ISSN 2334-3745 Volume IX, Issue 4 August 2015 Special Issue on the Islamic State PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 4 Table of Contents Welcome from the Editors 1 I. Articles A Long Way from Success: Assessing the War on the Islamic State 3 by Charles Lister Assessing the Islamic State’s Commitment to Attacking the West 14 by Thomas Hegghammer and Petter Nesser Understanding Jihadi Proto-States 31 by Brynjar Lia Is ISIS a Revolutionary Group and if Yes, What Are the Implications? 42 by Stathis N. Kalyvas Heirs of Zarqawi or Saddam? The relationship between al-Qaida in Iraq and the Islamic State 48 by Truls Hallberg Tønnessen The Metronome of Apocalyptic Time: Social Media as Carrier Wave for Millenarian Contagion 61 by J.M. Berger The Dreams of Islamic State 72 by Iain R. Edgar Picture Or It Didn’t Happen: A Snapshot of the Islamic State’s Official Media Output 85 by Aaron Y. Zelin The Concept of Bay‘a in the Islamic State’s Ideology 98 by Joas Wagemakers Social Media, Recruitment, Allegiance and the Islamic State 107 by Scott Gates and Sukanya Podder The Evolution in Islamic State Administration: The Documentary Evidence 117 by Aymenn al-Tamimi The Islamic State’s Eastern Frontier: Ramadi and Fallujah as Theaters of Sectarian Conflict 130 by Kirk H. Sowell ISSN 2334-3745 i August 2015 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 4 Understanding the Daesh Economy 142 by Jamie Hansen-Lewis and Jacob N. Shapiro Let Them Rot: The Challenges and Opportunities of Containing rather than Countering the Islamic State 156 by Clint Watts II. Resources Bibliography: Islamic State (Part 1) 165 Compiled and selected by Judith Tinnes III. Notes from the Editor Job Announcement: CTSS Director 213 About Perspectives on Terrorism 215 ISSN 2334-3745 ii August 2015 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 4 Welcome from the Editors Dear Reader, We are pleased to announce the release of Volume IX, Issue 4 (August 2015) of Perspectives on Terrorism at www.terrorismanalysts.com. Our free online journal is a joint publication of the Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI), headquartered in Vienna (Austria), and the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies (CTSS), at the Lowell Campus of the University of Massachusetts (United States). Now in its ninth year, Perspectives on Terrorism has over 5,200 regular subscribers and many more occasional readers and visitors worldwide. The Articles of its six annual issues are fully peer-reviewed by external referees while its Policy Briefs and other content are subject to internal editorial quality control. This special double issue is devoted entirely to the so-called Islamic State (IS), presenting 14 research articles on various aspects of the organization, in addition to an extensive, specially compiled bibliography on IS. The articles are products of a conference on IS held in Oslo on 11-12 June 2015. The conference was organized by the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) and funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and it brought together leading specialists on IS, jihadism, and civil war along with senior policymakers and government analysts from several countries. The motivation for the conference – and for this special issue – was that our understanding of IS is lagging behind the group’s battlefield advances. After a wave of studies on al-Qaida in Iraq in the mid-2000s, the academic community largely dropped the ball on the group’s later incarnations ISI and ISIS until it burst onto the global stage last summer with the capture of Mosul. The past year has seen a substantial intellectual catch- up effort, not unlike that mounted for al-Qaida in the early 2000s, but we still have a long way to go. The articles cover a broad range of topics and questions pertaining to IS as an organization. All of the articles were completed in July 2015 and are therefore unusually up-to-date as far as academic publishing goes. The issue opens with two articles (by Charles Lister and Thomas Hegghammer/Petter Nesser) that address two of the most pressing questions today, namely, how is the military campaign against IS going, and how much of a terrorist threat to the West does IS pose? The following three papers place IS in a historical and comparative perspective. Brynjar Lia looks at IS as the latest in a decades-long series of jihadi state-building efforts, Stathis Kalyvas asks what the comparative study of rebel groups of can tell us about IS, while Truls Tønnessen examines the relationship between IS and its historical predecessors. We then move on to ideology and propaganda with J.M. Berger’s article on social media and millenarian beliefs, Iain Edgar’s study of the night dreams of IS fighters, Aaron Zelin’s analysis of one week of IS propaganda, and Joas Wagemaker’s study of the concept of bay’a (allegiance) in IS’s ideology. The next three articles are concerned with how IS operates. Scott Gates and Sukanya Podder ask how IS deals with the organizational challenges that come with having many