Origins
and Strategy of the Islamic State
John Mauldin
Today’s
Outside the Box is
from my good friend George Friedman of Geopolitical Futures. George, who
founded the well-known Stratfor, is one of the world’s top geopolitical
forecasters. I’m very excited to welcome him as a Contributing Editor for
Mauldin Economics.
Starting
today and every Monday, we’ll publish a regular feature from George called This Week in Geopolitics. In
this weekly letter written for Mauldin Economics, George will highlight the top
international events that investors and those with an interest in geopolitics
should monitor. I am amazed by how quickly George slices through the media’s
superficial stories to reveal what is really important.
What
you read in This Week in
Geopolitics will be a small sample of the research George and his
team publish. His Geopolitical Futures premium service is off to a great start
and I highly recommend you try it. We have a special offer for Mauldin
Economics readers. Click here for details.
As
a reminder, I interviewed George in last week’s Thoughts from the Frontline. He had some
fascinating thoughts on the connection between politics and economics, the
European refugee crisis, China’s economic future and more. Click here to read it.
Today
he examines the origins of ISIS and looks at why they see their behavior as
rational. It is a disturbing viewpoint, and not one that will make us
comfortable, but we do need to understand this. And it highlights the almost
no-win position that the United States and the rest of the world (specifically
the Middle East) is in.
In
order to make sure this gets out Monday evening, I need to go ahead and hit the
send button without further comment so…. with that, let’s go straight to
George’s first weekly contribution.
[Editor’s note: if for some reason you do not want to receive
George’s new letter each week, click here and we’ll take you off the distribution list.]
Your
watching the world closer with George analyst,
John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box
Origins and Strategy of the Islamic State
By George Friedman for Mauldin Economics
Al-Qaida struck the United States on September 11,
2001 in order to pave the way for the caliphate, a multinational Islamic state
governed by a caliph. From Osama Bin Laden’s point of view, the Christian
world—as he thought of Euro-American civilization—had made a shambles of the
Muslim world. Most Muslim lands had been occupied or controlled by Christians.
After World War I the British and French, in particular, had reshaped these
lands to suit them. They invented new countries that had never existed before
like Jordan, Lebanon, and (in their minds) Israel and installed rulers on
others, such as the Saudis in the Arabian Peninsula.
After World War II, the United States inherited a
world the British had largely created. Where the British were the architects of
this world, the Americans became its maintenance men. Since the Americans were
caught up in a Cold War with the Soviets, the Soviets sought to create
pro-Soviets as well. A new wave of rulers arose under Soviet tutelage. These
were secularists, socialists, and militarists imposing military regimes.
Men like Gamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt, Saddam
Hussein in Iraq, and Hafez al-Assad in Syria were all Soviet allies. They were
despised by Islamists, as were the monarchies allied with the Americans. The
secular Arab rulers were simply apostates. The monarchies, like Saudi Arabia,
were corrupt hypocrites—formally Muslim but clinging to the Christians (now the
Americans) for power and safety.
Al-Qaida did not yet exist, but there were those
who dreamed of reclaiming the lands, expelling the apostates and hypocrites,
and creating the caliphate. These men had learned the art of war under American
tutelage in Pakistani camps after being recruited by the Saudis. They believed
they had destroyed the Soviets and, as a result, destroyed the Soviet Union.
True or not, this is what they believed.
When the Soviet Union fell, Iraq invaded Kuwait
and the Saudis asked the American Christians to save them. Men who had fought
in Afghanistan held the Saudis in contempt and were enraged by the Americans.
To a great extent, the Americans were unaware of the response. The men they had
trained for war in Afghanistan now saw the Americans as an obstacle to the
caliphate.
This is the soil that gave rise to al-Qaida.
Al-Qaida’s primary goal was to overthrow one of the secular or hypocritical
regimes, create a Sharia-based caliphate, and use it as a base for creating a
broader, transnational entity. Al-Qaida actually means “the base” in Arabic. It
had excellent relations in Afghanistan, given the role it played there, but
Afghanistan was too backward and geographically isolated to be the caliphate’s
capital. It instead became the base where al-Qaida would begin the war.
In al-Qaida’s analysis, the weak and corrupt
Islamic regimes could be overthrown, but the Muslim masses were inert, beaten
into submission by Europeans and Americans, and convinced of American
invincibility. They had no love for the Americans outside of some of the
regimes, but saw their cause to be hopeless.
