General Discussion

I would be indebted to anyone who can point out to me where it states the U.S. created the I.S.I.S. leadership, in any sense which could imply support, fostering, assistance, or any of the things usually meant when that term is used. The paper describes, to my eye, serious attempts by the U.S. to break the organization. One might regret failure in that attempt, but still....

According to CENTCOM, there had been only 79 VBIED attacks and
approximately 963 deaths as of June 21, and we anticipate that the group's
lethality will continue to trend downward in the wake of the successful
operations against it in recent months.

CENTCOM refers to U.S. Central Command, but earlier in the piece we get
these sorts of details from U.S. Strategic Command, or STRATCOM. Do we
want to attribute this to CENTCOM or should that one be STRATCOM too?

Iraq: A Bleak Future for the Jihadist ISI?

Summary

Over the last 90 days, Iraqi and U.S. forces have eliminated more than 80
percent of the Islamic State of Iraq's (ISI's) top leadership, including
its Egyptian chief of military operations and its Iraqi figurehead,
according to the top U.S. commander in Iraq. These personnel losses are
compounded by the fact that the al Qaeda-inspired jihadist group has been
struggling financially and is reportedly having problems getting foreign
fighters into the country. These setbacks will invariably complicate the
ISI's efforts to continue its campaign. While it is unlikely that the
ISI's propensity for violent attacks will wane, the group's diminished
leadership, operational capacity and logistics infrastructure make the
militant organization's future seem bleak.

Analysis

During a Pentagon press briefing on June 4, the top U.S. commander in
Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, said that over the last 90 days U.S. and Iraqi
forces had captured or killed 34 of the top 42 leaders of the Islamic
State of Iraq (ISI), the al Qaeda-inspired jihadist alliance in Iraq. This
represents roughly 80 percent of the group's identified leadership.
Commenting further on the misfortunes of the Iraqi jihadist franchise,
Odierno said, "They're clearly now attempting to reorganize themselves.
They're struggling a little bit. They've broken - they've lost connection
with [al Qaeda senior leadership] in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They will
attempt to regenerate themselves. They're finding it more difficult."

Indeed, since January, Iraqi and U.S.-led multinational forces have zeroed
in on the ISI, an effort made possible not only by the effective
exploitation of battlefield intelligence, but also by a large shift in the
way jihadists are viewed by Iraqi Sunnis. Today they simply are not given
the same type of support they enjoyed at the height of the insurgency in
2007. According to Odierno, the recent string of successes began shortly
after the ISI's headquarters in Mosul was raided in January and a number
of leaders in charge of financing, operations planning and recruiting were
arrested - and a great deal of actionable intelligence was recovered.

The Mosul operation was the beginning of a chain of intelligence-driven
operations during which the effective exploitation of intelligence gained
in one raid was used to conduct the next. Perhaps the most publicized blow
against the ISI to come out of the Mosul raid occurred in April, when
Iraqi and U.S. forces killed the group's military leader, Abu Ayyub
al-Masri (aka Abu Hamza al-Muhajir), as well as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi (aka
Hamid Dawud Muhammed Khalil al-Zawi, or Abdullah Rashid Saleh
al-Baghdadi), the titular head of the ISI. In addition to taking out the
apex leadership of the ISI, these raids also provided Iraqi and U.S.
forces with a vast quantity of intelligence, including cell phones,
laptops and a number of additional documents detailing the group's
operations in Iraq as well as correspondence between the ISI and top al
Qaeda-prime leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Al-Masri, a native Egyptian and former member of Ayman al-Zawahri's
Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was the group's replacement for the former head of
al Qaeda in Iraq, the Jordanian national Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was
killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2006. Al-Masri was considered the
operational battlefield leader of the ISI, whereas al-Baghdadi played a
more symbolic role by allowing the ISI to place an Iraqi face on the
transnational jihadist efforts that had previously been personified by the
foreign-born al-Zarqawi. From all indications, al-Masri provided the ISI
with a high level of experience, professionalism and tradecraft and was
the type of solid leader that is critical to actualizing a militant
group's intent. He was also known for his role in facilitating the
movement of foreign fighters to Iraq, providing them with training and
assimilating them in with the local ISI cadre. Because of al-Masri's
practical importance to the group, his death is considered to be a more
devastating loss to the ISI's operational capability than al-Baghdadi's.

