What ISIS Really Wants

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A Different View...

 

The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State

An Iraqi officer planned Islamic State's takeover in Syria and SPIEGEL has been given exclusive access to his papers. They portray an organization that, while seemingly driven by religious fanaticism, is actually coldly calculating.

Christoph Reuter

Apr. 18 2015

 

Aloof. Polite. Cajoling. Extremely attentive. Restrained. Dishonest. Inscrutable. Malicious. The rebels from northern Syria, remembering encounters with him months later, recall completely different facets of the man. But they agree on one thing: "We never knew exactly who we were sitting across from."

 

 

In fact, not even those who shot and killed him after a brief firefight in the town of Tal Rifaat on a January morning in 2014 knew the true identity of the tall man in his late fifties. They were unaware that they had killed the strategic head of the group calling itself "Islamic State" (IS). The fact that this could have happened at all was the result of a rare but fatal miscalculation by the brilliant planner. The local rebels placed the body into a refrigerator, in which they intended to bury him. Only later, when they realized how important the man was, did they lift his body out again.

Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi was the real name of the Iraqi, whose bony features were softened by a white beard. But no one knew him by that name. Even his best-known pseudonym, Haji Bakr, wasn't widely known. But that was precisely part of the plan. The former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein's air defense force had been secretly pulling the strings at IS for years. Former members of the group had repeatedly mentioned him as one of its leading figures. Still, it was never clear what exactly his role was.

 

But when the architect of the Islamic State died, he left something behind that he had intended to keep strictly confidential: the blueprint for this state. It is a folder full of handwritten organizational charts, lists and schedules, which describe how a country can be gradually subjugated. SPIEGEL has gained exclusive access to the 31 pages, some consisting of several pages pasted together. They reveal a multilayered composition and directives for action, some already tested and others newly devised for the anarchical situation in Syria's rebel-held territories. In a sense, the documents are the source code of the most successful terrorist army in recent history.

 

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H/T Washington Free Beacon

[Valin]

Jun 18, 2015

Experts discuss the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and the state of violent extremism.

 

Speakers:
Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
Graeme Wood, Contributing Editor, The Atlantic; Lecturer, Yale University

 

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The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State

Hardcover – December 20, 2016
by Graeme Wood

 

The author of the explosive Atlantic cover story “What ISIS Really Wants” has written the definitive, electrifying account of the strategy, psychology, and theology driving the Islamic State.

 

Tens of thousands of men and women have left comfortable, privileged lives to join the Islamic State and kill for it. To them, its violence is beautiful and holy, and the caliphate a fulfillment of prophecy and the only place on earth where they can live and die as Muslims.

 

The Way of the Strangers is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State’s true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Wood interviews supporters, recruiters, and sympathizers of the group. We meet an Egyptian tailor who once made bespoke suits for Paul Newman and now wants to live, finally, under Shariah; a Japanese convert who believes that the eradication of borders—one of the Islamic State’s proudest achievements—is a religious imperative; and a charming, garrulous Australian preacher who translates the group’s sermons and threats into English and is accused of recruiting for the organization. We also learn about a prodigy of Islamic rhetoric, now stripped of the citizenship of the nation of his birth and determined to see it drenched in blood. Wood speaks with non–Islamic State Muslim scholars and jihadists, and explores the group’s idiosyncratic, coherent approach to Islam.

 

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Dec 21, 2016

 

NPR: In 'Way Of The Strangers,' Wood Explores Why Young People Embrace ISIS

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Related

 

Apr 14, 2016

Jihadism: Can It Be Defeated? this is the key question for the panel moderated by Reuel Marc Gerecht, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; Gilles Kepel, professor at Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Science Po); Graeme Wood, contributing editor at The Atlantic; and Nancy Youssef, the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast.