Periodistic article about yihadists military tactics

1. THE MODERN WARS POST 27/05/2015Number 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,
hadforeseensuch as a scenario andenvisageda
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 whenfacing the ISIS.
The terrorist group is capable of continuing to
reapmore victories on the field in Iraqand 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
tothe dissolvedarmy 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 strategicviewpoint, 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.
Variety ofweapons,uniforms and
vehicles is usual in the front lines .
A terrorist army
By Marta Pérez Ortega

2. YIHADISTS THEIR MILITARY TACTICS| NÚMERO NUMBER 1223 2
Nearly every vehicle captured to
the enemy is reused by the
yihadists for it’s own purposesee
Yihadists Tactics Are Similar to Nazi
Germans
In 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 the following year. The
German air force had lost its advantage,
rendering its troops vulnerable to bombardment
by Alliedaircraft.
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,” Melloand Knights wrote. “Toseize
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 — onthe 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 andTikrit.
“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,” Melloand Knights wrote.
Behind this lethal screen, IslamicState 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 — suchas groves — to retreat.
In short, IslamicState doesn’t like to defend.
The group’s leaders know they’ll lose ina stand-
up fight, so they don’t bother. Whenjihadist
units must defend, they pull back most of their
fighters and leave behind a delaying force.
If the group loses ground, other units inthe
area—operating largely independently—launch
immediate counter-attacks. If they stay in fixed
positions, then Americanand coalition air power
will pummel them..
Yet there’s a demonstrable limit to Islamic
State’s reliance on attacking at all costs. Inthe
final year of WorldWar II, Germanarmies
repeatedly threw themselves into surreal and
self-destructive attacks under orders from Nazi
leader Adolf Hitler.

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