Someone said to me that we here on SST have not written much on IS. This is re-posted to answer that. pl
By Patrick Bahzad
After the Islamic State’s recent and overwhelming victory in Ramadi, the Iraqi government as well as analysts in D.C. seemed to be in a state of shock and disarray. ISIS is officially losing ground since the start of the US led airstrikes in September 2014. With the rout of the Iraqi army in Ramadi however, this narrative becomes harder and harder to sell. Earlier this year, victory of Shia militias in Tikrit had been seen as the beginning of the end for Abubakr al-Baghdadi’s organization. That assessment has now been called seriously into doubt, as the armies of the Caliphate seem to march on. Even though it is difficult to give an accurate estimate of ISIS’ military capabilities, they’re a force to be reckoned with, and they can challenge anything the current Iraqi government can muster against them.
Why months of airstrikes and hundreds of “sorties” haven’t stopped the Jihadis has several reasons. On the one hand, there are undoubtedly unresolved issues between Washington and Baghdad that have a bearing on the proficiency of the counter-IS campaign. Recent reports by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), stating that “coalition” airstrikes killed 170 ISIS members in the past months in Syria, should be taken with utmost caution. An allegedly independent opposition NGO, the SOHR is run out of London by a few individuals with a dubious track-record. According to – hopefully – more reliable accounts, i.e. the daily briefings of US Central Command, the first three months of consistent airstrikes managed to hit about 300 vehicles, but only 25 ISIS fighters …
This sobering result is more in line with developments we're seeing on the ground, as the death of several mid- to high-ranking ISIS leaders has not been enough to halt the overall momentum of the Caliphate’s troops, at least for now. The fact of the matter is, the Islamic State is an organization that has survived years of attempts by the Americans to destroy it. They know how to survive against an enemy that rules the skies and can see about everything that moves on the ground. They’re also hard to penetrate or read, which is very much related to the experience brought forward by former Baathist army and intelligence officers who joined the organization. What recent events in Ramadi have shown to those who might have forgotten about it, is that the Caliphate actually has an army. It is not exactly built along the same rationale as Western armed forces, but it has structure, “command and control” and a genuine ability to maneuver and fight, unlike some of the Iraqi government troops.
The question of manpower and “Martyr Operations”
Estimates about ISIS’ total number of troops aren’t exactly consistent. According to conservative – one might say optimistic – estimates, they can field about 20 000 men. A mid-range estimate, as good a guess as any, might give them 25 000 to 30 000 foot-soldiers and finally, the most pessimistic observers, some of whom have actually been in the field in Syria, report up to 50 000 fighters.
Like any army, the Islamic State's forces have various branches. Considering what their MO has been in recent battles, we will only be considering those units that played a role in the fighting. Obviously, when you come to think about ISIS ground forces you're almost inevitably drawn into the debate about the use of suicide bombers. These stormtroopers of death have a significant role in the Islamic State's overall strategy of spreading fear and showing they can hit anybody, anywhere, anytime. Their place on the battlefield however is well defined, as fighting in Ramadi has shown.
The man in charge of the “martyrs” training and recruitment is a former officer of Saddam Hussein's army who has joined the Islamist insurgency very early on. Interestingly, he's not Arab, but a Turkman from Tefallah, in Northern Iraq. A long time associate of Abu Ali al-Anbari, he was in charge for a while of creating ISIS cells in Tripoli, Northern Lebanon, which has since turned into a stronghold of the organization outside of its heartland.
Recruitment and training of suicide bombers
Potential candidates for “martyr operations” are recruited all over the area under ISIS control, but it is in Iraq, in the provinces of Anbar, Salah ad-Din and Diyala that the cells are most active. In these areas, there are potentially several dozen people being trained to blow themselves up when ordered to.
The training is fairly basic. It's actually closer to a brainwashing operation than an actual military training. The Islamic State has “scouts” on the lookout for young men, sometimes teenagers, who are fanatical – or stupid – enough to be drawn into this. Children of ISIS fighters, having already grown into an environment in which death as a martyr is more revered than anything else, feature among the most willing recruits.
Once the training is over, they wait for orders from the top and get sent on their mission, blowing up people in a mosque, or driving a truck full of explosives into the enemy's front-lines. Before they spring into action however, extensive intelligence work is done by ISIS agents on the ground, which shall be the subject of another piece.
A hint at Iraqi government intelligence failures
Suffice to say that the tactics and tecnics used by the Islamic State's intelligence professionals encompass about everything Saddam Hussein's security forces used as well, meaning every dirty trick in the book, and more. What is striking is that ISIS seems to be able to move its agents into locations of interest and have them report back without suffering a significant number of casualties or arrests.
This means these people are good at what they do and they can count on the loyalty or the silence of a large part of the civilians in the areas they target. Whether this result is obtained through spreading fear or by winning over “hearts and minds” is a different issue, the outcome however is indisputable.
