ISIS: The State of Terror Part 3

For more than fifty years, the Syrian people have lived under a military dictators.h.i.+p. A single family has ruled the country since 1970, starting with General Hafez al a.s.sad and his son, Bashar al a.s.sad, who succeeded him in 2000. Speech is extensively censored and those whose words displease the regime are subject to hara.s.sment or arrest. Members of the elite have lived very well. But there has been high unemployment, especially among youth.27 When popular protests helped unseat the long-standing dictators.h.i.+ps in Egypt and Tunisia in early 2011, young Syrians were inspired to follow suit. For the crime of spray-painting antigovernment graffiti in the town of Daraa, fifteen teenage boys were arrested and brutally tortured. Thousands turned out to protest this vicious act, and the regime responded by opening fire on the a.s.sembled crowds.28, 29 Soon afterward, a Facebook page called for nationwide protests and thousands flooded the streets to protest the brutality of the a.s.sad regime. In response to these protests, a.s.sad offered concessions, including ending the "state of emergency" that had been in place for nearly fifty years. Still the protests continued to spread. By May of that year, more than a thousand people had been killed by the regime, according to Syrian human rights groups.30 On May 28, 2011, the corpse of a thirteen-year old child was delivered back to his family in the town of Daraa, where the protests began.31 The child's genitalia had been removed, and his corpse was burned and riddled with gunshot wounds. Some fifty thousand protesters gathered outside Daraa. The Syrian government responded by again firing on the protesters and disconnecting the Internet.32 Western governments called on a.s.sad to step down, and the Arab League condemned the crackdown. According to Human Rights Watch, the Syrian government has taken tens of thousands of detainees into custody, solely on the basis of their peaceful opposition to the regime.

Many of the detainees were brutally tortured. Even the hospital staff treating wounded protesters were arrested and tortured.33 Human Rights Watch and others have reported that Syrian security forces were using rape systematically to torture men, women, and children, some as young as twelve years old.34 If the sectarian clashes in Iraq provided an opening for ISI to regroup, the violence in Syria gave Baghdadi a pretext to expand. The border between Syria and Iraq had long been porous. Long-standing smuggling routes that were used to move fighters and supplies from Syria during the war in Iraq were now reversed to bring fighters and supplies back into Syria.

In support of this effort, Baghdadi sent a number of operatives into Syria with the task of setting up a new jihadist organization to operate there. Among them was Abu Mohammed al Jawlani, a Syrian-born member of al Qaeda in Iraq who had spent time in Camp Bucca with Baghdadi and had more recently served as the regional leader of ISI in Mosul.35 Jawlani quickly established himself as leader of a group that came to be known as Jabhat al Nusra, which at first positioned itself as an independent ent.i.ty with no ties to either al Qaeda Central or the ISI.36 Within a year, al Nusra was a recognized leader among insurgent groups in Syria.37 Moderate opposition groups gradually found themselves struggling to acquire funding and weapons, while al Nusra and other Islamist groups were funded externally by donations and internally by the seizure of equipment and resources on the battlefield. Islamist groups soon had the upper hand over the secular opposition.38 For the first six months after the announcement of its creation, Nusra engaged in the same kinds of brutal attacks that had been the favorites of AQI and ISI: it bombed urban areas, killing civilians by the dozen, and targeted alleged government sympathizers and cooperators.39 These tactics alienated both the civilian population and the local Syrian revolutionaries.

In late summer 2012, al Nusra changed its approach. It started to cooperate with Syrian nationalist groups such as the Free Syrian Army, but it also reached out to forge relations.h.i.+ps with groups with widely divergent ideologies, as long as they shared Nusra's commitment to ousting the a.s.sad regime.40 The new strategy worked. By late 2012, Aaron Zelin described Nusra as "one of the opposition's best fighting forces, and locals viewed its members as fair arbiters when dealing with corruption and social services."41 At the same time, Baghdadi and ISI remained busy in Iraq. The two groups were expanding in different countries, but via markedly different strategies. Each was also growing in influence, setting the stage for the rivalry and confrontation that would ultimately end in al Qaeda Central's disavowal of ISIS.

On April 9, 2013, Baghdadi announced a merger of ISI and al Nusra, calling the new group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). In effect Baghdadi was unilaterally establis.h.i.+ng himself as the leader of both organizations (ISI and al Nusra), now merged into one. The announcement surprised both Zawahiri and Jawlani. Neither of them had signed off on the decision, and neither was enthusiastic about it. Al Nusra immediately announced its allegiance to Zawahiri and al Qaeda Central, placing al Nusra and ISIS in direct confrontation.42 Zawahiri scrambled to solve the crisis between the groups and to a.s.sert AQC's dominance over its affiliates. In a private letter that leaked to the press, he declared the merger null and void, ruling that Baghdadi would continue to run operations in Iraq and Jawlani would continue in Syria.43 But Baghdadi rejected the ruling in a defiant and very public audio statement released through jihadi media outlets: "When it comes to the letter of Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri-may G.o.d protect him-we have many legal and methodological reservations," he said. Baghdadi said he would continue to pursue a united Islamic state crossing the border between the two countries.44 Unsurprisingly, relations between ISIS, al Nusra, and al Qaeda Central continued to deteriorate as ISIS peeled off fighters from al Nusra and sent reinforcements from Iraq. Unlike al Nusra, which had forged alliances and won respect from other rebel factions, ISIS took an unyielding approach, refusing to share power in areas where it operated. Starting in mid-2013, these tensions evolved into violence, and by early 2014, a war within a war was being fought across northern Syria, with ISIS battling a number of other rebel factions, including al Nusra.45 On February 2, 2014, al Qaeda formally disavowed ISIS in a written statement: "ISIS is not a branch of the [al Qaeda] group, we have no organizational relations.h.i.+p with it, and [al Qaeda] is not responsible for its actions."46 Ever since the days of Zarqawi and bin Laden, al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate had been troublesome, but the differences over tactics and ideology had been fought out in private and papered over in public. Baghdadi's outright defiance and his escalating violence against other jihadists in Syria had forced Zawahiri's hand.

