The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Megathread

[Admiral Yi]

I have a feeling Mosul could be a gigantic clusterfuck. 

[grumbler]

I have a feeling Mosul could be a gigantic clusterfuck.

If they rush the attack for PR/morale purposes, I think that your forebodings will be realized.  It take enormous unit discipline to fight in urban areas, where you are depending on other, unseen, friendly units to do their jobs while you do yours.  It's really easy under those circumstances to conclude that your own small group of guys are taking all the risks, and to say "fuck that, I'm not crossing that street/entering that building until somebody else takes out those shooters."

[OttoVonBismarck]

The real flaw in the IS is that the adherents interviewed in the story all agreed that Baghdadi is the true caliph and successor to Mohammed, except if he does something that they don't like, in which case he isn't even a Muslim.  Not the most firm basis on which to rule.  I think internal strife will collapse the IS before external military pressure does.  The latter is important to maintain, though, as it exacerbates internal strains.

Yeah, real Caliphs held power because of their essentially unquestioned monopoly on force within their borders. It always bugs me when people say stuff like "ISIS controls land containing 8 million people" or "ISIS controls more land than is in the United Kingdom." It completely destroys any meaningful concept of "control." No middle age Caliph "controlled" his land by being hidden 24/7 because he feared death from a drone strike. There are actually few areas that ISIS controls the way anyone actually should use the word "control." Intermittently bullying people into paying "taxes" and stopping truckers when you sneak out of a hiding spot and taking money from them, then sneaking back because you fear air strikes, is very different from the kind of control an actual Caliph exercised over their territory.

The real Caliphs might have theoretically been just as exposed to the unstable base you mention, but of course since they were legitimate rulers with vast power in their own territory they likely would have killed--and quite rapidly, anyone stupid enough to start preaching that the Caliph wasn't a Muslim.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I agree he is saying ISIS cannot exist in exile (or rather, lacking a defined and controlled territory).

I don't think he is correct in this.

Various Muslim groups (admittedly Sh'ite) have, throughout history, adapted to having a "hidden Caliph" where their caliph has died, been murdered, or otherwise ceased to fulfil the requirements of being alive and holding territory, and continued to exist; I do not think it is safe to assume ISIS cannot do something like this.

Certainly, this would change the nature of the movement - but such change is not impossible.

Islamic State is only a meaningful concern because they have a lot of fighters and are killing a lot of people, and have seized some actual territory and intermittently control/operate in a lot more. Take all that away and they aren't materially different from what they were in say, 2011--irrelevant. No different from one of the many dozens of jihadist groups fighting in Syria right now, actually. I don't think the specific ideology of a Caliphate is what attracts Westerners and "true volunteers" (I use that term to denote people who are fully aware of and supportive of the ideology, not those who are just joining to plunder, or joining to avoid being on the wrong end of a gun), it's just the fact that ISIS is "number one." Al-Qaeda used to be number one and got similar international support. Take away their number one status and they are more or less irrelevant. Certainly doesn't fix the region, I predict ISIS is degraded in 3-4 years to the point Al-Qaeda is now, if not worse (actually their actions mean that when they do start to weaken they are likely to be targeted explicitly for massacre and destruction to a higher degree than other groups.) Afterward it's just fractured militant land again, until another group starts to attract attention as the "most powerful." The only thing that stops that is powerful States in the area. Lack of States controlling territory will always breed lawlessness and mayhem.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Heh, does anyone here really believe the Iraqi army will be able to retake Mosul?
Unless those Iraqi brigades are actually Iranian army brigades there's no way it'll happen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/world/battle-to-retake-iraqi-city-looms-as-test-of-obamas-isis-strategy.html?_r=0

I do. They'll have overwhelming air support and are expected to have 25,000 soldiers involved. ISIS controls Mosul with what's believed to be fewer than 2,000 fighters. Likely very quickly they'll occupy almost the entire city, to be frank. Then they'll spend the next 5-6 months fighting an urban guerrilla war. The only way they wouldn't is if the Iraqi Army can't find 25,000 soldiers willing to fight at all--which is possible, but if that's the case the offensive will never get off the ground in the first place. Likely the fanatical Shia militias and the big Iraqi Shia Ayatollahs who have said Shia have an obligation to fight against ISIS may help with this. When most of these guys threw down their guns and took off their uniforms they were unambiguously saying "fuck the Sunnis, we aren't defending them." Likely the 25k they are pulling together are the ones more inclined to be true believers in killing ISIS. Plus some will likely be Sunni as well, who have no reason not to be fighting.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Not really. US marines and army took Fallujah and it was very tough fight, and Mosul is much larger. Though hopefully the Iraqis being trained have more going for them than we may know about. They'll need a lot of urban warfare training and mostly the resolve to stick it out as the going gets very tough. No idea if they'll have enough of that. I guess I can have some confidence though since the Kurds were able to retain their hold on Kobani over many months, with allied air support, so there should be hope for the Iraqis and Kurds combined in Mosul.

