Category Archives: Failed foreign policy

Mapping Russian Aggressions

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Assad needs friends, where Iran and Russia are ready to help the Syrian regime. But there is the NATO component, where Russia is threatening more. Where is the White House? Where is the State Department? Where are the ambassadors or the National Security Council?

The Islamic State jihadist group has added to the pressure by attacking government-held areas in central Syria. Its most recent attack was on ancient Palmyra. 

HEZBOLLAH FIGHTS IN NEW AREAS

Noting that “the situation is trending less favorably for the regime”, a top U.S. military officer said on May 8 he would look to the negotiating table if he were in Assad’s shoes.

Yet the setbacks do not appear to have forced a change in strategy on the part of Assad or his most important allies, Iran and Russia.

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — About 600 U.S. and Georgian troops are conducting joint exercises aimed at training the armed forces of the former Soviet republic for participation in the NATO Response Force.

Col. Michael Foster, commander of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade, said the exercises are “an absolutely unique opportunity for us” and “the way we are going to be fighting in the future.”

Georgia has aspirations of joining NATO and contributed troops to the NATO-led military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. List of Russian military incursions.

Image result for map suspected russian military incursions uk telegraph

Mapped: Just how many incursions into Nato airspace has Russian military made?

The number of Russian military flights probing Nato airspace has increased. In this map, the Telegraph maps the latest provocative operations, click on a submarine or plane to find out more information

RAF Typhoons were scrambled to intercept two Russian long-range bombers off northern Scotland on Wednesday, in the latest in a series of provocative operations by the country’s air force.

 

As tensions between Nato and Russia have worsened over the Ukraine crisis, Moscow has significantly increased the number of military flights probing Nato airspace – and submarine activity probing its waters.

The number of interceptions over the Baltic States trebled last year and Nato members including Britain have stepped up air policing support in the area.

Russia’s TU-95 Bear bombers – strategic bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons – make probing flights towards UK airspace about once a month.

The Ministry of Defence says the Russian bombers have never violated Britain’s sovereign airspace, which extends 12 nautical miles from the coast, and publicly regards them as more of a routine nuisance than a threat.

But defence officials have expressed mounting concern over the nature of the flights. Michael Fallon, the then-defence secretary, said the appearance of Bear bombers over the Channel in February marked the first time they had been seen in that area “since the height of the Cold War.”

“We had to scramble jets very quickly to see them off,” he said.

Eyeing Islamists After they Leave the U.S.

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The trick words for foreign nationals to use to gain entry into the United States are refugee or asylum. That blasted ‘hearts and minds’ agenda is also married to another term, olive-branch.

Rather than deal with the root causes of failed nations such as Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Mexico, Syria and Libya which is the main charter of the United Nations Human Rights Council and Security Council, the destruction is being transferred to other Western countries by UN edict.

The United Nations is leading the charge and the State Department is helping by using the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Several countries are buckling to the demands of the United Nations. The United States is scheduled to take in 2000 Syrians, but watch that number, these are slippery characters we have at the UN and at the State Department.

The matter of Islamists in the United States for education, jobs or just visiting and then traveling to the Middle East is not a condition where we say, good riddance, we are likely to see or battle them at another time.

Those sympathetic soldiers in America learning from mosque sermons are told to learn from Anwar al-awlaki, now dead but his lectures and CD series remain on the internet for more learning. This is the challenge de jour for the FBI where cultivating communications from the U.S. to al Qaeda and or ISIS and even Boko Haram is leading the indictments across the country.

When those Pakistanis, Arabs, Somalis, Indians or even Chinese (Uighurs) have a United States connection by moving here and then gaining naturalized citizenship only to travel to countries of origination still pose robust terror issues. Some include al-walaki, Omar Hammami and Douglas McCain. An important case in point is Ahmed Farooq, born in Brooklyn, New York.

One of many remedies is to no longer allow entry into the United States under any kind of visa or by refugee/asylum request for at least three years or more.

