When, in early 2010, 34 of the group’s 42 most senior leaders had been killed or captured, the group “began launching well-planned, large-scale assaults on prisons where their leaders were being held.”
It was a success, and now the group’s leadership structure is strong on a local as well as regional level, with commanders responsible for managing military campaigns “and maintaining momentum,” Lister writes.
Yet a clearly-defined military structure is also easier to target. “A concerted intelligence-led operation should be initiated at the local level by local actors” to then be “fed into existing military operations against IS,” the report notes. “A sustained erosion of IS’s experienced leadership structure would make the group more vulnerable to military ground maneuvers by rival groups in Syria and, if established, in Iraq.
Islamic State leaders are also responsible for professionalizing a force that is estimated at some 31,000 fighters from an estimated 90 different countries. Yet this also tends to have the effect of diminishing much of the glamor that idealistic, often naive, young would-be fighters have come to expect – another aspect the US military could use against the group, analysts point out.
Islamic State fighters are forced to take part in bathroom cleaning detail for example, which recently prompted one recruit to call it quits in disgust. He also complained to India’s intelligence officers upon his return home that he suffered a bullet wound for which he did not receive proper medical attention. These are the sorts of things the US military and clandestine agencies can exploit through, for example, social media.
