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Abstract
The rise of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is not well understood at this point. This paper starts by comparing the Islamic State to the Vietnamese communists in a revolutionary warfare framework and makes a causal argument that the Islamic State’s defeat of the Sahwa (Awakening) movement in Iraq was the key to its successful establishment of control of most Sunni areas and the mobilization of its population for support. Islamic State operational summaries and captured documents are used to quantitatively establish the impact of the subversion campaign against the Sahwa and Iraqi government and trace the efforts of operatives in tribal outreach and recruiting. This research provides a valuable insight into the return of a powerful method of insurgency as well as a glimpse into the vast clandestine network that provides the strength of the Islamic State movement.
Notes
1. Fall, ‘Theory and Practice’, 50–6.
2. Taber, The War of the Flea, cover.
3. Fukuyama, The End of History, xiii.
4. Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam, 1. Marks studied four insurgencies (Thailand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Peru) that were inspired by Mao’s revolutionary doctrine. All were long-standing insurgencies whose lack of success after the Vietnam period might have confirmed the opinion that revolutionary warfare had lost its magic.
5. I use the term ‘the Islamic State movement’ to describe the group that Abu Musab al Zarqawi formed in Iraq in 2002 from remnants of his original camp in Afghanistan (founded in 1999) that he named Tawhid wal Jihad (Monotheism and Struggle). Zarqawi renamed the group Tanzim Qaidat al Jihad fi Bilad al Rafidayn (Organization of Jihad’s Base in Mesopotamia, a.k.a. al Qaeda in Iraq – AQI) in 2004 after pledging allegiance to Osama bin Laden. The group joined the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC) in January 2006, which was a political–military front of several jihadist groups but so dominated by AQI to the point that it is possible MSC was a sham organization used to convince Iraqis of its indigenous nature. Nevertheless, MSC lasted eight months before transforming from a group into a shadow government with a variety of cabinet positions (at least in name if not function). The Islamic State of Iraq lasted from 2006 to 2013, when Abu Bakr al Baghdadi reclaimed the al Nusra franchise as an Islamic State element and changed the name of the organization to the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (Levant). The group left that name behind when it established the caliphate known as the Islamic State in 2014. Zarqawi’s often stated intent in Iraq and the Levant as early as 2004 was to establish an Islamic state in the region once the coalition was expelled.
6. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, ‘Zarqawi’s Cry’, 3.
7. The Islamic State controls territory in areas that are also claimed by Syria and Iraq, while administering services to the remaining population and claiming a monopoly on the legitimate application of violence in the same area. The legitimacy of such a state remains to be evaluated, although it is still in power after two years. No other state has recognized the Islamic State, nor has any international organization.
8. Exceptions are Kalyvas, Logic of Violence; Goldstone, ‘What is ISIS?’; and Gartenstein-Ross et al., The War between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
9. The Sahwa (Awakening) movement was/is a grassroots movement of Sunni tribes in Anbar that fought Al Qaeda in Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq in 2006–2007 for control of Sunni areas. They were joined by elements of insurgent groups and other Sunnis and the movement spread outside Anbar to other Sunni areas of Iraq and elements still exist today, particularly around Ramadi. Cottam and Huseby’s book Confronting al Qaeda; The Sunni Awakening and US Strategy in Al Anbar contains interviews and a scholarly analysis of changing identities and images for both the Americans and the Sunni of Iraq from 2003 to 2010.
10. Two popular books about the Islamic State are Stern and Berger, ISIS: The State of Terror and Weiss and Hassan, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror . Both sets of authors present the group as a state and an army respectively that centers on terror, as opposed to a movement that uses terror instrumentally to achieve its end state – the creation of a ‘new’ type of state in the international system.
11. Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 4.
12. Fall, ‘Theory and Practice’, 46.
13. Fromson and Simon, ‘ISIS: The Dubious Paradise of Apocalypse Now’, 44.
14. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, Vol. I, 473. This is important because IS describes themselves in this image and this end state drives their strategy.
15. Arquilla, Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits, 8.
16. Ibid., 9.
17. McCuen, The Art of Counter-Revolutionary Warfare, 40. These phases are an adaptation to Mao’s original stages as modified by the Vietnamese communists.
18. Arquilla, Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits, 274.
19. Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam, 7.
20. Metz, Rethinking Insurgency, 13.
21. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, Vol. II, 86.