If the emir of al Qaeda expected contrition, he was gravely mistaken. ISIS responded swiftly and with characteristic violence. On February 23, 2014, a suicide bomber a.s.sa.s.sinated Abu Khaled al Suri, a longtime al Qaeda member believed to be Zawahiri's personal emissary in Syria, who had been charged with seeking a resolution to the dispute. There was little doubt who was responsible.47 In May, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al Adnani issued a scathing speech addressing Zawahiri, sarcastically t.i.tled, "Sorry, Emir of al Qaeda," in which he mockingly apologized for ISIS's failure to follow Zawahiri's weak example.

"Sorry for this frank report," he said, but members of al Nusra had been heard saying that the 63-year-old Zawahiri was "senile."

"Sorry, emir of al Qaeda," he said, but Zawahiri had made a "laughingstock" of al Qaeda. "Sorry," he said, but ISIS had questions about why it should continue to follow al Qaeda's losing example. "We await your wise reply."48 ISIS had successes to back up its swagger. In a sustained campaign throughout 2014, it seized and consolidated control of Raqqa, Syria, and most of the surrounding area, driving out both the regime and other rebels. It established Raqqa as its capital in Syria, populating it with hordes of foreign fighters and implementing ISIS's harsh interpretation of Shariah law.49 It also won significant control of Syrian city Deir ez Zour from al Nusra and other opposition forces, s.h.i.+fting considerable resources from al Nusra to ISIS and providing a crucial political and logistical way station near the border with Iraq.50 A CALIPHATE CLAIMED.

ISIS continued to make steady gains in both Iraq and Syria, controlling ever larger swaths of territory and aggressively governing in the areas where it could consolidate control. It captured Fallujah in January and kept on going.51 To accomplish this feat, ISIS crafted a series of complex alliances with Sunni Arab tribes in Iraq, even with tribes that did not necessarily share ISIS's extreme ideology. Many Sunni Arabs were fed up with the Maliki regime, which had continued to describe the Sunni Arab uprising against his sectarian policies as terrorism. Members of the Awakening Movement (who had sided with the U.S. military in the 2007 surge) felt particularly betrayed. Maliki had agreed to offer them a role in the military and police forces, but had not fulfilled his promise. Some angry members joined ISIS, while others chose to sit out the battle.52 Tensions were exacerbated by the regime's reliance on s.h.i.+a militias to fight ISIS in Anbar province and other areas. Many of these groups were Iranian proxies, owing more allegiance to Tehran than Baghdad, and some had returned to Iraq after fighting ISIS in Syria.53 For Iran, the growing chaos presented an opportunity to solidify its influence over Iraq and its prime minister.

More than eighty Sunni tribes reportedly fought alongside ISIS, and at times it was difficult to know who was in control of any specific area.54 But ISIS was content to take the credit, and no one else stepped up to speak for the insurgency. The coalition seemed legitimately shaky on its face, and reports of the internal tensions led many to speculate that it could tear itself apart at any moment. But somehow, it kept hanging on.55 In early June 2014, ISIS captured Mosul, a city of 1.5 million people and the site of Iraq's largest dam.56 Because it was so dangerous for journalists and other noncombatants to operate in areas afflicted with insurgency, the victory seemed to come out of nowhere. Certainly Western governments seemed to be caught flat-footed.

In addition to the unusually thick fog of war, however, there was a truly unexpected development. The United States had invested $25 billion in training and equipping the Iraqi army over the course of eight years.57 That investment evaporated in the blink of an eye as Iraqi soldiers turned tail and fled in the face of ISIS's a.s.sault on Mosul.

According to the Los Angeles Times, which interviewed some of the soldiers who had served in Mosul, the senior commanders fled when they saw ISIS's now-infamous black flags moving into the city. Corruption and sectarian tensions with the army itself may also have played a role; the regime had systematically driven Sunnis out of senior military positions, often in favor of less experienced s.h.i.+'a officers who had important friends.58 In a Reuters investigative report, Iraqi military commanders also detailed the breakdown and said the government had declined offers of help from powerful Kurdish fighting forces.59 Reports circulated on social media that ISIS had looted the banks in Mosul, which were later denied by the Iraqi government, but the denials-sourced to Iraqi bankers and officials whose own businesses rested on their ability to secure funds and the country's economy-were not any more credible than the original reports.60 It hardly mattered. No one disputed that ISIS had become the richest terrorist organization in the world, and was getting richer by the day. Most agreed its cash reserves ran into hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even a billion, and by November, some estimated it was generating $1 million to $3 million per day, although a large number of unknowns plagued such questions.61 Unlike al Qaeda and many other terrorist groups, which rely on external sources of funding, including "charitable" donations, much of ISIS's revenue was generated internally, from taxes on local populations, looting, the sale of antiquities, and oil smuggling, with the latter seen as one of the most important sources.62 ISIS tapped into "long-standing and deeply rooted" black markets and smuggling routes, making traditional instruments for fighting terrorist financing far less useful.63 It also raised millions by ransoming Western hostages.64 While the United States and the United Kingdom have government policies that forbid paying ransoms, many other countries, including some in Europe, have paid to have hostages released.65 Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, fell soon after Mosul. At many stops along its march, ISIS captured U.S.-supplied military equipment from fleeing Iraqi soldiers, which they trumpeted with photos on social media.66 On June 29, ISIS made a move in the world of ideas that was as bold as its military blitzkrieg on the ground. In an audio recording from its chief spokesman, Abu Muhammad al Adnani, ISIS declared that it was reconst.i.tuting the caliphate, a historical Islamic empire with vast resonance for Muslims around the world, but especially for Salafi jihadists, whose efforts were all nominally in the service of that goal.