The insurgents in Fallujah had about twice as many men as ISIS will have in Mosul. A lot of these discussions also has to get into the nitty gritty of what "winning" looks like. There were parts of Baghdad that during stretches of the occupation for example there was little U.S. military presence and in which it would have been dangerous for a small group of soldiers to travel. Part of the surge was designed to stop basically bunkering down and instead go directly into areas like that to fight the insurgents there. Given the much larger military force they will have it's likely the Iraqi military will seize and fortify some key points throughout Mosul pretty quickly, and very quickly they'll claim a PR victory. It's also then likely you have a very long stretch in which the city is really under no one's control, and the Iraqi military only controls the small areas where it has built hardened defensive positions. I wouldn't be shocked if you see 3-4x as many Iraqi soldiers killed during the lengthy period following the press release victory than you see killed in the "battle" leading up to it.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It's also worth noting the 2nd battle for Fallujah was kind of a watershed moment for the fragmented Iraqi insurgency. It was the last time they really deliberately got into a pitched battle, largely because huge numbers of them died and they recognized that actually engaging to that level would likely deplete them of manpower very quickly. It would be interesting given some of the theorizing about ISIS ideology if the likely loss of fighters they will have in Mosul will make them revert to traditional non-conventional warfare in which they avoid direct engagement. They reportedly lost over 1,000 losing Kobani and I don't see that that has altered their strategy of direct engagement. Which is likely to be part of their downfall, at the end of the day groups like that have a hard time persisting if they aren't willing to go underground. All the big militant groups like that all over the world that have survived for long numbers of years have been the ones that knew when to scurry into the rabbit holes, so to speak.

[citizen k]

My gut tells me there's more than 2,000 ISIS in Mosul. 

[KRonn]

It's also worth noting the 2nd battle for Fallujah was kind of a watershed moment for the fragmented Iraqi insurgency. It was the last time they really deliberately got into a pitched battle, largely because huge numbers of them died and they recognized that actually engaging to that level would likely deplete them of manpower very quickly. It would be interesting given some of the theorizing about ISIS ideology if the likely loss of fighters they will have in Mosul will make them revert to traditional non-conventional warfare in which they avoid direct engagement. They reportedly lost over 1,000 losing Kobani and I don't see that that has altered their strategy of direct engagement. Which is likely to be part of their downfall, at the end of the day groups like that have a hard time persisting if they aren't willing to go underground. All the big militant groups like that all over the world that have survived for long numbers of years have been the ones that knew when to scurry into the rabbit holes, so to speak.

True enough and going underground again would be their next move. But ISIS has gotten to a next level,  a foothold as a nation state so they'll fight to hold onto that.  Though kind of an organized crime state, still they have all kinds of functions, taxes, bureaucracies have been setup, some kinds of councils/leaderships running things in the towns and cities they've taken. They engage in trade such as oil to some extent where they can. They don't want to give that up but I don't see how they can prevail if the Arab world moves against them. Egypt's al Sisi has called for a pan-Arab movement to put down ISIS and that's a huge new development.

ISIS seems to have screwed up badly.  They're really still only a fragile "state" like you point out and they've over extended, pushed too far, and goaded Arab states like Jordan and now Egypt with the video of killings of Egyptian Coptic Christians. If these Sunni nations rise against Sunni ISIS then ISIS loses big time on the propaganda front in their rallying cry that their enemies are the West, Christians and Shia nations/people. To go back underground would be a big blow, especially if that loss is caused in large part by Arab forces, including many Sunnis.

[OttoVonBismarck]

My gut tells me there's more than 2,000 ISIS in Mosul. 

Maybe, but the size of these insurgent groups has historically been really over-estimated. Like I said, best as we could tell there were fewer than 4,000 in Fallujah during the Second Battle of Fallujah, and that was also almost 100% locals. ISIS I think has a far stronger international Islamic recruitment network than the Iraqi insurgents, but in a lot of local regions they won't have nearly the support. During the Iraq War both Sunni and Shia Iraqis were fighting to kill Americans because they viewed them as evil occupiers. In Mosul, a city that is pretty split ethnically and religiously, I don't think ISIS has nearly the same level of support that a more general "anti-occupation" insurgency had. ISIS has a lot of areas of interest, and probably less than 50,000 (claims of 200,000 total militants in ISIS is a good example of media exaggeration about militant size and potency.)