22. Hafez, ‘Lessons from the Arab Afghans Phenomenon’.
23. Abu Musab al Suri, ‘Lessons learned from the armed Jihad in Syria’, 16.
24. Lia, ‘Abu Musab al Suri’s critique of hard line Salafists in Jihadist current’.
25. Hamid and Farrall, The Arabs at War in Afghanistan, 257.
26. al Adl, My experience with Abu Musab al Zarqawi, 10.
27. Weiss and Hassan, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, 13.
28. Brisard and Martinez, Zarqawi, 226–7.
29. These concepts can be found throughout Abu Musab al Suri’s ‘Lessons learned’ document.
30. Hafez, Suicide Bombers in Iraq, 69; Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 47.
31. Whiteside, The Smiling, Scented Men, 141–4.
32. Even an informed observer with a decade of Iraq experience and the former Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction claimed that the Maliki administration was responsible for ‘killing all those Sunnis in the Awakening movement . . . they were met with murder’. This is a patently untrue statement but a common belief. This research proves the claim is baseless, while not disputing that Awakening members were at times arrested by the government under suspicion of collaboration with Islamic State – a charge that is hard to evaluate. Sometimes it was true. Bowen and Hamid, ‘Discussion about Islamism’, minute 44.
33. Kalyvas, Logic of Violence, 112–13.
34. Al-Qaidah Organization in the Arabian Peninsula, ‘Assassination Operations’, 64–87.
35. Lomparis, From People’s War to People’s Rule, 95.
36. Andrews, The Village at War, 44.
37. Moyer, Triumph Forsaken, 79.
38. Ibid., 18.
39. Russell, Innovation, Transformation, and War, 54.
40. Islamic State of Iraq, ‘Analysis of the State of ISI’, 3–4.
41. Russell, Innovation, Transformation, and War, 57.
42. Ibid., 105.
43. Green and Mullen, Fallujah Redux, 118.
44. Andrews, The Village at War, 57.
45. Ibid., 68.
46. Ibid., 73–103.
47. Ibid., 96.
48. Fall, ‘Theory and Practice’, 46–57.
49. Andrews, The Village at War, 72–95.
50. Lomparis, From People’s War to People’s Rule, 69.
51. Abu Omar, ‘The Religious and Political Crime of the Election and Our Duty Toward It’, 5.
52. The Qureshi indicated a lineage tie to the House of Muhammad, a legitimizing factor for a would-be caliph.
53. Abu Hamza, ‘The command is for none but Allah’.
54. Islamic State of Iraq, ‘Analysis of the State of ISI’. ID: NMEC-2007–612449
55. Lomparis, From People’s War to People’s Rule, 68.
56. Database available at iraqibodycount.org.
57. These population estimates are very rough due to the lack of reliable surveys since 2000. Baqubah’s number includes Buhriz and Khalis numbers to reflect the mixed nature of Diyala province.
58. Green and Mullen, Fallujah Redux, 118.
59. The United Nations believes that over half a million Maslawis left the city in 2014 as refugees. UNAMI/OHCHR, Report, 4.
60. Williams and Adnan, ‘Sunnis in Iraq Allied with U.S. Rejoin Rebels’, A1.
61. Abu Musab al Suri, ‘Lessons learned from the armed Jihad in Syria’, 33.
62. Iraqi Body Count incident: k12246-ef1611.
63. Flintoff, ‘Violence in Iraq Takes a Political Turn’.
64. Islamic State of Iraq, ‘Harvest of operations in Al Rusafa and the Southern Sections (Baghdad), 1 Feb to 16 Mar 2009’, item 1.
65. Ghazi and Arango, ‘Qaeda-Linked Militants in Iraq Secure Nearly Full Control of Falluja’, A8.
66. Mardini, ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq Operations Suggest Rising Confidence Ahead of U.S. Military Withdrawal’, 6.