ISIS emir Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was announced as the new "Caliph Ibrahim," and he showed his face in public for the first time a few days later, delivering a sermon at a Mosul mosque. The new caliphate would simply be known as the Islamic State, the announcement said, dropping "Iraq and Syria" from the organization's name to reflect its global claim of dominion.67 Neverthless, many outside observers (and even some supporters) continued to use the acronym ISIS to refer to the group.

The announcement (discussed at more length in Chapter 5) demanded the loyalty of all Muslims around the world (a laughable concept) and specifically from other jihadist groups. It was met by wild enthusiasm from ISIS supporters and a mix of hostility and incredulity from almost everyone else.

The jihadists continued pus.h.i.+ng south into territory controlled by ethnic Kurds under Iraq's federal system. The Kurdish militia, known as the peshmerga, was no match for the heavily armed ISIS fighters. While they put up a better fight than the Iraqi forces, they too were forced to retreat.68 The advance created a humanitarian crisis. The area that ISIS had captured had a large population of religious and ethnic minorities, including an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 Yazidis, who practice an ancient, complex religion mixing beliefs from a number of sources. ISIS views them as devil wors.h.i.+ppers and constructed a religious justification to kill all the men and enslave the women and children (see Chapter 9).69 The Yazidis were now defenseless against ISIS's genocidal intentions, and ISIS hunted and then surrounded them as they fled to Iraq's Mount Sinjar with no food and no water. The United States, the United Kingdom, and France made emergency airdrops of food and water to the Yazidi refugees to forestall what the UN referred to as a threatened genocide.70 But still, the siege continued. On August 7, President Obama announced that the United States would take military action against ISIS to help secure the safety of the refugees and American personnel in Iraq.

"I know that many of you are rightly concerned about any American military action in Iraq, even limited strikes like these," the president said in an address. "I understand that. I ran for this office in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home, and that's what we've done. As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq."

U.S. air strikes, combined with air support from the Iraqis and ground support from the peshmerga and the Kurdish militant groups Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its Syrian offshoot, the People's Protection Units (YPG), allowed tens of thousands of Yazidis to escape the newly rechristened Islamic State, but the continuing expansion of the insurgency put thousands more in harm's way, leading to ma.s.s killing of the men and the inst.i.tutionalized slavery of women and children, including horrific ongoing s.e.xual abuse of captured women.71 Faced with U.S. air strikes, the group began implementing a strategy from The Management of Savagery called "paying the price," in which it responded to any hint of aggression with extreme violence. In September, ISIS began to release videos online featuring the execution by beheading of Western hostages, which continued into the winter (see Chapter 5).

Nevertheless, ISIS continued its aggressive military campaign, even as the world slowly awakened to its depredations. Everywhere they controlled territory, ISIS inst.i.tuted a harsh theocratic rule, which included at least skeletal governance, with a functioning economy and civil inst.i.tutions. The initial wave of strikes in Iraq slowed ISIS's advance but did not significantly reduce its dominion.72 The effects of U.S. engagement in Iraq rippled over into Syria. On September 9, an explosion ma.s.sacred the senior leaders.h.i.+p of Ahrar al Sham, perhaps the most important jihadist group fighting the a.s.sad regime after the al Qaedalinked Jabhat al Nusra, and several other leaders within the Islamic Front, a broad coalition of Islamist rebel groups. The bombing targeted a meeting in which top leaders of the group were has.h.i.+ng out an internal dispute over its recent alliance with a coalition that included all of the remaining U.S.-supported rebels, and the question of whether to pursue a more inclusive strategy in Syria. It was unclear whether the attack originated with the regime or with ISIS, but the dramatic a.s.sault threw the alliance of Syrian fighters not aligned with ISIS into deep turmoil.73 Despite his promise of a limited role for the United States in Iraq, President Obama faced mounting pressure to do something about the group. In an address on September 10, he announced the goal of U.S. intervention had expanded.

"Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, [ISIS] through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy," he said, despite the fact that ISIS was far more significant as an insurgency than as a terrorist group. As part of this objective, the president said, an international coalition would strike ISIS in Syria as well as in Iraq.74 Soon afterward, the partic.i.p.ants in the coalition grew to include the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and-significantly-Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, Sunni-majority countries with the most to lose from ISIS's imperial ambitions and efforts to recruit in the region.75 The United Arab Emirates sent a female fighter pilot to lead one of its missions.

This significant expansion of the rules of engagement with ISIS became much more complicated with the first coalition strikes in Syria. During the first raid on September 22, 2014, American planes bombed not just ISIS targets but Jabhat al Nusra, which had broken away from ISIS months earlier and established itself as a leading force in the rebel alliance to overthrow Bashar al a.s.sad.