The Unknown American Al-Qaeda Operative

Since 2009, “Ustad” Ahmed Farooq had been the public face of Al Qaeda in Pakistan, serving as the terror group’s chief Urdu-language propagandist, later being discussed as a potential nominee to the Shura Council of Al Qaeda central, and, most recently, serving as deputy leader of the group’s South Asia affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).

But it was only this April, after his death in a January 2015 drone attack was acknowledged by Al Qaeda and U.S. officials, that his real name, dual U.S. nationality, and even his face (which was blurred in previous videos) were publicly revealed. It may have been to obscure the fact that Ahmed Farooq was really Raja Mohammad Salman, the graduate of an elite Pakistani military prep school whose father was a well-known Pakistani international relations professor and whose mother was a former parliamentarian nominated by a major Islamist party.

An American in Name Only

Farooq was American by circumstance. He was born in Brooklyn between 1979 and 1981, while his father, Raja Ehsan Aziz, who lived in the United States for seven years, was a graduate student at Columbia University. A Washington Post reporter suggests he was born in 1979 or 1980, but Pakistani government records state he was born in 1981.

It was unnamed American officials who revealed to the press after Farooq’s death that he was an American citizen. Farooq undoubtedly knew of his birth in the United States, but it was not mentioned in any public statements by him, Al Qaeda, or other jihadists. And he either obscured his American citizenship or was unaware of it. His mother, Amira Ehsan, claimed in a 2009 interview that her husband neither sought American citizenship for himself, nor applied for it for his son.

In Farooq’s early childhood, the family moved back to Pakistan—a Pakistan that was being radically reshaped by a military ruler, General Zia-ul-Haq, whose Islamization campaign at home and support of the Afghan war fought next door gave birth to a generation of Pakistanis with dreams of making the country—and region—an Islamic utopia. It’s this Pakistan, not America, in which his family seems to have gotten caught up in and ultimately shaped Farooq.

Islamist, Elite Family

Farooq’s father briefly served in Pakistan’s Foreign Service. He later joined the prestigious Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, where he was a professor in the International Relations Department for two decades. In the 1980s, Aziz established himself as an expert on the war in neighboring Afghanistan. In the 1990s, Aziz, according to a Pakistani writer Kamal Matinuddin, claims to have traveled deep into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. He would be consulted as an expert on the region into the 2000s, including for the UN. And he took part in an Islamabad think tank discussion on the Pakistan and Afghanistan insurgencies as late as 2008.

Aziz seems to have been somewhat careful in drawing a line between his academic work and political beliefs. In contrast, his wife, Amira Ehsan, was a well-known Islamist. She was affiliated with the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) into the 1990s. It’s unclear whether Aziz was formally affiliated with the group. But in the 1980s, the JI did include a segment of highly educated Pakistanis, often with PhDs from top Western universities. While JI has never had much popular support, it did receive a boost from General Zia, who appointed party members to key cabinet posts; his suppression of progressive voices also may have aided JI in developing a disproportionate representation in the country’s intelligentsia.

It does not appear that Aziz took part in radical activities publicly. He may be of a more moderate persuasion than his spouse. Amira Ehsan was elected to parliament in 1988 on a JI ticket, but she left the party in 1994 or 1995, joining a more radical splinter group known as Tehreek-e-Islami, which opposed what it perceived was JI’s timidity in working to establish an Islamic state. That same year, her own brother, the now-retired Colonel Muhammad Hamid, was reportedly involved in a failed coup attempt by a network of Islamist army officers, but later served as a prosecution witness.

During the late 1990s, as members of his family took on a more radical bent, Farooq attended the Cadet College Hasan Abdal, an elite military secondary school that has produced generals, business leaders, and other professionals. Farooq then attended the International Islamic University in Islamabad, a prominent school in the Pakistani capital where a small segment of its student body has been linked to radical networks.

