The Islamic State’s reemergence and success has caused considerable discussion regarding how an insurgent organization, once pushed to the edges of society has managed to successfully transform itself into an organization that controls territory, attracts recruits from around the world, and continues to make gains against other rebel groups and national armies. We would argue that a large piece of this puzzle is the ability of this organization to learn from the past and implement changes that allow
235 Harmony Document, SOCOM-2012-0000017-HT, 4.
236 Siobhan Gorman, Nour Malas, and Matt Bradley, “Brutal Efficiency: The Secret to Islamic State's Success,” Wall Street Journal, 3 September 2014; Caris and Reynolds, 14.
237 “ISIS' mass executions of Sunni men, women and children in Iraq continues,” CBS News, 2 November 2014.
238 Kirk Semple, “Wary Tribal Alliances, Born of Necessity, Offer Hope in Iraq,” New York Times, 6 October 2014; Suadad al-Salhy, “Iraq's Sunnis ready to fight IS group,” Al-Jazeera, 31 August 2014.
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them to attempt to avoid repeating previous mistakes. At the same time, another key to the success of the IS is its ability to leverage its capabilities in different areas in order to extract the maximum benefit possible from each of its activities. We provide several examples of this phenomenon here as a way to tie the discussion of the IS’s activities together.
One of the areas that have not received much public attention is the strides that the IS has made designing and developing intelligence practices to assist its military, financial, and governance activities. From the personal experiences of some Iraqi citizens, we know that they have been investigating individuals’ backgrounds to identify people living within their territory who are not Sunni.239 One helpful aspect in conducting these operations has been their ability to exploit the military and financial side of their operations for derogatory information on individuals whom they later target in an effort to strengthen governance by removing potential threats.
For instance, in one of the group’s propaganda videos, Sounds of the Swords Clashing Part 4, which appeared in May 2014, ISIL fighters are shown manning a checkpoint in an effort to search for people who they would consider to be a threat.240 As the video progresses, the fighters are shown checking the names of occupants of cars against a database contained on a laptop computer. It is explained that the database contains names of individuals who were either Arab Sunnis who fought against the ISIL or were other collaborators. While it is not explicitly stated where the information on this database came from, there are a number of anecdotes that suggest that the group uses material taken in military operations and captured financial records (deposits, contracts, etc.) to populate this database.241 These efforts that seek to fuse intelligence gains in one area of their activities to another are a sobering reminder about the capabilities of the IS.
In trying to govern their territory more effectively, the IS has also tried to learn from lessons of the past in which they may have emphasized the military side of the organization to the exclusion of other activities. One problem that was previously identified with the ISI in 2006–2007 was a lack of ability to match incoming foreigners to
239 Interviews with some Iraqi citizens, June 2014.
240 See Price, Milton, al-`Ubaydi (2014).
241 For instance, the much-publicized raid on the Central Bank in Mosul has been suggested as a source of intelligence information. Interview with Charles Seidel, October 2014.
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jobs appropriate for their skills.242 For example, one foreign fighter with experience counterfeiting was prevented from using his skill to the betterment of the organization, eventually being killed by a sniper after at least five months of sitting idle. In the limited evidence that has emerged, the IS has been very calculating in its usage of incoming foreigners, placing individuals with important governance skills in offices instead of on the front lines. In al-Raqqa, the head of the telecommunication sector reportedly holds a relevant Ph.D. from Tunisia.243 Recognizing the need for governance, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made a call in late June 2014 for “scholars, the judges, as well as people with military, administrative, and service expertise, and medical doctors and engineers of all different specializations and fields” to migrate to the IS.244 Other reporting has corroborated both the call for skilled foreigners and the IS’s use of them in important governance positions.245
The IS has also utilized military operations to strengthen its hand in governance. For instance, when the IS was seeking to make military gains in Mosul in 2014, it was reported that they relied to a certain extent on alliances with former Iraqi Ba’athist military officers.246 Later, other sources reported that after taking over Mosul, some of those military officers thought they could take advantage of the chaos to establish themselves as governing figures. This was contrary to the governance strategy of the IS, which quickly rounded up these individuals and executed them.247 If this information is accurate, it shows the danger to groups of allying with and helping the IS. It also shows how the IS is willing to use violence to eliminate threats to its ability to govern.
One of the most visible areas in which the IS is effective is in leveraging its media organization for gains in other areas. There is very little that happens within the territory controlled by the IS that does not have a media component to it. This allows
242 Harmony Document, NMEC-2007-612449, “An Analysis of the State of ISI,” 7-8.
243 Mariam Karouny, “Life under Isis: For residents of Raqqa is this really a caliphate worse than death?,”
Independent, 5 September 2014.
244 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, “A Message to the Mujahidin and the Muslim Umma,” posted to the al-I`tisam official Twitter page, 7 July 2014.
245 Anonymous and Ben Hubbard, “Life in a Jihadist Capital: Order with a Darker Side,” New York Times, 23 July 2014. For more details on the roles of foreign fighters in governance under the IS, see Caris and Reynolds, 23-24.
246 On the on-again, off-again alliance between the Ba’athists and the IS, see Tim Arango, “Uneasy Alliance Gives Insurgents an Edge in Iraq,” New York Times, 18 June 2014 and “Islamic State rounds up ex-Baathists to eliminate potential rivals in Iraq's Mosul,” Reuters, 8 July 2014.
247 Interview with Charles Siedel, October 2014.
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the IS to maximize the value it extracts from all of these activities. Hence, tactical operations to take out key targets not only have kinetic value, but also psychological value once the footage of the operation is publicized to a wider audience.248 Efforts to build roads and improve schools not only benefit the local population, but serve as signals to outsiders of the viability of the IS. This effective media organization allows the IS to select the good and omit the bad in the image it portrays. However, it is clear from our brief discussion here that there are multiple failures of the IS across its varied activities, especially governance. Highlighting these failures is an important part of diminishing the IS’s appeal.
Finally, perhaps the most overlooked observation is the fact that the IS blends its activities at all. There is no doubt that the IS carries out a large number of attacks, many against civilians. In this sense, the IS carries out activities traditionally associated with a terrorist organization. However, it also carries out a large number of operations against military and government forces in both Iraq and Syria. In addition to these operations, it also has set itself up as the governing authority in territory that it has captured and held. The attacking of military targets and the setting up of governance structures are activities much more akin to those conducted by an insurgent organization, as opposed to a terrorist organization. Recognizing that the IS is, in large measure, an insurgency that uses terrorism in addition to other activities, is an important step in creating policies that deal with it.249
248 See Price, Milton, al-`Ubaydi (2014).
249 For a greater discussion on the importance of distinguishing terrorism from insurgency, see Assaf Moghadam, Ronit Berger, and Polina Beliakova, “Say Terrorist, Think Insurgent: Labeling and Analyzing Contemporary Terrorist Actors,” Perspectives on Terrorism 8, no. 5 (2014), 2-17.
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