According to the administration, and backed up to some extent by open-source reports out of the Syrian civil war, the strikes were aimed at the "Khorasan Group," a virtually unheard-of cell of senior al Qaeda Central operatives that had been dispatched to Syria to plot attacks against the West.76 Information about the Khorasan Group was sketchy and conflicted, but the impact of the strikes was clear. Jabhat al Nusra responded by taking the offensive to the few remaining "moderate" rebels supported by the United States, dealing them a devastating blow. The future of the secular rebellion in Syria teetered on the brink of annihilation as ISIS continued to fight.77 Charles Lister of the Brookings Inst.i.tution, one of the most insightful followers of jihadist movements in Syria, wrote in early December: . . . while surprising to outsiders, the Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra is still to this day perceived by many as an invaluable actor in the fight against Damascus and as such, the strikes on its positions are seen by many as evidence of U.S. interests being contrary to the revolution [against a.s.sad].78 However, the situation is fluid, Lister noted in an email weeks later, and al Nusra's expanding conflict with other rebel factions may be starting to undermine its position. In late December, as this book was going to press, the largest Islamist factions in Syria announced a new coalition that excluded both al Nusra and ISIS.79 As of this writing, the advance of ISIS on the ground had been slowed by coalition air strikes and other action. While it continued to cling to the vast majority of its territory, there were signs that the coalition campaign was having some effect, for instance a protracted battle for the town of Kobane, defended by Kurdish peshmerga. The fate of Kobane was still undecided as this book went to press, but the contrast to ISIS's swift seizure of Mosul was stark.80 The group faced other setbacks, including repeated strikes by both the coalition and the a.s.sad regime on its strongholds in the Raqqa region (the latter killing large numbers of civilians), but it also showed signs that it was adapting to coalition strikes by hiding operatives.81 Lister wrote in November that ISIS was fielding approximately 25,000 fighters, including terrorist and insurgent divisions, as well as a force more resembling a traditional army's infantry. According to Lister, ISIS controls territory from the Aleppo region of Syria to the Salah ad Din province in Iraq,82 an area larger than the United Kingdom.83 It rules using a structure of wilayat or "provinces," each with its own governor, and local governments beneath them, as well as a series of administrative units, in many ways replicating a typical government bureaucracy. Its military force is primarily dominated by Iraqis, while many of its civil inst.i.tutions are staffed by foreigners (see Chapter 4).84 The structure is designed to survive the death of Baghdadi, and while the symbolic impact of killing the so-called caliph could be destabilizing in a number of ways, it is by no means certain that removing ISIS's leaders.h.i.+p would cripple the organization.

ISIS's strength on the ground is an important part of the story, but only a part. Through a media strategy as aggressive as its military tactics, ISIS seeks to extend its influence around the world.

It has set its sights on winning support from members of the global al Qaeda network and it has created remotely directed outposts, wilayat as far away as Algeria and Libya.

ISIS intends not just to "remain" in Iraq and Syria, but to "expand" around the world, in the words of Baghdadi and other top leaders. In order to achieve this goal, it has projected its influence to potential recruits and hoped-for allies around the world using methods unlike any other extremist group. To understand how this projection works is to open a window on ISIS's goals, beliefs, and its ultimate fate.

CHAPTER THREE.

FROM VANGUARD TO SMART MOB.

It was 1988, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was entering its final days. International agreements had been signed and sealed, and the enemy forces slowly but inexorably withdrew. For ordinary Afghans, this prospect must have been a relief, a hopeful moment. Perhaps the long and costly war might finally end and some semblance of ordinary life finally return.

For the interlopers, it was a hopeful moment as well, but their desires were different. Foreign fighters, subscribed to a jihadist ideology, had flocked to the country by the thousands. They believed, not without some merit, that they had defeated one of the world's two superpowers. But for their leaders, the end of fighting provided no relief. Their pa.s.sions and hopes were stoked by the prospect that this war would not only continue but expand to encompa.s.s the world.

For their plan to work, secrecy was required. Although thousands had come to fight the Soviets in the first stage, part two would be different. Through August and September, small meetings of two to fifteen leaders of the "Arab Afghans" were convened in Peshawar, Pakistan, to lay down plans for the next generation of violent jihad.1 The new organization would consist of two groups, one with limited scope and wide members.h.i.+p, and one with more ambitious scope and limited members.h.i.+p. The broad group would consist of would-be foreign fighters and Islamic radicals from around the world. These would be trained in insurgent and terrorist tactics in Afghanistan, then sent forth into the world to pursue their own agendas-always remembering the relations.h.i.+ps they had forged.

From this large pool, which would eventually sprawl into the tens of thousands, the "best brothers" would be invited into a more exclusive circle and indoctrinated into the overarching conspiracy to change the path of history. These men would form a small and tightly cohesive organization of elites, which they referred to as the military base, and later simply as the base-in Arabic the word was al qaeda.

At its inception, al Qaeda numbered just over three hundred men, and while the ranks would fluctuate over time, they rarely exceeded several hundred. In addition to those few hundred, its employees and allies numbered in the thousands. Members of the core group had to swear complete obedience (bayah) to the emir (Arabic for "prince") of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. One of the terror group's founding memos listed four requirements for becoming an al Qaeda member, in bullet-point format-two of them were obedience. (The other two were a personal referral from a trusted member of the inner circle and "good manners.") Al Qaeda was exclusive, but not isolationist. With a substantial sum of money drawn from Osama bin Laden's deep pockets, it began to send tendrils around the world, financing and providing technical support to everything from a Muslim insurgency in the Philippines to the first World Trade Center bombing to the full-on war in Bosnia. Key al Qaeda members moved in and out of these activities. They played a critical role but were rarely the prime drivers of events. Al Qaeda guided and it supported, but it did not claim credit and it did not advertise its name.