It's worth noting it's believed Sadr's Army alone (only one of many militant groups fighting the American occupation) had some 40,000+ members. ISIS is big for a group with such a wide scope, but a lot of "localized" insurgent forces in Iraq have often been very big too, and the total size of the insurgency against the occupation was much bigger than ISIS is reasonably believed to be at present. So all that is to say I think if you saw 4,000 militants (many of whom were locals and viewed themselves as defending their homeland) rise up in Fallujah I'd be surprised if there were going to be a lot more ISIS fighters than that.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Also as a good example of how the media exaggerates insurgent "control" of territory (I don't know why but this has always bugged me), I once saw a map of Afghanistan with red provinces (this map was originally an infographic of provinces in which the Taliban had attacked Afghan government or coalition forces--which was most of Afghanistan), and the nattering media types were talking about how most of Afghanistan was controlled by the Taliban.

In truth, even Helmand province, which was being called the "capital" of the Taliban at that point, was not really controlled by the Taliban. In what world do you "control" a province when major foreign hostile military bases are in said province? Camp Bastion for example is in Helmand province and at the same time the media was spreading this stupidity it had over 20,000 people stationed there.

In video game terms it'd be like in CK2 when a thieves guild establishes itself in a province saying that the Thieves Guild now owns the province.

[CountDeMoney]

(I don't know why but this has always bugged me),

Don't know why;  in this day and age of control and the iron-fisted management of the message, the media only reports what they're being told by the Pentagon.

[KRonn]

In Iraq on some maps in the media it shows ISIS control as thin ribbons, probably along major roads and the towns/cities along those roads. But the rest of the areas around those ribbons are clear, maybe not very populated or some areas are desert anyway. Yet we see reports that ISIS controls an area larger than the UK or whatever, which really isn't true.

[garbon]

Certainly not their most appalling act but ugh.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iraq-isis-take-sledgehammers-priceless-assyrian-artefacts-mosul-museum-video-1489616

The Islamic State (Isis) has published a video showing militants destroying ancient artefacts in a Mosul museum with sledgehammer and pickaxes.

IS fighters are seen unveiling old statues in the Ninawa museum dating back to the Assyrian empire and then dragging them down to the ground, where they fall into pieces.

Then, they are depicted pounding 3,000-year-old sculptures with hammers until they are completely shattered. Tens of militants are seen using ladders, hammers and drills to destroy every statue in the museum, including a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity dating back to the 7th century BC.

"These ruins that are behind me, they are idols and statues that people in the past used to worship instead of Allah," a bearded IS militant tells the camera, with the immense, partially-demolished winged-bull in the background.

"The so-called Assyrians and Akkadians and others looked to gods for war, agriculture and rain to whom they offered sacrifices," he added, with reference to the ancient civilizations that lived in Mesopotamia for more than 5,000 years in what is now Iraq, eastern Syria and southern Turkey.

"The Prophet Mohammed took down idols with his bare hands when he went into Mecca. We were ordered by our prophet to take down idols and destroy them, and the companions of the prophet did this after this time, when they conquered countries."

"When God orders us to remove and destroy them, it becomes easy for us and we don't care even if they cost millions of dollars," he continues.

A professor at the Archaeology College in Mosul confirmed to the AP that the two sites shown in the video are the city museum and a site known as Nirgal Gate, one of the several gates of the ancient capital of the Assyrian Empire Nineveh.

"I'm totally shocked," Amir al-Jumaili told the AP. "It's a catastrophe. With the destruction of these artifacts, we can no longer be proud of Mosul's civilization."

The video, dated February 2015 from Mosul and posted on a Twitter account used by IS, comes after Mosul's public library director Ghanim al-Ta'an told The Fiscal Times that IS members burned the city public library, which housed more than 8,000 rare old books and manuscripts.

"IS militants bombed the Mosul Public Library. they used improvised explosive devices," he said.

A history professor at University of Mosul told AP that Islamists began destroying the library earlier this month. Another report said 2,000 books were seen being loaded into pickup tracks.

Can't speak to the video itself as like with all their other videos, I ain't watching.

[Admiral Yi]

"When God orders us to remove and destroy them, it becomes easy for us and we don't care even if they cost millions of dollars," he continues.

"It's hard to fence giant stone statues."