However, the death of a single, competent leader is not necessarily a
permanent and devastating blow to an organization like ISI. Indeed, at
times, new leadership can be an operational windfall, as was seen recently
in Yemen. The ISI survived the 2006 death of al-Zarqawi and actually
increased its operational tempo in 2007. This increase was likely due to
the solid organizational structure al-Zarqawi had established, which
allowed a level of operational momentum to be maintained after his death.
Nevertheless, the death of al-Masri did not happen in a vacuum. It
occurred along with the elimination of more than three-quarters of the
group's identified leadership, which, when combined with the changes in
the environment in Iraq, will undoubtedly serve as a major setback to
ISI's operations in Iraq.

The downward trajectory of the al Qaeda franchise in Saudi Arabia from
2004 to 2008 provides an excellent example of the impact this sort of
leadership depletion and environmental change can have on a jihadist
group. The Saudi franchise officially began its protracted wave of
violence in May 2003 with three coordinated car bombings in Riyadh. After
an impressive counterterrorism offensive against the Kingdom's al Qaeda
franchise, Saudi authorities were able largely stymie the momentum of al
Qaeda in Saudi Arabia in about 18 months. Key to their success was their
ability to capture or kill 22 out of 26 (roughly 85 percent) of the
group's leaders on the Saudi most-wanted list by April 2005, including
three successive military commanders in the span of about a year,
beginning in June 2004. Indeed, by January 2009, the Saudi al Qaeda
franchise was so badly damaged that the remnants of the organization were
forced to leave the Kingdom and merge with jihadists in Yemen to form al
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. While the Iraqi and Saudi operating
environments are certainly different - with the former still in a de facto
state of war - the parallels in the hits against top-tier leadership are
worth noting.

In May 2010, following al-Masri and al-Baghdadi's deaths the previous
month, the ISI announced in a video message via its media outlet, the
Al-Furqan Media, that Nasser al-Din Allah Abu Suleiman would be al-Masri's
replacement as ISI "minister of war" and that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would
replace Abu Omar al-Baghdadi as the group's leader. Appearing in the
video, which was posted to extremist websites, Abu Suleiman threatened
that the ISI would "wage a new military campaign directed at Iraqi
security forces and the [Shia]" and that the fresh attacks would be
carried out to avenge the deaths of al-Masri and al-Baghadi.

At this point, little is known of Abu Suleiman or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
though these names are likely pseudonyms intended to protect their real
identities, and more information will probably surface once their true
names are learned. Despite the ominous nature of Abu Suleiman's message,
the new leadership of the ISI is going to have its work cut out for it in
the coming months if it is to hold the organization together and conduct
significant militant operations. The loss of 80 percent of the leadership
of any military organization is a difficult blow to overcome.

In Survival Mode

Al-Masri is gone. His replacement is a new, unknown and thus far untested
leader. STRATFOR has long noted the importance of leadership for these
types of militant organizations and how the quality of leadership directly
correlates to a group's operational ability. Although it is still too
early to accurately judge the impact al-Masri's death will have on the
ISI, the case of his predecessor provides a helpful illustration of what
can happen to a militant group under similar circumstances.

Despite his reputation for ruthlessness, which alienated a number of Iraqi
Sunnis, al-Zarqawi was still considered a charismatic and operationally
adept leader who was conducive to the group's ability to carry out scores
of terrorist attacks in Iraq - and beyond. He was also instrumental in
developing the overall operational capacity of the ISI, creating a cadre
of jihadist leaders who were able to bring in and train thousands of
recruits and then deploy them in the Iraqi jihadist theater.

Al-Zarqawi was able to capitalize on the anti-American sentiment in Iraq
and the Muslim world that arose after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This
anger resulted in calls for jihad - and for a robust flow of fighters and
financial support. Saddam Hussein's Baathist supporters and other Sunni
leaders in Iraq also saw the jihadist insurgents as convenient and zealous
proxies to use against U.S. forces. Al-Zarqawi, though, was never an al
Qaeda insider. In fact, correspondence between the al Qaeda leadership in
Pakistan and al-Zarqawi revealed serious fissures between the two
organizations. Nonetheless, al-Zarqawi saw the adoption of the al Qaeda
name as beneficial for recruiting and fundraising.

After al-Zarqawi's death in June 2006, the ISI officially named al-Masri
as the organization's new "minister of war/defense." Al-Masri was a
long-time al Qaeda insider who had been part of the Egyptian contingent
that joined the group with Ayman al-Zawahiri. Under al-Masri's leadership,
the ISI enjoyed a much closer relationship to the al Qaeda core. Despite
al-Masri's links to al Qaeda, questions arose about the Egyptian's
leadership and general competency and whether the death of the
high-profile al-Zarqawi would cripple the organization. These doubts were
largely eliminated a year later, after the ISI orchestrated a string of
violent sectarian attacks in Shiite neighborhoods around Baghdad on April
18, 2007, that claimed the lives of almost 200 people. During the course
of the year, more than 5,000 Iraqis were killed as a result of similar
bombings. According to statistics provided by the U.S. Strategic Command
(STRATCOM), there were 1,793 attacks involving vehicle-borne improvised
explosive devices (VBIEDs) in 2007 compared to 1,409 in 2006.