Instead, al Qaeda was a vanguard movement, a cabal that saw itself as the elite intellectual leaders of a global ideological revolution that it would a.s.sist and manipulate. Al Qaeda would set the stage for a global Muslim revolution by priming the pump.

It trained skilled fighters and terrorists using a network of training camps, some that it owned directly and others that it financed or supplied.2 It funded the spread of propaganda and ideology, often relying on the work of high-profile clerics and scholars who were not obviously cogs of the core organization, such as the late Abdullah Azzam and Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheikh."3 It facilitated and eventually directly committed terrorist attacks in order to teach the global community of Muslims, known in Arabic as the ummah, that it could fight back.

But like many other terrorist organizations, al Qaeda imagined the revolution would be a spontaneous happening. The function of terrorism was to awaken the sleeping ma.s.ses and point them in the right direction.4 The ma.s.ses would then rise up and more or less take matters into their own hands.

Through the 1990s, al Qaeda grew into a corporation, with a payroll and benefits department, and operatives who traveled around the world inserting themselves into local conflicts, either to a.s.sist radical movements on the ground or profit from them, as when it laundered money through Bosnian relief charities or trained members of a jihadist cell in the United States that carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and tried to bomb New York City landmarks just weeks later.5 During this phase, it increasingly devoted a.s.sets to committing its own terrorist attacks, instead of acting through proxies. Its simultaneous truck bomb attacks on U.S. emba.s.sies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 represented its most important move into this arena. By the end of the 1990s, bin Laden's deep pockets were starting to show the strain of all this activity (helped along by some catastrophic business developments), and the organization regrouped in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, where its resources turned more and more toward spectacular terrorist attacks, culminating in terrible fas.h.i.+on on September 11, 2001.

Throughout this, al Qaeda remained the vanguard, the elite. It laid plans but did not broadcast them. After the emba.s.sy bombings and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, it came out of the closet with a feature-length propaganda video that showcased many of its key leaders and its very basic message of armed resistance.6 But the video's simple problem/solution formulation did not offer al Qaeda as a political force, only as a paramilitary force multiplier for the hypothetical Muslim silent majority waiting to be mobilized.

Al Qaeda was the spark. The existence of gasoline was a.s.sumed.

The hoped-for spontaneous Muslim revolution did not emerge in the days and weeks that followed 9/11, but the attack thrust al Qaeda into its own sort of revolution-it would no longer lurk in the shadows, pulling strings from a remote enclave in Afghanistan. The terrorist organization was now one side in a full-fledged war, and with war came the necessity of politics.

Al Qaeda was slow to adapt, and it never fully a.s.similated the implications of the change in its role. Weeks turned into months, and no claim of responsibility for the 9/11 attacks or taunting challenge was forthcoming7 (a partially completed but unreleased video was later found on an al Qaeda hard drive).8 It released only a smattering of uninformative and uncompelling press statements and video clips.

It was as if bin Laden believed al Qaeda could somehow continue to act as the hidden hand after killing thousands of Americans in a single unforgettable spectacle (although the invasion of Afghanistan may have derailed possible plans to claim the attack). It took years for al Qaeda to begin fully exploiting the media-ready elements of September 11, although the response from Western news outlets helped fill the void.

Between its failure to plan and a failure to antic.i.p.ate the fury of America's response, al Qaeda was so slow off the mark with its messaging that the CIA beat it to the punch, airing an intercepted video featuring bin Laden discussing the planning for the attack before al Qaeda could even attempt to claim it.9 As the full force of the U.S. military descended on al Qaeda in Afghanistan, its ability to keep operations centralized began to decay almost immediately.

Al Qaeda had previously maintained operatives under its core organization in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, who were subjected to a severe crackdown in the wake of 9/11.10 While the group was semi-independent and intermingled with other jihadist communities dating back to the Soviet days, few policy makers and a.n.a.lysts saw reason to delineate between the Yemeni and Saudi branches and their parent. Each branch fell under attack, and both suffered serious losses.11 Beyond the Gulf, the core al Qaeda had resources and loose alliances around the world, most of which came under greater or lesser amounts of pressure in the months that followed. Al Qaeda adapted to this new reality, but it did not a.s.similate its implications.

RISE OF THE AFFILIATES.

American media and scholars.h.i.+p tend to treat the affiliate system as if it were a robust, well-defined structure, rooted in history. In fact, it is barely a decade old, with much of its activity weighted toward the second half of that span, and its history is one of fractiousness from the start.

When America turned its full attention to al Qaeda in the wake of September 11, the result was like a fist smas.h.i.+ng down on a ball of clay.

The terrorist organization was flattened and thinned, bent out of shape, and spread out over a wider area, as key personnel fled the onslaught in Afghanistan for points abroad, and operatives who were already in the field found themselves increasingly isolated.

Tight lines of control became attenuated. Orders had to travel more slowly, over longer and more exposed routes, to get from the central command to those who carried out the kinetic work of terrorism. Secondary nodes sprang up to mitigate the dragging response times, in which directives from on high could take weeks or months to arrive via courier, thanks to al Qaeda's elaborate security precautions.

