THE MODERN WARS POST 27/05/2015 Number 1223

Yihadists

Their military tactics

On June 10, 2014 Mosul, a city of 1.8 million people 400 km north-west of Baghdad, falls in the hands of the terrorists from ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) following a brief siege. Facing each other are 3 000 terrorists on one side and 30 000 men from the Iraqi army on the other. The latter decide to flee rather than to fight. The Iraqi army can allegedly count on 50 brigades, but they are mainly composed of inexperienced, badly trained and majority Shiite soldiers. The world watches in disbelief as the ISIS takes over the Iraqi city. Not even the CIA, as its director has recently publicly admitted, had foreseen such as a scenario and envisaged a strong, well organized and efficient terrorist army.The first question is hence: is the ISIS merely a group of terrorists or can they be considered an army? If we look at their discipline and organization, they can definitely be considered close to being an armed force. Apart from Iraq, the signs were already there in Syria. Bashar al Assad can rely on a well armed, trained army and is supported by the Lebanese Hezbollah militias. To date he has shown a great deal of resilience in resisting the attacks from the Free Syrian Army and Jahbat al Nusra. Yet, Bashar al Assad's army has suffered

some significant setbacks when facing the ISIS.The terrorist group is capable of continuing to reap more victories on the field in Iraq and Syria despite the international coalition's air strikes. The ISIS has pushed back even the Kurdish armed groups – whether they were the Iraqi Peshmerga who were used to fight against Saddam Hussein, or the PKK militants in Turkey or those from the YPG in Syria – without facing much opposition. This is the reason why the ISIS today controls a portion of territory between Syria and Iraq that is larger than Lebanon and where 8 million people live, or used to live before they fled.Tactics and strategies:The issue of armaments is relevant is they are properly employed, of course. This is where the professionalism of the soldiers once belonging to the dissolved army of Saddam Hussein comes into play. They are the ones helping the ISIS oust the Shiite government in Baghdad. They are responsible for teaching the militants how to use the weapons they own, prepare their strategies and draft their tactics.From a strategic viewpoint, the objectives of the militants from the ISIS are usually major roads, oil fields,

refineries, dams and power plants. They know they don't have enough troops to control large areas and hence focus on infrastructures or key points that grant them supplies, financing, freedom of movement and predominance on the ground. From a tactical viewpoint, instead, the militants fighting on the field is interspersed by forms of traditional warfare, combined with bomb or suicide attacks. These often target the enemies' frontline with car-bombs that anticipate the advance of the militants.

A terrorist armyBy Marta Pérez Ortega

YIHADISTS THEIR MILITARY TACTICS| NÚMERO NUMBER 1223

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Variety of weapons, uniforms and vehicles is usual in the front lines .

Nearly every vehicle captured to the enemy is reused by the yihadists for it’s own purposes ee

Yihadists Tactics Are Similar to Nazi GermansIn January, Kurdish troops launched a major offensive that broke Islamic State’s lines in northern Iraq. In response, the jihadist group sent 14 giant tanker trucks loaded with explosives and bolted-on armor to launch a counter-attack.Kurdish fighters have faced terrifying attacks like that before — though not on this scale. Fortunately, before any of the trucks made it to the Kurdish positions, the soldiers on the ground  — and U.S. and coalition warplanes  — destroyed them from a distance.It was a mad, desperate—and yes—suicidal tactic. But it’s also a revealing example of the group’s combat tactics and strategy during the past year.The jihadist group is now on the defensive, but it’s still deadly on the battlefield and its fighters are willing to die in brief counter-attacks. The main feature even if the group is losing the war is to practice a “cult of the offensive” with a heavy cost in human life.Why and how is the interesting part, and it’s the subject of a sweeping new essay by Alexendre Mello and Michael Knights in CTC Sentinel, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point’s newsletter.Mello and Knights know what they’re talking abou they’ve studied the battlefield up close.Islamic State’s emphasis on offensive operations despite largely being on the defense isn’t new.Rather, the authors compare Islamic State to Nazi Germany in 1944 and 1945. By then, the Allies had decimated the German army, but it was still tactically deadly and capable of driving back the Allies in short-term counter-offensives that inevitably ground to halt. In December 1944, German armies launched a sudden surprise attack on unprepared American troops in Belgium. Known as the Battle of the Bulge, the German armies drove the Allies back 50 miles under the cover of winter weather.The Allies stopped the Germans. Worse for the Nazis, they had too few soldiers to prevent larger breakthroughs by the Soviet, American and British armies

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the following year. The German air force had lost its advantage, rendering its troops vulnerable to bombardment by Allied aircraft.Nor did the Germans have a strategy to win the war. They were tactically good —that is, fighting on the battlefield— but strategically inept in that they had no way of turning those tactical victories into something bigger.

“Commonwealth forces learned the ‘bite and hold’ tactic,” Mello and Knights wrote. “To seize ground cheaply in surprise attacks and then inflict heavy casualties on the German counter-attackers, a situation not unlike today’s Kurdish/Western tactics on their frontlines in northern Iraq. Islamic State knows it can’t defend every piece of ground. It has too few fighters, too many fronts and too many enemies. In the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani — on the Turkish border — Islamic State fought for months against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units.

At times, it seemed like the Kurds would lose the battle … and the city.But with heavy support from coalition warplanes and reinforcements from the Kurdish Peshmerga, Islamic State was gradually beaten back. The jihadists pulled out into the countryside, leaving behind snipers and improvised explosive booby-traps to slow the Kurds down.The jihadists have replicated that tactic in Iraqi towns such as Jalawla and Tikrit.“Snipers, mobile shooter teams, and thick improvised minefields made of crude canister IEDs and explosive-filled houses are more than sufficient to slow, but not stop, an advancing force  — populated areas are denied rather than actually defended,” Mello and Knights wrote.Behind this lethal screen, Islamic State practices what the authors call a “commuter insurgency.”This term came into vogue during the American occupation of Iraq, and means that insurgent fighters live in rural areas and “commute” into the

war, like an exurban worker driving into the office every day.Islamic State attacks under the cover of morning fog, and the group uses rural features — such as groves — to retreat.In short, Islamic State doesn’t like to defend. The group’s leaders know they’ll lose in a stand-up fight, so they don’t bother. When jihadist units must defend, they pull back most of their fighters and leave behind a delaying force.

If the group loses ground, other units in the area—operating largely independently—launch immediate counter-attacks. If they stay in fixed positions, then American and coalition air power will pummel them.. 

Yet there’s a demonstrable limit to Islamic State’s reliance on attacking at all costs. In the final year of World War II, German armies repeatedly threw themselves into surreal and self-destructive attacks under orders from Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

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