However, since the spike of violence in 2007, the number of individuals
who have been killed as a result of large-scale bombings has dropped
precipitously. For instance, in 2008 the number of deaths fell by about 50
percent, from an estimated 5,000 to 2,500. The following year, this number
dropped to just over 2,000. According to STRATCOM, the number of VBIEDS
deployed by the ISI has also sharply dropped, from 1,793 in 2007 to 641 in
2008 and 330 in 2009.

Despite the drop in VBIED attacks and deaths in 2009, the run-up to the
Iraqi election saw at least four devastating and coordinated bomb attacks
claimed by the ISI. On Aug. 19, 2009, the ISI took responsibility for two
simultaneous VBIED strikes at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry and Finance
Ministry buildings that left some 100 people dead and more than 1,000
wounded. Two months later, in October 2009, the ISI claimed credit for a
pair of similar simultaneous VBIED strikes near the Ministry of Justice
building and the Baghdad Provincial Council building in downtown Baghdad
that killed more than 100 people and wounded hundreds more. Strikes on
similar targets were also carried out in central Baghdad on Dec. 8, 2009,
and Jan. 25, 2010.

During this string of attacks, the ISI demonstrated something of a
resurgence, though as the campaign progressed the group was forced to
target softer targets as security was increased around more high-profile
sites like government ministries (the group was not able to strike at
first-tier hard targets like the parliament building, the prime minister's
office or the U.S. Embassy). Nevertheless, the ISI campaign did
demonstrate that the group could still acquire ordinance, build reliable
improvised explosive devices (IEDs), gather intelligence and plan and
carry out spectacular attacks in the heart of Baghdad. Clearly, al-Masri
and his team were regaining operational momentum. Indeed, the size and
lethality of ISI's pre-election bombing campaign had not been seen since
the April 2007 sectarian attacks in Baghdad. Overall, however, the
casualty counts and the frequency of these attacks have continued to
decrease in 2010. According to U.S. Central Command, there had been only
79 VBIED attacks and approximately 963 deaths as of June 21, and we
anticipate that the group's lethality will continue to trend downward in
the wake of the successful operations against it in recent months.

The ISI will be fighting an uphill battle with the loss of so many
leaders. And this battle will not just be for increasing its operational
tempo or assuming control of Iraq. The group's No. 1 priority at the
present time is sheer survival. It needs to focus on re-establishing some
semblance of operational security so that it will have the breathing room
to recruit and train new operatives. It will also need to find a way to
pay for its continued operations, which, like those of militant
organizations elsewhere, will increasingly be funded through criminal
means.

Financial and Operational Losses

In addition to the crippling leadership losses, the ISI is also facing
financial problems and has reportedly been in contact with al Qaeda prime
in an attempt to secure more money. This is in stark contrast to July
2005, when al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri sent a letter to
al-Zarqawi asking for $100,000 because a number of al Qaeda prime's
financial lifelines had been cut off, and the Iraqi jihadist franchise was
flush with cash (mostly from overseas donors).

From all indications, this negative trend in the financial status of the
al Qaeda core group has worsened, further limiting its ability to assist
the now cash-strapped ISI. In October 2009, the U.S. assistant secretary
investigating terrorist financing at the U.S. Treasury Department said al
Qaeda "is [at] its weakest financial condition in several years." Also in
2009, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the former chief of al Qaeda's financing
committee and then head of al Qaeda's operations in Afghanistan,
repeatedly called for financial contributions to al Qaeda, saying that the
group was in desperate need of funding. To compound the financial woes,
al-Yazid was killed by a U.S. airstrike in late May. Clearly, the al Qaeda
core group is in no financial shape to support the Iraqi franchise,
leaving it up to the ISI to support itself financially.

To be sure, the expense of an individual terrorist attack can be marginal
for a group like the ISI. Obtaining the right supplies to fabricate and
employ an IED may cost a couple hundred dollars, and in a place like Iraq,
flush with military ordnance that can be purchased or stolen, it can cost
even less. However, the process of maintaining a militant network over a
long period, during and between attacks, is far more costly than just
paying for individual attacks. The sizable infrastructure required to
maintain such a network involves the costs of recruitment, travel,
weapons, wages, food, a network of safe-houses, training facilities and
materials and overhead expenses for things like fraudulent identification
documents and the bribery of security and government officials. When added
all together, these expenses require a serious financial commitment. And
these costs rose considerably when Iraq's Sunni sheikhs turned against the
movement and denied it much of the ideologically motivated support and
sanctuary it once enjoyed. The ISI is now largely forced to buy this
sanctuary.