Farooq’s family laid the groundwork for his radicalization. His mother, and other men and women in the Tehreek-e-Islami network, according to some news reports, may have even encouraged or even facilitated him and other sons to wage war against the Pakistani state. But when queried on the matter, a Pakistani official stated that Farooq’s parents were investigated and there was no evidence indicating they provided him any operational support. And in a 2009 interview, Amira Ehsan said that she “strongly oppose[s] terrorism within Pakistan.” One of her other sons, according to an unconfirmed report, is or was an army doctor. Yet in a tribute to Farooq, AQIS leader Asim Umar suggested that another brother of Farooq may have also died fighting in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The family may still have more explaining to do.

Generation Jihad

Ultimately, it was the ground shift in the region in the wake of 9/11 that pushed Farooq and many other Islamists in Pakistan over the edge. The Pakistani military decided to support the United States in the war against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Pakistani jihadists were incensed by the arrest and transfer of many of their allies, including the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, into U.S. custody, and the critical role Pakistan played in facilitating the fall of the Taliban, whose government was seen as uniquely reflecting Islamic ideals.

In 2007, Farooq joined an Al Qaeda cell led by Dr. Arshad Waheed, according to a Pakistani official. Waheed would be killed the next year in a CIA drone strike in South Waziristan. He was posthumously lionized by Farooq and Al Qaeda as a man who gave up a potentially lucrative medical career to fight in God’s path. Waheed left training to become a specialist in neurosurgery in October 2001, when the U.S. air campaign in Afghanistan began, providing medical assistance to militants in Kandahar. After the fall of Kabul to the Northern Alliance, Waheed returned to Pakistan, where he aided militants fleeing from Afghanistan. He was detained by Pakistani intelligence for alleged involvement in an assassination attempt on President Pervez Musharraf.

Waheed was the most prominent among many middle and upper middle class, educated Pakistanis who joined the ranks of Al Qaeda over the course of the decade following 9/11. What Waheed, Farooq, and others also had in common was past membership in the JI-affiliated student group, Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, or family members associated with JI.

A Skilled Polemicist

In 2007 or 2008, Farooq began preaching using the pseudonym Qari Abdullah Farooqi on a jihadist outlet known as Sada-e Khorasan. In 2009, he—according to a Pakistani official—facilitated the Parade Lane attack, a massacre of men and children at an army mosque in Rawalpindi. In the same year, he began serving as Al Qaeda’s chief propagandist for Pakistan. By 2013, under Farooq’s stewardship, Al Qaeda’s productions in the Urdu would exceed all other languages in output.

Farooq’s style of preaching was gentle, almost effeminate. His voice was weak, perhaps due to a heart condition. But his polemics, especially in the framework of Al Qaeda’s long documentaries, were biting.

The narrative Farooq offered was truly radical. The Pakistan Army, he argued, was no army of Islam; it was and remains the “Royal Indian Army”—a tool of Western powers to suppress the natives. In Farooq’s account, the alleged crimes of the Pakistan Army long precede the war on terror. Slick documentaries he produced castigated the Pakistan Army for massacring Muslims in the 1971 civil war in what would become Bangladesh, and for military operations not just in the tribal areas, but also in Balochistan. He also excoriated the army as a corrupt institution that sold prisoners to the United States and enriched itself in real estate and other economic ventures.

Unlike Al Qaeda’s Arab leaders, Farooq was able to frame his arguments in a uniquely Pakistani way. Ahead of the 2013 general elections, he appropriated the rhetoric of leading Pakistani politicians, by bemoaning the shortages of “gas, electricity, and clean water” and calling for a “revolution.”

Beginning of the End of Al Qaeda

Farooq’s revolution never came. As Al Qaeda’s Urdu-language productivity rose, the group’s physical presence in the region continued to wane.

Today, Al Qaeda in Pakistan is a shell of its former self. It once had the capacity to order the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and anchor a jihadist war against the Pakistani state. Now, its core and South Asia leaderships have been decimated by drones and Pakistani military and police operations. An Urdu-language Al Qaeda spokesman said in a recent statement that drone attacks have killed scores of Al Qaeda central leaders and around fifty members of its South Asia affiliate.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani military has conducted hugely successful operations against Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and other jihadist groups in North Waziristan and in Karachi. Anti-state jihadists have been denied critical operational space. Almost two-thirds of the Pakistan Army’s active-duty personnel are involved in some shape or form in the counterinsurgency in the country’s northwest.