Al-Qaida needed to convince the masses that
America was both vulnerable and hostile to Islam. It sought to strike the
United States in a way that the Muslim world would take startled note, and that
would compel America to go to war in the Muslim world. Al-Qaida’s experience in
Afghanistan convinced it that the United States, caught in a war of attrition
regardless of casualties, would eventually withdraw. The September 2001 attacks
were meant to draw the Americans into combat but, even more, to convince the
Muslim world that Muslims could strike at the heart of America, and then, when
the Americans invaded, encourage Muslims to rise up in a long war America
couldn’t win.
Part of the strategy worked, part of it didn’t.
The attacks did galvanize the Muslim world. The United States showed itself to
be Islam’s enemy by invading Afghanistan and later Iraq. The Muslim world saw
that Muslims could fight Americans and not suffer defeat like the Jews had
defeated the apostate Nasser’s army in 1967.
What did not happen was the essential step. While
war raged in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was no uprising elsewhere in the
Islamic world. When there were uprisings, as during the Arab Spring, they were
put down (Egypt) or left in unending civil war (Syria and Libya). There was no
foundation created for the caliphate, and over time American intelligence
whittled down al-Qaida.
Others stepped into the vacuum as al-Qaida
declined. Their opening occurred in Iraq and Syria. The Arab Spring in 2011
created an uprising against Bashar al-Assad, son of Hafez. Like much of the
Arab Spring, the public faces of the protests were secular liberals, but they
were unable to overthrow Assad. The resulting chaos and stalemate opened one
door to al-Qaida’s heir.
At the same time, the U.S. decision to withdraw
from Iraq, first made by George W. Bush and accelerated by Barack Obama,
allowed a Shiite government to take power there. This forced their enemies, the
Sunnis, back against the wall. Al-Qaida was Sunni and regarded Shiite Iran as
an enemy.
The rise of a Shiite government in Baghdad left
the Iraqi Sunnis nowhere to go. It was out of this that the Islamic State
arose. Syria and especially Iraq were its recruiting office and its battle
ground.
Al-Qaida wanted an uprising in an existing
country, but IS had a different strategy. Rather than overthrowing an existing
government, it decided to create the state in a region that paid no attention
to existing borders. Its goal, unlike al-Qaida’s, was to hold territory in
which the caliph could rule and from which it could expand and guide the
caliphate’s extension into noncontiguous Muslim lands.
The IS goal, therefore, was not to strike at the
Americans as al-Qaida did. The 9/11 strikes had done their work. Their job was
to create an area ruled under Sharia law with a governmental structure,
financial system, welfare system, and the other things a state needs. In
addition, and before this, IS had to create a military force that could take
and seize land against the weak opposition it would face in Iraq and Syria.
The first step in the Islamic State’s strategy,
therefore, was to put the caliphate before everything by taking control of
substantial and contiguous territory. IS did this by carrying out a series of
extremely competent military operations, seizing Mosul and Ramadi in Iraq as
well as Palmyra in Syria. The result was a new state, no less artificial than
those countries the British and French created after World War I, and governed
from the capital in Raqqa.
In carrying out this operation, IS deliberately
created a series of highly publicized atrocities. There were two reasons for
this. The first was to intimidate the new Islamic State’s population. This
region consisted of a wide variety of groups, many potentially hostile to the
new state. The ruthless acts served to make clear to the population that IS was
not merely claiming control of the region, but was in sufficient control that
it was indifferent to what the outside world thought.
Having fought the Americans, IS knew that apart
from special operations teams (the principle threat to IS in both Afghanistan
and Iraq) which could not by themselves threaten the existence of IS, the
United States took months to deploy forces. IS needed to show not only how
ruthless it was, but that it would not be challenged as a result.
The second reason for creating this core was to
lure the Americans into attacking it. The United States had grown wary of
occupation warfare that required deploying a military force against scattered
and persistent guerilla operations.
The Islamic State presented, and was, precisely
the type of force the United States should be comfortable attacking. First, it
occupied a clearly defined territory. Second, it contained a conventional
military force. IS was not a guerilla organization or terrorist group, although
it had elements capable of both kinds of operations.
The size of IS’ main military force (a force large
enough to seize, occupy, and defend an area as large as some countries in the
region) meant it could not be a guerrilla force. It appeared to be a mobile
infantry force, moving by foot and truck, armed with infantry weapons as well
as some small artillery and anti-tank weapons.
The exact size of IS forces remains a mystery, and
that is a testament to its skills at camouflaging its activities from the
ground to the electromagnetic sphere. Estimates of the size of its armed and
trained force range from 20,000 to 200,000. Based on the extent of its
frontiers and the casualties it seems to have taken, I estimate the force at
about 100,000.
