The Islamic State’s ‘Strategic Plan’
After the tribal “Awakening” (Sahwa) against the Islamic State movement in late 2006 was joined by an American troop “surge” in Iraq in January 2007, a stinging military defeat was inflicted on the jihadists, rolling back their territorial control in multiple provinces, ejecting them from the urban zones, and leaving them out in the deserts—their state project seemingly at an end. As we now know, it was not the end. The Islamic State (IS) was taking stock of what had gone wrong and how to recover: its conclusions were written up in a “Strategic Plan”,1 published internally in December 2009 or January 2010,2 a fifty-five-page document that, as one scholar noted, “has the look and feel of a DC think tank report”.3
BACKGROUND
The IS movement has gone under numerous formal names. When it was founded in 1999 by Ahmad al-Khalayleh (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) it was known as Jund al-Sham. After the U.S. response to 9/11 deposed the Taliban-Qaeda regime in Afghanistan in late 2001, Zarqawi fled through Iran and arrived in Baghdad in April 2002 with a cell of Al-Qaeda operatives.
In the year before the U.S.-led invasion, Zarqawi set about fusing his cadre with the militant underground Iraqi Salafi movement that had built up under Saddam Husayn’s increasingly Islamist regime. Zarqawi found particularly receptive ground with figures such as Abd al-Rahman al-Qaduli (Abu Ali al-Anbari) and Wael al-Ta’i (Abu Muhammad al-Furqan), who had created a proto-emirate in the Kurdistan zone. Alongside this, Zarqawi put together a regional network, particularly through Syria, where jihadist recruits like IS’s most famous spokesman Taha Falaha (Abu Muhammad al-Adnani) were waiting for Zarqawi’s call and where the regime of Bashar al-Asad was willing to conspire with the jihadists, particularly assisting in the transfer of foreign fighters, to thwart American plans.
Zarqawi had maintained relations with Al-Qaeda from the moment of his arrival in Iraq and in October 2004 openly pledged allegiance (bay’a) to Usama bin Laden, renaming his organisation, by then called Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM). Zarqawi was killed in June 2006 and replaced as AQM emir by Abd al-Munim al-Badawi (Abu Hamza al-Muhajir). In October 2006, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) was created with Hamid al-Zawi (Abu Umar al-Baghdadi) as its leader. The next month, Al-Badawi gave bay’a to Al-Zawi. Al-Badawi became the deputy and military emir of ISI. Publicly, Al-Qaeda on Iraqi territory had been dissolved, though in reality the ISI leaders continued to recognise Bin Laden and after him the recently departed Ayman al-Zawahiri as their commander.
It was in this period of ambiguity, before the IS movement was expelled from Al-Qaeda in February 2014, that the Strategic Plan was written, just a few months before Al-Zawi and Al-Badawi were killed in April 2010. Al-Zawi’s successor, Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi), would reap the rewards of Al-Zawi’s strategic reassessment after the surge-and-sahwa setback, declaring the caliphate in June 2014.