But it will take a generation to completely cure Pakistan of the strain of jihadism that has infected the country since the 1980s. The perfect antidote is a pluralistic, democratic, prosperous, and secure Pakistan. A steep decline in terrorism, positive relations between its civilian and military leaders, and an improving economy suggest Pakistan is on that very track. Still, real change in the country will require not just a good year, but at least a decade of sustained reform.

Foreign Media Readout of Obama Failed Summit

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When foreign media, one from Qatar and the other from the United Kingdom provide readouts of Obama’s Gulf State summit at Camp David explaining nicely that it failed, one must worry even more.

Obama’s White House protocol office made a huge gaffe at the front end of the summit by getting a name and history wrong. Then he returned each night to the White House, leaving his invited guests to their own devices. Not only did topics like Iran and Iran get some verbal gymnastics but the matter of Syria and Russia did too. The whole charade boiled down to let us just keep channels open.

For Barack Obama, a sitting president to be so concerned, that it keeps him up at night about those dying and suffering, when he touts his special energies to human rights, his real indifference is on both sleeves for all to see that are watching.

The White House, his national security council, this connections to the United Nations and his jet-setter, John Kerry have no mission statement, no objective, no strategy and no final goal except to pass the burning of the globe on to the next administration. The death toll rises, he is cool with that, and that will frame his 8 year White House legacy.

The Guardian view on the UN talks on Syria: a waiting game while the country burns

In part:

What is going on is the classic diplomatic exercise of keeping channels of communication open in a confused situation in the hope that, as and when it changes, there will be some expertise and engagement available if new opportunities arise. De Mistura’s tactics also represent a recognition that, if there were ever a time when the Syrian war could be tackled on its own, that time has passed. It was always part of the larger regional contest between Iran and the Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia, a contest which in turn was deeply influenced by the difficult relationship between the United States and Iran, by the rise of jihadism, and by the standoff between the west and Russia.

Now all these dimensions are changing. Secretary of state John Kerry’s consultations with Vladimir Putin last week suggest a softening of US and Russian differences over Syria. Meanwhile, at Camp David, President Obama tried to allay the fears of Gulf states that Iran will exploit a nuclear agreement to become the region’s strongest power. It is indeed an open question whether Iran will become a satisfied power, interested in extricating itself from Syria and resting content with its enhanced influence in Iraq, or not. The US will both cooperate with Iran and oppose it, Obama has implied – cooperate in Iraq and parts of Syria, but oppose in other parts and in Yemen. It is a formula that must be very perplexing even to its authors. The new Saudi king, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, meanwhile, has thrown down a gauntlet in Yemen, and is propping up the Sisi regime in Egypt financially while Egypt is choosing sides in Libya. The verdict on this new Saudi forward policy has yet to be reached.

And a word or two from al Jazeera:

Another forgettable summit

The just-concluded Camp David summit promises little more than running in place.

In part:

In contrast, the just-concluded summit promises little more than running in place. For its part, Washington explained its intention to move forward with Iran on a nuclear deal while insisting that it did not portend a US pivot away from its traditional Arab friends. Arabs were and remain sceptical, and justifiably so.

Obama himself explained: “I want to be very clear. The purpose of security cooperation [with the GCC] is not to perpetuate any long-term confrontation with Iran or even to marginalise Iran.”

US initiatives

Saudi misgivings about the choices made by US presidents have a long pedigree. The kingdom has been on the losing end of US initiatives in the region for decades. Washington has proven more than willing to take advantage of Arab weakness – US Palestine policy holds pride of place in this regard.

Of equal if not greater strategic import, however, is the toxic legacy of the US’ destruction of Baghdad’s Sunni military and political leadership, offering Iran a strategic entree into Iraq it has not enjoyed for centuries.

