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ISIS: The Terrorist Group That Would Be a State

Michael W.S. Ryan

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UNITED STATES NAVAL WAR COLLEGE

CENTER on IRREGULAR WARFARE andARMED GROUPS

United States Naval War College

Newport, Rhode Island

Draft as of 121916

Dr. Michael W. S. Ryan

ISIS: The Terrorist Group That Would Be A 

State
ISIS: The Terrorist Group That 

Would Be a State

Michael W. S. Ryan

Center on Irregular Warfare & Armed Groups (CIWAG)

US Naval War College, Newport, RI

CIWAG@usnwc.edu
RYAN: ISIS—THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT WOULD BE A STATE

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Roy Godson—Operationalizing Intelligence Dominance

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Michael Iacobucci—Operational Strategies to Counter IED Threat in 

Iraq

Devadas Krishnadas—Sovereign Wealth Funds as Tools of National 

Strategy: Singapore’s Approach

Jon Lindsay and Roger Petersen—Varieties of Insurgency and 

Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 2003-2009

Martin Murphy—Piracy

Norman Nigh—An Operator’s Guide to Human Terrain Teams

Thomas M. Scanzillo and Edward M. Lopacienski—Influence 

Operations and the Human Domain

John Scott-Railton—Revolutionary Risks: Cyber Technology and 

Threats in the 2011 Libyan Revolution

Richard Shultz—Organizational Learning and the Marine Corps: The 

Counterinsurgency Campaign in Iraq

John D. Waghelstein—Reading the Tea Leaves: Proto-Insurgency in 

Honduras
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3

This work is cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

This case study is available on CIWAG’s public website located at 

http://www.usnwc.edu/ciwag
RYAN: ISIS—THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT WOULD BE A STATE

4

Editors’ Introduction

In 2008, the U.S. Naval War College established the Center on 

Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups (CIWAG). CIWAG’s primary 

mission is twofold: to bring cutting-edge research on Irregular Warfare 

into the Joint Professional Military Educational (JPME) curricula; and 

to bring operators, practitioners, and scholars together to share their 

knowledge and experiences about a vast array of violent and nonviolent irregular challenges. This case study is part of an ongoing effort 

at CIWAG that includes symposia, lectures by world-renowned 

academics, case studies, research papers, articles, and books. Our aim is 

to make these case studies part of an evolving and adaptive curriculum

that fulfills the needs of students preparing to meet the challenges of 

the post-9/11 world.

It is important to note three critical caveats to this case study. 

First, the opinions found in this case study are solely those of the author 

and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense, the Naval 

War College, or CIWAG. Second, while every effort was made to 

correct any factual errors in this work, the author is ultimately 

responsible for the content of this case study. 

Third, the study questions presented in all CIWAG case studies 

are written to provoke discussion on a wide variety of topics, including 

strategic, operational, and tactical matters, as well as ethical and moral 

questions confronted by operators in the battlefield. The point is to 

make these case studies part of an evolving and adaptive curriculum 

that fulfills the needs of students preparing to meet the challenges of 

the post-9/11 world and to show them the dilemmas that real people 

have faced in high-pressure situations. 

Finally, in addition to a range of teaching questions that are 

intended to serve as the foundation for classroom discussion, students 

conducting further research will find the extensive bibliography at the

end of the case helpful. Compiled by the case study author and by

CIWAG researchers at the Naval War College, the bibliography is a 

selection of the best books and articles on a range of related topics. We 
RYAN: ISIS—THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT WOULD BE A STATE

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hope you find it useful and look forward to hearing your feedback on 

the cases and suggestions for how you can contribute to CIWAG’s 

mission here at the Naval War College.
RYAN: ISIS—THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT WOULD BE A STATE

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Author Biography

Michael W. S. Ryan is a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation 

and an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, both in Washington, 

D.C. Formerly, he served as a senior executive in the U.S. departments 

of state and defense and as vice president of the Millennium Challenge 

Corporation and the Middle East Institute. He studied Arabic in Egypt 

and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Dr. Ryan is author of 

Decoding Al-Qaeda's Strategy: The Deep Battle Against America, 

published by Columbia University Press (2013). His current research 

focus is jihadist ideology, doctrine, and strategy.
RYAN: ISIS—THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT WOULD BE A STATE

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Suggested citation:

Ryan, Michael. 2015. ISIS: The Terrorist Group That Would Be a 

State. Case study. Newport, RI: US Naval War College, Center on 

Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups.
RYAN: ISIS—THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT WOULD BE A STATE

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Table of Contents

CIWAG Case Studies...............................................................................2

Editors’ Introduction ..............................................................................4

I. ISIS: Its Evolution and Influences ........................................................9

A. What’s in a Name? From Tawhid w’ al-Jihad to ISIS........................10

B. Analytical Framework: Jihadist Strategy and Social Movement 

Theory ..................................................................................................21

II. How ISIS Adapts al Qaeda’s Doctrine and Strategy of Guerrilla 

Warfare ................................................................................................25

A. Guerilla Doctrine: Lessons Learned .................................................25

B. Guerilla Doctrine: Al-Suri’s Template and ISIS .................................36

C. Guerrilla Strategy: The Administration of Savagery as Operational 

Guide ....................................................................................................41

III. ISIS Group’s Successful Mobilization Tactics...................................49

A. Communication Strategy .................................................................50

B. Mobilization: Social Movement Theory Concepts Applied to ISIS...56

IV. Conclusion: Net Assessment of ISIS Strengths and Weaknesses With 

Recommendations...............................................................................67

A. The Enemy’s Strengths.....................................................................67

B. The Enemy’s Weaknesses................................................................68

C. Recommendations...........................................................................69

Selected Bibliography...........................................................................77

Further Reading....................................................................................81
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I. ISIS: Its Evolution and Influences

No lasting resolution to the ISIS threat in Syria and Iraq will be 

feasible until viable political solutions are found for both countries. At 

the time of the writing of this case study, the U.S. has proposed no such 

solution. It has given priority to addressing the security challenge but 

has not yet settled on an overarching strategy for either country. 

Instead, the U.S. and its allies have put in place a series of military 

responses to local threats and have taken advantage of targets of 

opportunity in both countries using coalition airstrikes. In Syria, the 

U.S. has launched the occasional U.S. Special Forces mission. 

Additionally, the U.S. has provided military training and some 

equipment to the government of Iraq and has responded to requests for 

airstrikes in support of specific Iraqi military missions. 

This case study presents a net assessment of ISIS: its strengths 

and weaknesses. The conclusion will propose some recommendations 

for degrading ISIS, both militarily and ideologically. Clearly, ISIS is a 

fluid topic, subject to change; please note that information in this case 

study is current as of August 2015.

It is beyond the scope of this case study to propose a political 

resolution to the political crises in Syria and Iraq, which have been a 

breeding ground for the group. Instead, the case study will address 

tactical recommendations for defeating ISIS at the military level and 

will suggest a strategic approach to countering the ideological 

challenge that ISIS poses to the region and beyond.

A net assessment is descriptive, not prescriptive. Developed 

over time within the U.S. Department of Defense, a net assessment has 

been described as a practice or methodology based on asking questions 

from a variety of distinctive perspectives.1It focuses on how the enemy 

 

1 The basis for the perspective on net assessment is based on Paul Bracken, 

“Net Assessment: A Practical Guide,” Parameters (spring 2006): 90-100. 
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operates and who the enemy is. It tries to understand how the enemy 

thinks about the U.S. in order to anticipate its strategy, if not its 

individual actions. To conduct a net assessment of ISIS, one needs to 

look at the strategic interactions of its component parts, its internal 

bureaucratic behavior, and the multifaceted nature of its strategy.

A. What’s in a Name? From Tawhid w’ al-Jihad to ISIS

ISIS developed its strategic approach within the modern 

jihadist tradition, which al Qaeda violently introduced to the United 

States with a series of escalating attacks culminating in the attacks of 

September 11, 2001. However, as an adaptive, learning organization, 

ISIS departed from al Qaeda’s strategy by taking advantage of its best 

thinking about jihadist lessons as codified by Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, who 

is a major influence on the ISIS group’s military doctrine. In addition, 

ISIS has used a strategic plan for establishing an Islamic emirate, as 

presented in broad strokes by another al Qaeda strategist with the 

pseudonym Abu Bakr Naji. ISIS also has learned from U.S. operations, 

especially from the use of Sunni tribes during the successful “surge” in 

Iraq, which came close to destroying al Qaeda in Iraq. Lessons learned 

from U.S. operations were the basis of the successful rebirth of al 

Qaeda in Iraq under a new name and organization, now called ISIS, and 

following a new strategy.

i. Al-Zarqawi: Founder, Tawhid w’ al-Jihad

On June 8, 2006, in a remote area in the vicinity of Baquba,

north of Baghdad, American F-16 aircraft targeted a jihadist “safe 

house” with two 500-pound bombs, causing extensive damage and 

killing its most infamous inhabitant, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi. Major 

General William Caldwell, U.S. military spokesmen in Iraq, stated that

Iraqi police arrived first on the scene, followed by U.S. Special Forces. 

The killing of the Iraqi jihadist followed intelligence information about 

the presence of one of al-Zarqawi’s known associates, Sheik Abd alRahman; tips received from Iraqi residents in the surrounding area led 

to the successful operation. Troops had been on the ground watching 
RYAN: ISIS—THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT WOULD BE A STATE

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for al-Zarqawi. Major General Caldwell further stated that Rahman 

“was brought to our attention by somebody within the network of 

Zarqawi’s.”

2

In fact, the successful operation came after Jordanian 

authorities arrested members of al-Zarqawi’s network and, more 

importantly, after many Iraqi fellow insurgents had grown to loathe 

their bloody comrade-in-arms enough to act as informants.

Al-Zarqawi’s death was the culmination of an American search 

for one of the most ruthless Salafi jihadist leaders, who had an 

American bounty on his head of $25 million, an amount equal to the 

reward offered for Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman alZawahiri. The terrorist leader had been responsible for the killing of a

U.N. envoy, numerous assassinations in Iraq and Jordan, countless 

killings of noncombatants, bombings of mosques and Islamic shrines,

and shocking video beheadings. It was to be hoped that his death, 

praised by his many enemies, would lead to a weakened al Qaeda effort 

in Iraq. President George W. Bush, however, sounded a sober note 

while praising the operation: “We can expect the sectarian violence to 

continue. Yet, the ideology of terror has lost one of its most visible and 

aggressive leaders and it provides an opportunity for the new 

government to turn the tide in the country.”

3

Because so many conflicting reports exist on a man who has 

become mythic, establishing the facts of al-Zarqawi’s life is 

problematic. What is told about him, however, shows a pattern that is 

important for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the ISIS

group: a lost young Muslim without a traditional Islamic religious 

foundation who becomes a zealous adherent of a radical jihadist group

to find salvation through violence against the established order. In 

effect, the wayward young man becomes a fearless fighter against 

 

2

“U.S. Military: Al-Zarqawi Was Alive After Bombing,” June 9, 2006, 

www.cnn.com.

3

“Bush: Al-Zarqawi Operation a ‘Remarkable Achievement,’” June 7, 2006, 

www.cnn.com.
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everyone outside his group, but the very zeal that gives him his strength 

is also difficult to control and alienates the population he needs in order 

to succeed. 

The man known by the jihadi nom de guerre Abu Mus’ab alZarqawi was born into poverty in the Jordanian town of Zarqa as 

Ahmad Fadil Nazal al-Khalayleh circa October 1966. Despite his 

humble circumstances, he is reported to have belonged to a prominent

Bedouin tribe, the Bani Hassan. Like many young men who later 

become strict Salafi jihadis, al-Zarqawi in his younger years did not 

show the influence of Islamic morals. He dropped out of school, drank 

alcohol heavily, sported tattoos, and engaged in general rowdiness. He 

was a taciturn, semi-literate, petty thief and gangster.4 According to 

some accounts, when he was only 15, al-Zarqawi participated in the 

violent robbery of a relative’s home, resulting in that relative’s death. 

People of Zarqa remember him as a bully, a thug, and even a pimp.5

Whether to escape Jordan or because of the lure of adventure, 

al-Zarqawi travelled to Afghanistan for the first time in 1989. He may

have had a religious motivation, but the Soviet Union had withdrawn 

from Afghanistan, leaving only other Muslims to fight. One who knew 

al-Zarqawi remembers him as an utterly fearless fighter who seemed to 

put himself in the midst of the most dangerous situations: 

He wasn’t very religious during that time. In fact, 

he’d only “returned” to Islam three months before coming to 

Afghanistan. It was the Tablighi Jamaat [a proselytizing 

missionary group spread across the Muslim world] who 

convinced him—he had thirty-seven criminal cases against 

him by then—that it was time to cleanse himself.6

 

4 Lawrence Joffe, “Obituary: Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi,” June 8, 2006, 

www.theguardian.com.

5 Mary Anne Weaver, “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi,” 

The Atlantic, web ed., June 8, 2006.

6

Ibid.
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Afghanistan was a formative influence for al-Zarqawi. He

claimed that the jihadist icon Abdullah Azzam was a great influence, 

but perhaps the most important event in the formation of his ideology 

was his meeting with fellow Jordanian and one of the most influential 

ideologues of Salafi jihadism, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Al-Maqdisi 

is the author of many jihadist books and treatises, including the 

influential jihadist tract Millet Ibrahim (The Religion of Abraham). AlMaqdisi is important not only because he was al-Zarqawi’s

foundational tutor but also because of his later role as a critic of his 

pupil and the ISIS group his student founded.7

Al-Zarqawi remained in Afghanistan until 1992, when he 

returned to Jordan, supported intellectually by al-Maqdisi and a handful 

of other jihadists to invigorate a Jordanian jihadist group that opposed 

the monarchy and democracy while calling for the killing of Jews and 

Christians. It was here the term Tawhid (monotheism) first appeared as 

a name he favored as a sort of precursor to his group, which exploded 

onto the scene after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. At some point al-Maqdisi 

and al-Zarqawi changed the name of the group from Tawhid to Bayat 

Imam (Allegiance to the Imam). Reportedly, al-Zarqawi was jailed in 

Jordan in 1993 for weapons possession and remained incarcerated with 

al-Maqdisi and other opposition elements until a general amnesty in 

1999 freed him. 

Prison was an important school for the young jihadist. He made 

significant contacts, and became a feared leader. His jihadist group 

grew in prison and on the streets outside as a kind of religiously 

sanctioned criminal gang. In 2000 he fled again to Afghanistan, now 

the leader of Jama’at al-Tawhid w’ al-Jihad (The Group for 

Monotheism and Jihad). For the first time as a leader, he met Osama 

 

7

For the relationship between al-Zarqawi and al-Maqdisi, see Joas 

Wagemakers, A Quietist Jihadi: The Ideology and Influence of Abu 

Muhammad al-Maqdisi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 

215-222.
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bin Laden, who was apparently repelled by the crude brawler, more 

talented with a knife than he was articulate. One hears that bin Laden 

did not trust al-Zarqawi because of potential infiltration of his group by 

the famed Jordanian intelligence apparatus, but hoped to use him in 

some capacity, a motivation no doubt shared by al-Zarqawi himself.

This time in Afghanistan, al-Zarqawi ran his own training camp near 

the Iranian border, which was separate from al Qaeda although it 

received funds from bin Laden’s organization, probably on the 

recommendation of the military chief, the Egyptian Sayf al-Adel. AlZarqawi did not pledge allegiance to bin Laden in Afghanistan.8

With the fall of the Taliban and the dispersal of al Qaeda and 

its followers following a quick and effective campaign by U.S. forces 

and their Afghan allies, al-Zarqawi made his way to Iran before 

migrating in 2002 to the Kurdish area of Iraq. There, he teamed up with 

a small Kurdish jihadist group, Ansar al-Islam (Partisans of Islam), and 

prepared for the expected American invasion.9 Now a full-blown jihadi 

leader with considerable battle experience and violent charisma, alZarqawi started to build his Jama’at al-Tawhid w’ al-Jihad into the 

scourge it would become after the 2003 U.S. invasion. He targeted the 

international community, the United Nations, foreign contractors, 

American forces, and especially the Shia community. A harbinger of

ISIS, al-Zarqawi’s group specialized in the new media with videos of 

lurid beheadings, constant Internet communications, and hyper violent

sectarian killings featuring gruesome methods like using electric drills 

against skulls. He attacked mosques, sacred shrines, and public 

gatherings of all kinds. His message and methods such as suicide 

bombing inflated his capabilities in the imaginations of many,

including U.S. officials. In fact, however, of the five groups of 

insurgents against American forces and the successor government to 

 

8 Weaver, “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi.”

9

Peter L. Bergen, The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America 

and al Qaeda (New York: The Free Press, 2011), pp. 160-164.
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Saddam Hussein, al-Zarqawi’s was the smallest and arguably the 

weakest. While his group was composed of some Iraqis and foreign 

fighters, the other insurgent groups included Iraqis from Saddam’s

regime, various nationalists, tribes, and local jihadist groups. Whether 

or not the U.S. inflated al-Zarqawi’s importance, his place in the 

jihadist pantheon would be fixed by his death, and he would become

the mythic hero for the organizations that followed in his line.10

Al-Zarqawi’s group was a successful magnet for foreign jihadi 

fighters. By 2004, the insurgency in Iraq had deprived al Qaeda’s illfated insurgency in Saudi Arabia (begun in 2003) of the recruits bin 

Laden expected to be available for his highest-priority effort,

overthrowing the Saudi monarchy. Saudi jihadists and their preachers 

wanted to fight Americans, who had pulled out of the kingdom just 

weeks before the launch of al Qaeda’s insurgency. If a jihadi wanted to 

fight Americans, he went to Iraq. By 2004, the al Qaeda effort in Saudi 

Arabia was already on the road to defeat, so bin Laden and al-Zawahiri

negotiated with al-Zarqawi the terms of affiliation with al Qaeda. The 

Tawhid group became the commander of the al Qaeda organization in 

the “land of the two rivers,” the jihadist name for Iraq. In the West, the 

organization was simply called al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Despite his 

pledge to bin Laden, al-Zarqawi was fully independent and did not 

follow direction from either bin Laden or al-Zawahiri, who became 

increasingly concerned about his indiscriminate violence against other 

Muslims as a course that would inevitably backfire. Referring to the 

videos of beheadings, al-Zawahiri presciently advised, “Among the 

things which the feelings of the Muslim population who love and 

 

10 Ahmad S. Hashim, “From al Qaeda Affiliate to the Rise of the Islamic 

Caliphate: The Evolution of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),” policy 

report, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore, December 

2014.
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support you will never find palatable are the scenes of slaughtering the 

[Muslim] hostages.”