In light of the group's financial troubles, it appears that the ISI may be
resorting to other, more criminal means of supporting itself through
things like kidnapping, extortion and robbery. Criminal activity has
always been part of the ISI method of operations since the group's
inception, and the group has long been implicated in various forms of
theft, kidnapping and smuggling in order to support its militant wing -
such is the nature of an underground militant organization. This
characteristic is commonly seen in even the most robust of militant groups
around the world. However, ISI's criminal activities have become more
exposed in recent months, and its militants have turned their weapons on
jewelers, goldsmiths, bankers, money exchangers and other merchants. The
trend can be seen across Iraq, in Baghdad as well as Basra, Kirkuk and
Fallujah. Increasingly, the ISI has to devote a larger percentage of its
manpower and operational capability to fundraising, which means it has
fewer resources to devote to terrorist attacks.

Most of these incidents go unreported, since they are considered lower
priority than the more violent terrorist attacks. Also, much of the crime
(especially the kidnapping and extortion) is carried out quietly and goes
unseen by the casual observer. This means that the scope of the criminal
activity being conducted by the ISI is likely higher than is being
reported in the press, and this is supported by information from STRATFOR
sources in Iraq. According to these sources, the ISI is particularly adept
at using pressure tactics against local businesses in operating protection
rackets. Merchants have to hand over a certain percentage of their monthly
earnings to ISI operatives in order to preserve their businesses. One
journalist in Mosul (Saad al-Mosuli) writes that some vendors pay as much
as 30 percent of their earnings.

Another area of criminal activity in Iraq is the theft and smuggling of
oil. Iraq has hundreds of oil fields crisscrossed by hundreds of miles of
pipelines carrying oil to terminals where it is either trucked or shipped
for export. Oil is vulnerable to theft at any stage in this process, and
militants in Iraq are known to tap pipelines or steal tanker trucks in
order to get their hands on the oil and sell it. All manner of criminal
activity can thrive in a country where the security environment remains
fluid and authorities have to decide whether to divert more resources to
preventing major VBIED attacks or to preventing robberies. Obviously, the
former generates more attention.

Below is a brief timeline of criminal activities either known or suspected
to be the work of ISI operatives just in the past several weeks:

The ISI is not the first militant organization to integrate criminal
activities into its method of operations. Groups such as the Farabundo
Marti Liberation Front in El Salvador, the Irish Republican Army, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the New People's Army in
the Philippines are just a few examples of groups that started with an
ideological justification for their violent activities and turned to
criminal activity when their funding dried up (many Marxist groups lost
funding when the Soviet Union dissolved). Some of these groups, such as
the FARC, are now almost exclusivity criminal, with only a thin
ideological facade used primarily for recruiting and justifying their
activities. Other jihadist organizations have also used fraud, extortion,
kidnapping and other illegal activities to finance their operations. For
example, the jihadist cell responsible for the March 2004 Madrid train
bombings financed its operations by selling narcotics.

Currently facing financial problems, the ISI is using its highly trained
and organized manpower, along with its weapons caches - resources that
were once reserved for ideologically motivated attacks - to collect
operating funds. With ample examples of the Prophet Mohammed and his
companions raiding the caravans of the enemies of Islam, groups like the
ISI believe they have religious justification for engaging in such
activities and that they do not tarnish their reputations as Muslim
movements. This is not to say that the group's activities have any legal
precedent under Islamic law; it is more likely a reflection that its
members are willing to twist religious and legal doctrine to benefit their
operational needs. However, such activities have certainly caused many
more moderate Iraqis to become skeptical of the ISI and to distance
themselves from the group. On the other hand, government accusations of
robbery could be a tactic to discredit the ISI and must be weighed
carefully.

Nevertheless, when Iraqi authorities blame the group for an incident like
the May 25 jewelry store robbery in Baghdad that left 15 people dead, the
fact that the robbers used rocket-propelled grenades, suppressed pistols
and assault rifles lends credence to the claim, as does the speed,
accuracy and general professionalism of the operation.

