ISIS: A Lot Weaker Than It Appears

Vincent J. Curtis 

7 August 2014

Most of the commentary concerning the terrorist organization ISIS has been overhung with fear.  Fear of what terrorist plots can be hatched against the United States when ISIS consolidates its power in northern Iraq.  Fear of the collapse of the rest of Iraq.  Fear of what might happen in Jordan, already overburdened with Syrian refugees.

A more balanced assessment of the threat ISIS represents is needed.  We ought do what General Ulysses S. Grant used to do: look at the weaknesses of the enemy and seek ways to exploit them.

What are the weaknesses of ISIS?  They can be reduced to three: first, that ISIS is militarily overextended; second, that they have now come out of the shadows and, having done so, created hostages to fortune; third, observe the enemies they have created in the Islamic world on account of having proclaimed a Caliphate.

ISIS is said to comprise some 10,000 fighters, of which 6,000 are in Iraq.  Of these 6,000, half are said to be “foreign” fighters, that is, Muslims whose primary residence is in Europe, Australia, or North America.  These foreign fighters fight for ISIS for the personal satisfaction of engaging in jihad and for the chance to indulge in the darkest of human desires.  ISIS has posted on the social websites the gruesome atrocities its members have committed against innocent victims.  Members of ISIS have also demolished ancient structures of veneration of both Muslim and Christian faiths.

ISIS boosts the strength of its numbers by the terror they inspire.  Even the tough Kurdish Pershmurga has recently shown reluctance to engage ISIS out of fear of a terrible death should they be captured.

Like a stock market gripped with irrational exuberance, the prospects of ISIS get better and better.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that there are only a limited number of ISIS fighters, who cannot be everywhere at once.  Half of these are foreigners for whom home will eventually beckon.  With one serious morale-breaking defeat, these foreigners will find home beckoning strongly, and will desert the cause.  One serious morale-breaking defeat and the myth of ISIS invincibility will be shattered, and with it the effectiveness of their use of terror.  After a defeat, the employment of gruesome murder would be seen as a sign of desperation, not as a sign of holy rage.  The fortunes of ISIS would collapse as rapidly as it grew.

Video clips of ISIS in battle have shown nothing except that they have mastered the art of driving pickup trucks in convoy.  They have not demonstrated the capacity to maneuver substantial bodies of troops in a real battle.  They lack the staff, the communications, the training and the discipline to do so.  And by a ‘real battle’ I mean a mere brigade-sized action, which would require the fielding of the majority of their fighting force in Iraq.

As between a pickup truck sporting a machine gun and an Abrams tank, there is no doubt about the outcome of a trial by battle.  One reason for the utter collapse in morale in the Iraqi government forces when faced with the ISIS incursion was the pilfering of soldier’s pay by the Iraqi officers.  Few men are willing to fight for a man who stole his wages.

In a conventional army, seven or eight men are needed to support one man in combat.  Nearly all of the ISIS men are described as “fighters,” meaning few or none of them do what is done by the seven or eight men in a conventional army.  ISIS will find it difficult, then, to replenish itself with ammunition and other necessities in the event of a major battle.  It is also vulnerable to a battle of attrition.

Having proclaimed a Caliphate and called upon all Muslims to “obey” him, the boss of ISIS, Caliph Ibrahim, created more weaknesses.  With a Caliphate and the naming of Mosul as its temporary capital city, ISIS has come out of the shadows.  It has real property, and it pretends to govern.  Upon the first act of terrorism committed or attempted against the United States by the Caliphate, its cities are liable to a retaliatory strike.  The home town of Saddam Hussein, Tikrit, could easily be flattened by the United States Air Force in retaliation for another underwear bomber tied to the Caliphate.

Their terrorists have to board a commercial airliner and pass through U.S. Customs before they can strike the homeland.  Not exactly a Utah beach like threat of invasion.

By claiming to be the Caliph, Ibrahim has said indirectly that the Kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and the presidents of Egypt, Turkey, and Iran are his vassals and their countries are under his suzerainty.  I wonder how they feel about that; perhaps western diplomats should ask them about their diminished status in the world.