After the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, an existing group of Jordanian-influenced jihadists led by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, one of the terror organization's informal allies, directly began fighting United States forces (as discussed in Chapter 1). In 2004, Zarqawi pledged loyalty to Osama bin Laden and renamed the group al Qaeda in Iraq, the first formal AQ affiliate under the franchise model.12 In 2007, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat announced it was joining al Qaeda and would henceforth be known as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).13 Other affiliates soon followed. In 2009, the survivors of the Yemen and Saudi branches announced they were merging to form al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).14 And in 2012, after years of being rebuffed by Osama bin Laden, Somalia's al Shabab was accepted into the fold by Zawahiri.15 In April 2013, Jabhat al Nusra split from the remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq to become al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate,16 and in September 2014, Zawahiri announced a new affiliate, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, whose members.h.i.+p is still unclear but whose domain extends over geographical territory once considered the stomping ground of the core al Qaeda. A flurry of terrorist attacks soon followed in the new affiliate's name.17 FROM TERRORISM TO INSURGENCY.

The affiliate structure immediately began to s.h.i.+ft al Qaeda's focus away from global terrorism toward local insurgencies.

Under bin Laden, the terrorist group certainly had its hands in the insurgency business. For example, it had bankrolled, trained, and organized Muslim separatists in the Philippines into a fighting force that used terrorist tactics alongside open war in an effort to carve out an extreme Islamist political s.p.a.ce in the island nation.18 Al Qaeda training camps had long focused on teaching military tactics, including many lifted from the U.S. Army. After training in Afghanistan, fighters might return to their home countries or be deployed to another conflict. In Bosnia, al Qaeda supported Egyptian radical networks in creating a division of foreign mujahideen to fight the Serbs, and it played a direct role in recruiting U.S. military veterans to serve both as trainers and soldiers.19 But these efforts, and others, were local conflicts with local combatants, and while al Qaeda's role was important, it was also in some ways peripheral and in all cases covert. Mujahideen in Bosnia and the Caucasus and Kashmir and other hot spots did not fight under the name of al Qaeda, and if their leaders owed bin Laden great respect and deference, they did not owe him obedience. Al Qaeda was neither attributed as the cause of these conflicts, nor was it responsible for their outcomes.

Each new affiliate that joined al Qaeda after 9/11 was, to a greater or lesser extent, mounting an insurgency in its home region, and each was allocating far greater resources to such battles than to striking international targets with the elaborately planned terrorist plots that had become AQ's trademark. When they ventured out with bombings and other civilian ma.s.sacres, they often struck at geographic neighbors-the near enemy-rather than al Qaeda's preferred symbolic targets in the West.

Of all the affiliates, AQAP was most directly controlled by al Qaeda Central, and it was the most active in plotting against the United States homeland. But while it quickly earned a reputation among policy makers and terrorism a.n.a.lysts as the "most dangerous" of the affiliates,20 perhaps even more than al Qaeda itself,21 the resources it allocated to terrorism were meager.

One would-be suicide bomber on a U.S.-bound plane succeeded in injuring only his private parts when his "underwear bomb" caught fire but did not detonate.22 An intercepted cargo plane bombing was done so cheaply-$4,200-that its frugality became the cover story in the branch's English-language propaganda magazine, Inspire, rather than its lethality (casualties: zero).23 As the affiliate structure snapped into place, so too did an ideological current (bolstered by practical necessities) that further fractionalized the parent. Abu Musab al Suri, one of the most influential modern jihadist ideologues, outlined the case for decentralization in a 2005 book, A Call to a Global Islamic Resistance. One of the movement's most important elites, he laid out a blueprint for al Qaeda's obsolescence-leaderless resistance, in which the jihadi revolution would be carried forward by small cells who answered to no central authority.24 Leaderless resistance, essentially an optimistic idea that radicals would self-organize into independent cells and take violent action without direction, was not especially new. It was appealing to weak movements that faced significant external pressures without enjoying popular support. Leaderless resistance was urged on the white nationalist movement during the 1980s and 1990s by some of its most prominent ideologues, including Louis Beam and Tom Metzger,25 ultimately hastening that movement's irrelevance as precious few volunteers stepped forward to risk prison without financial, technical, or even verbal support from a leaders.h.i.+p figure.

For al Qaeda Central, this s.h.i.+ft took the wind out of more than a decade of active, if selective, recruitment. Leaderless resistance is a tactic adopted when operational security concerns outweigh an organization's desire for a steady influx of new blood and spectacular, highly sophisticated attacks.

While al Qaeda Central contracted under heavy pressure from drones, raids and military strikes, the affiliates grew, attracting new recruits to take part in an increasingly militarized environment, one that al Qaeda was unsuited to lead. Supplying armies is very different from commanding them. Osama bin Laden had only minimal military experience; Ayman al Zawahiri had even less. As secure communication between the slow-moving core and its fast-moving satellites grew ever more difficult, centrifugal force began to degrade al Qaeda's ident.i.ty as a cohesive whole.

Al Qaeda was no longer a vanguard leaders.h.i.+p movement, playing chess on the world stage with a variety of resources at its disposal. While still representing a radical fringe and a tiny minority of the world's Muslims, the affiliates were gaining recruits and dragging al Qaeda, painfully, into the turbulent waters of populism.

THE AGE OF FITNA.

With all these moving parts, it did not take long for the rumblings of fitna-an Arabic word referring to a period of internal dissent and infighting in Islamic history-to surface.

The new affiliate structure was inherently a field of land mines. Three of the affiliates-AQIM, al Shabab, and al Nusra-had their origins as splinter groups, the products of earlier waves of fitna, while AQAP was a merger between two badly damaged organizations. Although all four had some measure of al Qaeda influence in the DNA of their predecessor organizations (including shared personnel and Osama bin Laden's money), their histories hardly recommended them as islands of stability.

Furthermore, the affiliates had served mostly local interests prior to joining al Qaeda. While each leader made an oath of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, and after his death to Zawahiri, members.h.i.+p in the world's elite jihadist network had not visibly resulted in a substantial change to their priorities.