11

It is important to view al-Zarqawi’s career as a model on 

multiple levels for the Islamic State group. Again and again, one can 

perceive the mafia-like criminal enterprise beneath the extremist 

religious pretensions. Time and again, ISIS uses religion to justify 

violent attacks against noncombatants, which most Muslims find 

inexcusable, while the apparatus for terrorism is funded by bank 

robberies, looting of artifacts, the slave market, kidnapping, and 

extortion, as well as smuggling and trafficking of all kinds, including 

petroleum, antiquities, and even people. The inventive use of social 

media, publicizing atrocities resembling what nineteenth-century 

anarchists called the “propaganda of the deed” to attract recruits to the 

movement, and the preference for the knife over the gun or sword for 

wanton executions are all traits of al-Zarqawi, a man who was more 

comfortable with the knife than with the Kalashnikov. So it should not 

be surprising that after his 2006 death in an American airstrike, his 

organization maintained many of his traits and tactics, including the 

penchant for changing the name of his organization when 

circumstances warranted.

ii. From Al Qaeda in Iraq to the Islamic State in Iraq to ISIS

In January 2006, AQI formed what was called the Mujahedeen 

Shura (advice) Council. Through it, the group hoped to draw in local 

jihadist groups, which were estranged from al-Zarqawi’s indiscriminate 

violence and violation of tribal customs. The council was not effective. 

After al-Zarqawi’s death, AQI became the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) in 

mid-October, a designation that went beyond anything al Qaeda had 

claimed for itself and to which a number of local jihadist groups and 

other insurgents objected. The new name in effect declared the 

 

11 Quoted in Bergen, The Longest War, p. 167.
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transnational Salafi jihadist group the core of a state to replace Iraq and 

demoted other factions of the insurgency to supporters of the new state. 

AQI’s leadership had become blurred even before ISI was 

declared. The new leader, whose existence was questioned by many 

observers, was Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. The more likely leader was a 

man with the nom de guerre Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. Some argued that 

both names were aliases for an Egyptian, Abu Ayyub al-Masry, who 

was close to al-Zawahiri.

12 In any case, both Abu Omar al-Baghdadi 

and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir apparently were killed during a joint raid 

by Iraqi and American forces on April 18, 2010. The general 

decapitation operations continued across Iraq. In June 2010, the U.S. 

commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, told a Pentagon news 

conference that 80% of ISI leaders had been killed or captured.13

However, at the nadir of ISI’s fortunes in June 2010, a new and 

apparently much more effective leader emerged—Abu Bakr alBaghdadi, who was soon to become known to his followers as Caliph 

Ibrahim. Unlike al-Zarqawi and al Qaeda’s top leadership, Abu Bakr 

al-Baghdadi was not only an experienced field jihadi but also claimed 

to have received a religious education, with the equivalent of a Ph.D. in 

Islamic law. He had been captured by American forces in 2004 and 

interned in Camp Bucca, but was released in less than a year because 

he was not considered important enough or dangerous enough to keep 

in custody. Although ISI was significantly weakened by 2010, its 

foreign leadership had been replaced with Iraqis like al-Baghdadi. 

He was born Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri near Samarra, 

Iraq, in 1971. Most of al-Baghdadi’s biography, however, should be 

seen as more propaganda than history; ISI spokesmen and clerics 

 

12 Eben Kaplan, “Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, Zarqawi’s Mysterious Successor 

(aka Abu Ayub al-Masri),” Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder, June 

13, 2006.

13 “U.S. Says 80% of al Qaeda Leaders in Iraq Removed,” June 4, 2010, 

www.bbc.co.uk.
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carefully crafted his biography to match the preferred characteristics of 

a caliph. Thus, he was described as a descendent of the Prophet 

Mohammad, a member of the Prophet’s tribe, the Quraysh, and both a 

man of religion and a leader in battle. If propaganda and organization 

may be considered al-Baghdadi’s greatest strengths as a leader, his 

clandestine nature is no doubt his greatest survival skill.

Al-Baghdadi and his closest circle planned a comeback 

strategy that could be rolled out as U.S. forces pulled out of combat and 

then left Iraq. In 2011, two significant events occurred: the anticipated

withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and the unanticipated fullscale insurrection against Bashar al-Assad in Syria in the context of the 

Arab Spring. Still nominally affiliated with al Qaeda, al-Baghdadi 

funded and sent Abu Muhammad al-Jolani into Syria in August 2011 to 

set up an organization that became operational long before it emerged 

as Jabhat al-Nusra in January 2012 in Aleppo.14

Al-Jolani was a Syrian who took his time to set up a credible 

insurgent organization viewed by other rebels as both effective and 

authentically Syrian. He hid his allegiance to al Qaeda and ISI. It 

appears that he was following a strategy championed by al-Zawahiri,

very much Mao’s or Che Guevara’s strategy of seeking local support 

for guerrilla warfare against a strong central government, perceived as 

tyrannical. This was not new to al Qaeda and belonged as much to bin 

Laden as it does to al-Zawahiri, but it was more successful than al 

Qaeda’s previous attempts in Saudi Arabia or North Africa. Moreover, 

it had the advantage initially of falling outside of American concern.

How did all that change?

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been part of AQI and ISI, quietly 

learning and organizing. He had likely never been important enough to 

pledge allegiance to al-Zawahiri, although his allegiance had been 

assumed and he had no reason to break with the organization. He also 

 

14 Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, ISIS: Inside The Army of Terror (New 

York: Regan Arts, 2015).
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19

either felt no need to ask permission or at least thought it unwise to 

when, in April 2013, he declared that he had formed the Islamic State 

of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) as a single state. 

He must have felt strongly prepared with arrangements with 

tribal groups in Iraq and the solid support he had within ISI leadership

and rank and file. He was fulfilling not only al-Zawahiri’s call for an 

Islamic emirate in the heart of Muslim lands but also al-Zarqawi’s

visions of the rebirth of Imad al-Din al-Zangi’s emirate. This stretched 

from Mosul to Aleppo and marked the “turning point in favor of the 

Islam” during the Second Crusade.

15 In addition, as the propagandistin-chief, al-Baghdadi saw the utility of the popular prophesies calling 

for an Armageddon in an area north of Aleppo called Dabiq and the 

associations with the hero Saladin, who defeated the Christians and 

overturned the Shia caliphate in Egypt. 

The wildly successful al-Jolani did not want to be merged into 

the new organization and appealed to al-Zawahiri for help. In June 

2013, al-Zawahiri called for ISI to fight in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra to 

fight in Syria, without merging. After all, there was no need to merge 

when both were part of the umbrella of al Qaeda. When al-Baghdadi 

rejected al-Zawahiri’s unenforceable decision, the al Qaeda chief in 

October 2013 formally declared ISI, now ISIS, to be separate from al 

Qaeda in every sense.

16

ISIS, however, refused to be disbanded. Using traditional 

guerrilla tactics coupled to semi-conventional army tactics, it became 

the most successful jihadist group in Syria and set about setting up a 

proto-state with its capital in al-Raqqa. ISIS mainly avoided Syrian 

regular forces, which were slowly grinding down the Syrian insurgents 

in a costly war of attrition. ISIS fought only when it could win, and that 

was mostly against other jihadist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra. 

 

15 See Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th ed. rev. (London: Palgrave 

Macmillan, 2002), p.644 ff.

16 Hashim, “From al Qaeda Affiliate to the Rise of the Islamic Caliphate.”
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20

After securing its base in Syria, ISIS focused its attention on Iraq in 

June 2014.

The newly energized group reactivated old networks within 

major cities and surrounding areas in the majority-Sunni provinces and 

proceeded with a jihadist version of blitzkrieg. The ultimate prize was 

strategically and historically significant Mosul, which fell to ISIS on 

June 10, 2014. About 800 to 1,000 ISIS fighters took the city of two

million people when Iraqi forces comprising two divisions of 

approximately 30,000 soldiers fled after initial skirmishes. 17 In the 

following days, ISIS went on to capture a number of strategic Sunni 

towns, such as Tikrit, and the oil refinery town of Baiji. Soon, most of 

the so-called Sunni triangle was under attack or under ISIS control. 

The lightning campaign was so successful that on the first day 

of Ramadan (June 28), the spokesman for ISIS declared that the 

Khilafah (caliphate) had been revived under the Caliph Ibrahim, the 

Commander of the Faithful, previously known as Abu Bakr alBaghdadi.18 The Sykes-Picot era borders between Syria and Iraq were 

erased and the Islamic State was born, bearing the slogan “Remaining 

and Expanding.”

Discussion Questions

1. When al-Baghdadi sent Abu Muhammad al-Jolani to Syria 

and funded his startup organization, this organization initially fell 

outside of American concern. What steps might be taken to help focus 

on and prevent similar startups?

2. How might the U.S. and its allies have better exploited the 

emerging split between al-Baghdadi (ISIS) and al-Jolani (al-Nusra)?

 

17 “Iraq Army Capitulates to ISIS Militants in Four Cities,” June 11, 2014, 

www.theguardian.com.

18 “Khilafah Declared,” Dabiq: The Return of Khilafah 1 (June-July 2014): 6-

9.
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21

3. By killing al-Zarqawi, the U.S. severely weakened the 

capabilities of al Qaeda in Iraq, yet only a few years later, al-Baghdadi 

was able to revive AQI and radically expand its size and influence 

under the label of IS. What factors account for this dramatic success? 

4. The “surge” in Iraq came close to destroying AQI. What 

might have been some cost-effective steps the U.S. could have taken to 

finish the job?

5. ISIS has destroyed the Sykes-Picot border between Syria and 

Iraq, established by France and Great Britain after World War I. Can 

the borders ever be redrawn as they once were? Would a different

configuration be achievable today? If so, what?

B. Analytical Framework: Jihadist Strategy and Social Movement 

Theory

There is no doubt that ISIS is heir to al Qaeda’s legacy. ISIS 

has adopted al Qaeda’s theory and doctrine of revolutionary war and 

the strategy and tactics derived from classical guerrilla warfare doctrine 

as practiced by Mao Tse Tung and other revolutionary guerrilla warfare 

theorists. In the late 1990s, a jihadist theorist who adopted the 

pseudonym Abu Ubayd al-Qurashi, and was later part of al Qaeda,

defined revolution as:

a comprehensive and fundamental change to the 

political order, social structure, economic ownership, and the 

standing social order. Revolution also means the attempt of a 

nongovernmental group to take control of the government in 

order to establish a new political social and economic 

structure.19

Both al Qaeda and ISIS are attempting such an overthrow of 

the existing order on a global basis. Both organizations not only intend 

 

19 See translation in Michael W. S. Ryan, Decoding Al Qaeda’s Strategy: The 

Deep Battle Against America (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 270
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to revive the ancient Islamic caliphate based on the model that existed 

in the seventh century; they also want to expand its geographic scope

beyond all historic precedents. To answer the question of whether ISIS 

is Islamic or a perversion of Islam, one may say with confidence that 

ISIS, like al Qaeda, is pursuing a revolution within Islam first; after 

winning that war, both organizations intend to impose the results of this 

revolution on the rest of the world. As one would expect, much of what 

makes ISIS the group it has become is identical to al Qaeda as Osama 

bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri conceived it. 

Like the current al Qaeda organization, ISIS is influenced by 

two major jihadist authors, Abu Mus’ab al-Suri and Abu Bakr Naji. AlSuri is best known for his magnum opus, The Global Call to Islamic 

Resistance, which documents modern jihadist history and makes 

recommendations for the future, including a theory of small-unit and 

individual terrorism, often referred to as lone-wolf terrorism by 

Western authorities. Pseudonymous Abu Bakr Naji, also a member of 

al Qaeda, wrote a important strategic manual, The Administration of 

Savagery, that both al Qaeda and ISIS are known to use to give recruits 

a broad overview of the strategy to create the modern Islamic emirates 

that will replace existing governments. Both authors/strategists provide 

extensive materials to aid understanding the similarities and differences 

between ISIS and al Qaeda, as well as their strengths and weaknesses.

However, if the two groups’ identities are shared to such a great extent, 

how does ISIS differ from al Qaeda?

To begin to answer this question, it is useful to examine ISIS in 

light of the elements of a template developed by Abu Mus’ab al-Suri 

based on his exhaustive analysis of historical jihadist organizations 

from an insider’s perspective. He identified five prerequisites for a 

clandestine jihadist group: 

1. Manhaj (program or methodology): How do they apply their 

belief structure to society? What is the concept and driving ideology to 

which its members adhere?

2. Qiyadah (leadership): Who are they? What are their 

connections to other forces hostile to democracy and the United States?
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23

3. Mukhattat (strategy or road map): Are they following a 

recognizable pattern or strategic plan to achieve goals?

4. Tamwil (funding): What are their sources? How do they 

identify the means to achieve their goals?

5. Bay’ah (allegiance): Is their allegiance to a local or external 

individual, or to an external group?20

After examining ISIS by applying an insider’s analysis, an 

outsider’s view may be obtained by using concepts derived from social 

movement theory (SMT). SMT is not a single theory; rather, it is a 

broad term used to capture the various interdisciplinary approaches 

within social science to examine why and how social movements form, 

mobilize resources, frame issues, and use networks to affect a social or 

political outcome. Much of SMT is irrelevant to the study of ISIS and 

jihadism in general. However, scholars have used specific SMT 

concepts to study Islamic activism with some success.21

The three concept pairs that are most useful to the analysis of al 

Qaeda and ISIS are culture and framing; violence and contention; and 

networks and alliances. Culture and framing is most useful for analysis 

of the ISIS group’s successful propaganda and mobilization strategy. 

The use of violence in political contention is an important barometer of 

the level of violence used by ISIS to achieve its strategic goals of 

capturing and holding territory in the heart of traditional Muslim lands. 

Similarly, the distinction between networks and alliances can explain 

how ISIS and its components can form and break alliances at the 

strategic level while sharing the same networks with other groups at a 

 

20 For a discussion of al-Suri’s analysis, see ibid., p. 242.

21 For example, see Mohammed M. Hafez and Quintan Wiktorowicz, 

“Violence and Contention in the Egyptian Islamic Movement,” Diane 

Singerman, “The Networked World of Islamist Social Movements,” and 

Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, “Interests, Ideas, and Islamist Outreach in Egypt,” 

in Quintan Wiktorowicz (ed.), Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory 

Approach (Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 

2004).
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24

tactical level, whether the networks involve criminal smuggling 

enterprises or shared guerrilla operations.

Discussion Questions

1. How can al-Suri’s five prerequisites for a clandestine jihadist 

group—program, leadership, strategy, funding, and allegiance—be 

used to analyze Islamic State’s strengths and vulnerabilities?

2. Some analysts have referred to ISIS as generating a civil 

war within Islam. How does al-Qurashi’s definition of revolution 

apply? 

3. Is ISIS fomenting a civil war for leadership in a territory or 

establishing the basis for a revolution? Explain.
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II. How ISIS Adapts al Qaeda’s Doctrine and 

Strategy of Guerrilla Warfare

Most accounts of ISIS military operations in Syria and Iraq 

tend to emphasize the lurid brutality shown to its victims rather than its 

less newsworthy tactics. In this context, ISIS appears to be quite 

different from al Qaeda, at least in theory. At the same time, a careful 

examination of ISIS operations reveals that its military and political 

doctrine comes from the documented experiences of decades of jihadist 

insurrections, as interpreted by al Qaeda ideologues. ISIS learned from 

these experiences vicariously and added its own formative lessons from 

its own losses to U.S. and allied forces in Iraq to create a new approach 

to creating its so-called Islamic state and caliphate.

A. Guerilla Doctrine: Lessons Learned

In the autumn of 2001, Alan Cullison, on assignment from the 

Wall Street Journal, ventured into northern Afghanistan to write about 

the U.S.-assisted war against the Taliban. Cullison’s historic trip almost 

ended in one of the steep passes through the Hindu Kush mountain 

range. The old pickup truck the journalist had rented lost its brakes on a 

steep hill, crashed into the back of a Northern Alliance fuel truck, and 

turned over onto its side to continue its skid. The baggage slid into the 

gorge. Miraculously, none of the passengers, including “a Japanese 

journalist, two Afghan interpreters, the driver, and a shoeless boy who 

had been riding on the roof and wiping dust from the windshield,”

22

were seriously injured. One of Cullison’s interpreters, however, 

suffered a sharp blow to the ribs from what turned out to be the 

journalist’s laptop, which was destroyed in the collision. 

 

22 Cullison, “Inside Al-Qaeda’s Hard Drive,” The Atlantic, September 2004. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/09/inside-al-qaeda-s-harddrive/303428/
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Finding himself in Kabul with other journalists covering what 

was the downfall of the Taliban regime without his laptop, Cullison 

soon wearied of dictating dispatches over his satellite phone and set out 

to find a new computer in a city in which that was a rare commodity. 

After a series of inquiries, the journalist finally found an enterprising 

thief, who had been watching the al Qaeda offices. Every day, 

Mohammad Atef, al Qaeda’s military chief, entered the office building 

carrying a laptop computer. On the day before al Qaeda fled Kabul 

before the Northern Alliance and American entry into the city, the thief 

climbed over the wall surrounding the building and found the laptop 

and a desktop computer, which he took. Cullison turned the newly 

purchased computers over to U.S. authorities, who examined them 

before returning both. The laptop was curiously empty, but the desktop, 

which had belonged to Ayman al-Zawahiri, contained almost 1,000 

documents dating to as early as 1997. 

These documents included working papers, letters, business 

forms, checklists for interrogations, and a draft of al-Zawahiri’s

unpublished writings. One of the working papers, which seemed to be 

written for the al Qaeda leader rather than by him, was an untitled

treatise on guerrilla warfare filed under the file name ALKAER in a 

folder entitled “security.” A close examination of this untitled

manuscript reveals that large sections are verbatim, unattributed quotes 

from the Arabic translation of American Robert Taber’s book The War 

of the Flea, thus linking the thought of al Qaeda’s top leadership to the 

study of twentieth-century left-wing guerrilla insurrections inspired by 

the writings and examples of revolutionary leaders like Mao Tse-tung, 

Che Guevara, and Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap.

Although the manuscript found in al-Zawahiri’s computer was 

anonymous, it is most likely the work of Abu Mus’ab al-Suri. The style 

of writing and presentation resembles his extensive published works; 

moreover, al-Suri taught Taber’s book in lectures on guerrilla warfare 

in Peshawar and the training camps in Afghanistan, and refers to 

Taber’s book as the best work on guerrilla warfare. Major al Qaeda

strategists refer to it as well. The book can be found online in its Arabic 
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27

translation as The War of the Oppressed with al-Suri’s commentary in 

the footnotes. The word translated as “oppressed” in Arabic may also 

be translated literally as “those deemed to be weak”; thus, the war of

the guerrilla is the war of those who are deemed to be weak, like the 

insignificant flea, but who are actually a deadly force. 