This, of course, leaves another mystery: where
this force was trained—since training even 20,000 is a conspicuous activity.
Units must train together to be effective. There are many mysteries about IS
for which there is no consensus save educated guesses. We know the extent of
its power. We know when this frontier is attacked, the attacker tends to
encounter resistance. Beyond that, IS has protected its capabilities
professionally.
Given all this, it would appear to be ripe for
attack by American forces, which excel at this kind of warfare. That is
precisely what IS wants. There has been much talk about IS believing that an
apocalyptic battle must take place in order to establish the caliphate. This is
a metaphysical concept on which I have no opinion. However, from a political
and military point of view, the caliphate must be founded on a decisive battle
that forces capitulation from its main enemy. This would convince the US to
respect the caliphate and the caliphate’s citizens to respect the power of the
state. By this I don’t mean the guerrilla wars in which the conventional force
simply withdraws; I mean a battle in which the enemy is defeated in detail.
The Americans prefer conventional attacks with
tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. IS engaged and destroyed a Syrian armored
brigade with anti-tank weapons. The United States uses air strikes and
helicopters. IS may have man-portable surface-to-air missiles (and should have
them from whatever source it secured the anti-tank missiles).
IS has a major advantage in one thing: the US is
casualty averse. The US has a force operating at a distance for reasons that
impact national security but don’t pose a direct threat to the homeland.
Therefore, the American appetite for more serious military intervention is
extremely limited. IS needs a decisive battle at any cost. Weapons aside, the
outcome of this battle matters far more to IS than to the United States, and
therefore IS’ threshold for pain is far higher.
The caliphate, having been established, must now
be defended. It must be a territory and not a hideout, it must be coherent and
not scattered tracts, and it must be defensible regardless of the cost. Having
established its frontiers, the Islamic State intends to use minimal force to
defend against minor attacks, as the Syrian Kurds carried out recently.
Most impressive about IS is its ability to
retreat, regroup, and strike elsewhere. That is the measure of a military
force. For example, the Americans proved themselves at the Battle of the Bulge
when having been sent reeling, they regrouped, reinforced and struck back. It
is in defeat that I judge a military force, and IS has handled defeat well. But
we should also remember that IS will not waste force on marginal threats.
For IS, the main threat will come from the
Americans and therefore it must preserve the ability to fight U.S. forces. Some
point out that IS has been under pressure from all sides. This is because its
leaders understand the maxim that he who defends everything defends nothing.
But the Americans have not come. Nor have other
enemies like the Iranians or Israelis. Nor for that matter have the Turks. No
one wishes to engage IS while it is on the defensive and at its best. There are
many reasons, but the heart of the matter is that the battle, if lost, would be
devastating for Americans, and if won by them opens the door to occupation
warfare, as did the defeat of the Iraqi army in 2003.
IS must hold to save the caliphate now or, if it
loses this battle, wait and fight another. And if the Americans don’t come and
IS holds its territory, then IS can choose the time and place for its next
strategic offensive.
Assuming that IS has 100,000 troops, the US must
bring a force of 300,000 to bear under the old (and perhaps obsolete) rule of 3
to 1 on the offensive. It took six months to prepare for Desert Storm and
longer for Iraqi Freedom with far fewer troops than 300,000. The terrain is
desert, and supply lines will run from ports that have to be secured, along
with roads that could be filled with IEDs. For the Americans, the logistics
would be as tough as the battle.
Logically, the best course for the United States
is not to engage. IS is beginning to realize this and seemingly prefers to
force a battle. That is why we are beginning to see terrorist actions flaring
in Western countries.
The lesson al-Qaida taught IS is that the
Americans have a threshold and that if you cross it, they will react
dramatically. Therefore, it appears to me that IS is searching for that
threshold and probing to see responses. Attacks like the ones in Paris last
month were not in response to French involvement in the region. These attacks
are unconnected to that, but are designed to be as terrifying as possible—both
in their suddenness and brutality—and compel a response.
It is odd to argue that someone wants to be
attacked by the US. But IS needs the attack and also believes it can at least
survive and likely defeat the Americans. It is clear that other countries in
the region are steering clear of IS, and it is clear that President Obama is
doing everything he can not to engage IS on the ground. And it is clear that IS
is doing what it can to drag the Americans deeper into the conflict. If the
Americans don’t come, and no one else comes, the psychological demonstration
might not take place - but the caliphate will exist.
On the whole, IS has the strategic advantage in
multiple ways. It behaves in its territory as if it intends to stay a long
time.
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