran.
Putting US troops on the ground sounds like an easy solution, but it is highly problematic. US ground troops would only provide a center of gravity on the ground that ISIS could use to further recruitment while also bogging down and draining US forces. It is a variation of the ‘bait and bleed’ strategy, known as ‘bloodletting’. ISIS will turn American conventional military strength into a weakness, draining US finances and military resources, in a protracted war akin to the one seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. The presence of American or NATO troops would inflame the passions of believers in the caliphate, accentuating recruitment, and create a negative cycle that the US will find impossible to dismantle. It would be far more effective for the US to use airpower and to focus on containment of ISIS whilst pushing regional allies to put troops on the ground. American, Canadian or European military forces on the ground dis-incentivizes the most proximate US allies in the region—Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait—from doing more militarily to fortify themselves against ISIS. There can be no mistaking the fact that ultimately the destruction of ISIS will come only with ground troops – airpower alone cannot defeat ISIS.
A strategy of containment against ISIS will work because ISIS at its core is a contradiction. The international system is designed around the state. It is ‘inter’-national in that states engage with one and other. For a single state to exist outside of the system will be extremely difficult. ISIS seeks to abstain from the international community, unlike other Islamist movements in Iran or Afghanistan, for example, which sought international recognition and engagement with the wider world despite their domestic policies. This isolation will make the financial life of ISIS difficult, especially if the international community is increasingly able to shut down access to the resources required to administer a country—food, mechanical equipment, parts, etc.[34] Just as sanctions have forced Iran to the negotiating table, cutting ISIS off from the material world will have a similar effect. The international community has made some headway in this regard, but more can be done.[35] There are limited options regarding financing of the Islamic state, since state income relies mainly on black-market sales. But the US and its allies can further ‘incentivize’ states in the Gulf that fail to shut down private funding to ISIS. This hits directly against ISIS administration of the caliphate and erodes the organization’s attempt to be a legitimate ‘state-like’ actor, undermining the faith of those under ISIS ‘governance’. This process is already slowly beginning.[36]
The next part of a containment policy is to shore up the border-states to ISIS. The legitimacy of ISIS as a movement is linked to its political vision and the successful administration of the caliphate. Since the expansion of the caliphate into all lands of the disbelievers is mandated through ISIS’ reading of the Koran, one can expect that ISIS will continue to pressure neighbours that it regards as apostates, with their next target most certainly being Baghdad. Denying ISIS the opportunity to expand, while strangling the existing state of resources, creates a pressure to destabilize the state both logistically and also politically. There is little political appetite in the West to funnel more money into Iraq, but a failure to shore up the Iraqi government will have worse longer-term repercussions. Furthermore, preventing ISIS from taking new cities and targets will also starve the organization of the military hardware required to continue its offensive campaigns (and for self-defense). The US cannot fight Baghdad’s war for it, but the US and NATO allies and partners such as Australia, should dispatch additional Special Forces and trainers to Iraq. Further professionalization of Iraqi forces will help them to win battles and to better secure territory after victories. The recent victory in Tikrit is theoretically a win for Iraq, but the reality is that it came on the back of mainly Sunni militias. The problem here is that this might lead to further factionalism in Iraq, which is what allowed ISIS to develop and take root in Iraq in the first place.
The international community must also accept that to effectively contain ISIS it must work with President Assad in Syria—but only to a limited extent. The Syrian Army is stronger than the Iraqi military and provides the western bulwark against ISIS. It is a matter of lesser evils, and while repugnant, working with Damascus is integral to defeating ISIS in the medium-to-long term. However, this is not to say that US goals of regime change in Syria are incorrect—indeed US allies in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, will only push out ISIS if it comes with the removal of Assad. This will require a careful balancing act, but the priority should first be the defeat of ISIS.
The bulk of the US, Canadian and European contribution to the campaign against ISIS should come from C4ISR assets, Special Forces units, trainers and airpower. Strengthened allied ground forces, however, will be necessary as airpower will be of limited effect. The challenge in this case is that using airpower against cities is counterproductive and finding targets outside of the cities is difficult. Robust airpower should be on hand, but bombing for the sake of bombing is not productive.
The refusal to put extensive US troops on the ground defies the opportunity for ISIS to whip up support in the Umma, the Muslim global community, for expat fighters to come defend the caliphate. The strengthening of ISIS’ neighboring militaries will offer more friction for the ISIS military to confront and a stranglehold on the ability of ISIS to provide ‘services’ to ISIS administered lands undermines the legitimacy of the caliphate and consequently its ability to wage offensive jihad. As such, the ISIS government will be forced to make rational decisions to focus on internal betterment of the ISIS state or offensive operations. Continued operations will destroy the caliphate since the internal socio-political organization will collapse; on the other hand, a focus on just the domestic administration eviscerates the logic of the ISIS caliphate, undermining its ability to recruit and thus expand.
Conclusion
ISIS is an organization riddled with contradictions. It cannot exist independent of the world it seeks to counteract. Unlike Al Qaeda, a networked and amorphous organization, ISIS is bound to territory and it is from that territory that it derives its lifeblood. If the international community can avoid taking the bait by putting troops on the ground, and instead maintains a robust strategy of containment, coupled with action on the ground by regional allies. ISIS, in time, will fail. To some this may seem like a slow, ponderous process, but the US has managed to live with a much larger and more direct threat from the Soviet Union for nearly 45 years. When is it so imperative to fight a hot war with ISIS, when a lukewarm one will do?