One of the strengths of Taber’s book that al-Suri seems to have 

absorbed is that it documents what makes revolutionary wars succeed 

and what makes them fail. Al-Suri spent years analyzing why jihadist 

insurrections generally failed, and his studies on Algeria and Syria, as 

well as his 2004 Call to Global Islamic Resistance, emphasize the 

importance of learning from past mistakes. 23 Al-Suri believed that 

jihadists following the Muslim Brotherhood model had not studied 

previous examples of jihadist struggles to learn from their mistakes as 

well as their rare successes. His commentary has been influential in al 

Qaeda’s thinking from its earliest days until today, and this work can be 

considered to have guided Syrian rebels against Bashar al-Assad. AlSuri influenced al-Zarqawi and should be seen as a major influence on 

ISIS.

The following description of the stages of guerrilla warfare is 

from this case study author’s translation of introductory material of the 

ALKAER document, before introducing examples from Taber’s book. 

First Stage: Attrition

 

23 For more on the significance of Taber’s book to al-Suri and other jihadi 

strategists see Ryan, Decoding al Qaeda’s Strategy; for an in-depth study of 

al-Suri’s life and thought, see Brynjar Lia, Architect of Global Jihad: The Life 

of al Qaeda Strategist Abu Mus’ab al-Suri (New York: Columbia University 

Press, 2008). See also Andrew Black, “Al-Suri’s Adaptation of FourthGeneration Warfare Doctrine,” Terrorism Monitor 4, no. 8 (September 26, 

2006).
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28

The first stage of guerrilla warfare is described as composed of

classic hit-and-run tactics used by guerrillas in insurrections, in 

preparation for the larger struggle to come. The mujahedeen’s aim here

to weaken the central government’s hold on the periphery. The 

ALKAER document describes this stage as the equivalent of Mao’s

metaphor of the “war of the flea” in which the weak flea, by means of 

its escalating numbers and numerous bites, first drives the powerful but 

helpless dog mad, and eventually kills it. The most important 

component of this stage, however, is political activity and propaganda 

to gain the support of the population.

Second Stage: Equilibrium

“Equilibrium” is the somewhat misleading term that describes 

the evolution of a guerrilla war (or war of resistance) into a stage in 

which the mujahedeen have acquired heavy weapons and begin to form 

more conventional or semi-conventional forces. These forces are strong 

enough to attack larger enemy forces, well-defended military 

installations to which government forces have withdrawn, and even 

cities. Meanwhile, guerrilla attacks continue as before, and 

political/propaganda operations continue or increase.

Third Stage: Decision

Stage three is characterized by a decisive battle or series of 

battles leading to the total defeat of the government and the surrender 

or flight of government forces. The ALKAER document points out that 

this stage is almost never reached because governments tend to collapse 

and their forces surrender before the decisive battle.

In addition to presenting this brief description of the three 

stages of guerrilla warfare, the ALKAER author continues to 

demonstrate that the correct approach to this type of warfare is not 

academic and is not as tidy as the description would suggest. The 

author of the document points out that the concept may succeed in one 

land and not in another: the experience of one people with insurrection 

is not necessarily transferable to another people or another country. 
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29

Geography, economics, and even the population’s susceptibility to 

ideology vary from country to country. The watchword for success is 

flexibility and the ability to adapt to local circumstances in executing a 

strategic plan, a lesson that ISIS has clearly learned and one that has 

allowed it to have more success in a short period of time.

The influence of al Qaeda’s thinking on ISIS can be seen in the 

adaptation of Mao’s doctrine that guerrillas must be prepared to trade 

space for time. ISIS generally is ready to surrender one place in order 

to retreat and gain time to regroup, rebuild, and attack again in another 

place. This approach has the net effect of hurting its enemy’s morale 

and confidence at the same time as it builds morale among ISIS troops. 

The ALKAER document clearly states this concept:

We need to gain time to obtain new guerrilla units 

and supporters; and we need to gain time to obtain the 

people’s trust. We need to gain time to attack the regime 

politically—politics before military as the saying goes—the 

mere existence of a guerrilla in a district in itself is a victory 

and challenges the regime. Therefore, we sacrifice space to 

obtain time.24

The three-stage guerrilla war described in ALKAER shows the 

strong influence of Mao and Che Guevara.25 It is representative of the 

three-stage descriptions of jihadist warfare in major al Qaeda writers on 

the subject, which ISIS adapted for its strategy in Syria and Iraq. The 

importance of gaining time to produce the political outcome ISIS 

desires cannot be overstated. To cite just one circumstance, one can 

 

24 The author of this case study translated the above passage from the 

unpublished ALKAER.DOC, pp. 2-4; he received comments from a native 

speaker who wishes to remain anonymous. 

25 To see another example of an al Qaeda leader’s view of three-stage guerrilla 

warfare espoused by Mao, see Norman Cigar, Al-Qa’ida’s Doctrine for 

Insurgency: ‘Abd Al-’Aziz Al-Muqrin’s “A Practical Course for Guerrilla 

War” (Washington, DC: Potomac, 2009).
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30

see that ISIS generally uses its guerrilla strategy and tactics to gain time 

and break the momentum of the political military narrative against it. 

One can see this in periods when ISIS has lost significant battles like 

Kobane in Syria or Tikrit in Iraq. To counter the coalition narrative 

after losing Tikrit to the Iraqi government (aided by American air 

power), for example, ISIS moved on another axis to achieve a surprise 

success and drove Iraqi forces out of Ramadi. To achieve this, it relied 

on suicide bombers in explosive-laden trucks and small groups of 

hardened guerrilla fighters to rout an arguably more powerful force, in 

greater numbers and with superior equipment. While ISIS may not have 

expected to be able to hold Ramadi indefinitely, it changed the 

narrative of losing to coalition forces and gained time to rebuild morale 

and recruit more forces.

To develop a greater understanding of ISIS’s doctrine for 

insurgency, it is helpful to examine another of al-Suri’s works that 

analyzes lessons he learned from the Muslim Brotherhood’s previous 

insurgency in Syria.

i. Al-Suri’s Lessons Learned from Syria

As a young man, al-Suri participated in the Muslim 

Brotherhood’s insurrection in Syria, which ended in failure in 1982. He

established his bona fides as a jihadist strategist with his lengthy 

history of the insurgency, published in 1991 as The Islamic Jihadist 

Revolution in Syria. Part of that history was published as a separate 

manual entitled “Observations on the Jihadist Experience in Syria,”

26

which he used for training jihadists. Al-Suri detailed what he called 

seventeen bitter lessons from the failed insurgency and the one positive 

lesson from the jihadist perspective: namely, that an organization could 

mobilize a Muslim population under the Muslim banner, even against 

 

26 For a further analysis of al-Suri’s observations, see Ryan, Decoding Al 

Qaeda’s Strategy, pp. 198-199.
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31

great odds. However, mobilizing the population without a great deal of 

preparation was a betrayal of that population by the jihadist leadership.

The major failure by the Muslim Brotherhood was the lack of a 

strategic concept and plan for victory against the regular and irregular

forces of a Middle Eastern praetorian state. Not having an overarching 

concept led to all the bitter lessons that al-Suri judged to be why the 

insurrection failed. For example, without an overarching narrative and 

strategic plan, leaders cannot explain their ideology and objectives to 

their foot soldiers; they cannot transform Salafi preachers into jihadists; 

and consequently they are unable to devise a powerful internal and 

external propaganda program, without which any guerrilla war is bound 

to fail. Al-Suri also believed that a successful revolution, which is what 

Salafi jihadists seek, must learn from previous lessons. 

It is clear that both ISIS and al Qaeda have addressed these 

mistakes. Both have a strategic concept that works for them, although 

ISIS has been able to leapfrog al Qaeda in propaganda. Another 

interesting observation is that the Muslim Brotherhood was thought to 

have accepted too many recruits when the Syrian regime pressed them 

militarily, and that this allowed the regime’s intelligence services to 

infiltrate the group to gain tactical and strategic intelligence. Clearly 

both ISIS and al Qaeda have well-conceived vetting programs and keep 

their inner circles small. Furthermore, both ISIS and al Qaeda execute 

accused spies on a regular basis as a warning to others.

A good indication of why the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has 

done relatively poorly, relative to either al Qaeda or ISIS, in the current 

uprising against the Syrian government is that they have not learned 

from al-Suri’s observations. For example, the FSA’s political 

leadership is outside the theater of operations; they depend on external 

states for support; they deal regularly with neighboring regimes; and of 

course they are devoid of any discernible ideology. Also, it is unclear 

what they would do if, contrary to expectations, they were to succeed 

against the Syrian government. Both al Qaeda and ISIS have been able 

to engage religious leaders successfully, and both have been able to 
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32

forge alliances with powerful local tribes, even though these alliances 

could well be fragile in the longer term.

There are lessons outlined by al-Suri that ISIS has addressed

better than al Qaeda. For example, al-Suri warned against engaging in a 

long war of attrition with the central government. So far, ISIS has 

generally avoided long set battles and sieges against either the Syrian or 

the Iraqi governments, whereas al Qaeda has engaged in sieges. The 

glaring exception for ISIS was their disastrous attempt to take over the 

Kurdish town of Kobane, which ended in defeat by a combination of 

Kurdish ground forces and American air strikes on January 26, 2015,

after months of heavy fighting. On the other hand, al Qaeda initially

had a superior capability to mount terrorist attacks outside of Syria and 

Iraq as a jihadist version of deterrence, especially against Europeans 

and the U.S., although ISIS is working to improve its capabilities in 

this area.

The greatest failure of both ISIS and al Qaeda in their efforts in 

Syria and potentially in Iraq is the lack of unity among the various 

jihadist movements. The constant warfare among competing groups 

inevitably weakens the effort in Syria. One could argue that ISIS and al 

Qaeda engage in a periodic war of attrition against one another, which 

is greatly to the advantage of the Assad regime. Despite the ISIS 

group’s success with tribal groups, success depends on the tribes seeing 

ISIS as a better bet than either Damascus or Baghdad. Over time, tribal 

groups could see ISIS as a bad choice, but that would require more than 

ISIS blunders; it would require central governments to change their 

policies and overcome deep-rooted animus and lack of trust on the part 

of the tribes. 

Finally, despite their minor successes, neither ISIS nor al 

Qaeda has been able to win over or neutralize the Kurds in either Syria 

or Iraq. The net effect of this failure is that both jihadist groups have 

serious and able fighters threatening their flanks. The Kurds are not 

enough to overcome ISIS, but ISIS can never quite achieve its goals as 

long as determined, hostile Kurdish Peshmerga forces threaten the 

consolidation of ISIS gains.
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33

ii. Al-Suri’s Call to Global Islamic Resistance Model

The weakness was not in the methods of the 

organizations or in the organizations [themselves] in a 

general sense. On the contrary, it was the changing times and 

the givens of the new reality after 1990 that made these 

methods obsolete. I used a metaphor to clarify what I mean in 

some of [my] lectures in Afghanistan and I will return to it 

here.

So, [imagine] you have an electric machine that is 

excellent, powerful and outstanding! But it works only on an 

old electric system of 110 volts; then, as happened in our 

countries, there is a complete changeover of electric power 

providers to 220 volts.

Then, what happens if you were to insist on using it? 

The machine will be consumed by fire; your electric system 

will be destroyed and perhaps you will be electrocuted in the 

bargain! It goes without saying that the weakness is not with 

the machine itself, for it is flawless and perfect for its time,

but the surrounding new circumstances made it obsolete. Its 

natural place became a museum in a corner of a vault as a 

relic from the past. And your love of it, your beautiful 

memories with it, and the fact that it is a legacy from your 

parents will not change the reality at all.27

Abu Mus’ab al-Suri used the metaphor above in his last major 

work, Call to Global Islamic Resistance, less than a year before 

Pakistani authorities captured him in 2005. He intended this work to be 

his encyclopedic legacy of jihadist history and doctrine for future 

 

27 Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, Call to Global Islamic Resistance (Da’wah alMuqawamah al-Islamiyyah al-Alamiyyah), Part 2 (n.p.: December 2004), p. 

1359; translated in Ryan, Decoding Al Qaeda’s Strategy (2013), p. 223
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34

jihadists to study. He had been a jihadist for his entire adult life,

starting with the Muslim Brotherhood insurrection in Syria until his 

sojourn with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which 

ended in his flight from Afghanistan after the American overthrow of 

the Taliban government. He had written histories of the major jihadist 

activities, including works on Syria, Algeria, Afghanistan, Saudi 

Arabia, Yemen, and Central Asia. He became convinced that a jihadist 

insurrection based in one country, such as Egypt or Algeria, could not 

succeed after the U.S. emerged as the single global superpower after 

the fall of the Soviet Union. A jihadist insurrection based on a regional 

approach had a better chance; however, the only real hope for jihadists 

involved a globally networked effort. Al-Suri had great respect for the 

power of the modern U.S. military; he did not believe American forces, 

bolstered by their system of global alliances, could be defeated by 

traditional clandestine organizations anywhere. 

For years, Al-Suri urged jihadists to think in terms of a system 

rather than an organization. In his Call to Global Islamic Resistance, he 

described an ideal model for such a system of jihad, which he 

recognized would need to be adjusted to changing world conditions, 

just as the old single-country clandestine organization had to be 

abandoned in the face of the American-led coalition of modern allies. 

Al-Suri recommended a system in which jihadists would unite under a 

global model with three components, which he referred to as circles: 

(1) a clandestine central leadership circle; (2) a coordination circle, 

which would be a collection of “open front” regional jihadist 

insurrections; and (3) a “call” circle, composed of individual and smallcell terrorism behind enemy lines. These enemy lines could be Europe, 

the U.S., or anywhere Muslims felt compelled to contribute to global 

resistance to the modern world order as jihadists, their only allegiance 

to the jihadist resistance.

The system that most resembles al-Suri’s model today is al 

Qaeda’s, led by al-Suri’s old friend and leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. 

The central circle is the clandestine al Qaeda Central, based in South 

Asia. The coordination circle approximates al Qaeda’s system of 
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35

affiliates and associated groups. Finally, the call circle approximates 

the small cells and individual jihadists often referred to in the U.S. as 

lone-wolf terrorists. However, a “lone wolf” is not what al-Suri had in 

mind. In fact, his model was based on lone-wolf jihadists, but he

thought that such random acts had no political or systematic effect. His 

system was meant to coordinate the activities of small-cell terrorists 

with the policies of the central circle. This coordination was to be 

carried out by what we refer to as affiliates, al-Suri’s coordination 

circle. For security reasons, the coordination circle would need to 

minimize its contact with the isolated call cells. This contact at a 

maximum would involve initial funding and training by what al-Suri 

called a builder cell. At a minimum, the call cell would have no contact 

of any kind with the rest of the circle and would fund itself and train 

itself using materials provided on the Internet. One need only think of 

the role of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in providing 

inspirational and instructional materials online for the Boston Marathon 

bombers in 2013 or, reportedly, initial funding for the Paris 

conspirators who attacked the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices on 

January 7, 2015. We should expect, however, that in many cells there 

would also be an initial facilitator who pushes individuals into 

radicalization but is not personally an attacker, and may in fact commit 

no acts that would allow criminal prosecution.

The other system that resembles al-Suri’s model is the ISIS 

group’s self-styled caliphate. This has a semi-clandestine center 

surrounding the self-proclaimed khalifa (caliph); a series of provinces, 

similar to affiliates, in Libya, Algeria, and the Sinai, for example; and 

growing indications of the presence of lone-wolf terrorists in the U.S. 

and Europe. By using al-Suri’s template as a guide to the basic 

requirements of a jihadist group, one can see how ISIS distinguished 

itself from al Qaeda and previous groups. 

Discussion Questions

1. The untitled paper found in al-Zawahiri’s laptop—most 

likely al-Suri’s work—describes three stages of guerrilla warfare. What 
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36

steps could a government take to keep the first stage of guerrilla 

warfare (attrition through hit-and-run tactics used by the guerrillas)

from devolving into the second stage (equilibrium between the 

mujahedeen and government forces)?

2. Al-Suri’s jihadist global model has three components: (1) a 

clandestine central leadership circle; (2) a coordination circle of 

regional jihadist insurrections; and (3) a “call” circle of individual and 

small-cell terrorism behind enemy lines. In what ways do al Qaeda and 

the Islamic State follow this model? In what ways do they diverge 

from this model? 

3. Develop a counterstrategy to attack the three key 

components of al-Suri’s model outlined above.

4. How important is the role of politics for a government facing 

guerrilla warfare? What kind of political messages have worked in the 

past? What differences, if any, should there be between political 

messaging during a conflict with jihadists versus political messaging 

against a more familiar left-wing insurgency?

5. Setting the differences in their ideologies aside, how would 

you compare the ISIS group’s conduct of war with Mao’s wars against 

Japan and Nationalist Chinese forces, or any other left-wing 

insurrection with which you are familiar?

B. Guerilla Doctrine: Al-Suri’s Template and ISIS

The first building block of a jihadist organization is what alSuri, like other jihadists, calls a manhaj, which is a program, 

methodology, or guiding ideology around which the members convene.

Al-Zawahiri has always claimed that al Qaeda follows the manhaj alnubuwah, or the prophetic program, which attempts to return Islam to 

the seventh-century governance of the first followers of the Prophet 

Mohammad, which the al Qaeda leader calls the “Rightly Guided 

Caliphate.” This is exactly the manhaj that ISIS claims to follow, but 

with a key difference: For al-Zawahiri, the caliphate was a goal located 

somewhere in the undefined future and al Qaeda was considered an 

organization within the larger jihadist movement; for al-Baghdadi, on 
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37

the other hand, the caliphate exists now, and he governs it as the Caliph 

Ibrahim.

Al-Baghdadi emphasizes the concept of community (jama’ah) 

and claims that leadership embraces both the political and religious 

aspects of life. Al Qaeda never claimed to be a religious organization; 

its leadership claimed to combine political and military leadership in 

Osama bin Laden, and now in Ayman al-Zawahiri, as the vanguard of 

the jihadist movement. One can conclude, then, that although both 

groups use the same words for their manhaj, ISIS claims to have 

achieved al Qaeda’s goal and therefore to have supplanted al Qaeda as 

the leader—not just of the jihadist movement but of all Muslims, a 

breathtaking leap. It is difficult to see how the two groups can reunite 

without one of them abandoning its reason for existence.

The second building block is leadership, which includes a 

paramount leader to whom its members pledge allegiance (bay’ah), as 

well as an advisory council, other councils such as military and 

religious councils, and an administrative body. Both al Qaeda and ISIS 

have clearly identified structures that resemble this description, but 

again, ISIS has insisted that it has the elements of a state with territory 

and governing departments such as a consumer affairs council, an 

education council, and so on.

The third necessary building block is the strategic plan or 

roadmap that allows a jihadist organization to meet its offensive and 

defensive goals. Al Qaeda and ISIS share the general roadmap for 

creating an Islamic emirate, written in 2004 by al Qaeda strategist Abu 

Bakr Naji. Naji does not provide a recipe for jihadist groups to follow; 

instead he emphasizes that he is providing a strategic outline in broad 

strokes. Only a field commander can devise a strategy for a particular 

area based on geographic, demographic, and economic circumstances 

of the target area. His work, The Administration of Savagery, was used 

as a training manual for recruits, which is exactly how ISIS uses it. (See

II.c. Guerrilla Strategy: The Administration of Savagery as 

Operational Guide.) This strategy is based on creating or taking 

advantage of areas in the countryside or a city that have fallen into 
RYAN: ISIS—THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT WOULD BE A STATE

38

chaos in order to drive out government troops and impose a proto-state, 

which Naji calls the administration of savagery. In a large countryside 

such as Yemen or remote areas in Syria and Iraq, a number of such 

liberated areas may be created, expanded, and consolidated. There may 

be specific strategic plans for special circumstances as well. 