”I do not believe it is in the United States’ interests, or the interest of the region, or the world’s interest, to [attack Iraq],” Crown Prince Abdullah told ABC News shortly before Vice President Dick Cheney’s arrival in March 2002. ”And I don’t believe it will achieve the desired result.”

Cheney dismissed Saudi concerns that war would destabilise the region. That is indeed what Bush wanted – a revolutionary break with the past out of which a new Middle East would be forged.

Not Drawing Another Red Line on Syria

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Syria Is Using Chemical Weapons Again, Rescue Workers Say

BEIRUT, LEBANON:  Eyes watering, struggling to breathe, Abd al-Mouin, 22, dragged his nephews from a house reeking of noxious fumes, then briefly blacked out. Even fresh air, he recalled, was “burning my lungs.”

The chaos unfolded in the Syrian town of Sarmeen one night this spring, as walkie-talkies warned of helicopters flying from a nearby army base, a signal for residents to take cover. Soon, residents said, there were sounds of aircraft, a smell of bleach and gasping victims streaming to a clinic.

Two years after President Bashar Assad agreed to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, there is mounting evidence that his government is flouting international law to drop jerry-built chlorine bombs on insurgent-held areas. Lately, the pace of the bombardments in contested areas like Idlib province has picked up, rescue workers say, as government forces have faced new threats from insurgents.

The Security Council did condemn the use of chlorine as a weapon in Syria, in February. But with Russia, the Syrian government’s most powerful ally, wielding a veto, there was no Council agreement to assign blame.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which monitors agreements on toxic arms, found that chlorine had been used “systematically and repeatedly” in three Syrian villages in 2014, and mentioned witness accounts of helicopter-borne chlorine bombs in its report. But it, too, lacked authorization to say who used them.

 

Obama said he did not use military action on Syria with regard to his original red-line on chemical weapons is due to the fact that Assad gave up his weapons. Those stockpiles have been eliminated and now he is disputing whether chlorine is prohibited and if the international community says those must be eliminated then he will reach out to Russia to put a stop to it.

Last week, others in Obama’s administration called for an immediate U.N. investigation into the “abhorrent acts” – without saying what, if any, punishment Assad might face if formally blamed for the string of alleged chlorine gas attacks.

One western U.N. diplomat told Fox News the situation has become “unacceptable” in Syria.

“There is mounting evidence of repeated chlorine attacks,” the diplomat said.

Civilians, including children, allegedly have been injured and killed in the latest attacks. In a letter sent last week to the U.N. Security Council from the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, the group cited reports of chlorine gas attacks in the Idlib and Hama areas and urged the creation of a no-fly zone to protect the Syrian people.

“In the past two weeks alone, witnesses and medics on the ground in Idlib and Hama governorates reported at least nine separate instances of toxic chemical attacks — several of them deadly,” the group wrote. “… in each instance, barrel bombs loaded with poisonous chemical substances were deployed from Syrian regime helicopters.”

The U.S. has submitted a preliminary draft Security Council resolution that aims to set up a mechanism for determining who is to blame and to hold them accountable.

A U.S. official told Fox News the Security Council is overdue in addressing “the need to determine who is responsible” for the attacks. “Doing so is critical to getting justice for the Syrian people,” he said.

 

ISIS On a Successful Destruction Path

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Ramadi government buildings taken over by Islamic State and at least 50 are dead. They have moved into Palmyra a very ancient location protected by World Heritage and beheaded 10 people.

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Meanwhile Scotland is sounding the alarm bells.

Scotland Yard’s top anti-terror chief: ‘Jihadis staying in UK to plot attacks’

Scotland Yard’s top counter-terrorism officer today warned of a growing threat from Britons inspired by Islamic State who stay here to attempt terrorist outrages instead of fighting overseas.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said “significant numbers” of extremists influenced by the “corrupt cult” are plotting attacks in Britain — as new figures reveal jihadi arrests have soared.