67. Islamic State of Iraq, Documented Military Operations in Diyala Province, 17 Feb-26 Mar 2011.
68. Islamic State of Iraq, Documented Military Operations in Diyala Province, 26 Sep-17 Oct 2011.
69. Islamic State of Iraq, Documented Military Operations in Diyala Province, 22 Apr -19 Jun 2012.
70. Williams and Adnan, ‘Sunnis in Iraq Allied with U.S. Rejoin Rebels’, A1.
71. Al Umar, ‘Al-Hamadani’.
72. Weiss and Hassan, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, 38–9.
73. Al Tamimi, ‘Violence in Iraq’, note 47.
74. Allam, ‘Records show how Iraqi extremists withstood U.S. anti-terror efforts’.
75. Roggio, ‘Iraqi forces strike blow to al Qaeda in Iraq’s northern leadership cadre’.
76. Bahney et al., Economic Analysis, 75.
77. Abu Musab al Suri, ‘Lessons learned from the armed Jihad in Syria’, 19.
78. This research relied on many captured documents authored by the Islamic State of Iraq. I found these to be a very reliable source, and this claim is supported by the excellent work done by Jung et al. in ‘Managing a Transnational Insurgency’ as part of the Harmony Program for the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, NY. For a convincing theory on why an insurgent group would expose themselves to risk by producing such a voluminous administration, see Shapiro’s The Terrorist’s Dilemma, a chapter of which focuses on the ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’.
79. ISI, State of Ninewa, Mosul Sector, ‘Warning to the owners of billiard halls, laser CD stores’.
80. ISI, Governor of Mosul, (No Title).
81. ISI, Warning No 106.
82. Al Tamimi, ‘Archive of Islamic State Administrative Documents’.
83. Interview with TW (20 March 2015), who served as a U.S. Army platoon leader in the Hamiya/Jurf area in 2010–2011.
84. Sergeant First Class Christopher Brevard of Apache 1-501 Parachute Infantry Regiment was killed in March 2007, allegedly at the direction of Abd al Hadi and his Islamic Army of Iraq cell in Jurf ah Sakhr.
85. ISI, ‘Harvest of military operations in the Southern belt sector of the Baghdad Province’, 19 October 2008 entry.
86. ISI, ‘Documented Military Operations in the South Province’, 3 July 2009 entry.
87. ISI, ‘Documented Military Operations in the Southern Governorate’, 9 June 2010 entry.
88. Interview with FJ (14 July 2015), an Awakening coordinator in Jurf from 2007–2012.
89. ISI, ‘Documented military operations in the South Governorate’, 15 Oct 2012 entry.
90. ISI, ‘Statement detailing some documented cases in the blessed head harvesting raid in the southern province’, item #2.
91. Gartenstein-Ross et al., The War between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, 5.
92. McAdam, Political Process, 40–55. Brought to my attention by Professor Doowan Lee of the Naval Postgraduate School. Lee adapted the model for use in analyzing the social movement aspect of unconventional warfare and shared his unpublished paper ‘Resistance Dynamics’ with me.
93. These are subsets of the mechanism element in Lee’s model.
94. Ingram, ‘Strategic Logic’, 2.
95. These are the subsets of the effects element in Lee’s model.
96. The Conflict Records Research Center at National Defense University was closed in late June 2015 due to a lack of funding. There are plans to reopen the center soon in a different venue.
97. Adnani, ‘The Islamic State of Iraq will Remain’, minute 35–46.
98. Abu Bakr, ‘But Allah will not allow but that his light should be perfected’, words addressing ‘O Sunni Tribes ...’.
99. Anonymous Al Qaeda Central official writing to Abu Hamza, portion of the correspondence dated 25 January 2008.
100. Abu Omar al Baghdadi had the personal credibility to establish a tribal outreach among Iraqi Sunnis, not Abu Hamza who was Egyptian. The relationship between the two partners and Abu Omar’s considerable influence is a yet untold story that hopefully will be further developed by additional research.
101. Anbar province had a legal, media, medical, prisoners, support battalion, security, treasury, and mail section overseen by an administrative emir council. A spoils group reported to the administrative emir. The general emir reported to the Mujahidin Shura Council (prior to the Islamic State formation) according to Bahney et al., Economic Analysis, 35. These documents came from the Harmony Batch ala Daham Hanush and Harmony Batch MA 7029-5.
102. The Southern Belt was a term developed during the Zarqawi era to describe an area which stretches from south of Fallujah to just beyond the Tigris River south and east of Baghdad. This included Jurf ah Sakhr, one of the towns in the case study.
103. Bahney et al., Economic Analysis, xvi.
104. Abu Khaldun, ‘Synopsis of the Relations Committee in Baghdad’s Southern Belt’.
105. Ibid.
106. The names of the Sahwa sheiks were in the original document but withheld in this paper to protect them from possible harm. Abu Khaldun, ‘OPSUM from Abu Mustafa of Southern Belt trying to overturn Sahwa’.
107. McCuen, The Art of Counter-Revolutionary Warfare, 55–6.
108. Haji Bakr Naji, The Management of Savagery, 31–3.