THE STRATEGIC PLAN
While the Strategic Plan contained some self-criticism, IS largely puts the blame on a media campaign against them. The document begins by mocking “the Crusader forces that overthrew the criminal Ba’thist regime and thus facilitated the establishment of an Islamic State”, and says that it was undoubtedly the annoyance at this that led the Americans to waging a “dirty war” against IS at the height of its power, including staging “bombings of markets, public spaces, and mosques” that were blamed on the mujahideen. IS acquired video proof of Americans planting explosives, according to the document, which “confirmed the innocence of al-Dawla (the State)”, but too many “believed the Crusader media”.4
It was these “insane acts” by the Americans that killed Muslims which helped turn Sunni opinion against IS and trigger the Awakening, the Strategic Plan goes on, taking the chance to counter “the mockery of the State” that it only exists on the internet: all agreed that IS had been removed from territorial control of areas in 2007-08, and an “imaginary state” hardly needs to be overthrown.5 Under a subheading declaring that the Islamic State “remains” (baqiya), the Strategic Plan concedes that the state has fallen, but insists this is merely “God … testing the believers”. Indeed, the collapse happening when it did—rather than later, as with the Taliban, which ruled for five years before its Emirate was crushed—shows God’s “mercy”: the ranks will be purified by this “trial”—only those of true faith will endure—and the state “will return”.6
It might be considered the compliment of vice to virtue that the Strategic Plan attributes the bombing of markets and mosques to the Americans—there is clearly an implicit instruction to cease doing this—but the Strategic Plan regards it as a “malicious” calumny to blame IS for the emergence of the Awakening, and in any case rejects the idea that public opinion should be a factor in implementing (IS’s version of) the shari’a—“the law of God” is not swayed by “whims and [popular] opinions”.7
IS recognised that there were many Iraqis who were content with the post-2008 government, and divides them into two categories: “simple or ignorant people who do not care much about living under any system that does not oppress them”, and “the merchants of jihad and the vampires, who climbed on the skulls of the martyrs” in an effort to gain power, i.e. the Sunni insurgents who turned on IS and joined the Awakening. Dealing with them would require “political flexibility and the use of a lot of intelligence”, as well as “good media and propaganda” work.8 But IS is insistent that crucial to revival is refusing to be deceived into error by demonic forces and remaining on “the straight path that God commanded us to follow”,9 which is to say not deviating from IS’s version of Islam.
The Strategic Plan implores IS’s jihadists to understand that they must navigate tribal socio-political “customs and traditions” carefully, again an implicit criticism that the group has not done so up to this point. The guiding assumption of asabiyya (social cohesion) means that many who joined the Awakening did not do so out of any deep conviction, the document claims, making the case that the apparent unpopularity of IS with the tribes is something of a mirage. In this telling, the Awakening contagion caught on because some leaders joined with the Americans and tribesmen “do not question their brother” if he instructs them, but IS has to be careful in retaliating because tribesmen will “support their brother, whether he is an oppressor or an oppressed person”, so if IS kills someone, and incurs a blood debt from the extended family, it makes it impossible to recruit them.10
By the Strategic Plan’s reckoning, there are two projects in Iraq: a “national one”, embodied in the U.S.-supported government, which “represents all segments of the people,” even “Christians and Satanists”, abides by international conventions, and is recognised by the United Nations and the Arab League, and “an Islamic project on the prophetic method,” drawing on the jurisprudence of the Islamic creed back to the Salaf, “which is represented in the Islamic State of Iraq”, whose beliefs are clear to friend and foe: it “does not believe in anything that contradicts the law of its Lord, and does not know how to compromise”, not even using the excuse of “realism”.11 (The Strategic Plan is very agitated about objections to the jihadist state project based on considerations of “realism”, which it sees as a disingenuous objection raised by secularists,12 and IS will not accept people refusing to join it because they believe the project is “destined for failure”.13)
IS makes clear—as it always has—that it has a special contempt for other Islamists who seek some form of accommodation with the international system: the Strategic Plan specifically names the Iraqi Islamic Party (the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood), a group IS ferociously hates and regards as its primary rival for Iraqi Sunni allegiance, plus HAMAS (the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood), and the Taliban.14 And the primary dispute with these entities is their territorially-limited ambitions, whereas IS’s is a “project of the entire umma”, intending to “gather the Muslims around its banner, so that [its success] will be glory, victory, and pride for Muslims everywhere”.15 As for those who might not want to join this unity project, IS is firm that—by definition since they are on the correct path—it is these rejectors who are splitters within the Muslim community.16
