London: The latest video from ISIS introduces a new British executioner, a successor to “Jihadi John”, and it is a classic of the genre: bombastic, pompous, ridiculous yet terrifying. “O slave of the White House, O mule of the Jews,” says a man in a ski mask, addressing David Cameron, “how strange it is that the leader of a small island threatens us with a handful of planes. Only an imbecile would dare to wage war against a land where the law of Allah reigns supreme.” He has a cold, arrogant look in his eyes and brandishes a pistol held sideways, aping American “gangsta style”. Kneeling before him are five men in orange jumpsuits identified as “British spies”. In fact they may just be Syrian journalists whose “crime” was simply trying to do honest reporting about the so-called Islamic State.
ISIS’ new year message is much the same as it was last year: Be afraid! We are coming for you! It is still chilling. But ISIS is not the force it was 12 months ago, and its video nastiness seems now more a sign of weakness than strength. The group has suffered a string of defeats in recent months. The tally so far includes the town of Kobani in northern Syria; Sinjar, in Iraq, which fell to the Kurds in November; and Ramadi, taken back by the Iraqi Army two weeks ago. Fighters who promised to love death as much as we love life appear to be losing their nerve. In Sinjar, there are reports that two “brigades” of fighters deserted. In Ramadi, there was no bitter struggle to the last suicide vest. Instead, ISIS melted away, leaving behind booby traps and car bombs to slow the Iraqi advance. So far, US officials claim, American bombs have killed 20,000 ISIS jihadis.
A friend of mine, a diplomat, has developed sources within the group and he describes a very different ISIS from the one we see in their propaganda videos: “Morale is plummeting within ISIS, especially among foreign fighters,” he says. “Many European foreign fighters in particular are packing it in. Many want to defect. Whole units have just gone away in Iraq… the Islamic State is in crisis.” There was a struggle within the ISIS leadership between hawks and doves, the diplomat said, with the hardliners gaining the upper hand. But they were frustrated at being unable to mount big, shock attacks as they did in 2014 — because of Western bombing. “Inherent Resolve (the US-led campaign against ISIS) is much more effective than it is given credit for… the further expansion of ISIS has been stopped.”
The leadership is still striving to attract new recruits to “God’s Kingdom on Earth”. A video in English and French shows an ISIS loyalist taking his three small daughters to the shops — all well-stocked — and then to a fairground. “Brothers and sisters, come to caliphate,” says the narrator, making a special appeal for engineers, doctors and nurses.
Some do find they like life under the caliphate. A British recruit to ISIS described the attraction to me once. “It’s a really good feeling. You can go around without anybody trying to harass you (for being a Muslim),” he said. “I don’t miss a thing about Britain. Here, I can drive, I don’t need a licence. If I want to watch TV, I don’t need a licence for that either. I can walk around with a Kalashnikov, with an RPG if I want to. It’s total freedom, thanks be to God. It’s like I’m flying.”
But as my diplomat friend says, many others have become disillusioned. Last year I met an activist called Abu Ibrahim who runs a network that gets people out of ISIS territory. “Most of those who go to the caliphate are true Muslims,” he told me. “They are shocked when they get there and see what things are really like. It is horrible — for them it is either flee or commit suicide.”
He estimated that 40 per cent of foreign fighters wanted to leave. But desertion involves a terrifying risk. In one six-month period last year, 400 fighters were executed for disloyalty, according to his own source inside ISIS. He managed to take out a handful before they were killed, including three Britons: two men and a woman.
Abu Ibrahim showed me a photocopy of a French passport belonging to a woman in a hijab. He had smuggled her out, too. She had gone to Syria to join the jihad but learned her duty would simply be to bear the next generation of jihadis. She was promptly married off. When her new husband — another French citizen — was executed for refusing to obey orders, she was put into a prison for women.
There were some 300 women in the prison, she remembered. They were watched all the time. The only way out permitted was by marriage, though she was eventually rescued by Abu Ibrahim’s network. Her husband had been killed for refusing to join the bitter side-war against the Islamic State’s rival, the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s loyalists in Syria. Many others have been killed for the same reason. They had joined ISIS to kill the unbelievers of the Syrian regime.
This is a real weakness for ISIS: they are locked in a continual struggle for members with Nusra and other Salafi-jihadist groups in Syria. Fighters defect to ISIS and then defect back again. ISIS is not a monolith but a coalition. That coalition includes criminal gangs and groups of tribal fighters whose sheikhs have pledged loyalty to the caliphate. I watched the Kurds battle ISIS for possession of one town in eastern Iraq.
Kurdish intelligence said they were facing a force of about 800. That consisted of around 650 locals and some 150 outsiders, ISIS shock troops led by a commander who brought with him a bag of cash for the sheikh and promises to protect the tribe against all enemies.
When ISIS looked unstoppable 18 months ago, the criminal gangs and the Sunni tribal leaders all wanted to sign up with a winner. Now some at least are looking for the next “strong horse”. If ISIS is driven away from the Syrian town of Aleppo — their next predicted defeat — it will be because of this phenomenon of groups changing sides. The collapse there could be quite rapid. After that, if Ramadi really has taught the Iraqi Army how to do street fighting, the next town to fall could be Fallujah.
It is too soon, though, to say that the caliphate is done for. Abu Ibrahim told me the war would never be won from the air, nor with the US-led coalition’s existing allies on the ground. “How many airstrikes have they carried out? 1,000? 2,000? 3,000? If a quarter of that effort was used for the ground battle, ISIS would have already been crushed.”
The problem, he said, was that most of the victories against ISIS have been by the Kurdish militias taking back Kurdish territory, where there was no Sunni Arab population that ISIS could enlist to mount a defence. In Syria, outside the Kurdish areas, there are no significant armed groups the Americans can count on as allies. That is what led the former US Army general and CIA director David Petraeus to make the remarkable suggestion of an alliance with “moderate” members of the Nusra Front: that is, an American alliance with Al Qaeda.
In Iraq, it is true, the government has taken back Ramadi, and before that Baji and Tikrit. But the Iraqi Army is as much a business as a military force. Many of its officers are there to enrich themselves, happy to leave the fighting to Shia militias (paid for and directed by Iran). It is far from certain whether the Iraqi Army would be capable of taking back Mosul.
The real problem in Mosul, and elsewhere, is that many Sunni Arabs quite like being ruled by ISIS. Or at least they prefer ISIS to what they fear would be murder and pillage by Shia death squads sent by a government in Baghdad they still think of as sectarian.
Victory over ISIS depends, as it always did, on winning over ordinary Sunnis. It is a political problem as much as a military one. But if Sunnis ruled by ISIS can be persuaded to abandon the caliphate, taking with them the “fair-weather jihadis”, the hardest part of the battle would still be to come. The die-hard loyalists would be left, including many British jihadis. The death throes of the caliphate will therefore take time. During this period, as ISIS has warned, the West can expect more attacks.
By arrangement with the Spectator