Decline in Foreign Operatives

In addition to the leadership losses and financial troubles besetting ISI,
there are also indications that the group is struggling to carry out
suicide attacks as frequently as it used to. One reason could be that the
ISI is running out of foreign volunteers to participate in such attacks.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, intercepted messages
and prisoner interrogations indicate that ISI commanders are complaining
about the lack of foreigners for suicide missions. "The shortage of
suicide bombers is because Islamic fundamentalists are more interested in
Afghanistan and Pakistan these days, the Americans are withdrawing from
Iraq and al Qaeda's networks have been disrupted by ourselves and the
Americans," Zebari said in an interview with the Associated Press in late
May. While Iraqis can certainly carry out suicide attacks, a significant
percentage (estimated by the U.S. military to be as high as 80 percent) of
the suicide attacks in Iraq since the U.S. invasion have been perpetrated
by foreign-born jihadists. In 2008, we began seeing an indication that the
ISI was recruiting Iraqis who were mentally ill or addicted to drugs to
serve as suicide bombers.

There are a few possible explanations for the apparent paucity of foreign
travelers to Iraq to carry out such operations. First, as Zebari mentions,
U.S. troops are pulling out of Iraq, and many radical Muslims would rather
attack "infidel troops" than fellow Muslims. As of May 2010, there are
more American troops stationed in Afghanistan (94,000) than Iraq (92,000)
for the first time since major combat operations began in Iraq in 2003.
These numbers are only expected to continue to fall in Iraq as the Obama
administration puts a greater focus on Afghanistan. Naturally, if jihadist
operatives are eager to take the fight directly to Americans and other
Westerners, they would more likely head to an area where there are more
American and other Western troops.

It also appears that the Syrian regime has helped crack down on the
established smuggling networks that have been an instrumental gateway to
Iraq for foreign fighters. According to jihadist recruiting records found
in the Syrian border town of Sinjar by U.S. troops in 2007 and released by
the U.S. government in 2008, there were approximately 700 foreign national
who illegally entered Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007. Indeed,
the Iraqi government claimed in 2007 that more than half of the foreign
fighters were arriving in Iraq via Syria. U.S defense officials also
remarked at the time that coalition operations helped cut the flow of
approximately 60 to 80 fighters a month in half. This reduction was at
least partly due to the death of Abu Osama al-Tunisi by U.S.-led forces in
September 2007. As his name indicates, al-Tunisi was a Tunisian member of
the ISI's inner circle who was chiefly responsible bringing foreign
fighters into Iraq.

Most of the illegal entries into Iraq, according to the Sinjar documents,
were facilitated by four members of a terrorist finance and facilitation
ring running out of Syria known as the "Abu Ghadiyah" network, named for
its leader, Badran Turki Hisham al-Mazidih (aka Abu Ghadiyah). However, on
Oct. 26, 2008, U.S. forces, reportedly with the assistance of the Syrian
government, conducted a cross-border raid against the group that resulted
in the death of Abu Ghadiyah. Because smuggling is a long-practiced trade
in Syria, a replacement for Ghadiyah has most likely stepped into place,
but the flow of fighters from Syria has clearly dropped since 2007.

Of course, the simple fact that U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to capture
or kill senior ISI members at a heretofore unseen rate has had a
noteworthy impact on the ISI's ability to recruit, train and run foreign
fighters. This success has been due not only to the increased intelligence
capability of the U.S. and Iraqi forces but also - significantly - to the
fact that a number of Iraq's Sunni sheikhs have turned against the ISI.
The group's decline has also been a result of the length of the struggle.
A large number of jihadists have been martyred in Iraq and a substantial
amount of money has been sent there over the past seven years. It is hard
to maintain that type of commitment over time - especially when the effort
is producing diminishing returns and other theaters such as the
Afghanistan/Pakistan region, Yemen and Somalia have grabbed more of the
worldwide media spotlight.

Conclusion

The year 2010 appears to be a banner year for U.S. and Iraqi troops in the
fight against the ISI. Their combined efforts, with local assistance, have
severely damaged the group's finances, leadership and ability to recruit.
To be sure, the ISI's intent to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq has
not diminished. But even before the most recent coalition successes, the
ability of the group to return to its 2007 glory days was seriously in
doubt, and today its overall operational capacity appears to be severely
crippled. And as U.S. and multinational troops continue their steady
withdrawal from Iraq, there will be less incentive for transnational
jihadists to travel to Iraq to fight the "far enemy." Ongoing pressure on
the ISI may also serve to fracture it into smaller disjointed entities,
which could even lead to infighting. Pressed for cash, the motivations for
violent attacks are likely to continue to devolve into political and
criminal acts, the frequency and lethality of which will depend on the
ability of Iraqi forces to handle the situation.

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