This in turn raises serious questions about the intelligence work of the Iraqi government, as well as the information gathered by Western intelligence agencies through means such as SIGINT or GEOINT. It is rather surprising that ISIS is able to concentrate significant forces for attacks like Ramadi, without any red flags going up in Baghdad or Washington.
The reasons for these shortcomings are probably twofold and both of them are worrying: on the one hand, the Iraqi government's intelligence services are unable to plant assets into ISIS middle or senior leadership. On the other hand the Islamic State has developed operational procedures that allow it to remain mostly invisible prior to the start of its military operations. We'll dig more into this aspect of their organization when we turn to their intelligence service.
The main military branches
Setting aside the use of suicide bombers, the armies of the Caliphate aren't that different from other armies. They use whatever branches are most adapted to the type of battles they're fighting and to the equipment they have at their disposal. In short, ISIS troops are mostly light, motorized infantry.
This infantry is structured along very decentralized guidelines. They number in between 20 000 and 30 000 men, spread over the whole territory controlled by the organization. They actually function like large cells in the area assigned to them, never more than a few hundred men at a time, and they can get called in for larger joint operations without prior notice. The degree of autonomy these infantry units enjoy is the main reason for their success. Their leaders decide independently where to station their men, preferably in small groups living among the civilian population, and avoid gathering larger groups unless absolutely necessary.
The other branches of the Caliphate's army that should be mentioned are the artillery, consisting mostly of heavy mortars coming out of old Iraqi army stockpiles and modern antitank weapons that have been bought or confiscated from the Free Syrian Army. Part of these antitank missiles have been delivered to the Syrian rebels by western nations or their Gulf allies, but ended up in the hands of the Caliphate, which uses them more proficiently than the FSA ever did.
The professionalism of the Islamic State's artillerymen – around 3 000 to 5 000 men in total – has been noted on numerous occasions, with “suicide bombers” spearheading the attack, followed in quick sequence by a barrage of pretty accurate artillery fire, before the actual assault by infantry takes place.
Snipers
In addition to its main battlefield units – suicide bombers, infantry and artillery – the Islamic State also makes extensive use of snipers, which is often forgotten by outside observers, but constitutes one of their most deadly weapons.
The “Al Kanz” sniper brigade totals around 700 men who get dispatched in small teams to the areas where they're are considered most useful. Some of these men have been trained by the US themselves, during the “Surge”, when Sunni tribal units were fighting ISIS predecessor “Al Qaeda in Iraq”. Since then, they have jumped ship and are now among the most efficient ISIS' troops.
According to a number of deserters and defectors, the man in charge of training and supervising “Al Kanz” is a Moroccan national and former member of the French Foreign Legion, whose “sniper” company in the “2e Regiment Etranger Parachutiste” is considered one of the best sniping schools in the world.
With their modern sniping rifles – including cal. 50 weapons originally delivered to the Iraqi army – the ISIS snipers have now all the tools of their trade and they are feared among their enemies, which should be testimony enough to the quality of their “work”.
“Special Forces” and “Border Police”
The most recent creation of the Caliphate army's branches, the “Special Forces” have actually been designed to accommodate one of ISIS most fearsome military leaders: Tarkan Batirashvili, aka “Abu Omar al-Shishani”.
Half Georgian and half Chechen, al-Shishani has made a name for himself in Syria with his mujahideen from the Caucasus. He's now in command of around a thousand men, of various nationalities, most of them Iraqis from Anbar province though, which begs the question as to whether this unit wasn't also created to keep an eye on al-Shishani, whose fame within the organization could make him a dangerous challenger to the more senior Iraqi leadership.
Finally, one of the most ignored but also most efficient branches of the Caliphate's army is the “Border Police”, created and lead by a Turkish member of the organization. Originally a rather small branch, it numbers now around 2 000 men who sometimes blend into the population of the “frontier” regions of the Islamic State.
Their mission has become more and more sensitive now that ISIS is trying to consolidate its territorial gains and build a genuine State-like structure. The “Border Police” rules with a iron fist and the hammer comes down hard on anybody attempting to leave to Caliphate without authorization. Defectors and deserters in particular are being put to the sword. Preventing infiltration by foreign agents and identifying journalists who might be kidnapped and used for ransom money is also part of their mission statement.
The overall picture
What emerges from this short description is an organization that has both a concept and the manpower and experience to implement it. The Islamic State is not just a terrorist organization anymore. It has conquered a territory equaling in size about half the United-Kingdom. It is now trying to govern and put in place structures that would ensure its survival in the areas it controls.
But the Islamic State is by far not done with its offensive operations, and Ramadi has been a reminder of that. They can still stage attacks and take new cities, even in the face of the US led coalition and airstrikes strategy. There is also a less visible side to the potency of the Islamic State's challenge, namely its ability to organize covert operations of various types, which we shall examine based on a few case studies in our next piece.