ISIS devised a plan it called Khutah Istratijiyyah li Ta’ziz alMawqif al-Siyasy li ‘l-Dawlah al-Islamiyyah fi al-Iraq (Strategic Plan 

to Strengthen the Political Position of the Islamic State in Iraq) in 

2009/2010 after ISI had been decimated by a combination of attacks by 

American troops and the Iraqi tribal Awakening Councils (the Sahwah)

during 2007-2008. Anticipating American troop withdrawals, it 

proposed to create alliances with Sunni tribes, similar to the Sahwah 

groups supported by the Americans, except this time to attack Shia 

communities in Iraq and central government forces and installations, 

which would be dominated by Shia factions. Once ISIS established

itself in Syria, it followed this basic plan there as well. These wellconceived strategic approaches has given both al Qaeda and ISIS a 

significant advantage over other groups in Syria. On balance, ISIS has 

been more consistent than al Qaeda and has been able to keep the 

strategic upper hand and usually, but not always, comes out the winner 

in local tactical situations.

The fourth building block outlined by al-Suri is tamwil

(funding). Al Qaeda and the ISIS group’s funding sources are very 

similar, although ISIS has been much more successful in self-funding. 

In the past, both groups have relied on funding from oil-rich Gulf 

countries, not directly, but from wealthy patrons. This funding has been 

replaced for the most part by criminal enterprises involving smuggling, 

human trafficking, robbing banks, and taking war booty. 28 Perhaps 

because the ISIS group’s founder began his career as an enterprising 

 

28 As a result of the devastating U.S. air campaign against its central 

leadership, funding for al Qaeda occurs now in its affiliates. Al Qaeda Central 

can offer advice and guidance, but is not a source of funding.
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39

criminal while al Qaeda’s founder was a businessman of sorts, ISIS has 

always had an advantage in funding from criminal enterprises like 

smuggling petroleum products. Since declaring itself to be the 

caliphate, ISIS has outstripped al Qaeda and every other jihadist group

in funding itself exclusively through criminal enterprises, taxes, and 

fees in areas it controls.

According to the general consensus of the Western analytical 

community, ISIS is the richest jihadist organization, with revenues of 

US$2 billion to $2.5 billion per year, according to one estimate, 

although its expenses are much higher than that.

29 We may well assume 

that ISIS prioritizes its funding for operations and keeping tribal allies 

faithful, but it is also fair to conclude that it desperately needs large 

revenue streams to continue to operate at current levels. 

As with al Qaeda, the U.S. government, working with its allies, 

has targeted the ISIS group’s sources of revenue. For example, ISIS 

funds itself in part through the sale of antiquities of all kinds.30 The 

U.S. Department of State has a program to combat this source of 

funding, but it needs more support and a higher profile. Similarly, 

tightening up enforcement on smuggling, while extremely difficult, is 

not impossible and could have a significant effect on ISIS revenues. 

The most lucrative target revenue stream for ISIS in October 2014 was 

based on petroleum products. At that time, the U.S. Treasury 

Department estimated that the group’s revenue from petroleum in Syria 

and Iraq amounted to US$1 million to $2 million per day. By 

December 2014, however, the revenue had tapered off significantly

 

29 See Murad Batal al-Shishani, “The Political Economy of Islamic State and 

Its Financial Resources for War,” Terrorism Monitor 12, no. 24 (December 

19, 2014).

30 See Amr Al-Azm, Salam Al-Kuntar, and Brian I. Daniels, “ISIS’ Antiquities 

Sideline,” New York Times, September 2, 2014; and Simon Cox, “The Men 

Who Smuggle the Loot That Funds IS,” February 17, 2015, www.bbc.com.
RYAN: ISIS—THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT WOULD BE A STATE

40

because of U.S. and coalition military activities.31 On February 3, 2015, 

the spokesman for the Pentagon announced that “oil revenue is no 

longer the lead source of [ISIS’s] income in dollars.”

32 U.S. officials 

have not specified the amount of the cut, but if the international 

coalition could cut petroleum refining and smuggling by ISIS only by 

half, we could see a drop in annual revenues to ISIS on the order of 

US$15 million to $30 million per month. 

These and other criminal activities are all known problems; 

efforts already exist and programs are in place to address them. 

Prioritizing and resourcing these programs across the spectrum of ISIS 

funding could pay large dividends. In addition, traditional 

counterinsurgency training and security assistance for local military 

and security elements in Iraq will continue to be necessary to ensure 

that local forces can eventually replace coalition forces in attacking 

revenue streams to ISIS. 

The last of al-Suri’s building blocks for a clandestine jihadist 

organization is the pledge of allegiance (bay’ah). Both organizations 

use the bay’ah to its leaders as an organizing principle. The bay’ah is 

an ancient Islamic ritual in which an individual personally swears a 

religiously binding pledge of fealty and obedience to a Muslim leader. 

In practice, this means that individuals become members of a jihadist 

group by pledging bay’ah to its leader, whom they are now bound to 

obey. If this leader then pledges allegiance to the leader of another

group, all the pledged members of the original group are also bound to 

follow the leader of the other group. This system of pledges of 

allegiance produces a jihadist network with centralized guidance and 

decentralized execution, which became the hallmark of al Qaeda

operations. The ISIS group’s achievements on the battlefield and in 

 

31 Jay Solomon, “ISIS’s Oil Revenue Is Falling, Administration Says,” 

Washington Wire, December 15, 2014, http://blogs.wsj.com.

32 “Pentagon: Oil Is No Longer ISIS’ Main Source of Income,” February 5, 

2015, http://english.alarabiya.net.
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41

propaganda has led to greater success in acquiring such pledges of 

allegiance from individuals and groups in, for example, Egypt, Libya, 

Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, al Qaeda still has 

strong allies and is expanding in South Asia to include India.

Al-Suri argued that a jihadist enterprise must adapt to 

circumstances. ISIS has demonstrated that it is a learning organization. 

Al-Suri also argued for years that jihadists should work for a global 

system and not an organization (tanzim). ISIS has stated that it is not a 

tanzim but a state. Whether it can be as adaptable as a state with a 

population and territory to defend remains to be seen. Destruction of 

the ISIS group’s so-called state in Syria and Iraq likely also means 

destroying the carefully constructed ISIS system. On the other hand, al 

Qaeda currently appears to be an adaptable system composed of local 

organizations, any of which could be destroyed without destroying the 

system as a whole. 

Discussion Questions

1. Using al-Suri’s analytical template for clandestine jihadist 

organizations, do you think that ISIS or al Qaeda will pose a greater 

threat to U.S. interests in the long run? 

2. With al-Suri’s template in mind, how would you recommend 

the U.S. government decrease the likelihood of a strategic alliance 

between al Qaeda elements in Syria and ISIS at some point in the 

future?

3. The U.S. government devised a sophisticated network to 

attack funding sources for al Qaeda. What steps would you recommend 

to reduce funding for ISIS?

4. Is ISIS more like a clandestine organization or more like a 

state? Explain.

C. Guerrilla Strategy: The Administration of Savagery as 

Operational Guide

In his influential book, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner

(circa 2001), Ayman al-Zawahiri demonstrates that knowledge of 
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42

classic guerrilla warfare as practiced by ISIS and al Qaeda existed 

within the Salafi jihadist movement as early as the 1970s in Egyptian 

circles.

33 In 1974, nine years after the publication of Robert Taber’s

classic account of guerrilla warfare, a young man named Yahya 

Hashim came to al-Zawahiri for advice and support. Hashim was a 

deputy prosecutor who had turned against the Egyptian regime on 

religious principles and had converted to the “jihadist movement.” He 

was especially concerned about the fate of some young officers who 

were engaged in a revolt in the Military Technical College. Hashim had 

become obsessed with the issue, following details of the case in great 

detail, and beginning to consider armed confrontation with the 

Egyptian regime via guerilla warfare. He raised this idea with alZawahiri, who wrote, “I did not agree and told him that the nature of 

the country was not suitable for this kind of warfare. Then I gave him a 

book about guerrilla warfare.”

The young man apparently did not learn from al-Zawahiri’s

book. Gripped with idea of starting a guerrilla war, he shared his plan 

with some of his brothers. His idea was to get the officers out of jail 

and begin operations in the mountains near the desert in Minya 

Governorate, on the west bank of the Nile, about 150 miles south of 

Cairo. The plan was discovered, and Hashim fled to the mountains with 

a number of military officers. The mayor of a nearby community

became suspicious of the group and informed security officials, who 

went after the would-be guerrillas in force. When the rebel group ran 

out of ammunition, the security forces seized them and Hashim was 

killed in the action. Al-Zawahiri praises him as a hero of the jihadist 

movement against the government, but remarks that the conditions 

favoring success for guerrilla warfare simply did not exist.

 

33 This vignette is based on the account Ayman al-Zawahiri gave in his book

Fursan Tahta Rayah al-Nabi (Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner), 1st ed.

(N.p.: Al-Sahab Publishers, n.d.), chapter 4 (pagination varies in Arabic 

editions), http://www.tawhed.ws/a?a=3i806qpo.
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43

Like al Qaeda, ISIS is known to use Abu Bakr Naji’s The 

Administration of Savagery to give new recruits the big picture about 

the strategy and tactics favored by the group they have just joined. Like 

al-Zawahiri, Naji is a proponent of the Salafi jihadist movement and 

wrote his book as a universal guide to jihadist revolution and the 

creation of an Islamic emirate. Naji presents the ideal conditions for 

jihad to define priority states and refers his readers to studies performed 

by al-Suri. He uses the term “administration of savagery” to refer to the 

goal of setting up proto-governments in liberated areas, and gives five

ideal conditions to establish these areas:

 Geographic depth and topography favorable to 

guerrilla operations

 Weak government unable to control peripheries or 

densely populated internal areas

 The nature of the people; lack of social cohesion

allowing polarization

 Availability of weapons distributed among the people

 Presence of a strong and expanding jihadist movement 

and preachers

It is clear that Nilotic Egypt is missing several of these 

characteristics. Most of the country’s population is confined to a thin 

fertile strip along the Nile. While political divisions are apparent, there 

still exists a high degree of social cohesion among the people and a 

strong identity as Egyptians. In post–Arab Spring conditions, the area is 

awash with weapons, but the strong central Egyptian government is 

able to uncover insurgent cells as they form. The Sinai, however, has 

much more favorable terrain for guerrillas and shows much less social 

cohesion. But even here, the strong central government tends to grind 

down the opposition, although it is hampered by lack of recent 

experience in counterinsurgency and a military still equipped and 

trained primarily for conventional warfare. The insurgency in the Sinai

began as an al Qaeda enterprise calling itself Ansar Bait al-Maqdis in 

2011, which increased its activity after the fall of the Morsi government 

in 2013. It gained much more international prominence, however, after
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44

the group pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi and the insurgency was 

subsumed within ISIS as an Islamic State province in the Sinai, 

sometimes referred to as Wilayat Sina.

Abu Bakr Naji’s book proposes a three-stage guerrilla strategy 

that mirrors the three-stage strategy found on al-Zawahiri’s hard disk in 

Kabul and echoes the strategy proposed by the foremost strategists and 

practitioners of the jihadist movement. Naji’s formulation is more 

colorful: 

1. Damage and exhaustion;

2. “Administration of savagery” in liberated areas;

3. Creation of Islamic state by consolidating liberated areas.

ISIS deviated from this strategy by jumping ahead to declare

itself the caliphate for all Muslims instead of stopping at an Islamic 

emirate. This declaration increased its ability to recruit significantly 

more members, but also poses problems with other jihadist groups 

because ISIS did not seek a consensus before moving to this end state.

When Mao Tse-tung proposed a strategy for guerrilla warfare, 

he felt compelled to justify using the word “strategy” to describe a 

tactic in warfare that was traditionally a tool of a conventional army,

following a conventional strategy. Mao claimed, however, that when a

territory is vast like China, guerrilla warfare “knocks at the gates of 

strategy.”

34 In Mao’s terms, guerrilla warfare becomes strategic in the 

case of a vast but weak state, China, fighting a small but powerful 

country, Japan, that occupies extended areas in a protracted war. In the 

third decisive stage of Mao’s strategy, however, conventional warfare 

returns and becomes primary.

In the concept of jihadists like ISIS, the Muslim Umma is vast 

but weak and is occupied by foreign powers or their client apostate 

 

34 Mao Tse-Tung, The Art of War: Special Edition, trans. by Foreign Language 

Press, Peking (El Paso, Texas: El Paso Norte Press, 2005), pp. 115 -117.
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45

states.35 The three-stage strategy also requires conventional or at least 

semi-conventional forces in the third stage of consolidating liberated 

areas. However, as ISIS has implemented its war, the third stage may 

come when it “liberates” a rural area or cities such as al-Raqqa in Syria 

or Mosul in Iraq, or even sections within cities. The three-stage strategy 

is then a constant as ISIS moves from area to area, driving other forces 

out and whenever possible setting up its primitive government within 

the surrounding sea of chaos. Having no heavy industry of its own, it 

arms its semi-conventional forces from the arms left abandoned by its 

opponent.

ISIS uses guerrilla tactics throughout its campaign in Syria and 

Iraq. It attacks weak, isolated units for the most part and avoids 

stronger forces. When it attacks an isolated army installation or other 

fortified area, it often succeeds by using suicide bombers in the initial 

assault. In video after video, ISIS shows a smiling jihadist making a 

short speech in a large truck filled with explosives; and then,

sometimes using aerial photography, ISIS shows the progress of the 

truck against a target until it explodes. Later, it films guerrillas in small 

units moving through the installation or town mopping up local forces. 

It avoids attrition of its own forces except when it believes it can 

prevail in a high-value target such as Kobane. In areas such as 

Baghdad, ISIS uses terrorist attacks to keep its enemy occupied, in 

hopes of exhausting and demoralizing their forces.

Mosul and al-Raqqa have become new safe havens and 

symbols of success. In both areas, but especially in Mosul, one can see 

the effects of criminal networks that apparently existed during alZarqawi’s time, when his cadres extorted money and in some cases 

 

35 The Arabic word Umma means “community.” In jihadist literature, “the 

Umma” refers to the virtual community of all Muslims worldwide. The 

ultimate goal of modern jihadist groups such as ISIS is to unite this virtual 

community into an actual political community under the universal Shari’ah or 

Islamic law.
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46

acted as contract killers. ISIS today advertises its execution of freelance 

robbers and drug dealers as evidence of its intent to protect the people 

and provide security, the bare minimum requirement to set up Naji’s

administration of savagery. 

As ISIS has consolidated its hold on cities and villages, it has 

used tribal alliances and former Baathist military to provide local 

governance and act, in Clausewitz’s term levée en masse, as an armed

populace to oppose any encroachment by outside conventional forces 

or militias. Naji had advised jihadists with urban backgrounds to study 

tribal customs in sociological studies to allow them to deal effectively 

with tribes; and he had anticipated that some members of the central 

government could be persuaded to join the jihadist cause, much as the 

former military and political cadres of Saddam Hussein’s government 

did after the U.S. invasion.

Naji had another important message: that ordinary Muslim 

people could not be relied on and were reluctant to join a jihadist 

operation because they were more concerned about their daily affairs or 

had been co-opted by the central government. He argued that jihadists 

needed to use polarization to mobilize a Muslim population. In his 

concept, one could polarize a community by using money to gain 

support, especially with tribes. ISIS has certainly used this tactic. But 

the main means of polarization in Syria and Iraq, where al-Zarqawi 

made great use of it, is the Sunni-Shia divide and sectarian warfare. In 

other areas such as the Sinai or Libya where this sectarian division does 

not apply, ISIS, and al Qaeda before it, uses other polarizing issues 

such as factional disputes in Libya or resentment of Sinai’s traditional 

residents against the government in Nilotic Egypt. Without polarization 

in an area, the ISIS group’s strategy would falter. The use of terrorism 

and videos of violence against enemies are powerful tools in its

polarizing campaigns.

The U.S. and the coalition of nations against ISIS have the 

traditional military and political tools to weaken the group by 

understanding its strategy and tactics in detail and devising means to 

counter them. The most difficult issue to address, however, is 
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47

polarization. The U.S. has taken the first major step to address 

polarization in Iraq by pressing for a more inclusive government, but 

Syria is still elusive. If progress in Iraq is slow and uncertain, in Syria it 

has not even begun. The air campaign is an extremely powerful (but not 

sufficient) military tool and can demonstrate that ISIS is less powerful 

than its propaganda would have us believe. However, addressing 

polarization can only occur in the context of a political solution that has 

not been described in great enough detail for Iraq and has not been 

articulated at all in Syria. The convincing description of political goals 

needs to accompany anticipated military success to avoid having any 

such success becoming temporary.

The importance for ISIS of The Administration of Savagery, 

and the reason that this group still uses it in training new recruits and as 

a guide for regional commanders, may be because the book distills the 

essence of jihadist strategic thinking on insurgency up until its 

completion in late 2004.36 Its lessons are cast as universal truths based 

on what the author calls “universal laws” of war and politics. These 

laws naturally describe guerrilla doctrine and tactics that were as true 

for al Qaeda as they were for Mao, in the author’s view. The book also 

represents bin Laden’s and al-Zawahiri’s view that the United States 

can be driven out of the Middle East because it acts on self-interest, not 

principle. According to this view, if jihadists could demonstrate that the 

cost of staying in the region is too high in blood and treasure, the U.S.

would leave the greater Middle East, and modern jihadists could then

create a new empire using modern military tactics and an ancient plan 

of government.

Part of the cost of staying could be addressed by guerilla 

strategy, terrorism tactics, and brutality, which ISIS has always 

emphasized. Another aspect, according to Naji, is that seizing energy 

resources in the Middle East and North Africa would give jihadists the 

 

36 See Ryan, Decoding Al Qaeda’s Strategy (New York: Columbia University 

Press, 2013), p. 148.
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48

economic power to create the caliphate and cripple Western economies, 

especially the American system. Al Qaeda consistently failed to seize 

energy assets in the Arabian Peninsula; however, ISIS has made seizing 

oilfields a priority in Syria and Iraq and has succeeded to the extent that 

it strengthened its finances beyond any other jihadist group. Its threat to 

Saudi Arabia is in part to carry out bin Laden’s and al-Zawahiri’s

greater plan.

Discussion Questions

1. Al-Suri’s definition of the ideal conditions for jihadists

seems to describe conditions in both Syria and Iraq at the present time. 

