[Zagadka]

After the Caliphate, What’s Next for ISIS? ISIS 2.0, Experts Say
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/worl ... tacks.html

Its de facto capital is falling. Its territory has shriveled from the size of Portugal to a handful of outposts. Its surviving leaders are on the run.

But rather than declare the Islamic State and its virulent ideology conquered, many Western and Arab counterterrorism officials are bracing for a new, lethal incarnation of the jihadi group.

The organization has a proven track record as an insurgency able to withstand major military onslaughts, while still recruiting adherents around the world ready to kill in its name.

Islamic State leaders signaled more than a year ago that they had drawn up contingency plans to revert to their roots as a guerrilla force after the loss of their territory in Iraq and Syria. Nor does the group need to govern cities to inspire so-called lone wolf terrorist attacks abroad, a strategy it has already adopted to devastating effect in Manchester, England, and Orlando, Fla.

“Islamic State is not finished,” said Aaron Y. Zelin, who studies jihadi movements at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I.S. has a plan, and that is to wait out their enemies locally in order to gain time to rebuild their networks while at the same time provide inspiration to followers outside to keep fighting their enemies farther away.’”

Continue reading the main story
Even with the news on Tuesday that American-backed forces said they had captured Raqqa, the capital of the group’s self-declared caliphate, European counterterrorism officials were worrying about sleeper cells that may have been sent out well before the battlefield losses mounted.

In Iraq, where the group that became the Islamic State took root, security officials are bracing for future waves of suicide attacks against civilians. And even if governments are able to head off organized plots like the Paris attacks of 2015, officials around the globe concede that they have almost no way of stopping lone wolf assaults inspired or enabled by Islamic State propaganda that lives online.

“It is clear that we are contending with an intense U.K. terrorist threat from Islamist extremists,” Andrew Parker, the director of Britain’s MI5 intelligence service, said in a speech on Tuesday. “That threat is multidimensional, evolving rapidly, and operating at a scale and pace we’ve not seen before.”

American and European counterterrorism officials acknowledge that they do not know the exact capabilities the Islamic State retains, or how much the appeal of the group’s ideology has been dented by its string of heavy military defeats.

Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicted last month that the loss of territory would precipitate a loss of credibility. “We’ll continue to see reduction in territory, reduction in freedom of movement, reduced resources and less credibility in the narrative,” he told a Senate hearing.

Others are less sanguine. They point to a speech by the Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammed al-Adnani, before his death in an American drone strike last year, urging the group’s followers to fight on as a lean, agile insurgency instead of the bureaucratic juggernaut it had become.

“True defeat is the loss of willpower and desire to fight,” he said. “We would be defeated and you victorious only if you were able to remove the Quran from the Muslims’ hearts.”

The group’s ability to weld religious fervor to the political resentments of disenfranchised Sunni Muslims in Shiite-dominated Iraq already saved it once, when it appeared broken by the American military surge in Iraq in 2007 and 2008.

By the time American forces withdrew from Iraq in 2011, intelligence officials estimated that the Islamic State’s predecessor, then called the Islamic State of Iraq, was down to its last 700 fighters. The group was considered such a minor threat that the reward offered by the United States for the capture of its leader plummeted from $5 million to $100,000.

It took less than three years for those beaten-down and diminished insurgents to regroup and roar across Iraq and Syria, declaring an Islamic caliphate from the Mediterranean coast of Syria nearly to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. It became both the world’s wealthiest terrorist group, and the most feared.

Even with the loss of most of that territory, the organization is far from defeated, and remains far stronger today than it did when American troops pulled out of Iraq.

The group currently has from 6,000 to 10,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria, the United States-led coalition said on Friday. That is eight to 14 times the number it had in 2011.

“That’s the relevant comparison,” said Daniel L. Byman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, who tracks jihadist groups. “This is a very strong group which has a lot of sympathizers, its ideas are embedded and it has networks. It has a lot to draw on even as it loses its physical territory.”

The group has also developed a powerful social media network that with no physical presence allows it to spew propaganda, claim responsibility for terrorist attacks, and not just inspire attacks but also help plot and execute them remotely.

A large share of its attacks in the West in recent years have been carried out by men who communicated online with ISIS, taking detailed instructions through encrypted messages, but never meeting their terrorist mentors.

The first major attack in the United States claimed by ISIS, a foiled shooting at a Texas community center in 2015, was directed this way, according to a recent assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Islamic State may also have undercover operatives or sleeper cells outside the Middle East. Senior American officials said last year that the group had sent hundreds of operatives to Europe and hundreds more to Turkey.