The very first affiliate, al Qaeda in Iraq, was a disaster almost from the start. Its leader, Zarqawi, was bullheaded and brutal, favoring the ideological approach known as takfirism, which refers to the practice of deeming someone to be a nonbeliever in Islam based on specific actions or practices. The concept had been around for a long time in various forms, but Zarqawi took the practice to new heights (in terms of who might be targeted) and new lows (in terms of requiring evidence of guilt). In his mind, there were any number of reasons one might be deemed to have left the fold-such as following the s.h.i.+'a branch of Islam, or by inconveniencing AQI in almost any way-and he used it as a pretext for wanton murder. (A more complete discussion of takfir may be found in the appendix.)26 Al Qaeda's efforts to rein in Zarqawi's excesses,27 which it felt were hurting the image of jihadists everywhere, were only partially successful, winning some grudging concessions but forming the foundation of a deeper frustration that would linger after Zarqawi's death in 2006.

As more and more affiliates entered the system, al Qaeda faced new and different organizational challenges. AQAP was better behaved, but its successful English-language media operations threatened to overshadow its operations such that at one point, a plan was floated to make its highly visible English-speaking provocateur, Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen, into the affiliate's actual leader. The proposal was nixed by bin Laden.28 AQIM had significant internal tensions, in part thanks to the popular Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a legendary but fiery figure, who balked at the chain of command that placed him under the affiliate's leaders.h.i.+p. Belmokhtar broke with AQIM and eventually made his own pledge directly to Zawahiri, although his organization has not been recognized as an affiliate to date.29 The Islamic State in Iraq, the successor group to al Qaeda in Iraq, was similarly beset with strife and a long grudge over differing tactics that had festered since the Zarqawi days. In late 2011, it had sought to expand its reach by sending operatives to Syria, who then formed Jabhat al Nusra, a new fighting organization that soon took on a life of its own. In 2013 it changed its name to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and tried to reestablish its dominance over al Nusra, only to be rebuked by the latter's leaders.h.i.+p and later by al Qaeda Central.30 The rift would set the stage for the worst crisis in al Qaeda's history, the rise of ISIS, but the problem would be dramatically foreshadowed in Somalia, where social media pulled back the veil on internal strife within al Shabab and pointed toward a revolution in jihadi culture.

AN AMERICAN HERALD OF CHANGE.

Al Shabab was a splinter from a Somali Islamist group, the Islamic Courts Union, and it thrived after its parent perished, in large part because of the charisma and brutality of its emir, Ahmed G.o.dane.31 Al Shabab quickly earned a reputation for attracting foreign fighters, especially Westerners. Many of these were from Somali diaspora communities in Minnesota, but a young Syrian-Irish-American from Alabama had become the insurgent group's public face. Omar Hammami had catapulted to fame of a sort in an al Shabab propaganda video t.i.tled "Ambush at Bardale," in which he and other American recruits rapped in English about jihad to the delight of radicals.32 In March 2012, Hammami posted a video to YouTube claiming that al Shabab wanted to kill him and asking for help from "the Muslims," a plea essentially directed at the leaders.h.i.+p of al Qaeda Central. The dispute, it later emerged, had several dimensions, including Hammami's objections to corruption within G.o.dane's regime, poor treatment of foreign fighters, and the American's quixotic view that jihadist groups should immediately declare a caliphate then fight to defend it, a perspective parallel to the thinking of the leaders in the Iraqi affiliate of al Qaeda. He also audaciously accused al Shabab of a.s.sa.s.sinating al Qaeda emissaries and allies in Somalia, charges that were later supported by other evidence.33 To promote his "help me" video, Hammami took to social media. Although he opened a number of accounts, some private and others public, he was most successful on Twitter. Using the handle @ab.u.mamerican and posing as his own "PR rep" at first, he tried to engage Western terrorism a.n.a.lysts, with an eye toward drawing media attention to his plight.34 Hammami's rebellion was part of a broader fitna within al Shabab that involved leaders with long-standing ties to al Qaeda. But none of them had been able to appeal to Zawahiri and receive any sort of response, a command-and-control logjam that grew more and more conspicuous as weeks of infighting dragged into months. Hammami's theory was that news coverage would eventually find its way back to al Qaeda Central and prompt a reply. He waited, but only silence followed.

Hammami's presence on Twitter had a cascading effect, drawing out al Shabab loyalists who proceeded to attack and threaten him over the social media service. In a second wave, Hammami's supporters within Somalia signed up and set about to discredit and expose G.o.dane's maneuvers against the dissidents in daily Twitter fights. Infighting was nothing new to al Qaeda and its progeny, but the public spectacle was unprecedented, and it further stoked the flames of discontent. Much of the sniping took place in Hammami's absence. He spent his time hiding in the forests of Somalia, occasionally emerging to recharge his phone and fire off a new volley of provocations.

While Hammami was an important catalyst, he was not the only jihadi taking his grievances to social media. In the years since September 11, al Qaeda had taken to the Internet, in part to offset its lagging communications from senior leaders.h.i.+p, but mostly because everyone else was using the Internet.

The terrorist group had generally kept up with the technology of the day, but in the realm of social media, it was slightly slower to adopt the latest trends. The center of gravity for jihadist extremists online had settled onto pa.s.sword-protected message boards, highly structured discussion forums that were carefully moderated by activists who were members of al Qaeda, or very closely aligned with such (see Chapter 6).35 The arrangement had numerous advantages, mostly revolving around control. Because the forums were moderated by people with legitimate terrorist connections, they were an important vehicle for authenticating official statements from al Qaeda and its affiliates, making false claims almost unheard-of.

