Guest post by Joe Giordano, Author of Drone Strike (Anthony Provati thrillers)

Guest Post: Strategies and Tactics of the ISIL Caliphate – Joe Giordano

The Management of Savagery

Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) supported by U.S. airstrikes will eradicate the last stronghold of ISIL, The Islamic State in the Levant’s caliphate.

The strategy and tactics ISIL employed to establish and expand power could be termed the ‘management of savagery,’.

As a rallying cry for Moslems around the world, ISIL’s initial goals were to create a caliph, a religious figurehead, and a caliphate in the name of God and Arab history and to take territory in Syria as a beachhead to invade and conquer Iraq.

The caliphate modeled itself after Saddam Hussein’s former, omnipresent security apparatus. An emir of intelligence supervised surveillance, espionage, murder, and kidnapping. The principles applied were: everyone watches everyone and deceive all but those who love God.

In villages, ISIL opened Islamic missionary centers for recruitment and to spy.  Powerful families were investigated to discover their source of income, and if any of their activities (homosexuality, secret affairs, criminality) could be blackmailed under Sharia law. Marriage into influential families was promoted. Local imams were scrutinized for details on their life and family, their political leanings, and opinion on jihad. Clan heads would be intimidated to take a loyalty oath or be kidnaped and killed along with anyone refusing involvement or standing in the way.

ISIL sought recruits critical of sheiks, former intelligence operatives, men without jobs, disaffected from society, bitter and unemployed. They sought nationalists not Islamists. They exploited the faith of others. Foreign recruits ranged from Saudis, Tunisians, school dropouts from Europe, battle-tested Chechens and Uzbeks, the odd American, Turks, Egyptians, and Indonesians.

Militarily, they sought to capture weapons depots and raise operational funds from black market oil and refined product sales, the illicit drug trade, and the smuggling of looted antiquities.