Islamic State Flag
Der Spiegel had an excellent article on how ISIS rose to power, based on files recovered from the ex-Baathist spy master who planned most of its structure and early strategy.
It boils down to two main themes. First, ISIS set up charity offices in the territory it would later try to seize. The men assigned to those offices were tasked with finding out who the most important people in the area were and marrying into the most important families, if possible.
When ISIS went active, they had complete files on the power structures of every area. They knew who had power, who was likely to oppose them, and, to put it crudely, where they lived. Their enemies knew next to nothing about them, but they they were able to bribe, blackmail or kill anyone who was in a position to be useful or pose a threat.
Second, and especially interesting, the initial ISIS force was comprised almost entirely of people not native to Syria. On the face, this seems like a bad idea, but lack of local ties, combined with ferocious operational security, meant that ISIS could move its troops from place to place and the locals couldn’t easily track those movements.
ISIS soldiers who were local would have talked, their movements would have been easy to track. Foreigners with few to no local ties, not so much.
As a result, ISIS was able to make a small army effectively much larger than it seemed. They would march almost all their troops to the next theater, and because their enemies didn’t know it, they couldn’t take advantage.
The result of this was that ISIS’s local enemies, the local elites, were often unable to effectively oppose them (since they got dead or blackmailed if they did). Additionally, ISIS possessed operational flexibility their armed opposition didn’t have.
The entire article is worth reading if you’re interested in how ISIS rose and worth thinking on how it could be applied elsewhere, or stopped. It’s also an excellent reminder that the best of the forces rising in the Islamic world are staffed and run by people who are brilliant and not to be underestimated. (They ought to be the best; a very harsh Darwinian selection has been run on them. Slip up, wind up dead.)
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