ISIS is a crisis in the Islamic world.  Only by having threatened to attack the United States has it deflected attention from the crisis it poses to the Islamic world.  A Caliphate undermines the religious legitimacy of the governments of other Islamic countries.  ISIS is far more a threat to the Middle East than it is to the United States.

If a means can be found to inflict casualties on ISIS in a continual way, or if it can be brought to battle by a serious military, ISIS will deflate like a broken balloon.

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Serious Means for Serious Ends

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis 


23 July 2014

 

 

War is a serious means for attaining serious ends.  The waves of rocket attacks by Hamas against Israel are certainly serious means, but what serious end is in view for Hamas?

 

Territorial gain cannot be the goal, certainly not the immediate goal of the acts of war committed by Hamas against Israel.  For the foreseeable future, Hamas and the Palestinian people they govern will be confined to the Gaza strip, a well-defined piece of territory.  Israel would gain no respite should territory be ceded to Hamas as a gesture, and Hamas lacks the military power to seize and hold Israeli territory.  Gain of territory cannot be the serious end in view. 

 

The sheer inconveniencing of Israeli citizens and Israeli commerce, while it may be occurring, is not a serious goal because it cannot be maintained.  It is not a step towards something higher.  Israeli retaliation against Gaza makes that goal not a paying proposition in the interim.

 

The declared goal of Hamas is the complete destruction of the Israeli state, and these rocket attacks will not achieve that.  Israel is not going to surrender to Hamas because of these attacks.  Indeed, the success of the Iron Dome anti-missile system is making Hamas’s barrages look feeble.  On the other hand, serious destruction is being meted out by Israel against Gaza.  Air attacks, artillery, and now a ground invasion of Gaza by Israel provoked by the Hamas rocket offensive is proving what an illusion it was to believe that Israel would surrender to a rocket barrage.

 

What goals could possibly be aimed at by Hamas, since neither the surrender of Israel, the gain of territory, retaliation, nor the relief of other pressures by Israel is in the offing?

 

Several goals come to mind.  The first is that Hamas is proving its worth to its supporters and paymasters.  Israel is hated by many other countries in the Middle East; the destruction of Israel is the declared national goal of Iran, for example.  Hamas did not build the missiles it is firing into Israel.  The missiles Hamas is launching into Israel had to be supplied by someone, and manufactured somewhere other than Gaza.

 

A missile capable of reaching Tel Aviv from Gaza takes up a lot of space.  Thousands of rockets somehow had to be transported by sea and delivered to Gaza through an efficient Israeli naval blockade.  This fact suggests that the missiles were delivered through Egypt and moved past the border controls between Egypt and Gaza.  These missiles would not have been delivered to Gaza at such cost and risk unless it was understood that Hamas would launch them against Israel.  Thus Hamas is acting as an agent to the state which supplied them the missiles.  It is doing what is expected of it.

 

The benefit to the state which supplied Hamas the missiles is that it gets to see Israel harassed at no physical cost to itself.  It is the Gazans who suffer Israel’s wrath, not Iran for example.

 

Hamas also is enforcing its control over the Palestinians of Gaza.  The goal that Israel must be destroyed is resisted at the cost of one’s life in Gaza.  Hamas will tolerate no dissent, on this point above all.  The Palestinians of Gaza have been dragooned into a war with Israel.  They are obliged to use their women and children as human shields protecting Hamas’s missile storage sites, an act contrary to the Geneva Conventions.  Being able to show civilian casualties to the world and offering these as examples of Israeli brutality is another goal of Hamas in this campaign.

 

Who would be convinced by such a thing?  The scenes of destruction and the sight of wounded children have certainly raised emotions all around the world.  Emotions would most likely be raised favorably for Hamas among those who are already convinced of the evil of Israel.

 

Thus Hamas by this rocket offensive against Israel is proving its worth as an agent and client of its supporters.  It is demonstrating its power over the Palestinians of Gaza by dragooning them into the war with Israel.

 

But Gaza and its Palestinian population clearly are things to be used by Hamas.  The destruction of Gaza and the creation of misery for its population are useful to Hamas since it can justify repression of dissent as a necessary war emergency.

 

Hamas governs Gaza, but to the benefit of itself not to the benefit of the people of Gaza.