How could the U.S. government devise a cost-effective strategy and 

tactics to weaken the conditions that help jihadists?

2. The jihadists’ strategy is to increase the costs, in terms of 

both blood and treasure, of the U.S. presence in the region, thereby 

forcing Americans to leave the greater Middle East and allowing 

jihadists to fill the political vacuum. In what ways can the U.S. attack 

this strategy?

3. How does the ISIS group’s use of brutality and terrorism line 

up with other insurgencies with which you are familiar? Does the level 

of brutality matter to the outcome ISIS seeks?

4. What steps might the U.S. take (without occupying territory) 

to help diminish sectarian polarization in Syria and Iraq? 
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49

III. ISIS Group’s Successful Mobilization Tactics

A crucial part of the success of ISIS in Iraq and Syria is the 

group’s ability to continuously refresh its ranks of fighters despite 

heavy losses against other jihadist groups, the Kurds, the U.S.-led 

coalition air campaign, and regional governments. Recruiting foreign 

fighters to augment the ranks of local recruits is a key element of ISIS 

mobilization. By February 2015, U.S. officials estimated that as many 

as 20,000 recruits from perhaps 90 countries had joined the group.

37

The total ISIS fighting force from all sources in Syria and Iraq has been 

estimated to be as low as 30,000 and as high as 100,000. The estimate 

for all security forces, including police, could be as high as 200,000.38

The ISIS mobilization success so far has been based on its 

ability to use social media adroitly, but behind this success is a 

carefully constructed narrative of a foundational myth, the promise of 

apocalyptic victory against all enemies in the long run, and the myth of 

a welcoming home for all Muslim recruits in the immediate term. 

Before attempting to construct a counter narrative, we must first 

understand its content. The ISIS group’s magazine Dabiq reliably 

reflects the group’s policy and propaganda and is one also of the most 

accessible vehicles for its messages. Examining ISIS media content, 

especially Dabiq, reveals its key messages and its potential target 

audiences, the “what” of its mobilization effort. 

In addition, selected Social Movement Theory concepts, best 

known for use in analyzing political movements in Western societies,

 

37 Robert Windrem, “ISIS by the Numbers: Foreign Fighter Total Keeps 

Growing,” NBC News, February 28, 2015.

38 See Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, “How Many Fighters Does the Islamic State 

Really Have?,” February 9, 2015, http://warontherocks.com. Gartenstein-Ross 

includes high and low estimates from numerous sources to conclude that 

official U.S. estimates of 20,000 to 31,500 fighters in ISIS are low.
RYAN: ISIS—THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT WOULD BE A STATE

50

provide analysts with tools to understand “how” ISIS mobilizes support 

for its political and military program.

A. Communication Strategy

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. 

ISIS has attributed this inspirational saying to its founder Abu 

Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, and it appears in every issue of the magazine 

Dabiq. Dabiq’s first issue explains that its name comes from the place 

name of an area in the northern countryside of Aleppo, which was 

mentioned in a hadith (a reported saying of the Prophet Muhammad):

“The [last] Hour will not be established until the Romans land at alA’maq or Dabiq. Then an army from al-Madinah of the best people on 

the earth at that time will leave for them.” Dabiq continues the hadith 

as it describes an epic battle called “Malahim” in Arabic and 

“Armageddon” in English. The battle will be between the Muslim 

forces led by the Mahdi, but it will not occur until the Prophet Isa

(Jesus) descends on Damascus to confront a demonic “deceiver” who is 

leading the people astray. His appearance signals the beginning of the 

end times, which open with an epic battle in which Muslims triumph 

over Christian forces and culminate in the glorious end times, which 

represent not necessarily an end but the beginning of an indefinite 

period during which the entire world will be Muslim.

39

This story used by ISIS is very old and is at the heart of 

popular Muslim Apocalyptic tradition. Scholars sometimes refer to this 

tradition as the A’maq cycle,

40 after a series of valleys in northern 

Syria. Dabiq is now a small town of approximately 3,000 people, but 

 

39 The story of Dabiq appears in greater detail in Dabiq: The Return of 

Khilafah 1 (June-July 2014).

40 For an analysis of the ancient A’maq cycle, see David Cook, Studies in 

Muslim Apocalyptic (Princeton: Darwin Press, 2002), pp. 49-54.
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51

some believe it will be the scene of the ultimate confrontation between 

Muslims and Christians before the last Hour. This imaginative setting 

is romantic and open to interpretation. Numerous books have been

written about the signs of the end times and are best sellers in some 

parts of the Middle East. 

ISIS has chosen a tradition that may be found in one of the 

major collections of hadiths, the Sahih Muslim. 41 Like all sibylline

utterances, its interpretation is malleable and may fit a variety of 

circumstances. For example, Western troops landing in Syria would 

allow ISIS to call for jihad based on a hadith that anyone with access to 

the Internet or Islamic books could find. The hadith’s interpretation 

connects the lands stretching from the city of Medina in Saudi Arabia 

in the south, through Iraq and Syria, to the borders of Turkey in the 

north. Other traditions connect this area in imagination to the black 

banners of Khorasan and the founder of ISIS, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, 

who came from Afghanistan (Khorasan) through Iran to Iraq, to found 

a proto-state that would stretch from to Iraq to Syria. To a new convert 

to Islam, these founding myths may be embellished to give a romantic 

purpose and meaning to a life full of struggles, which like all romantic 

quests, is full of suffering before the goal is reached.

Al-Suri in his Call to Global Islamic Resistance cemented this 

romantic quest to the jihadist tradition side by side with his military 

theories of jihad, devoting the end of his long book to a catalog and 

analysis of apocalyptic hadiths.

42 While some of these dealt with the 

black banner of Khorasan and the army of jihadists led by the Mahdi 

flooding out of the east to conquer all before them before taking 

Jerusalem, and were featured in some of al Qaeda’s recruitment efforts,

 

41 The hadith cited by ISIS may be found in the standard compilation of hadith, 

the Sahih Muslim, chapter 40, no. 6924.

42 For an analysis and references to the apocalyptic tradition in al-Suri’s work, 

see Jean-Pierre Filiu, Apocalypse in Islam, trans. M.B. DeBevoise (Berkeley: 

University of California Press 2011), pp. 184-193.
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52

the apocalyptic tradition was never in the forefront for Osama bin 

Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Now, however, ISIS is embracing it in 

a powerful message to its potential recruits wherever they are.

i. ISIS and the Apocalypse

If the apocalyptic material is ancient, the ISIS group’s method 

of delivering it is thoroughly modern and shaped to make the message 

suit the group’s policies and recruitment efforts. ISIS has excelled in 

videos and glossy magazines with high production values, including 

professional editing of videos and high-resolution cameras for still 

shots. If the message is 80 percent of the struggle, it should not be 

surprising that ISIS takes great care in coordinating its messages and 

overlapping methods of delivery. The use of social media ensures that 

target audiences will be reached by a method that suits their 

circumstances. If a target population does not have ready access to 

computers, content targeted at smartphones offers an alternative. Where 

Facebook is popular, that is the chosen platform for messaging. If the 

smartphone is the preferred device, as it is with younger audiences,

especially for recruitment, Twitter and even personal messaging are the 

delivery of choice. In short, all methods of delivery are available for 

general propaganda.

For example, the announcement of the “return” of the caliphate 

was handled in very carefully orchestrated fashion, including multiple 

languages and all available electronic forums. Online, one could read

the announcement of the caliphate and its new caliph delivered by the 

ISIS spokesman; and then on popular commercial video platforms, one 

could watch a video of the inaugural speech by the new self-styled 

caliph in the historic mosque in Mosul. A few days later, the first issue 

of Dabiq began appearing on selected websites, and it included quotes

from the new caliph about various policies that first appeared on 

Twitter. Generally, commercial enterprises like Twitter and YouTube 

will remove such postings for violating content policies, but once 

posted they take on a life of their own on the Internet and can be found 

on a variety of public and private websites and blogs.
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53

ii. ISIS Messaging

ISIS messaging may be lurid and overwhelming, as in the 

beheading videos, or it may be subtle and intended for specific 

audiences. For example, the first issue of Dabiq devoted an article to 

establishing that leadership means both religious and political 

leadership for ISIS. The article’s title, “The Concept of Imamah

(Leadership) Is From the Millah (Path) of Ibrahim” contains some 

allusions that resemble “dog whistles,” or phrases with special 

significance to specific audiences (just as dog whistles are pitched 

outside the range of human hearing, where only dogs can hear them—

and be trained to respond to them). For example, the statement that 

leadership is derived from the path or way of Ibrahim (Arabic for the 

Prophet Abraham) could simply mean that leadership derives from a 

Salafi jihadist concept of Islam, because that is what “Millah Ibrahim”

means to jihadists. On the other hand, the path of Ibrahim could also 

allude to the other significant event announced in the magazine: the 

seizure of religious and political power by the new Caliph Ibrahim. 

The embedded dog whistle is more obscure; Millah Ibrahim is 

the title of an important book by Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a famous 

jihadist religious authority and former mentor of al-Zarqawi. AlMaqdisi turned against al-Zarqawi because of the latter’s excessive and 

brutal violence and became an outspoken critic of ISIS. Citing this 

book is signaling to other jihadists, especially in Saudi Arabia and 

Jordan, that ISIS is claiming to have accomplished what al-Maqdisi had 

only spoken about. Furthermore, Dabiq’s apocalyptic messaging 

context would appeal to extremists in Saudi Arabia, who admire alMaqdisi’s works, tend toward a millenarian concept of history, and 

agree with his harsh criticism of the Saudi government.

Dabiq contains other important indications of the ISIS group’s

policies. For example, in describing the strategy of founder al-Zarqawi, 

the authors of Dabiq introduce the transliterated Arabic words nikayah

(damage/terrorism), tawahhush (savagery or chaos), and tamkin

(establishing the proto-state). These are ordinary words but are used as 

terms of art as the three stages of jihad in The Administration of 
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54

Savagery. The magazine also describes deals with tribal councils, part 

of a strategy developed by ISIS in its written plan for a comeback in 

Iraq in anticipation of the withdrawal of American forces, and mimics 

the American approach to Awakening Councils among the tribes in 

Iraq to decimate al Qaeda in Iraq. In the context of this strategy 

attributed to al-Zarqawi, ISIS outlines a five-stage roadmap it will 

follow to expand its proto-state. The first two stages constitute the 

recruitment and absorption of individuals or groups into the ISIS 

structure, while the last three stages echo the three-stage cycle of 

guerrilla warfare described by Naji and al-Suri.

43

The first stage is the call for recruits to travel (hijrah) to ISISheld areas in Syria/Iraq or other battlefields. The second stage is to join 

(jama’ah) the group and be trained and absorbed. The third stage is to 

engage in destabilizing the central government with terrorism and

guerrilla warfare. The fourth stage is the establishment of the protostate after government forces are withdrawn or defeated—“the 

administration of savagery.” The final stage is the establishment of an 

Islamic emirate or, in the case of Syria/Iraq, the self-declared caliphate.

This sequence makes sense only if one considers that the 

expansion of the caliphate requires additional local and foreign recruits 

to be guided through the five-stage path. In Syria and Iraq, the process 

is mature and ISIS is fighting to survive, but in Egypt or Libya, to cite 

two active examples, the groups pledging allegiance to Caliph Ibrahim 

are in the beginning stages of the process. Anywhere ISIS exists, the 

stream of recruits is required to replenish its losses in its continuous 

armed struggle to establish its rule over new areas, consolidate those 

areas with previous conquests, and then continue to expand. Essentially 

unopposed, ISIS forces expanded rapidly in northern Iraq, subduing 

 

43 ISIS is known to distribute Naji’s book to regional commanders and rankand-file recruits. See Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, ISIS: Inside the Army 

of Terror (New York: Regan Arts, 2015), p. 40-41. In his book, Naji 

recommends other jihadist authors, most notably Abu Mus’ab al-Suri.
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55

village after village and setting up a primitive government under its 

own version of Islamic law. In Syria, however, ISIS was able to 

consolidate its rule in al-Raqqa and increase government services to the 

point where it can claim to have a number of government services one 

would expect in a city. The most dramatic consolidation of power was 

between contiguous areas in Iraq and Syria after Mosul fell to ISIS 

forces when central government forces fled. The areas under ISIS 

control, however, are not static. The greatest challenge for ISIS so far 

has been Kurdish forces in both Syria and Iraq supported by U.S. air 

assets, which have managed to defeat ISIS forces and drive it out of a 

number of previously occupied areas. Without a strong propaganda 

campaign to replenish its ranks, ISIS could not sustain its momentum 

or continue to hold areas it has taken by force.

Space does not permit cataloging all the allusions and messages 

in the first issue of Dabiq, let alone all the messages in the following 

issues. Each page is carefully written and dense with messages framed 

for a variety of audiences that ISIS intends to reach, both friends and

enemies. Even a casual reading of Dabiq demonstrates what one would 

expect from any jihadist group, that is, the holy places in Saudi Arabia 

and Jerusalem are high mission priorities. A careful reading shows that,

like al Qaeda, the ISIS group’s doctrine follows in the Egyptian 

revolutionary intellectual tradition of Sayyid Qutb and Muhammad 

Abd al-Salam Faraj. This tradition places the modern concept of jihad 

as an individual obligation at the center of Islamic doctrine; considers 

all Muslims except for Salafi jihadists to be apostate; and downgrades 

Jews and Christians to the status of implacable enemies that are not part 

of the Abrahamic tradition.

Discussion Questions

1. Much of the ISIS group’s political propaganda involves the 

use of Islamic symbols and popular beliefs. How can the U.S. and its 

coalition allies counter this propaganda (for example, the use of the 

concept of the Apocalypse) without making matters worse? What 

would be the effect of ignoring this part of ISIS propaganda?
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56

2. How important are Kurdish forces in the battle against ISIS 

in Iraq and Syria? Should the U.S. arm the Kurds directly, even if the 

governments of Iraq and Turkey object? In other words, how would 

you make the tradeoff between military gains against ISIS versus

political complications with allies?

3. What elements would you include in an information war 

against ISIS?

B. Mobilization: Social Movement Theory Concepts Applied to 

ISIS

Several concept pairs developed in Social Movement Theory 

complement the contextual analysis of ISIS’s general propaganda and 

its targeted usage of social media for recruitment. These concepts are 

useful tools in assessing an organization’s approach to mobilizing 

political forces behind its programs and provide the frameworks for 

questions concerning how an organization is successful in terms of its 

strengths and vulnerabilities. The first pair is culture and framing, in 

which organizations frame all issues in terms of the culture of the group 

it intends to influence. Framing can also be used to convert target 

populations to a political culture mobilized for action. Over time, how 

an organization frames issues becomes the political brand of that 

organization. The second concept pair is violence and contention. The 

interplay of violence and contention44 in the political realm defines how 

and when violence becomes the chosen form of political contention. 

The last concept pair to be considered is network and alliances. Here,

the key is the distinction between the two and the identification of 

 

44 “Contention” is used in this case study as shorthand for political contention, 

including the various tools available to social movements to oppose the ruling 

system in a particular country or region. Social movements usually have a 

repertoire of tools for political contention, such as trade unions, political 

parties, and so on. The jihadist movement generally insists that rationally 

organized violence must be its major political tool and rejects any other form 

of democratically acceptable contention as a path to its goals.
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57

when collaboration within a network is permitted under revolutionary 

Salafi jihadism, when an alliance is not permitted.

i. Culture and Framing

Perhaps the strongest aspect of the ISIS group’s mobilization 

strategy is its ability to frame its messages consistently and with crossreferences across multiple social media platforms. However, as Quintan 

Wiktorowicz argues in his groundbreaking book Islamic Activism, 

“One of the most critical dimensions of the framing process for 

movement mobilization is frame resonance.”

45 Like other Islamist 

recruiting efforts, ISIS frames messages with different cultural 

resonance for different audiences. And like other extremist groups 

before it, ISIS recruiters target individuals and groups with tailored 

appeals, purely political appeals, appeals to victimhood, religious 

appeals, appeals that offer a new identity, and apocalyptic appeals. The 

major overarching frames include the following:

 Salafi jihadist answer to world problems (true Islam)

 Fulfillment of end-times prophesies (apocalyptic 

adventure)

 Answer to unjust U.S. and its client tyrants (caliphate 

as powerful winner)

 Benign community of believers (paradise for lost 

millennials)

 Avenger of racial and ethnic humiliation (revenge and 

rebirth for victims)

 Best bet to survive (protector in war theaters)

ISIS framing exercises will change with changing events. The 

vocabulary and symbols will vary with audience. These appeals may be 

single source or mixtures such as Dabiq offers. What is new and a 

 

45 Quintan Wiktorowicz, ed., Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Approach

(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), p. 16.
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distinctive competitive advantage for ISIS is its ability to match the 

medium to the preferences of the target audience—in other words, it

chooses the medium and message that resonates best with the target 

audience. In the case of recruitment, the framing may begin with a 

general framing on radical websites and Facebook using themes such as 

the alleged victimization of Muslims in wars the U.S. or its allies have 

fought. A general appeal using the usual framing of events in Iraq, 

Syria, or other areas with a majority Muslim population may be part of 

a broad radicalization effort. The appeal may be sharpened by Twitter 

offerings in English that target a young audience in a specific country. 

Finally, if individuals self-identify with specific concerns, ISIS 

operatives may target them with personal messages to their phones or 

email accounts to continue the radicalization process. These might be 

totally political in nature or may have a religious cast. Where 

conditions permit, recruiters may offer these messages in person in a 

way that may be protected by laws allowing freedom of speech. If the 

message is religious, the target will be someone who may identify as a 

Muslim but does not know much about Islam beyond clichés. 

The distinctive framing used by ISIS, which is different from 

all other radical groups currently, is its self-identification as the 

caliphate for all Muslims. One of its most powerful appeals to lost 

souls is its representation of its Syrian capital, al-Raqqa, as a peaceful 

community of believers where every race and ethnicity is treated with 

respect and given a purpose in a loving community of believers. This 

image remains powerful despite al-Raqqa’s grim reality.

ii. Violence and Contention

So until we return to the correct state of Islamic affairs, it’s

upon us all to work together to eradicate the principle of “free 

choice,” and to not deceive the people in an attempt to seek 

their pleasure, neither by calling to “free choice” directly, nor 

by alluding to it indirectly. Rather, we must confront them 

with the fact that they’ve turned away from the religion, 

while we hold onto it, grasping its purity, its clarity, its 
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59

comprehensiveness, without any blemishes due to shirk

[idolatry], misguidance or heresy, and that we’re completely 

ready to stand in the face of anyone who attempts to divert us 

from our commitment to making the religion of Allah 

triumphant over all other religions, and that we will continue 

to fight the people of deviation and misguidance until we die 

trying to make the religion triumphant.46

In most political movements, the key question is how political 

contention is managed. The usual assumption is that denying any 

political space for opposition creates the conditions in which political 

violence is more likely. Furthermore, indiscriminate suppression of 

dissent is generally viewed as a mobilizing force for those who would 

engage in revolutionary activities. Some clandestine organizations in 

the Middle East and North Africa, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, 

inhabit a space that allows the pragmatic choice of violence or 

nonviolence depending on the circumstances. It is misleading to assert, 

however, that any Islamist group is inherently nonviolent. While Salafi 

jihadists are at the extreme of Islamist identity, there is no Gandhi or 

Martin Luther King in Islamist ranks. Jihadists argue that violence is 

always necessary in dealing with political foes. Occasionally, a Salafi 

jihadist will argue that violence must be avoided to prevent damage or 

destruction to the jihadist movement as a whole or in a particular 

country. In general, however, those making such statements generally 

make them in jail or after being released. The question for Salafi 

jihadists is not whether they will resort to violence—but against whom, 

when, and how.