He said police were “wrestling to tackle” dangers involving “complex, organised” plots as well as potential attacks by “chaotic” extremists whose aims changed on a daily basis. There was also a “massive threat on the streets of the UK” posed by those who had returned from conflict in Syria and Iraq after engaging in “barbaric” atrocities.

‘ISIS is a state-breaker’ — here’s the Islamic State’s strategy for the rest of 2015

ISIS seeks a global caliphate, according to its propaganda. ISIS has articulated its global vision numerous times. Most powerfully in the fifth issue of ISIS’s multi-language Dabiq magazine, ISIS stated the following:

The flag of Khalifah will rise over Makkah and al-Madinah, even if the apostates and hypocrites despise such. The flag of Khalifah will rise over Baytul-Maqdis [Jerusalem] and Rome, even if the Jews and Crusaders despise such. The shade of the blessed flag will expand until it covers all eastern and western extents of the Earth, filling the world with the truth and justice of Islam and putting an end to the falsehood and tyranny of jahiliyyah [ignorance], even if America and its coalition despise such.

ISIS’s ultimate end is likely a global war, not a limited war for local control inside Iraq and Syria. ISIS’s vision for a prospering caliphate requires that it instigate a broader war to compromise states competing with it for legitimacy.

Driving this broader war is likely how ISIS frames its goals in 2015 beyond Iraq and Syria. ISIS must maintain its physical caliphate within these states while it approaches this second objective to expand in an environment of regional disorder. Accordingly, ISIS assigned the title of “Remaining and Expanding” to the above-referenced issue of Dabiq published in November 2014.

 

ISIS Sanctuary_12 MAY 2015Institute for the Study of War

To “Remain and Expand” is a strategic mission statement with two goals.

First, it supports ISIS’s defense inside Iraq and Syria, and second, it seeks the literal expansion of the caliphate.

ISIS announced operations to expand to Libya, Sinai, and other corners of the Arab world in late 2014 while under duress, in a moment of weakness during which rumors arose of the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS’s leader. The timing of this announced expansion supported ISIS’s momentum while it faced counter-attacks inside Iraq and Syria.

Global expansion is a motif that ISIS desires to propagate at times when it is experiencing tactical losses. Expansion into new territory is therefore a defensive supporting operation. But it is nevertheless also a concrete operational plan to make its caliphate larger.

Military Parade in Rain in Baaj 19 JAN 15Institute for the Study of WarAn ISIS military parade in Baaj, in northwestern Iraq, on January 15, 2015.

ISIS is framing its strategy across three geographic rings: the Interior Ring in the Levant, the Near Abroad in the wider Middle East and North Africa, and the Far Abroad in Europe, Asia, and the United States. ISIS’s strategic framework corresponds to a campaign with three overarching goals: to defend inside Iraq and Syria; to expand operations regionally, and to disrupt and recruit on a global scale.

Iraq is central to the origin of ISIS’s caliphate, and likely also central to many among ISIS’s leadership cadre. Iraq will likely remain the epicenter of ISIS’s campaign as long as its current leadership is alive. The physical caliphate in Iraq and Syria is still the source of ISIS’s power, unless ISIS’s operations in the Near or Far Abroad achieve momentum that is independent of ISIS’s battlefield success in Iraq and Syria.

Iraq in particular holds unique and lasting significance for ISIS that it cannot easily replicate elsewhere. Expressing Iraq’s significance, ISIS issued the following quote from al-Qaeda in Iraq’s founder, Abu Mus’ab az-Zarqawi at the beginning of every Dabiq magazine issue it has published as of April 2015: 

“The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify — by Allah’s permission — until it burns the crusader armies in Dabiq.” – Abu Mus’ab az-Zarqawi 

Focusing anti-ISIS operations upon Iraq in 2015 therefore has merit. But it also raises questions about what the operational goal of the counter-ISIS strategy should be.