And the group has continued to sow chaos even as it has lost territory. In 2017 alone, it has claimed responsibility for three terrorist attacks in Britain that killed 37 people, the Istanbul nightclub bombing on New Year’s Eve that killed 39 people, and strikes in more than seven other countries.

As the group was losing Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in August, it sent a van tearing through crowds in the heart of Barcelona, killing 13 people and loudly declaring its continued relevance.

It is also premature to assert that the Islamic State is running out of territory. While its footprint has shrunk in Iraq and Syria, it still controls close to 4,000 square miles along the Euphrates River Valley on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border. American and Iraqi military commanders believe the group’s core leaders have gone to ground in the largely barren areas along the border.

At the same time, ISIS branches in North Africa and Asia are still launching operations, and its camps in eastern Afghanistan remain largely intact, despite recent American airstrikes.

Some areas that were previously declared liberated have seen a return of ISIS fighters. In Libya, where the group was routed from a 100-mile stretch of coastline in late 2016, the militants recently posted a video showing their fighters manning a new checkpoint. And far from its roots in the Middle East, the group continues to grow in other corners of the world, including in the Philippines, where a local affiliate held the town of Marawi for months, and in West Africa, where the militants continue to grow their ranks, encroaching on areas formerly under Al Qaeda’s grasp.

If the Islamic State does decline, other jihadi organizations are poised to fill the vacuum.

Al Qaeda, whose appeal to young fighters had been largely been eclipsed by the tech-savvy new caliphate of the Islamic State, is vying for a comeback.

“The reason that the I.S. gained a big following quickly was that it appealed to the hotheads, those looking for instant gratification,” said Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who monitors terrorist groups. “That caliphate model is all gone, but Al Qaeda remains.”

The older group has been urging followers to pivot from the Islamic State’s focus on the battlefields of the Middle East and instead put an emphasis on attacks in the United States and other foreign lands.

It has also been promoting a younger, charismatic new leader: Hamza bin Laden, 27, the son of Osama.

[ness31]

So they downsized. They keep their overheads low and maximise the profits. Lol, sounds like a business model I’ve seen somewhere before, but to point out the obvious ain’t exactly kosher...

[Zagadka]

This all goes back to the general problem with insurgent groups; they can easily melt away, and actually exterminating them is very hard. They're basically human cockroaches, only worse, and based on our "progress" in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they will probably be successful, especially if Syria continues to be lawless or Iraq destabilizes.

[Ter]

True, they can terrorize people around the world, but the loss of their physical territory is also a loss of credibility for IS. IS sympathizers will now have no place to travel to to join them, like many did the last few years. They can also no longer offer sex slaves for new IS adherents to join.
Many of the IS cockroaches have been turned into fertiliser during the battles in Syria and Iraq. Which is a good thing Alhamdullila.

There will be terrorist attacks in the West, for sure, but in view of improved surveillance, those will be kept to a minimum.

I don't think IS will ever again conquer huge swathes of land like they did in Syria and Iraq.

[Beren]

Now comes the afterparty.

[SolarCross]

Just one head on a hydra called Islam.

[Libertarian353]

[SolarCross]

FTFY.

How is ISIS a head of western civilisation? Only a few ISIS members were born in the west and they were all muslims, usually muslims from immigrant populations. It is funny to think of Islam as a western religion, it stands mostly in opposition to the sort of stuff that western civilisation tends to value. So again que?

[Libertarian353]

How is ISIS a head of western civilisation?

Cause the west created ISIS, this is beast 100 years in the making.

Only a few ISIS members were born in the west and they were all muslims, usually muslims from immigrant populations.

Who radicalized Muslims and promoted more conversion than the west? They're actions are advertising Islam.

It is funny to think of Islam as a western religion, it stands mostly in opposition to the sort of stuff that western civilisation tends to value.

All you value are base on enlightenment, those liberal tenets, people like you ironically paradoxically both hate yet want to preserve.

[SolarCross]

Cause the west created ISIS, this is beast 100 years in the making.

That's like saying the jews created the Nazis.

Who radicalized Muslims and promoted more conversion than the west? They're actions are advertising Islam.

What? I am not sure I understand your probably rhetorical question but it is generally Islamic clerics that radicalise muslims, no one else has the means or motivation.

All you value are base on enlightenment, those liberal tenets, people like you ironically paradoxically both hate yet want to preserve.

Not all of them come from the enlightenment, western culture is much more dynamic and varied than that. But I was thinking of more basic everyday stuff than philosophy or political mores, stuff like music, dancing, pork sausages, art work, skimpy clothes and booze. Muslims would ban all that stuff, literally on pain of death, if they could.

[Libertarian353]

That's like saying the jews created the Nazis.