The quote above indicates an answer to the first two questions. 

ISIS is a modern totalitarian political movement based on a deviant 

Islamic analysis. It is a radical form of takfir (declaring someone to be 

an infidel) that is applied to all except those who accept the new 

caliphate. Therefore, violence is directed against anyone or any group 

 

46 Dabiq: The Flood, no. 2 ( July 2014), p. 11. 
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that disagrees with the group’s ideology. Similarly, the timing of 

violence against those who disagree is always until all dissent is 

crushed. It is an eternal war until the end times. The first ones who 

must be killed or converted are those who say they are Muslims but 

reject the truth that ISIS claims to be bringing to the world. The 

“Flood” alluded to in the theme of issue 2 of Dabiq is the great Flood 

that destroyed the entire world except for the Prophet Noah (called Nuh

in Islam).

The ISIS group’s practice of killing civilians and captive 

soldiers seems arbitrary and barbaric when viewed from the outside. 

Such violence is correctly recognized as primarily a terror tool and a 

recruiting vehicle. By killing those who resist, ISIS intends to 

encourage others to submit, an ancient practice that has precedents in 

Alexander the Great’s conquests, Caesar’s wars, and the Mongol 

invasion of the Middle East. However, when ISIS kills soldiers after 

they surrender or kills noncombatants, they discriminate between 

Sunnis, who are given a chance to repent and pledge allegiance to alBaghdadi, and Shia, who are executed. Shia are always framed as 

“rejectionists,” while Sunni are “apostates.” ISIS thus denies that it 

kills indiscriminately.

Many question whether ISIS is more violent than al Qaeda or a 

greater threat to the U.S. In fact, most signature atrocities such as 

videos recording ritualized beheadings belong as much to al Qaeda’s

repertoire as to ISIS. Al Qaeda has beheaded Western civilians on 

camera clandestinely in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to cite two 

examples. The leadership of al Qaeda thought these worked against its

brand, but it is still possible to find video beheadings claiming to be by 

al Qaeda’s Jabhat Nusra in Syria today. Al Qaeda also has used suicide 

bombers against civilians in a number of countries. Certainly, al Qaeda,

like ISIS, has been responsible for the deaths of more Muslims than 

non-Muslims in their numerous terror campaigns throughout the world.

The more interesting comparison is between ISIS and the 

Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria during the 1990s. GIA 

developed into one of the most radical and violent jihadist groups in 
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modern times, although its scope was local rather than transnational or 

global. In escalating waves of violence marked by the massacre of 

civilians, GIA eventually claimed that essentially all Algerians, except 

for their own members, were infidels meriting death. Even al Qaeda

strategists al-Suri and Naji referred to the GIA as “deviant.” Professor 

Mohammad M. Hafez has argued that GIA’s anti-civilian violence in 

Algeria was “the outcome of an ill-fated convergence of three 

variables—indiscriminate repression, exclusive organization, and 

antisystem ideologies.”

47 Hafez argued that the Algerian government,

after a military coup that thwarted the legal election of an Islamist 

government and the defeat of the founding secular regime, resorted to 

indiscriminate violence to repress the protesting Islamist factions. This 

in turn allowed GIA, which was a marginal but highly exclusive and 

secretive group, to increase its membership, powered by powerful antigovernment framing. GIA eventually lost the support of a terrified 

populace and fell to the militarized government. It was this example 

that al-Zawahiri had in mind when he counseled al-Zarqawi against 

anti-Shia violence and why al Qaeda today is taking a stand against 

video beheadings. But GIA did not have the ISIS group’s powerful 

media tools.48

In the face of other jihadist opposition, ISIS has turned video 

beheadings and even live burnings to its advantage, at least in the short 

term. What most people see as barbaric, a subset of radicalized 

 

47 Mohammed M. Hafez, “From Marginalization to Massacres: A Political 

Process Explanation of GIA Violence in Algeria,” in Wiktorowicz ed., Islamic 

Activism (2004), p.53.

48 GIA also lacked many other competitive advantages that ISIS possesses. For 

example, it focused mainly on Algeria and did not have a wide appeal that 

would gain it regional support. Also, Algeria does not have the sectarian 

polarization that ISIS has been able to use to its advantage in Syria and Iraq. 

Thus the hyperviolence that ISIS uses can be framed as discriminating, 

whereas GIA was seen to be indiscriminate in its violence. Perhaps the most 

important advantage for ISIS, however, is its strategic approach based on 

lessons learned from previous jihadist insurgencies.
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individuals sees as heroic acts of revenge and a sign of power against 

arrogant enemies. This short-term strength, however, may turn into a 

long-term vulnerability—but only if the U.S. and its allies can mount 

an effective counter narrative that rivals the effectiveness of ISIS 

propaganda. Otherwise, culturally framed violence will continue to be a

significant tool in the ISIS arsenal.

iii. Networks and Alliances

The Islamic State has an extensive history of building relations 

with the tribes within its borders in an effort to strengthen the ranks of 

the Muslims, unite them under one imam, and work together towards 

the establishment of the prophetic Khilafah. Its practice of attending 

tribal forums, addressing the concerns of the tribal leaders, and 

accepting their bay’ah is regularly met with success.

Last month, following instructions from the head of Public 

Relations in Wilayat Halab [Governorate of Aleppo], the 

wilayah’s head of Tribal Affairs attended a meeting with the 

following tribal representatives ... 

49

Clandestine groups, especially jihadist ones, operate within a 

shadow network that includes not only allies but also other groups that 

collaborate because of specific mutual advantage. When at its weakest 

point in 2009/2010 in Iraq, ISIS forged a strategy to strengthen its 

political position, at the core of that strategy was the recognition that 

the group’s treatment of Sunni tribes had created the circumstances in 

which the tribal leaders were ready to ally with the U.S. to destroy 

AQI. Winning over the Sunni tribes in Iraq was a large part of the ISIS 

reemergence in Iraq. Similarly, in Syria, gaining the cooperation of 

tribal groups is at the strategic core of the ISIS group’s tactical 

success.

50

 

49 Dabiq: The Return of Khilafah 1 (June-July 2014): 12.

50 See Murad Batal al-Shishani, “The Islamic State’s Strategic and Tactical 

Plan for Iraq,” Terrorism Monitor 12, no. 16 (August 8, 2014); Michael Weiss 
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63

In the above quote, ISIS demonstrates how it succeeds with 

tribes by using a Syrian example, but the same scenario played itself 

out in Iraq as well. After the withdrawal of American forces, the Maliki

government’s mistreatment of the Sunni tribes created a universal 

hostility among their ranks. ISIS needed to transform resentment, 

which could be passive, into active resistance. ISIS went about this 

transformation by both using political arguments and providing 

tangible rewards. The tangible rewards were delivered in the context of 

their proto-government, which is the equivalent of Naji’s

Administration of Savagery in areas from which central government

forces had been withdrawn in Iraq and Syria. These tangible benefits 

are succinctly described in Dabiq:

 Returning property to owners

 Investing millions of dollars in local services

 Providing security and stability

 Ensuring the availability of food and commodities in 

local markets

 Reducing crime rate

ISIS also reported what it expected from the tribes around 

Aleppo in return. It requested that tribal elders collect the religious tax 

(zakat) and prepare lists of orphans and widows who would benefit 

from the tax. Next, it asked the elders to “encourage” youth to join its

military forces and turn in any weapon acquired either from the Assad

regime or the Free Syrian Army. Finally, ISIS told the elders that any 

of its members who had borne arms against ISIS could repent;

ominously, their repentance must occur before ISIS captured them. 

Recounting the meeting in Syria and other meetings, ISIS listed 

the names of those tribes attending. However, Dabiq becomes vague 

 

and Hassan Hassan, ch. 13, “Shakedown of the Sheikhs: ISIS Co-opts the 

Tribes “in ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (New York: Regan Arts, 2015); for 

the ISIS account of its relationship with the Sunni tribes in Syria, see “Halab 

Tribal Assemblies,” in Dabiq: The Return of Khilafah (June/July 2014): 13-14.
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64

when recounting the number of tribal leaders that pledged allegiance to 

al-Baghdadi and ISIS. The clear implication is that ISIS is accepting 

tribes’ buying into the ISIS network and collaborating without actually 

becoming part of it. One could say that the relationship is more than a 

network but less than an alliance, especially since ISIS has substituted 

wilayat (governorates or provinces) for allies. Naji wrote about “faithbased bonds of loyalty” as a substitute for tribal loyalty, which he

envied.51 This may be the model for ISIS seeking pledges of allegiance 

or bay’ah as a substitute for tribal bonds. In following this path, 

however, ISIS is vulnerable to tribal backlash and ultimately revolt 

under the same conditions that would allow such a course.

We have discussed how ISIS relies on criminal networks and in 

many ways itself constitutes a criminal network of smugglers and 

extortionists. In addition to using criminal networks logistically, ISIS 

appears to contract out killing. For example, on one occasion when 

Kurdish forces in Iraq allowed reporters to interview captured ISIS 

killers, it became clear that the men were paid killers, not ISIS soldiers. 

The men referred to ISIS in the third person, using the pejorative term 

Dae’sh

52 casually, as though it were the most ordinary way to refer to 

the group, although use of that term would be avoided by any ISIS 

member, even under duress. ISIS also networks with other hostile 

jihadist organizations with which it is in a state of perpetual war. Such 

networking is based on pragmatism and is the field commander’s

prerogative. When al Qaeda groups in Syria occasionally collaborate 

with local ISIS forces in military operations, such collaboration does 

not signify that the two parent groups are considering reuniting. Unless 

the official spokesman announces a rapprochement or truce, any local 

 

51 See Ryan, Decoding al Qaeda’s Strategy, pp. 183-185.

52 Dae’sh is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham, which 

avoids the use of “Islamic” in the group’s title and has a slighting sound when 

pronounced with a sneer but otherwise is meaningless.
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accommodations should be considered normal pragmatic field 

decisions without wider political ramifications.

To counter the ISIS group’s mobilization strategy requires 

collaboration between Muslim-majority countries and the U.S. and its 

Western allies. ISIS has shown its resilience as a social movement and 

a revolutionary concept, so the collaboration against it must be long

term. The U.S. cannot effectively counter the specifically religious 

aspects of the ISIS narrative because only Muslim authorities have any 

credibility in that arena. That is not to say that the U.S. government 

should not collaborate with private Muslim-American organizations,

especially in anti-radicalization programs in Muslim communities. 

However, addressing issues such as the end-times narrative requires a 

deep knowledge of Islamic texts and traditions. Funding translations 

from Arabic is one important aspect of this struggle. While Western

public figures often state that Middle Eastern Muslims must do more to 

counter radical statements, many Arabic voices are in fact raised but go 

unnoticed because of language barriers. The West should at least match 

the ISIS group’s translation efforts into major European languages. 

Otherwise, the ISIS narrative goes unchallenged in, for example,

English-, French-, and German-speaking countries.

Much of what the U.S. can do involves avoiding playing into 

the mobilization narrative and inadvertently feeding it. The most 

famous example is President George W. Bush’s use of “crusade” to 

describe American military actions. To avoid such gaffes, a great deal 

more effort needs to be placed on understanding the jihadist ideology. 

Much progress has been made, but much more effort is required.

The importance of criminal networks to ISIS and al Qaeda

argues for vigorous cooperation among coalition law enforcement 

agencies to disrupt these networks. Attacking crime in general will not 

help because the category is too broad, but putting organizations and 

individuals on notice that the international community will give high 

priority to arresting and prosecuting individuals who receive goods 

smuggled by ISIS operatives would be a significant positive step.
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Discussion Questions

1. ISIS uses “culture and framing” in much of its public 

dialogue via terms and arguments that resonate with the culture of its

target audiences to criticize its enemies, including the United States.

How could the U.S. frame ISIS attacks on historical and religious 

landmarks that are much loved by local populations in ways that would 

resonate in the greater Middle East? What would be the military’s role, 

if any, in this messaging? Can you think of other issues that would be 

more effective to reframe?

2. What factors contribute to the success of ISIS on social 

media? What countermeasures are available to mitigate that success?

3. ISIS uses networks of Sunni Arab tribes in Syria and Iraq to 

prosecute its war against the region. Much of its work with tribes was 

inspired by the successful U.S. strategy against al Qaeda insurgents 

during the “Surge” in Iraq. From your experience, could the U.S. 

replicate its work with Sunni tribes in present day Iraq and Syria 

without a large military footprint? Explain.
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IV. Conclusion: Net Assessment of ISIS Strengths

and Weaknesses With Recommendations

As suggested earlier, this case study is intended to be a 

preliminary net assessment of the ISIS group’s strengths and 

weaknesses. To be useful, such a net assessment must take into account 

a relatively long time frame, which current trends suggest. What 

follows are conclusions gained from this assessment, with preliminary 

recommendations based on current research.

A. The Enemy’s Strengths

One of the greatest failures of the U.S. approach to ISIS 

mirrors a shortcoming with al Qaeda—namely, a failure to identify 

precisely who the enemy is and describe it in the terms it describes 

itself. This failure of concept stems from an attitude that is often heard 

in private conversation but not written down. Too often, analysis of 

ISIS and al Qaeda fails to recognize the importance of the written word 

to these groups. Both ISIS and al Qaeda are modern, adaptive learning 

organizations in spite of the primitive society they espouse, and their

strategists and practitioners take great care in the written and spoken 

word. They produce written primers for recruits in grand strategy as 

well as strategic critiques of their own operations.

ISIS follows in al Qaeda’s footsteps by having multifaceted 

strategies based on lessons learned from past failures and successes. 

We know that ISIS’s military strategy begins from a model that would 

be recognized by Mao, Che Guevara, or General Giap. It is a strategy 

that hopes to defeat the most powerful global military by using a 

political strategy aimed at convincing the U.S. that staying the course in 

the Middle East will be too costly in lives, treasure, and international 

prestige. And it intends to defeat local powers by a version of 

Clausewitz’s levée en masse using a mobilization strategy based on 

effective religiously-based propaganda, tangible rewards, and fearsome

punishment. It has focused on the local themes that have always 

appealed to some groups within the Muslim majority of the greater 
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Middle East, including reestablishing a powerful caliphate, driving out 

foreign powers, protecting the sacred places of Islam, controlling the 

region’s natural energy resources, and, finally, producing a righteous 

version of social justice by overthrowing all authoritarian regimes. ISIS

also enjoys the reputation of being the richest jihadist organization at 

present, capable of persuading citizens of some 80 countries to travel to 

join its struggle. In both Iraq and Syria, ISIS has managed to forge 

powerful relationships with Sunni tribes with grievances against Shia 

Muslim-majority governments.

ISIS is part of a social movement that describes itself as the 

leader of the global Salafi jihadist community, similar to al Qaeda’s

claim to be the vanguard of the Salafi jihadist movement. ISIS is 

attempting to become a mass unified social movement by 

demonstrating almost miraculous success in a short period of time in 

Iraq and Syria. It also has aspirations to support insurrections in the 

Arabian Peninsula, beginning with Saudi Arabia. Further afield, it has 

seeded nascent groups in the Sinai, Libya, Algeria, and the Af/Pak 

region. In addition, the well-established Boko Haram group has 

pledged allegiance to ISIS.

B. The Enemy’s Weaknesses

Despite its quick success, ISIS is not militarily strong in a 

conventional sense. It has no defense against American and coalition 

airstrikes. It has not been successful over the long run against

determined Kurdish ground forces in either Iraq or Syria. Its rapid 

initial success is based on a superior guerrilla strategy coupled to its 

ability to terrorize its opposition; this initial success must be sustained,

but holding territory is proving more difficult over the long run. 

Similarly, over the long run ISIS will need to continue to generate large 

amounts of revenue to sustain its operations. It will inevitably give 

priority to its military operations, which will raise discontent among its 

subject Sunni population who accede to ISIS not out of love, but 

because of grievances against the Shia. However, it appears unlikely 

that ISIS will be able to generate the revenue it needs. American 
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69

“strategic patience” in its air campaign is paying dividends by reducing 

ISIS revenues from petroleum smuggling and other criminal 

enterprises. Furthermore, its enemies among the Gulf nations have 

taken steps to stem donations from private sources. 

One of the strategic hinge issues is the internal war among 

local jihadist groups. While ISIS has emerged as the most powerful 

group in terms of resources and ability to draw new members, it is 

weakened by its unwillingness to achieve a meaningful detente with al 

Qaeda and other jihadist groups despite its claim to the caliphate. ISIS 

would be strengthened by such a detente, but it seems highly unlikely 

in the short or long term. The barbaric public atrocities that have 

somehow inspired foreigners to travel to join ISIS have, at the same 

time, undermined its brand in the Middle East with the vast majority of 

Muslims in the most powerful countries. Finally, to succeed, ISIS 

needs to live up to its slogan “remaining and expanding.” If it can be 

contained or rolled back in the territories it occupies, it could lose its 

advantage of being seen as a winner worthy of fear, if not respect.

C. Recommendations

The following recommendations are based on information 

provided in this case study. Where direct U.S. military involvement is 

suggested, this is always intended to be a limited, mission-specific 

involvement such as the use of temporary direct action by Special 

Forces or air strikes. Such recommendations should not be understood 

to mean a massive involvement of conventional forces at the level of 

U.S. involvement in Afghanistan or Iraq.

i. Counterterrorism Recommendations

On balance, the competition between al Qaeda and ISIS is a 

zero-sum game: the U.S. cannot degrade one without strengthening the 

other. However, the counterterrorism and police measures used against 

ISIS can be adapted to degrade al Qaeda as well. For example, 

measures taken against an ISIS smuggling network would also affect al 

Qaeda capabilities. To address the ancient issue of smuggling requires 
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the use of all the tools at the U.S. coalition’s disposal in the areas of 

counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and counter narrative. 

Importantly, American operations need to be executed in the context of 

a clear strategy, including publicly articulated and resourced goals and 

objectives. As it is unrealistic to expect to stop all smuggling into and 

out of Syria and Iraq, any anti-smuggling effort would need to 

discriminate between high-priority and low-priority targets. For 

example, coalition forces and intelligence assets could decide to target 

high-value operations such as smuggling of people, arms, petroleum 

products, and historical artifacts. The U.S. also would need to give

clear warnings that individuals engaging in such smuggling are 

considered to be members of ISIS, not innocent civilians.

