Origins of the Islamic State and How to Defeat the Group

From Rand.org (May 19):

Drawing from more than 140 recently declassified documents from the predecessors of the Islamic State, a new RAND Corporation study shows that the group has been operating for years with remarkable continuity in its philosophy, methods and goals, including the long-standing aspiration for creating a caliphate.

The documents show that the leadership consciously designed the organization not just to fight, but also to build a state governed by the laws dictated by its strict Islamist ideology.

“The lessons from examining the group's history are useful for setting expectations about the strengths and vulnerabilities of the Islamic State and its ability to combat its opponents,” said Patrick Johnston, the lead author of the report and a political scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Understanding the origins of the Islamic State can help lead to a coordinated and effective campaign against it. It also can explain how the Islamic State may be able to survive such an effort and sustain itself in the future, albeit perhaps at a lower level of threat.”

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The group paid its personnel low wages that would draw true believers rather than opportunists, trained and allocated its membership with an eye toward group effectiveness, raised revenues locally through diversified sources and was able to maintain itself, albeit at much reduced strength, in the face of an aggressive counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategy put in place by its opponents.

“Its own records show that the group was rational in its administration, adaptive in its actions, careful about spending and diversified in revenue raising,” said Howard J. Shatz, a co-author of the report and a senior economist at RAND. “This made it — and continues to make it — a formidable enemy.”

The RAND report recommends that any counter-personnel strategy should strive to eliminate layers of high-level and mid-level managers from the Islamic State. Capitalizing on any fissures within the group can speed its decline, as can degrading its revenues and therefore its ability to make payments.

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“Targeting the Islamic State's training camps and its flow of skilled terrorists returning to their home counties could be a new approach to reducing the group's ability to strike abroad, especially if it is combined with the current campaign to eliminate their revenue sources and bulk cash holdings,” said Benjamin Bahney, a co-author of the report and a RAND policy analyst.   [read more]

Interesting. So, the Islamic State’s thugs are like the mob? Sounds like it to me. The mob I believe was efficient too. Both are evil. The only difference is one was about money, the other is about ideology. The Rand Organization has several reasearch articles on the Islamic State.

PragerU.com has an informative video called What ISIS Wants. It also talks about how the Islamic thugs got their beginning and about their ideology.