So you agree with me?


.

What? I am not sure I understand your probably rhetorical question but it is generally Islamic clerics that radicalise muslims, no one else has the means or motivation.

They radicalized base on USA funding and western interference. You cause 9/11.

Not all of them come from the enlightenment, western culture is much more dynamic and varied than that.

Not really, we got all of this base on Roman/Greek/Muslim thought. So we backtrack to be innovative.

But I was thinking of more basic everyday stuff than philosophy or political mores, stuff like music, dancing, pork sausages, art work, skimpy clothes and booze. Muslims would ban all that stuff if they could.

You really don't know Islamic history. They had all that and more.

[Oxymandias]

@SolarCross

Not all of them come from the enlightenment, western culture is much more dynamic and varied than that. But I was thinking of more basic everyday stuff than philosophy or political mores, stuff like music, dancing, pork sausages, art work, skimpy clothes and booze. Muslims would ban all that stuff, literally on pain of death, if they could.

Here, SolarCross's brain shuts down and forgets that he's talking about the Middle East. Ever heard of belly-dancing, Persian miniatures, the fact that several Muslim leaders loved booze and even declared it halal at some point, the fact that Middle Eastern music is literally the only thing from the Islamic Golden Age that is intact, and the fact that pork was also widely eaten in Turkey, Iran, and the Levant. Even during the Rashidun Caliphate which was probably the most brutal out of all the caliphates also had all these things.

I think you're confusing ancient Middle Eastern empires with modern Middle Eastern nation states. Heck, you're even screwing up your nation states as well. Ancient Middle Eastern empires were alot more different than their nation state counter-parts and were large enough that it would be physically impossible to ban anything since it would take too many resources to administrate. Even today, you still see stuff like rapid booze consumption, pork being eaten, belly-dancers belly-dancing, skimpy clothes being wore, controversial art work being made, and music being heard, like everywhere. The Middle East loves it's music too much.

You haven't been to the Middle East or even looked up information on the Middle East so of course you don't know any of this. In fact, you're so ignorant and lack so much self-awareness that you said that Muslims hate music, dancing, skimpy clothes, and art work when the biggest icons of the Middle East consist of belly-dancers and Persian miniatures. The average person at least knows what the fuck a belly-dancer is which you apparently don't.

[Libertarian353]

@Oxymandias

Again White "historical" narrative, states that the darkies worship a "satanic" desert God(Satan is God? LOL). And that Islam is literally communism, with their welfare state anti-poverty policies. No wonder America hates it, welfare for poor is anti-american and Blacks/Women having rights... literally Hitler.

[Oxymandias]

@Libertarian353

Islam itself isn't a political ideology though. Some caliphates implemented those policies themselves however their effectiveness depends on the time period and caliphate. Furthermore, oftern caliphates very economically libertarian and implemented polycentric law which means that Sharia law wasn't used often if not at all. All it had was, what was at the time, a good safety net which other countries like Switzerland and even some ancient civilizations like the Song Dynasty beat the caliphate at.

[Libertarian353]

@Oxymandias

You don't get it, Islam is Stone age, oooga booga, camel jockey, A-RAB, OBAMA BIN LADAN, terrorist ,alloha snacka, enemy of freedom, praise Satan, Heil Hitler, durka durka, rape a goat, bomb a building, shoot the infidel, put a sheet on a female, beat and stamp a female, stone the gay jewish tranny, non-booze, enemy of the pig, burn a america flag, 9/11 was an inside job, george bush work with the Saudis, Oil, petrol dollar, Iraq, Iran, the stans, the foreigner taking dur jobz, refugee crises, have more than one wife, religion of peace.

[Godstud]

ISIS is going to end up much like Al Qaeda... a footnote.

[Donna]

It will be interesting to see how they continue. They will have to always have a caliph to whom they pledge allegiance to, so it might continue as a Salafist sect that attributes eschatological significance to the appearance of the "Islamic State" between 2013 and 2017, and particularly the reign of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. At any rate they have theologically rationalized their physical defeat. I'm not sure how long they can survive as a sect, though. Back in 2014 there was a more serious debate among Salafists whether to support ISIS. Today the vast majority of them do not.

[SolarCross]

Here, SolarCross's brain shuts down and forgets that he's talking about the Middle East. Ever heard of belly-dancing, Persian miniatures, the fact that several Muslim leaders loved booze and even declared it halal at some point, the fact that Middle Eastern music is literally the only thing from the Islamic Golden Age that is intact, and the fact that pork was also widely eaten in Turkey, Iran, and the Levant. Even during the Rashidun Caliphate which was probably the most brutal out of all the caliphates also had all these things.

I think you're confusing ancient Middle Eastern empires with modern Middle Eastern nation states. Heck, you're even screwing up your nation states as well. Ancient Middle Eastern empires were alot more different than their nation state counter-parts and were large enough that it would be physically impossible to ban anything since it would take too many resources to administrate. Even today, you still see stuff like rapid booze consumption, pork being eaten, belly-dancers belly-dancing, skimpy clothes being wore, controversial art work being made, and music being heard, like everywhere. The Middle East loves it's music too much.

You haven't been to the Middle East or even looked up information on the Middle East so of course you don't know any of this. In fact, you're so ignorant and lack so much self-awareness that you said that Muslims hate music, dancing, skimpy clothes, and art work when the biggest icons of the Middle East consist of belly-dancers and Persian miniatures. The average person at least knows what the fuck a belly-dancer is which you apparently don't.

I've lived in post revolutionary Iran for a year, I'm not completely ignorant of how things are. I've had black market beer, black market pork, watched black market DVDs, seen "muslims" at private parties dancing and dressing unpiously. The point is all that stuff isn't carefree, it is done in oh so quiet defiance of those who must be feared. Every now and again someone is careless, wears just a little bit too much make up in public or whiffs of bath brewed wine, and gets beaten up, pushed off a roof or disappeared by the righteous ones.

[Oxymandias]

@SolarCross

I highly doubt that you actually went to post-revolutionary Iran. It's more plausible that you just watched that video talking about censorship and Iran and suddenly think you understand everything about it. You would not hold the same beliefs that you do now if you did go to Iran. Because then you'll realize that Muslims are human beings and that creates cognitive dissonance thus permanently changing the way you think about Muslims.

Are you sure it isn't carefree? Defiance requires a devil-may-cry attitude or a carefree attitude or else it isn't defiance. Defiance requires you to focus on the moment and not any future consequences. It requires you to surrender your own identity for the sake of either nihilistic enjoyment or for political ideology. You cannot be defiant and not be carefree. These things are a part of each other, not separated. Based on the parties I went to in Iran and how large and ridiculous they actually are, I would say that Iranians at this point, simply do not give a fuck.

Also you want to know how I know that you didn't live in Iran for a year? Because you said that people were getting pushed off of roofs. Pushing people off of roofs is an ISIS signature, just like beheading. Iran doesn't do public executions like Saudi Arabia or ISIS and if it did, it would not literally push them off of a roof. Either the Bonyad (corporate elite) or the owner of the building they threw a person off of would sue the government and the media would be on the tails of the current president for allowing such thing to happen with conspiracies that the president is actually an ISIS sympathizer.

Disappearances don't even happen anyone either. Disappearances are a pre-revolutionary Iran thing, not a post-revolutionary Iran thing and it's even harder to pull them off now.

If anything of what I said surprises you such as the fact that the media is not owned by the government and can criticize it or that people can actually sue the government then you have definitely not gone to Iran.

[SolarCross]

@Oxymandias
I was there around 8 months on the longest stretch, like it or lump it, I don't care. I definitely know muslims are human beings, for what difference that is supposed to make, just being human isn't all that much to brag about, Adolf Hitler was human so were the fly boys who dropped nukes on those japanese cities, Kin Jong Un is human too. Being human doesn't say much about what kind of human.

I don't have a problem with muslims as people, just Islam as a religion. I'd say my experience in Iran rather confirms this, Iranians in my experience are mostly delightful people but the religion they are burdened with is execrable.

Carefree means there are no censors or plain clothed religious police / vigilantes to care about, whether one is brazen and foolhardy or timid and cautious one is never carefree unless there is no reason to fear or "not give a fuck".

But it seems to me you are actually tacitly acknowledging that Iran has a problem and that problem is Islam.

I was only vaguely aware that there was some enforcement beyond even official judical punishment, that could definitely be lethal and of an ad-hoc kind which might plausibly include pushing people of a roof. I did see a largish crowd chasing a young lad, late teens I guess, shouting and throwing stones at him. But I never found out what it was about. I gather that quite a lot of women don't like to wear the hijab but they invariably do anyway in public, there is some punishment for not doing so, though I don't think anyone ever told me what it was exactly. I was told once about a girl who was stopped by religious police for wearing lipstick, they gave her a handkerchief to wipe it off with but it had razor blades wrapped in it.

I know many newspapers are not government owned but only the ones that are even more Islamic than the government are free to operate without interference. It isn't just the government that is Islamic, Iran is a democracy after all, it could hardly be a theocracy as well without a substantial grassroot support. I used to read the Iran Daily while I was there.