After the lengthy introduction,17 the document says the Strategic Plan will be explained under five headings: (1) unity efforts; (2) balanced military planning; (3) jihadist Awakening Councils; (4) giving due attention to political symbols; and (5) reassurance to opponents. The first section, very dense in theology, essentially calls for all Islamists and insurgents to knuckle under to IS, and interestingly quotes Ayman al-Zawahiri as an authority for this demand.18 The meat of the Strategic Plan is in the second section.19
The Strategic Plan notes that U.S. President Barack Obama had announced (in February 2009) that American troops were going to cease combat missions by August 2010, and withdraw entirely by the end of December 2011. “This brief study will address—God willing—how to strengthen the position of the Islamic State … so that after the withdrawal of [U.S.] forces in nearly two years, it will be in a better position”, politically and militarily, “ready to take over all of Iraq”.20
The Strategic Plan recognised what a “clever and bold idea” it was for the U.S. to deputise the rule of Sunni Arab areas in Iraq to a tribal security structure, and concluded they should annex the structure, through a propaganda campaign to delegitimise tribes receiving patronage from a “foreign occupier” that hates Islam, and smashing the connective tissue between the tribes and the U.S. by assassinating the Awakening leadership.21 IS described the strategy as having three “broad outlines”: (1) “Nine bullets for the apostates and one bullet for the crusaders”; (2) “purification/cleansing” (al-tatheer); and (3) “targeting” (al-astahdaf).22
In terms of the first part, the Strategic Plan notes that the U.S. had been “holed up in isolated and well-protected bases” outside the cities since June 2009:23 it would be a waste of resources to focus on an enemy already heading for the exits, though IS should stage infrequent but significant attacks on the American bases, just to ensure that they feel insecure enough that they stay on the bases and avoid the mission seeming too easy, which might tempt the Americans into staying after 2011.24 Meanwhile, in the tribal areas, IS would make it “so there is absolutely no security in any area”, attacking “on a large scale” the Iraqi army and police that “the Crusaders” were trying to construct to leave in place as a proxy regime after they leave, attriting these forces, keeping them constantly off-balance, unable to establish control, and increasing desertion rates, while deterring family and friends of those murdered or terrorised into quitting from joining the Awakening.25 IS was quite clear that this strategy would not pay off “within a month or two”, but, if accompanied by a media campaign that on the one hand stoked fear of injury and death for those who stood against it and made it a social disgrace to join the Awakening, while on the other hand offering “soft and compassionate” treatment for those who repented and switched sides, eventually the Awakening would disintegrate.26 This well-honed, two-pronged strategy from IS echoes Saddam’s “terror and enticement” (al-tarhib wal-targhib) method of rule, specifically with the tribes.
The cleansing section opens, rather incongruously, with a quote from The Art of War by Sun Tzu (d. 496 BC): “Reduce the hostile chiefs by inflicting damage on them; and make trouble for them, and keep them constantly engaged; hold out specious allurements, and make them rush to any given point.” The Strategic Plan explains that IS’s forces should “cleanse areas” of “puppet Iraqi forces”, targeting the centres where they gather, and this is of “great importance” to the “jihadist project” because waging this kind of “war of attrition” (harb istinzaf) means the security forces will constantly be occupied with rebuilding their bases and trying to replenish their ranks, rather than asserting state control. “This is similar to the scorched-earth policy, but it is more focused”, the Strategic Plan says: creating an environment of persistent insecurity will not only exhaust the military and police; it will allow IS to “strengthen its influence … in those areas”, filling in the gaps left by the Iraqi state, and where possible flipping security forces to “make good use of them”.27