U.S. counterterrorism resources include police, intelligence 

agencies, and the military. These efforts are both domestic and foreign 

and include a coalition of allies. In a successful campaign against ISIS, 

allied efforts are crucial, particularly in countries where jihadists rally 

to the ISIS banner. Fortunately, this coalition is already in place and, at 

one level or another, the U.S. works with countries sharing a 

counterterrorism interest. The U.S. can greatly strengthen

counterterrorism efforts by providing technical assistance to our allies,

especially in forensic science and intelligence, two fields in which

American technology is paramount. The key to success is sharing 

information among components and resourcing the analysis of data. 

Each country in the coalition must be responsible for its own 

enforcement; problems will always arise around data that is not shared.

Counterinsurgency theory and practice has risen and fallen 

over the last decade. There has been controversy concerning whether al 

Qaeda and ISIS should be addressed as a counterterrorism or a 

counterinsurgency problem set. Despite the hot political aspects of this 

debate, a cold eye on the nature of ISIS and al Qaeda reveals that both 

organizations are promoters and participants in transnational 

insurgencies and use terrorism as a major weapon. To be effective in 

the current atmosphere, the U.S. can make headway in 

counterinsurgency by using military and intelligence means against 
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perceived ISIS strengths. For ISIS, legitimacy is based on success. By 

thwarting success, the U.S. and its allies can degrade the group’s brand 

and its legitimacy. To cite one example, ISIS financial strength allows 

it to fund groups like Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM) in the Sinai. ABM

has suffered severely under the Egyptian military campaign against it, 

but it has been able to improve its operations by declaring allegiance to 

ISIS. Being able to fund and arm groups like this is an important part of

what gives ISIS legitimacy in the eyes of ABM members and other 

jihadist groups with ambitions of their own, whether in Libya, Algeria,

or the Sahel. 

Finally, a key component is the need to put the occasional ISIS 

success in context. For example, it is not enough to note that ISIS uses 

classic guerrilla warfare strategy that relies on the media and 

propaganda as much as on force of arms. The U.S. and its coalition 

allies need to use that knowledge to note that when ISIS forces lose 

ground in one area, their small-unit tactics using multiple suicidevehicle-borne IEDs and their ability to move quickly allows them to 

mount successful surprise attacks. These attacks are “successful” if 

they manage to distract the media from recent coalition success on a 

wider scale and portray ISIS success as a change in momentum. 

Nevertheless, ISIS will not be able to hold the territory if coalition 

forces mount a determined counterattack.

From the beginning of its involvement, the U.S. has prioritized 

air strikes on economic targets within ISIS-held territory. Significantly 

increasing these strikes could over time degrade this source of 

legitimacy. Meanwhile all the local counterinsurgency efforts would 

remain the responsibility of local forces, ideally using subnational 

forces that possess a strong unity of purpose, with U.S. technical 

assistance and training. In locales such as Syria, Iraq, Libya, and 

Yemen, the U.S. may not be able to rely solely on local forces in the 

immediate and mid term. U.S. and coalition military forces tailored to 

the situation may need to be part of the military solution in such cases, 

whether through an air campaign or through ground forces at a level 

well below that of either the Iraq or Afghan wars.
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ii. Counter Narrative Recommendations

Counterterrorism and counterinsurgency programs need a 

counter narrative to transform operational success into political success. 

Like any effective political narrative, the anti-ISIS narrative must be 

composed of positive information about the coalition as well as

negative information about ISIS. To be credible, both must be factbased and consistent with the evidence. Posting accurate date online 

and using social media to lead individuals to that data could be 

powerful tools. However, such programs cannot be identified as a 

psychological operations campaign. They need to be part of an 

information campaign with high standards of accuracy and 

international credibility, delivered via all modern social media as well 

as traditional media. For example, if a nongovernmental group were to 

tabulate and update atrocities that ISIS itself claims, such a database 

could be an effective resource for journalists and others. The database 

would need to be timely and constantly available. While various NGOs 

and think tanks currently track ISIS activities that experts use 

piecemeal, creating an online clearinghouse for this work could be a 

useful first step for the U.S. government or a privately funded effort.

This approach could be difficult in its start-up phase. But 

without reliable public information, the counter narrative war on ISIS 

likely cannot be won—if winning means reducing the threat to the 

international order to acceptable levels by stopping the spread of 

jihadist cells across the globe and discrediting the ideology that spawns 

them.

One conclusion to be drawn from al-Suri’s analysis of the 

lessons learned in the Muslim Brotherhood’s failed Syrian insurrection 

is that the sensitive pressure points for a jihadist group like ISIS 

become clear. The greatest successes by ISIS in this regard suggest the 

potential for their greatest vulnerabilities to be exploited. For example, 

if the U.S. were to force ISIS into a war of attrition beginning with 

areas adjacent to or in Kurdish territories, essentially to achieve some 

strategic depth for the Kurds, we could damage more than the resultant 

military losses might suggest. Such an operation would begin to erode 
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ISIS’s propaganda advantage, attacking the basis of its consistent 

propaganda slogan of “remaining and expanding” by demonstrating 

that ISIS cannot expand into Kurdish-declared no-go zones. One could 

make the same case for Sunni Arab tribes in Iraq and Syria. To succeed 

in this effort, the U.S. would need to lead the coalition in significantly 

arming and training Kurdish forces and Sunni Arab tribes directly,

based on best military estimates of requirements. Political objections to 

such a course by local governments constitute a serious obstacle to 

direct efforts with subnational groups; but for the U.S. to continue to 

heed such objections would be nothing less than giving up a powerful 

tool with a record of success.

The U.S. would also need to enhance its tactical air campaign 

considerably while maintaining its current strategic campaign against 

economic targets. As this program becomes successful, the U.S. could 

work with the Iraqi Army to pursue similar campaigns against 

geographically significant targets held or under attack by ISIS, before

eventually turning to a campaign to retake Mosul. We could then 

simultaneously declare the creation of coalition expeditionary quickstrike units, including U.S. Special Forces and Marines, and proceed 

with quick temporary strikes inside Iraq and eventually Syria at 

strategic points. This would clearly demonstrate that ISIS is not a state 

and cannot protect the territory it now holds.

These military moves would not be meaningful without an 

accompanying and coordinated strategic narrative. The narrative would 

have two parts. In the first part, Muslim coalition partners (Egypt 

would need to be a part of this campaign) would start a sustained 

campaign against the Islamic pretentions and arguments broadcast by 

ISIS. This campaign would include technical religious arguments 

offered by recognized religious authorities. These arguments would not 

be difficult to construct, but they would need to be sustained and not 

abandoned when they become subject to counterattacks by ISIS and its 

jihadist sympathizers. 

The second aspect of this counter narrative campaign would 

focus on the basic fallacy at the heart of the ISIS group’s strategy, 
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beginning with the strategic flaw of trying to hold territory in the center 

of Muslim lands without any allies, economy of its own, or strategic 

advantage. This campaign could also focus on the non-religious aspects 

of a state. Such attacks already exist in Arabic on Christian Arab 

websites and argue that the Islamic State is a state without borders, 

without recognition from any state, without the ability to defend itself, 

without an economy outside of criminal enterprises, without any 

foreign embassies, and so on. In short, the political counter narrative

would need to be basic, straightforward, and relentless in all forms of 

media. The U.S. could lead this, but through a public-private 

partnership that would engage the creative energies of the private 

sector—coordinated and supported but not dictated by the government. 

Such a campaign would need to include Muslim-American groups and 

collaboration with Middle Eastern partners as much as feasible.

iii. Final Recommendations

The most important task for U.S. planners is to focus on how

ISIS is carrying out its doctrine and strategy, to identify how it is 

adapting to U.S. pressure, and how it views victory as an organization. 

Most of the elements needed to defeat ISIS are in place. The American 

military has spoken of “strategic patience” to explain the slow, some 

would say cautious, pace of operations. The coalition’s emphasis on 

hitting economic targets is gradually paying dividends by first slowing 

and then significantly reducing the ISIS group’s revenue from 

petroleum sales and other criminal activities. Local populations have on 

occasion indicated to reporters that they recognize and appreciate the 

coalition’s focus on avoiding civilian casualties during airstrikes. 

Airstrikes against targets of opportunity in the open have reduced the 

ISIS group’s ability to mass forces against vulnerable targets or 

reinforce its own units when they come under attack in Iraq. 

In the endgame, the U.S. will need to reconsider its policy of 

not using forward spotters for precision airstrikes in cities and towns. 

When coalition fighters first struck targets in al-Raqqa, local residents 

reported that ISIS fighters fled the city. However, we should expect that 
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after experiencing the coalition’s policy of restraint, ISIS would 

continue to hide among the population in large cities, especially Mosul, 

to impede Iraqi or Kurdish forces. Placing U.S. Special Forces or 

Marines with allied ground forces would greatly assist clearing 

operations. The obvious problems with such a decision are the 

likelihood of American casualties and the perception that Americans 

and Iranian forces are fighting together against the Sunni population.

While American military involvement in Iraq and Syria is 

important to contain ISIS, it is insufficient to defeat ISIS or al Qaeda

over the long run. Another key part of coalition success is to continue 

to focus on first containing and then reversing ISIS, not only on the 

ground but also in its crucial advantage in communications and 

propaganda. The U.S. would reap benefits from continuing to target 

ISIS communications facilities and finding ways to wage cyber war 

against its online propaganda servers. 

Even more important than attacking physical aspects of ISIS 

communications, the U.S. and its allied coalition need to develop a 

multi-tiered counter narrative. The U.S. may encourage Muslimmajority allies to consistently address the religious aspects of ISIS 

communications. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have a large role to play in 

this, and their efforts should be encouraged and supported technically. 

A joint fusion center to produce translations of statements and fatwas of 

major Muslim religious scholars or statements by recognized Islamic 

institutions would ensure that non-Arabic speakers hear rebuttals to the 

ISIS group’s multilingual output. For its part, the U.S. response should 

be crafted as though it were a high-quality political or advertising 

campaign against a rival, using classic opposition research and reports 

that are factual and convincing, not polemical. Providing reports to the 

international press with fact-checked statistics on ISIS crimes, its 

destruction of mosques and beloved historical landmarks, its 

involvement in human trafficking, and so on could inform a widely

dispersed population of events about which they are now unaware. 

Information confirmed and reported by local press sources would likely 

be more effective than statements by American officials.
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While difficult, defeating ISIS militarily could well prove the 

easiest part of the struggle. Unless the U.S. and its partners also 

succeed in discrediting its ideology, we should expect current trends to 

continue until either the movement burns itself out or local populations 

somehow manage to destroy it—neither of which is guaranteed. The 

anti-ISIS coalition thus must fashion cost-effective strategies to contain 

ISIS militarily while working together to discredit its legitimacy. The 

overarching premise of the American response should be that ISIS is a 

long-term violent threat of a hostile transnational social movement, 

wrapped in a Salafi jihadist cover. Comparisons to historical 

movements, such as the Anarchist movement before World War I, 

could be used to show how transnational violence begets more violence 

and does not build healthy societies. History has shown that we should 

expect the ISIS/al Qaeda phenomenon to reconstitute itself under a new 

name and new leadership in the event we manage to destroy its current 

organization and top leadership. As long as their ideas remain credible 

and even appealing to some, the threat of anarchistic violence will 

remain.

Discussion Questions

1. This case study lists some ISIS strengths and weaknesses. 

How would you characterize the ISIS group’s greatest strengths and 

greatest weaknesses?

2. In your opinion, which of the recommendations in this case 

study are the most useful? Which are the least useful? What other 

countermeasures could the U.S. take against ISIS? 

3. Should the U.S. continue to target al Qaeda forces in Syria?

Explain.
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Annex A: Selected Bibliography

Amr, Al-Azm, Salam Al-Kuntar, and Brian I. Daniels. “ISIS’

Antiquities Sideline,” New York Times (September 2, 2014).

Al-Shishani, Murad Batal. “The Islamic State’s Strategic and 

Tactical Plan for Iraq.” Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor 12, 

no. 16 (August 8, 2014).

———. “The Political Economy of Islamic State and Its 

Financial Resources for War.” Terrorism Monitor 12, no. 24 

(December 19, 2014).

Bergen, Peter L. The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict 

Between America and Al Qaeda. New York: The Free Press, 2011.

Black, Andrew. “Al-Suri’s Adaptation of Fourth-Generation 

Warfare Doctrine.” Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor 4, no. 8

(September 26, 2006).

Bracken, Paul. “Net Assessment: A Practical Guide,”

Parameters (2006): 90-100. 

Chulov, Martin, Fazel Hawramy, and Spence Ackerman, “Iraq 

Army Capitulates to ISIS Militants in Four Cities,” The Guardian (June 

11, 2014).

Cigar, Norman. Al-Qa’ida’s Doctrine for Insurgency: ‘Abd Al-

’Aziz Al-Muqrin’s “A Practical Course for Guerrilla War.”

Washington, D.C.: Potomac, 2009.

CNN Wire. “Bush: ‘al-Zarqawi operation a ‘remarkable 

achievement’.” CNN (June 7, 2006). 

Cook, David. Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic. Princeton, N.J.: 

Darwin Press, 2002.

Cox, Simon. “The Men Who Smuggle the Loot That Funds 

IS.” BBC (February 17, 2015).

Cullison, Alan. “Inside Al Qaeda’s Hard Drive.” The Atlantic

(September 1, 2004).

Dabiq: The Flood Issue 2. Al-Hayat Media Center English 

digital edition. July 2014.
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Dabiq: The Return Of Khilafah 1. Al-Hayat Media Center 

English digital edition. July 2014.

Filiu, Jean-Pierre. Apocalypse in Islam, trans. M.B. DeBevoise. 

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

Gartenstein-Ross, Daveed. “How Many Fighters Does the 

Islamic State Really Have?” February 9, 2015, 

http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/how-many-fighters-does-theislamic-state-really-have/

Hafez, Mohammed M. “From Marginalization to Massacres: A 

Political Process Explanation of GIA Violence in Algeria,” in 

Wiktorowicz, ed. Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory 

Approach. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 

2004.

Hafez, Mohammed M. and Quintan Wiktorowicz. “Violence 

and Contention in the Egyptian Islamic Movement,” in Wiktorowicz, 

ed. Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach. 

Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Hashim, Ahmed S. Iraq’s Sunni Insurgency. New York: 

Routledge, 2009.

———. “From Al Qaeda Affiliate to the Rise of the Islamic 

Caliphate: The Evolution of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).”

Policy Report, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies 

(December, 2014).

Hitti, Philip K. History of the Arabs, tenth edition rev. London: 

Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Joffe, Lawrence. “Obituary: Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi.” The 

Guardian, (June 9, 2006).

Kaplan, Eben. “Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, Zarqawi’s Mysterious 

Successor (aka Abu Ayub al-Masri).” Council on Foreign Relations 

Backgrounder (June 13, 2006).

Lia, Brynjar. Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of al Qaeda

Strategist Abu Mus’ab al-Suri. New York: Columbia University Press: 

New York, 2008.
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79

Mao Tse-Tung. The Art of War: Special Edition. trans. Foreign 

Language Press, Peking. El Paso, Texas: El Paso Norte Press, 2005.

“Pentagon: Oil Is No Longer ISIS’ Main Source of Income.”

Al-Arabiya News (February 5, 2015).

Ryan, Michael W.S. “Hot Issue: Dabiq: What Islamic State’s 

New Magazine Tells Us About Their Strategic Direction, Recruitment 

Patterns, and Guerrilla Doctrine.” Terrorism Monitor, Jamestown 

Foundation. August 1, 2014. 

———. Decoding Al Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle 

Against America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.

Solomon, Jay. “ISIS’s Oil Revenue Is Falling, Administration 

Says.” Washington Wire (December 15, 2014).

Singerman, Diane. “The Networked World of Islamist Social 

Movements,” in Wiktorowicz, ed. Islamic Activism: A Social 

Movement Theory Approach. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana 

University, 2004. 

Taber, Robert. War of the Flea. Washington, D.C.: Potomac, 

2002. 

“U.S. Military: al-Zarqawi Was Alive After Bombing.” CNN

(June 9, 2006).

“US Says 80% of al Qaeda Leaders in Iraq Removed.” BBC 

News (June 4, 2010).

Wagemakers, Joas. A Quietist Jihadi: The Ideology and 

Influence of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge 

University Press, 2012.

Weaver, Mary Anne. “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Mus’ab 

al-Zarqawi.” The Atlantic website ed. (June 8, 2006).

Weiss, Michael and Hassan, Hassan. ISIS: Inside the Army of 

Terror. New York: Regan Arts, 2015.

Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. “Interests, Ideas, and Islamist 

Outreach in Egypt,” in Wiktorowicz, ed. Islamic Activism: A Social 

Movement Theory Approach. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana 

University. 
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Wiktorowicz, Quintan, ed. Islamic Activism: A Social 

Movement Approach. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana 

University Press, 2004.

Windrem, Robert. “ISIS By the Numbers: Foreign Fighter 

Total Keeps Growing.” NBC News, (February 28, 2015).
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Further Reading

“Assessing the Strategic Threat From ISIS.” Testimony before 

the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, by James F. Jeffrey 

of the Washington Institute (and former U.S. ambassador to 

Iraq), February 12, 2015. 

Jeffrey identifies that IS is not just another violent radical 

Islamic extremist group but has seemingly global appeal in regards to 

recruitment, saying that its “nihilist worship of violence, control over 

much territory and six or more million people, conventional as well as 

nonconventional military capabilities, and appeal as a caliphate all 

render it unique and very difficult to combat.” He points out that the 

weakness of the Middle East state system does not allow for a slow 

wait-and-see style campaign and that operations should be accelerated. 

He concludes by discussing the importance of political developments in 

the Middle East when considering fighting IS and that Iran cannot be 

allowed to gain a greater foothold in the region. 

Berger, J.M. “The Metronome of Apocalyptic Time: Social 

Media as Carrier Wave for Millenarian Contagion.”

Perspectives on Terrorism 9, no. 4 (August 2015): 61-71.

In order to create a heightened sense of urgency that the end 

time is rapidly approaching (and in turn garner more recruits), IS uses 

social media at a rapid pace, especially Twitter. IS floods the Internet 

with countless tweets espousing their message; before or after any 

event or attack, their rhetoric usually increases rapidly. An individual 

who follows an IS member on Twitter or other social media platforms 

is exposed to countless pieces of propaganda from not only the user 

they follow but also all of their followers/contacts. This immersion 

tactic is paired with social contagion and temporal compression in 

order to spread their apocalyptical message in a countdown-like manner

to push already immersed users to hurry up and join while there is still 

time. 
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Brennan, Margaret, “ISIS Cashing In on Selling Plundered 

Antiquities to Fund Terror,” CBS News, September 29, 2015.