foreign fighters, Aymenn al-Tamimi presents a detailed analysis of the IS administration and bureaucracy, and Kirk Sowell takes a detailed look at IS’s military and political operations in Ramadi and Fallujah. The last two articles speak to the question of whether containment is a viable alternative strategy against IS. Jamie Hansen-Lewis and Jacob Shapiro evaluates the long-term sustainability of the IS economy, while Clint Watts evaluates and pros and cons of a strict containment approach. ISSN 2334-3745 1 August 2015 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 4 The final item in this issue is a comprehensive bibliography of IS compiled by Judith Tinnes. We are confident that these contributions will be of interest and use to scholars and policymakers seeking to understand the Islamic State. Also, please see the position announcement at the end of this issue from UMass Lowell, where they are searching for a new Professor and Director of the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies. The issue was prepared by guest editor Thomas Hegghammer, Director of Terrorism Research at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), and co-editor Prof. James Forest, Director of Security Studies at UMass Lowell. The next issue (October 2015) will be prepared by editor-in-chief Prof. em. Alex P. Schmid. ISSN 2334-3745 2 August 2015 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 4 I. Articles A Long Way from Success: Assessing the War on the Islamic State by Charles Lister Abstract Since the U.S.-led coalition initiated military action against the Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq in August 2014 and in Syria the following month, a number of victories have been achieved. However, progress thus far can best be described as a series of loosely linked tactical gains, rather than a significant strategic advance. The stated coalition objective is to “degrade and destroy” IS as a militant organization, but it remains a potent armed force capable of capturing valuable territory and inflicting considerable material damage on its adversaries. The time has now come for a bold and critical re-evaluation of the current anti-IS strategy and the core analytical understandings driving counter-actions. In addition to honestly assessing progress thus far in countering IS, this article highlights three key issues requiring acknowledgment and recommends their inclusion within the foundational thinking of a new and more effective counter-IS strategy. Keywords: Jihadism, ISIS, Iraq, Syria, strategy, foreign policy Introduction Since the Islamic State’s (IS) declaration of a Caliphate (khilafa) in late-June 2014 and the initiation of U.S.- led coalition airstrikes against IS targets in northern Iraq in August 2014 and in Syria in September 2014, the terrorist organization has become an increasingly international phenomenon. In the weeks and months that followed, growing numbers of jihadist militants began swearing their loyalty (bay’a) to IS, answering IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s call for worldwide pledges of allegiance to his self-declared authority. By early August 2015, IS and its “Leader of the Faithful” (amir al-mu’minin) Baghdadi – also referred to as Caliph Ibrahim – had accepted into the fold groups operating in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Nigeria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan-Afghanistan (Af-Pak) and Russia’s North Caucasus, in addition to its already existing force in Syria and Iraq. While some of these new IS affiliates – designated as “provinces” (wilayat) within the Caliphate – are operationally smaller than others, all have carried out attacks following their inclusion within the IS umbrella. Nonetheless, it remains unclear to what extent each international faction and each of the existing 36 provinces has established and consolidated solid command and control (C2) links to the IS central leadership in Syria and Iraq. The clear and present threat posed by IS justifies, and indeed demands a counter-reaction by international states and the local governments who directly face IS on the battlefield. After nine months of coalition operations, a series of tactical-level victories have been won against IS in parts of Iraq and northeastern Syria, but these do not yet appear to amount to anything close to strategic progress in genuinely degrading and destroying IS as an organization. In fact, some facets of the strategies adopted may even prove counterproductive in the long-term. Considering the sheer scale of IS operations in Syria and Iraq and the questionable nature of its command and control (C2) links with groups in other countries, the strategic priority for the international community should remain countering IS in its Iraqi and Syrian heartlands. However, the existing strategy is neither ISSN 2334-3745 3 August 2015 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 4 sufficient in scale or design to effectively achieve this objective or to transform tactical gains into long-term strategic progress.