Control of cities is the metric for the success or failure of states that are challenged by ISIS. Cities are also the key to challenging the legitimacy of ISIS’s caliphate. They are not, however, the metric by which to measure the defeat of ISIS’s fighting force.

ISIS’s ability to remain as a violent group, albeit rebranded, has already been demonstrated, given the near-defeat of its predecessor AQI in 2008 and its resurgence over the intervening period. Nevertheless, ISIS in 2015 is a caliphate that has more to prove, and it likely desires to preserve the image of a vast dominion across Iraq and Syria.

In this most dangerous form, ISIS is a counter-state, a state-breaker that can claim new rule and new boundaries after seizing cities across multiple states by force, an unacceptable modern precedent. ISIS would fail to remain as an alternative political order, however, if it lost all of the cities under its control, an important aspect of the US plan to defeat ISIS strategically. 

mosul air strikes isisStringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesAir attacks are staged by coalition forces to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants in Vane 30 kilometers north of Mosul, Iraq on January 20, 2015.

This analysis frames the question: what will ISIS lose if it loses Mosul?

Mosul is ISIS’s largest urban prize. It is hundreds of miles from Baghdad and outside the current reach of the Iraqi Security Forces. It has been under ISIS’s overt control since June 2014, and it is a symbol of ISIS’s power. It is the city from which ISIS’s leader Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi announced his caliphate.

When the ISF mount an effective counter-attack against ISIS in Mosul, ISIS will lose credibility, not only as a fledgling polity but also as a military that will have been outperformed by a more capable force. More so than Tikrit, ISIS likely cannot relinquish such a great city as Mosul outright. ISIS will likely fight harder for Mosul and allow it to be destroyed in order to deny it to the Iraqi government. It is a valid operational priority for the Iraqi government to reclaim Mosul before ISIS destroys it to ensure Iraq’s recovery.

Mosul’s recovery will not be the end of the war against ISIS, however. In fact, ISIS will constitute a permanent threat to Mosul if its dominion over the Jazeera desert in western Iraq persists. This outcome is guaranteed while ISIS controls eastern Syria. 

ISIS controls more than cities, and freedom of maneuver outside cities will allow ISIS to reset in nearby areas outside of them without altering its overall disposition. ISIS organizes itself internally through administrative and military units called wilayats that sub-divide its territorial claims. ISIS currently operates 20 known wilayats across Iraq and Syria as of April 2015, all but two of which posted their operations with photosets online in early 2015.

ISIS Valiyat mapInstitute for the Study of War

The map at left is a graphical interpretation of ISIS’s wilayats in Iraq and Syria, created by an ISIS supporter and later branded and re-posted by ISIS through its own social media in January 2015. ISIS’s wilayat disposition shows that ISIS’s concept for territorial control considers areas, more than just individual cities.

The area approach reflects both a social mentality to occupy populations comprehensively and a military approach to eliminate gaps in ISIS’s control that would expose ISIS to internal resistance or external attack.

ISIS’s campaign in Iraq and Syria is a distinctly urban operation, but ISIS has been a desert force since its inception, and this area mentality and ability to maneuver in deserts is another reason not to limit anti-ISIS strategies to driving ISIS from individual cities. 

Driving ISIS from a city translates neither to defeating a respective ISIS wilayat, nor to the elimination of ISIS military presence in a particular area. Putting pressure on ISIS in one city at a time will only cause it to shift, rather than to experience durable loss.

Unless ISIS is cleared as comprehensively as its predecessor was in 2006-2008, ISIS’s military disposition across Iraq and Syria will likely endure, even expanding, allowing ISIS to regroup and renew its campaign to retake cities continuously.

Anti-ISIS strategies therefore need to consider how ISIS frames the terrain inside Iraq and Syria, and how it will likely posture in order to defend and eventually resume its offensive campaign to control cities permanently. Anti-ISIS strategies can use the same frame to constrain ISIS’s options and force it into decisive battles.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-is-a-state-breaker–heres-the-islamic-states-strategy-for-the-rest-of-2015-2015-5#ixzz3aDyndtrv