The targeting IS has in mind in the Strategic Plan is on the “effective cadres and … well-trained battalions”: targeting the leaders of the Awakening “does not mean much” militarily, but eliminating capable officers and units—and specialists like engineers that reinforce the Iraqi military—removes capabilities that are difficult to replace and will lead to “the destruction of the Crusaders’ dreams”. “Targeting this qualified minority must be the most important priority” in all regions, the Strategic Plan emphasises. The other aspect to targeting, the Strategic Plan says, is hitting “strong political symbols”: this has to be done with careful long-term planning and intelligence gathering, by recruiting people in the security details of senior politicians if necessary, to kill government officials and sow chaos in the political system. The aim of this political warfare is to show “the world and the Muslim community inside Iraq that this government is very weak and incapable of protecting itself, let alone protecting others, therefore relying on such a government is not the right choice”. As well as forcing Iraqis to look to IS for safety, IS intends this targeting to spread “despair” among the Americans about ever finding a path to a strong and self-reliant Iraqi government.28
The section on creating jihadist Awakening councils focused on ways to displace the Americans as patrons of the tribal security structure. “This will not be easy”, the Strategic Plan concedes: the Americans pay well and there are security, social, and other impediments; many fear what it means to live under (IS’s) Islamic law. IS sees the way around this as recruiting “honourable shaykhs” from among the tribal leadership, who will bring their clans with them, and, at the other end, recruiting among the youth, which should be done by da’wa (proselytism), so that the young men are indoctrinated into loyalty to IS, instead of just being hired because of material needs.29
The political symbols section is devoted to the idea of IS raising such symbols as a counter-moral universe to that of the Iraqi state: such symbols would take the form of individuals, like Zarqawi, whose sacrifice and dedication for the cause inspires emulation, and by the rank-and-file of IS cultivating a reputation for being morally upstanding—devoid of monetary corruption, unlike the government; fair in adjudicating legal disputes; and more generally courageous, generous, and truthful. In this regard, IS has kind words for Taliban emir Mullah Muhammad Umar, at least the way the group has built up the mystique around him, a notable improvement over the Mujahideen who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, where the groups established no one leader of the jihad, so fell into civil war once the Red Army was out. An example of what not to do given by the Strategic Plan is the then-recent events in Iran, where the Supreme Leader Ali Khamene’i oversaw a blatantly fraudulent election to keep Mahmud Ahmadinejad as president.30
The last section of the Strategic Plan, a seemingly unusual one for IS, is about reassuring opponents. The document notes that, by Islamic Tradition, one of the first things the Prophet Muhammad did at Medina was reach an accord with the Jews to protect their lives and property, and IS should and has followed this example in Iraq, notably with the Christians, who were, by IS’s telling, protected in areas IS controlled—if they paid the jizya tax (extortion) money and acknowledged their subordination. The Strategic Plan is very clear that the full shari’a should be imposed, including the “hadd [or hudud] punishments”, but the issue of the minorities is “a sensitive topic”, much-focused upon by IS’s enemies, so the jihadists have to be very careful, avoiding actions that cause unnecessary political damage, even if those actions are religiously permissible.31
THE STRATEGIC PLAN: THEN AND NOW
The broad theme of the Strategic Plan is to use a mix of inducement and terror—the carrot and the stick—to bring the Sunni tribes and insurgents who turned on IS in the 2006-07 Awakening back into the jihadist fold. This strategy had been developed in the field by Al-Zawi and Al-Badawi in late 2007, when the crucial decision was taken to allow repentant Sahwat to re-join the Islamic State, rather than holding to the letter of jihadi-Salafist doctrine and seeking to exterminate all “apostates”. This was an immensely controversial move ideologically—it is the context for the defection of the ISI chief judge Abu Sulayman al-Utaybi in August 2007, a saga with a long afterlife. But ISI registered a quick success in assassinating Abd al-Sattar Abu Risha, the Awakening leader in Anbar who began the whole process in September 2006, and by late 2009, with the IS movement beginning to see results, it codified its formula in the Strategic Plan.
In correctly reading the Awakening movement as an elite phenomenon of tribal and insurgent leaders, with the Sunni masses beneath them reluctant to follow the course of collaboration with the Americans and the Shi’a-led government, and understanding that the military struggle is not the centre of gravity in an insurgency, IS was able to see—as the Americans did not—that the setbacks of 2007-08, losing territory and emirs, were not the metrics that mattered. The battle was on Iraq’s political terrain, and there IS was steadily advancing, destabilising and delegitimising the Awakening through a strategic messaging (or propaganda) campaign that gained in credibility because it was matched by the group’s actions, casting the Awakening leaders as “traitors” and itself as the guardian of Sunni interests, limiting its terror to those intransigent Sunni opponents who spurned its extensive efforts win them back.