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Published in the Friday, August 1, 2014 edition of the Hamilton Spectator

IRAQ CIRCLES THE DRAIN

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis


 9 July 2014

  

Last month, amid a welter of slaughter and torture, a new Islamic Caliphate was proclaimed on the territories of Syria and Iraq.  This new political creation resembles a balloon: one pinprick and it will collapse.

 

The Islamic Caliphate was created by a homicidal egomaniac who now calls himself Caliph Ibrahim.  Previously he went under the alias of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.  He sees himself as the second coming of Mohammed, except with a better taste in wristwatches.  The new Caliphate rests on the bayonets of some six thousand men, half of whom are foreigners from Britain, France, Australia, Canada, and the United States.  The appeal of fighting for the Caliphate among these men is the feeling of fighting for Islamic righteousness, i.e. jihad; and the chance to gratify the darkest of human desires.  As proof, thousands of unarmed civilians and captured soldiers have been gruesomely executed by ISIS members, and few of these were by crucifixion.  These executions have been posted on social media for the entertainment of some and the terrorization of others.

 

ISIS, for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is the name of the terrorist entity.  Failing to make further headway against the forces loyal to Syrian president Bashir al Assad, ISIS turned east in June and advanced against an utterly demoralized and unprofessionally led Iraqi military.  The Iraqi forces either deserted or retired before the advance, and allowed ISIS to occupy Mosul, the second largest city of Iraq.  ISIS occupies a portion of the Sunni majority area of Iraq.  It has made no effort to advance into Iraqi Kurdistan, which is stoutly defended by the Peshmerga, the tough Kurdish militia; or into Jordan.  The rapid ISIS advance stalled north of Baghdad, where Sunni majority Iraq begins.

 

Some rather breathless western commentators have said that ISIS is transforming itself into a real army.  All that has been seen in film clips, however, are civilian pickup trucks sporting mounted machine guns, and disordered bodies of men firing automatic weapons aimlessly into the unseen distance for the benefit of the camera crew.  ISIS may have captured some Iraqi and Syrian military equipment and fighting vehicles and put them on display for the cameras.

 

There’s many a slip twixt lip and cup.  It is one thing to be able to drive a fighting vehicle and quite another to coordinate the tactical use of groupings of fighting machines in battle.  All the ISIS has demonstrated with their fighting vehicles is the capacity to drive in convoy.  ISIS has never demonstrated the capacity to maneuver in battalion and brigade sized formations in open battle.  They have no air power.  With only six thousand real fighting men, half of whom are foreign adventurers, oppressing millions, Caliph Ibrahim makes a lot of boasts.

 

In his first public pronouncements, Caliph Ibrahim promised to make terrorist attacks against the United States and called upon all Muslims to “obey” him.  A Caliphate is a special thing in Islamic history and teaching; it is the empire of the Ummah, the believers, and the Caliph is the head of state and theocratic absolute monarch.  A Caliphate would hold that the Kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and the Republics of Turkey, Egypt, and Iran would be vassal states under its suzerainty and the Kings and presidents of these countries are vassals.  Perhaps some confused western diplomats, seeking clarification, might ask the governments of these countries if they planned to “obey” the new Caliph; whether their countries should now be regarded as subordinate entities to the new Caliphate, and if not, why not.

 

The new Caliphate and self-proclaimed Caliph Ibrahim represent a political crisis in Islam, first and foremost.  His threat to western countries is a separate matter.

 

By proclaiming a new Caliphate and establishing Mosul as its capital, Caliph Ibrahim has created hostages to fortune.  He is no longer the head of an ethereal terrorist organization that exists nowhere in particular and is responsible for the governance of nothing.  An act of terrorism committed against a NATO country, or any other country, would constitute an act of war by the Caliphate.  Mosul may not be as pleasant a place to govern from after it was flattened from a visit from the United States Air Force in retaliation for a Caliphate sponsored act of terrorism.

 

Enjoy the Caliphate while it lasts.  Its strength is grossly overestimated; it has no political legitimacy, and has made too many enemies in the Muslim world.

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Published in the August, 2014 edition of Esprit de Corps magazine.