June 27, 2015
What a difference one year can make. US officials are now using less the word terroriststo describe the Islamic State, and more often words like formidable or a resilient foe. It appears they have good reason to change their view on what is evidently more of an army and less of a “group”. An army that appears like a mutating virus and that is able to adapt with swiftness and speed to its enemies’ strategies to such an extent that professional armies find themselves changing their military tactics from offensive to defensive.
The Islamic State continues to manage to acquire more territories, almost immediately after losing other territories. Is this phenomenon a coincidence or is it a well thought-out strategy?
It is common for armies to make tactical retreats, but it would appear that ISIS goes one step further. Additionally, events on the ground strongly indicate that ISIS does not make tactical retreats, but goes as far as to lose ground intentionally. In essence, its soldiers make tactical defeats to give an impression that the “group” is weakening.
When ISIS lost the Mosul Dam and later Kobani and Tikrit, these defeats were celebrated as if the war was already won. What happened after that took the world by surprise as those losses were quickly followed by the fall of Ramadi and later Tadmur to ISIS. If we compare the value of the towns taken from ISIS to the ones ISIS annexed thereafter, the difference in quality is clear.
As Tel-Abyadh fell to the Kurdish fighters a few days back, ISIS initially appeared weakened, but the soldiers of “Khilafah” quickly started probing and indeed taking quality areas in Hasakah and its fall appears a matter of days or weeks at latest.
As Tel Abyadh and neighboring villages continue to be retaken from ISIS, it is not surprising that the “group” is probing Baghdad. While many observers translate the retaking of Tel Abyadh as an indication that Raqqa itself is about to be removed from the grips of ISIS, critical probing of events of the past year should make any practical analyst uneasy about making such hasty conclusions.
If ISIS let go of Tikrit to only astonish the world by taking Ramadi, coupled with the eminent control of Hasakah, the fall of Raqqa might actually be the worst news for the forces fighting the Islamic State. Indeed, letting go of Raqqa could be the most devastating tactical defeat that ISIS would make, as the only worthy prize for its fall would be Baghdad itself.
No sane observer can ignore the fact that all the fighting of the past year is a build-up for the eventual invasion of Baghdad. Taking Baghdad requires a huge army and if ISIS is to make a choice as to which city to abandon to erect a capable and formidable force to head to the capital, then Raqqa is the most likely choice. For ISIS, expanding need not necessarily mean the impractical or costly holding of territory. ISIS expansion is a long-term goal and as such fortifying itself in Iraq could be the best choice with the intention of a more invasive invading of Syria later on.
Rather than retreating, ISIS chooses to make its retreats appear as defeats and that has psychological and practical advantages. First, it makes the advancing coalition troops pay a heavy price for capturing what ISIS deems as unworthy territory at any given point in time by planting booby traps and keeping a few hundred of its soldiers behind to inflict heavy losses on the advancing soldiers. It is rare to hear of ISIS captives, because its soldiers that have been left behind have only one obligation and that is to die by taking out as many of the advancing army as possible.
Psychologically, the tactical defeats confuse ISIS’s opponents by giving them an imagined sense of euphoria by the victory only to pop up elsewhere and send an opposing message by taking better and bigger territory.
The ongoing battle in Hasakah and its eventual fall keeps the doors opens for fighters from Turkey into Syria. The continuing battles in and around Beiji are clearly intended to create a pathway towards retaking Tikrit, in which case the route to Baghdad would be set all the way from Hasakah through Mosul towards Baghdad from the North. Provided that Western Anbar is under ISIS control, a second road towards Baghdad from Western Anbar to Ramadi to Fallujah would open the pathway to Baghdad from the West. If ISIS has to lose Raqqa to secure the two pathways, then Baghdad would face its worst assault in its recent history.
This might sound just like a theory at present, but ISIS has proven once and again that it is willing to make huge sacrifices in the short term to secure longer term goals. In as much as Syria is still contested, if ISIS manages to keep central Syria under its control, it still has a say in what goes on until it feels ready to come back into Syria. Thus far, ISIS had had its forces thinly spread but it is now clear that it intends to secure Iraq fully before later advancing on Syria in a more concerted manner and as such it is now in the process of gathering soldiers to erect bigger army units.
Nowadays, when I hear that ISIS has lost a village or a town, only two questions pop up: Is it a real defeat or is it a tactical defeat and what is the next city on ISIS’s mind?
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