Already returned via the Strategic Plan framework to its primary sanctuaries by mid-2011, the American departure from Iraq in December 2011—and a little help from the Iraqi government under Nuri al-Maliki, which stopped paying the Awakening militias and then began persecuting their members—allowed IS to complete the design laid out in the Strategic Plan to collapse the Awakening: nearly 1,350 Awakening members fell to IS assassins from 2009 to 2013, often with the permission of rival leaders within the same tribes who had been recruited by IS. The disintegration of the Awakening structure created the vacuum for IS to seize Fallujah in January 2014 and begin spreading out in Anbar. By June 2014, the Iraqi security forces, hollowed out by years of attrition and infiltration, imploded. IS moved from shadow governance to overt control of the bastion it never lost, Mosul, and then it rolled over the Sunni Arab zones and proclaimed them part of its caliphate.
IS had made no secret of its strategy: its public messaging in real time, through the leader up to 2010 Al-Zawi and then the spokesman Falaha, from his first speech to the last, reflected its private thinking, hammering on the theme that—whatever tactical mistakes might have been made by IS in handling the tribes—the key to victory was to maintain their strategic course and ideology through this tribulation God had sent them. Indeed, IS claimed to welcome the test as a means of ridding itself of those whose faith was too weak or impure—which would be easy to dismiss as “cope” if this strategy had not resulted in the creation of the caliphate, ratifying for IS that Al-Zawi had been right all along and leaving them with the conviction that the destruction of the caliphate in 2019 is merely the resetting of the board in a game they know how to win.
Post has been updated
REFERENCES
The full title of the document is, “A Strategic Plan to Strengthen the Political Situation of the Islamic State of Iraq” (Khutta istratijiyya li-ta’ziz al-mawqif al-siyasi li-dawlat al-Iraq al-Islamiyya). The Strategic Plan is also sometimes called “the Fallujah Memorandum” (Mufakirat al-Fallujah), since this label is also used on the first page. The full document in Arabic can be accessed here.
The Strategic Plan is dated Muharram 1431 (18 December 2009 – 15 January 2010).
William McCants (2015), The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State, p. 79.
Strategic Plan, p. 3.
Strategic Plan, p. 4.
Strategic Plan, p. 5.
Strategic Plan, p. 11.
Strategic Plan, p. 6.
Strategic Plan, p. 7.
Strategic Plan, p. 8.
Strategic Plan, p. 12.
Strategic Plan, pp. 19-21.
Strategic Plan, p. 23.
The Strategic Plan (pp. 22-3) justifies IS declaring its state in October 2006 with reference to the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP). The Strategic Plan says the state declaration was not a unilateral move: IS consulted with other Sunni groups, “with the exception of the one faction [i.e., the IIP] that was fully involved in the political process”. IS concedes that it was unable to contact some groups before the declaration, but contends that its hand was forced when it came to the timing because of “the fear that the Islamic Party would establish a Sunni region akin to the Kurdish [autonomous] region in an attempt to appropriate the jihadist project and to gather the Sunnis around its political symbols. The announcement of the [Islamic] State blocked this scheme before it materialised.” HAMAS and the Taliban were mentioned on page 13.
Strategic Plan, p. 15.
Strategic Plan, p. 18.
Strategic Plan, pp. 3-15.
Strategic Plan, pp. 30-1.
Strategic Plan, pp. 33-8.
Strategic Plan, p. 6.
Strategic Plan, pp. 38-9.
Strategic Plan, p. 33.
Strategic Plan, p. 38.
Strategic Plan, p. 35.
Strategic Plan, pp. 33-4.
Strategic Plan, p. 34.
Strategic Plan, p. 36.
Strategic Plan, pp. 36-7.
Strategic Plan, pp. 39-41.
Strategic Plan, pp. 43-8.
Strategic Plan, pp. 49-51.