“[N]ewly discovered declassified documents show for the first 

time just how deeply ISIS relies on smuggling antiquities to fund its 

terror. Abu Sayyaf was the group’s top antiquities dealer. Receipts also 

show him to be a careful record keeper. Treasury officials told us 

transactions totaled hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Bunzel, Cole. “From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of 

the Islamic State.” Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with 

the Islamic World: Analysis Paper 19 (March, 2015):1-45. 

Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings. 

Cole Bunzel begins by examining the ideologies of the group 

and its particular brand of jihadi Salafism (al-Salafiyya al-Jihadiyya). 

The history of IS’s formation and development is detailed along with 

its split from AQ and its creation into a new entity. Bunzel then looks 

at the establishment of the “caliphate” by IS and the implications 

surrounding this. He concludes by providing a translation of the official

creed and goals of IS. 

“Countering ISIL’s Financing.” Testimony before the House 

Financial Services Committee by Patrick B. Johnston of the 

Rand Corporation, November 13, 2014. 

In his testimony before U.S. House of Representatives’ 

Committee on Financial Services, Johnston points out the sources of 

IS’s wealth and how it grew over the years. Next, he discusses the 

potential areas that IS could use this money on. The most likely areas 

of spending consist of expanding territorial control in Syria and into 

Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Gaza and building an infrastructure and 

asserting its governance over already captured areas. It is recommended 

that in order to greatly impact IS’s finances, the U.S. and coalition 

forces cut off IS’s access to oil, ransom money, foreign donors, and 

extortion payments. However, due to the clandestine nature of these 

transactions and limited cooperation from Turkey and regional partners 
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who could identify the banks and donors, stopping these revenue 

sources will be difficult. Also, the banks cooperating with IS are 

unlikely to comply with any international order to stop working with 

them. At the end of the testimony, Johnston provides three policy 

recommendations: (1) Continue to conduct airstrikes against oil assets 

and other financial targets; (2) Develop more effective financial 

intelligence collection and analysis capabilities regarding IS’s financial 

networks; and(3) Continue supporting the deployment of U.S. advisors 

to Iraqi Security Forces. 

Crowcroft, Orlando. “ISIS: People Trafficking, Smuggling, and 

Punitive Taxes Boost Islamic State Economy,” International 

Business Times, June 16, 2015. 

“Libya’s thriving trade in smuggled Syrian and African 

migrants is earning militia groups such as Islamic State over $320m per 

year and providing a much-needed financial lifeline for the radical 

terrorist group as it expands from its traditional hubs in Iraq and Syria. 

Once branded the best-funded terrorist group in the world and banking 

up to £1m per day from oil sales, bank robberies, extortion, smuggling 

and punitive taxes on local citizens, IS has had its funding squeezed 

over the past six months. This has come as it has lost control of oil 

fields and faced renewed crackdown on the smuggling of antiquities 

and historical artefacts, which it had been looting from Syrian and Iraqi 

historic sites and selling on the black market in Turkey. But in Libya, it 

appears IS has joined a number of other militias—tribal, political, and 

religious—in taxing human traffickers in order to cash in on a lucrative 

human trafficking economy.”

Di Giovanni, Janine. “Who Is ISIS Leader Abu Bakr alBaghdadi?” Newsweek, December 8, 2014. 

This article starts by relaying the statement of an attendee of 

the mosque where al-Baghdadi made one of his rare public 

appearances. Abu Ali, a pseudonym, claimed that there was complete 

and total control of the appearance, from control of recording to forcing 
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all attendees to swear allegiance to Baghdadi and not allowing them to 

leave the mosque until at least 30 minutes after he had left. Ali 

describes him as having the “working mentality of a mafiosi,” and 

speaks on his level of organization. The article proceeds to provide a 

background on al-Baghdadi. A London-based Iraqi analyst, Sajad 

Jiyad, then refutes some of the claims about al-Baghdadi being truly 

religious, stating that he is most likely an opportunist who enjoys the 

prestige and attention of being seen as the next Osama bin Laden. 

Engel, Pamela. “ISIS Has a Cash-Flow Problem,” Business 

Insider, September 24, 2015.

“A little more than a year after declaring an Islamic caliphate in 

Iraq and Syria, the extremist group is having a hard time keeping the 

promises it made to those living in its territory . . . Some of the cash 

crunch comes from falling oil prices and airstrikes targeting oil 

facilities, and sources contend that ISIS spends more on weapons than 

on fulfilling the needs of the people living under its control. To make 

up for its reported drop in revenue, ISIS is said to rely more on 

taxation.”

Engel, Richard and Robert Windrem, “ISIS Makes Three 

Times as Much From Oil Smuggling as Previously Thought: 

Officials,” July 24, 2015.

“Two U.S. counter-terrorism officials now tell NBC News that 

the amount of money ISIS can earn from selling and smuggling oil and 

gas is roughly to $8 to $10 million a month. The officials said this is 

the most accurate information they have had so far, calling previous 

estimates speculation. ‘We have learned more about the internal 

market. ISIS sells oil and gas everywhere. It sells within Syria, and to 

the Syrian regime. It sells in Iraq. It is a more extensive and complex 

market than we assumed,’ a senior counter-terrorism official said.”

Fairfield, Hannah, Tim Wallace, and Derek Watkins. “How 

ISIS Expands,” New York Times, May 21, 2015.
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A central goal of IS is expansion. The group continues to take 

over key cities in Iraq and Syria with the aim of building a broad 

colonial empire across many countries. A year after announcing its 

expansion goals, it is operating or has cells in more than a dozen 

countries. The series of graphics in this article provides visual 

representations of IS advancement and describes a three-part method of 

expanding their territory. This expansion process consists of controlling 

and governing area in which IS already has a significant presence;

infiltration of communities through intimidation of local leaders and 

use of sleeper cells; and absorbing other groups through pledges of 

loyalty or bay’at.

Global Imitative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

“Libya: A Growing Hub for Criminal Economies and Terrorist 

Financing in the Trans-Sahara,” policy brief, May 11, 2015. 

“Of all of the criminal economies, the most urgent to address is 

the flow of refugees across the Mediterranean as increased flows could 

in turn lead to further financial establishment of radical groups 

involved in trafficking in Sinai and Egypt and linked to Libya, Syria, 

and Iraq—including IS. A further increase in organized criminal 

networks involved in smuggling is possible on routes including to and 

from Jordan as well as transits to Libya and Egypt. Increasing the 

number of refugees originating from Syria, especially as a result of 

Islamic State attacks near Damascus (as we have observed around 

refugee camps), can thus facilitate systems of migrant smuggling and 

human trafficking. This effectively increases armed groups’ ability to 

entrench themselves more deeply in Libya and to gain sources of 

incomes outside of Iraq and Syria.” (p. 8)

Hansen-Lewis, Jamie, and Jacob N. Shapiro. “Understanding 

the Daesh Economy,” Perspectives on Terrorism 9, no. 4 

(August 2015): 142-155. 

This article evaluates the sustainability of IS’s economy. While 

the terrorist group manages to bring in a large amount of revenue each 
RYAN: ISIS—THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT WOULD BE A STATE

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year, the article shows that it is not sustainable over a long period of 

time. The majority of IS income besides oil sales derives from

extortion, ransom money, forced taxes and similar means. The group 

touts in its propaganda videos its infrastructure and social services, yet 

the reality of the situation is reflected in the poor health of the 

population under its rule. The economy itself has little potential to 

grow, as it entirely based off limited sources of funding that will run 

out over time. The authors conclude as a result that containment seems 

a viable strategy for combating IS. Its inability to have a 

stable/functioning economy will most likely result in desertions and 

uprisings from many of the already unwilling inhabitants.

Hardy, Sam. “How the West Buys ‘Conflict Antiquities’ From 

Iraq and Syria (and Funds Terror),” The Great Debate (blog), 

Reuters, October 27, 2014. 

Hardy discusses how the buying and selling of antiquities from 

the Middle East supports insurgent groups spanning ISIL to the Free 

Syrian Army. These artifacts include ancient Greek and Roman items, 

to appeal to the U.S. market. Many objects are laundered through 

auction houses in Germany, which will see a new law come into effect 

in 2016 designed to help stop this illegal trade.

Harrison, Ross. “Newsflash: Time Is Running Out to Defeat 

ISIS.” National Interest, August 21, 2015. 

Harrison argues that IS trying to destroy the nationalism of 

individual countries in order to further its own goals. Once traditional 

unifying factors and identities are gone, it will be easier for them to 

implement their own ideology. He argues that the U.S. needs to recreate borders to enforce traditional nationalism, work with Saudi 

Arabia, Iran, and high-level clerics to refute IS’s ideology, and use the 

more moderate groups as a bulwark against the more extreme ones. 

Huang, Reyko. “The Islamic State as an Ordinary Insurgency,”

Washington Post, May 14, 2014. 
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Part of the Islam and International Order symposium, Huang

compares the actions of the Islamic State to other terrorist and insurgent 

groups and shows their similarities. Examples are cited in which other 

groups committed similar atrocities that were not nearly remarked as 

upon as the Islamic State is. The author argues that this is mainly due to 

the fact that IS makes everything so visible: The average person can 

easily see these activities posted online, whereas the previous groups’

only exposure was from news coverage and history texts. The Islamic 

State is just as horrendous as previous groups, Huang argues—the only 

difference is that they broadcast it to the world.

Kadercan, Burak. “Three Huge (and Dangerous) Myths about 

ISIS.” National Interest, August 30, 2015.

Kadercan argues that the security community does not have a 

set, concrete method for dealing with IS. There are three common 

myths: that IS owes much of its appeal to the territory it holds; that it 

needs to continue to expand in order to stay relevant; and that if the 

“myth of invincibility” that IS proclaims is broken, then IS can be be 

broken. The author argues that since IS operates on a “territorial 

flexibility” that the loss of territory does not greatly impact its

legitimacy. The group pushes a narrative of a “capable underdog” in 

which martyrdom is relished and the sheer act of fighting against 

overwhelming odds is lauded. The author concludes that studying the 

supporters of IS, who have an understanding of the capabilities of the 

group, may provide the security community with a realistic view of its 

abilities and sources of legitimacy.

Katz, Rita. “Follow ISIS on Twitter: A Special Report on the 

Use of Social Media by Jihadists.” INSITE Blog on Terrorism 

and Extremism, June 26, 2014. 

IS has become adept at utilizing social media, especially 

Twitter, in order to spread propaganda, recruit new followers, and 

conduct psychological warfare. In addition to a plethora of unofficial 

accounts, IS has several dedicated accounts and an entire media wing 
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called Al-Furqan. The readily available and easy-to-use platform of 

social media has allowed the terror group and others like it to spread 

their message and garner support. When their accounts are shut down,

they start new ones that often masquerade as accounts concerned about 

the social welfare of Muslims or as charity organizations.

Lewis, Jessica D. “Al Qaeda in Iraq Resurgent,” Middle East 

Security Report 14, Institute for the Study of War, September 

2013.

This report details the revival of al Qaeda in Iraq in 2012–13 

after its initial degradation throughout much of 2007–08. Vehicle-borne 

improvised explosive device attacks remained its signature after the 

U.S. withdrawal in 2011. The article analyzes AQI’s “Breaking the 

Walls” campaign, which sought to establish governance across Iraq and 

Syria while aiming to retake territory it had formally controlled.

———. “Al Qaeda in Iraq Resurgent, Part II,” Middle East 

Security Report 15, Institute for the Study of War, September 

2013. 

This report supplements the previous one by focusing on the 

geography, volume, interval, and selected targets that characterized al

Qaeda in Iraq’s waves of violence and prison attacks. It proceeds to 

detail the evolution of AQI’s military organization over 2012–13. 

AQI’s capabilities are assessed in the context of operational planning 

and how this reorganizes AQI as a military organization as opposed to 

a leadercentric terrorist organization.

———. “AQI’s ‘Soldier’s Harvest’ Campaign,”

Backgrounder, Institute for the Study of War, October 9, 2013. 

This report examines the campaign launched by al Qaeda in 

Iraq in late 2013 to control key terrain in Iraq while targeting any 

Sunnis who work for the government. By analyzing the contest for 

control between AQI and the Iraqi Security Forces, this report 
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documents the intimidation and displacement of Iraqi soldiers and 

government officials by AQI.

Lia, Brynjar. “Understanding Jihadi Proto-States.” Perspectives 

on Terrorism 9, no. 4 (August 2015): 31-41. 

With the rise of the Islamic State and its proclamation that it is 

indeed an actual state, comparing IS to other past and present “jihadi 

proto-states” is important in order to better understand it. The 

comparison allows for a better look at the common features of these 

types of states and a better look into understanding their aggressive 

tactics. While the jihadi proto-state is not a new phenomenon, the rate 

and number of attempts and successes have increased since 2011. The 

author states that each of these proto-states has four common 

characteristics: they are intensely ideological, internationalist, 

territorially expansive, and irredentist. The governments tend to be 

harsh and repressive, are often established to combat rival Islamists,

and depend on the support of external constituencies.

Lister, Charles. “Profiling the Islamic State,” Brookings Doha 

Center Analysis Paper 13, November 2014. 

This report provides a detailed overview of IS, from its origins 

to its presence as of 2014, and provides analyses on its objectives and 

issues regarding the use of foreign fighters. “Part II: The Islamic State 

Today” provides information on the group’s policies, military 

strategies, and governance of controlled areas. The section regarding 

foreign fighters flows into policy recommendations for countering ISIS.

The recommendations include stopping IS’s revenue flows, disrupting 

manpower and resources, targeting the group’s leadership, countering 

their propaganda, and stabilizing Iraq and Syria.

Malik, Shiv, Ali Younes, Spencer Ackerman, and Mustafa 

Khalili. “How ISIS Crippled al Qaida,” Guardian, June 10, 

2015. 
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The inside story of the coup that brought al Qaeda to the brink 

of collapse. IS has not simply eclipsed al Qaeda on the battlefields of 

Syria and Iraq and in the competition for funding and new recruits; 

according to a series of exclusive interviews with senior jihadi 

ideologues, IS has successfully launched a “coup” against AQ to 

destroy it from within. As a consequence, they now admit, AQ—as an 

idea and an organization—is now on the verge of collapse.

Price, Brian, Dan Milton, Muhammad al-Ubaydi, and Nelly 

Lahoud. The Group That Calls Itself a State: Understanding 

the Evolution and Challenges of the Islamic State, Combating 

Terrorism Center, December 2014. 

This report from the CTC provides a thorough look at the 

Islamic State. It shows the origins and formation of the group and 

identifies its operational strengths and weaknesses. It also compares IS 

to other militant/extremist groups that the U.S. has fought against and 

concludes with an examination of the strategic challenges and 

opportunities faced by countries engaged in counterterrorism efforts 

against IS.

Solomon, Erika, Robin Kwong, and Steven Bernard, “Inside 

ISIS Inc.: The Journey of a Barrel of Oil,” Financial Times,

October 14, 2015. 

Liberally illustrated with maps, this article traces one barrel of 

oil from extraction to ultimate destination to explain the hold ISIS has 

over Syria’s oil fields and oil trade.

Walt, Vivienne. “ISIS Makes a Fortune From Smuggling Migrants Says 

Report,” May 13, 2015, 

“The movement of migrants across the Middle East and Africa 

towards Europe has generated up to $323 million for the Islamic State 

in Iraq and Greater Syria and other jihadist groups, a new report has 

revealed. . . . [W]hile E.U. officials anguish over the plight of people 

crossing the Mediterranean to get to Europe, the migration has proved 
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an invaluable business opportunity for groups like ISIS. So valuable 

that international crime experts believe ISIS might have launched some 

attacks specifically in order to drive people to flee, and then profit from 

their flight.”

Weaver, Mary Anne. “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab 

al-Zarqawi.” Atlantic (Web edition), June 8, 2006. 

This article provides a detailed account of al-Zarqawi’s 

transition from a violent gang member to a jihadi fighting in 

Afghanistan and finally into the leader of AQI. 

Weiss, Michael, and Hassan Hassan. ISIS: Inside the Army of 

Terror. New York: Regan Arts, 2015. 

This book starts by describing the growth and development of 

IS and highlights their use of propaganda, executions, and use of 

foreign recruits to expand their presence in the Middle East. It profiles

key members and tells their history before they joined the group and 

explains what role they had in the evolution of IS. The authors discuss 

the impact of what is described as “political and military maneuvering” 

by the U.S., Iran, Iraq, and Syria and how this has impacted IS’s

expansion. Through interviews with U.S. military and IS members, the 

authors shed light on internal struggles within IS and how the group’s 

hatred for Shias is causing another war in the region.

Winter, Charles. ”Islamic State Propaganda: Key Elements of 

the Group’s Messaging,” Terrorism Monitor 13, no. 12 (June 

12, 2015). 

Following IS’s lightning-fast expansion in the Middle East and 

beyond, rarely a day passes without it securing a place in the headlines. 

This is the inevitable outcome of the group’s well-honed messaging 

strategy, which skillfully uses social media to project its propaganda 

globally. By dissecting and examining the various strands of IS’s 

propaganda, narrative, and brand, this article deals with the message 

itself, focusing on how the group has gained such international traction. 
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———. Documenting the Virtual “Caliphate”: Understanding 

ISIL’s Propaganda Strategy, Quilliam Foundation, July 2015. 

“In the Quilliam Foundation’s latest research into IS 

propaganda, Senior Researcher Charlie Winter presents us with a truly 

ground-breaking window into the mind of the propagandist, 

demystifying the media war more than ever before. Between 17 July 

and 15 August 2015, the Islamic month of Shawwal, Charlie compiled 

an exhaustive archive of IS propaganda, creating not just a snapshot of 

its output, but a comprehensive, 30-day view of it. ... When it comes to 

IS propaganda, it is imperative that we understand it in as granular and 

nuanced a manner as possible. Using data to test the hypothesis of the 

July 2015 report The Virtual “Caliphate”: Understanding Islamic 

State’s Propaganda Strategy, Charlie has illuminated the bare bones of 

the IS brand.” (p. 4)

Zelin, Aaron. “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Has a 

Consumer Protection Office,” Atlantic, June 13, 2014. 

IS seeks to control every aspect of life in the areas that it has 

captured. This is part of a greater strategy of governance, which 

includes social services religious lectures, billboard campaigns, and a 

functioning Sharia court system. It is important to the group’s 

propaganda and recruitment efforts that it presents the image of being a 

functioning state and divert some attention away from its normal 

campaign of terror.

———. “Picture or It Didn’t Happen: A Snapshot of the 

Islamic State’s Official Media Output,” Perspectives on 

Terrorism 9, no. 4 (August 2015): 85-97. 

The author conducted a study that tracked, examined, and 

analyzed a week’s worth of IS official media releases. It found that the

majority of IS social media output covers military activities, trainings 

and attacks, governance, preaching, moral policing and morality. The 

study also revealed that the group tends to rely on imagery more than 

words, especially highlighting the beauty of its territories. 
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