The moderators could also clamp down on anyone who was sowing dissent and even ban them altogether if they could not be brought to heel. At the time, this seemed like a secondary benefit, but it soon became apparent that it was a crucial control mechanism for the post-9/11 al Qaeda.

During the terrorist heyday of the 1990s, al Qaeda was able to indoctrinate and manage recruits within its training camps and by virtue of the secrecy of its operations. Insiders were compartmentalized, and casual supporters were kept at a distance (except when it was time to pa.s.s the collection plate). When the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan fractured this infrastructure, the forums offered a method for achieving a similar effect remotely, albeit much less effectively.

Before it renamed itself ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq had experimented with the idea of trying to launch viral content from the forums, including soliciting online bayah and seeking popular affirmation for its leaders.h.i.+p, but the efforts fell flat, mainly because of the moderated format and the strength of al Qaeda Central's control.36 Hammami had tried his appeal in the forums but was categorically rejected. The moderators, fearing the effects of infighting might discredit al Shabab, censored any attempt to distribute his messages and grievances, and later suppressed similar attempts by more senior Shabab allies with more established reputations.37 But in early 2013, the Islamic State of Iraq announced that it was reabsorbing the Syrian al Qaeda affiliate, al Nusra, into a new controlling ent.i.ty, the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, or ISIS. Al Nusra was having none of it and invoked the authority of Zawahiri in rejecting the bold power play.

Chaos broke out on the jihadist forums, and people started to take sides. One very prominent forum member, a widely admired jihadi a.n.a.lyst known as Abdullah bin Mohammed, began to criticize ISIS on the forums, accusing it of committing crimes against other jihadi groups and insinuating that it had been infiltrated by external evildoers who were now steering it down a dark path.38 After much drama, bin Mohammed was banished from the forums. But he found a new home on Twitter, where he quickly ama.s.sed tens and eventually hundreds of thousands of followers, including many who followed him from the forums.39 In this new wilderness, no moderator held the power to silence dissent and his audience was vastly bigger, including people with a casual interest in jihadism as well as hard-core operatives. Other forum celebrities soon followed his example. Dirty laundry was aired, debates were held right out in the open, and support could be quantified in follower counts and retweets. It was very nearly democratic.

All this while, Hammami held court for terrorism a.n.a.lysts and traded jibes with Somali haters, occasionally going silent for long periods as he fled for his life. He began to achieve celebrity, or at least notoriety, both in the West and among jihadis. At one point, he even exchanged private messages with bin Mohammed over Twitter.40 Al Shabab was forced to fire back at Hammami's allegations over its official Twitter account, in addition to its many proxies who never wearied of attacking the American, even as he doc.u.mented more scandals and the growing violence by al Shabab against its own ranks. The fitna began to spill back onto the forums, discrediting their legitimacy compared to the free expression available on Twitter.41 Al Jahad, a second-tier forum, began to take up Hammami's cause. It published an open letter to Zawahiri from a senior Shabab foreign fighter with long-standing al Qaeda ties, Ibrahim al Afghani, who begged Zawahiri to exert his authority over G.o.dane.42 If Zawahiri tried, it never became public-another pitfall of the communications breakdown. G.o.dane could simply ignore private communiques or pretend he never received them, confident that al Qaeda Central would be unable to do anything about it.

One of al Jahad's administrators, identifying himself as Sa'eed ibn Jubayr, took to Twitter in defense of Hammami but also stepped forward as an unlikely champion for a particularly Western value.

"Maybe jihadis are adopting freedom of speech," he tweeted at one point in response to a comment by one of the authors. "And I don't see anything wrong or messy with jihadis accepting open criticism from within."43 Hammami's quest ended with his apparent execution at the hands of al Shabab in September 2013. Even that news broke and disseminated over social media, confirmed by both pro- and anti-G.o.dane factions.44 Many online jihadis honored him as a martyr and adopted his picture as a Twitter avatar in protest of his slaying. Hammami had lost the battle, and his life, but he had helped inaugurate a new era for the jihadist movement. This new paradigm was not democratic, but it was a feedback loop, in which jihadist supporters and even fighters found themselves with a new voice and a bully pulpit.

ENTER THE ISLAMIC STATE.

ISIS had been the victim of social media criticism when Abdullah bin Mohammed turned his pariah status on the forums into Twitter celebrity, but it was quick to turn the tool to its advantage. As 2013 rolled into 2014, more and more jihadist fighters from every Syrian faction signed up for Twitter as their platform of choice.

Many factors came into play. Aside from the question of freedom of speech, the fitna in the forums had turned ugly. The two most important arenas were al Fidaa, al Qaeda Central's official forum, and al Shamukh, a designated forum for authenticated al Qaeda official releases.45 The administrators of the forums had tried hard to suppress the fitna plague in their online realms, but now they themselves had been infected. Users were thrown out for expressing pro- or anti-ISIS views, and eventually the administrators-including some of al Qaeda's inner circle of media operatives-turned on each other. Scores took to Twitter as the forums blew up. Shamukh defected entirely to ISIS, only to be wrested back in a coup by al Qaedaloyal admins who controlled the message board's technical features. (By September, it was swinging back toward ISIS.)46 Tensions began to mount between ISIS and other Syrian mujahideen. After ISIS's attempted power grab in early 2013, Zawahiri had ordered it to stay in Iraq and leave Syria to al Nusra. ISIS ignored his commands and fighting broke out between ISIS and al Nusra, later expanding to include a number of other Syria-based mujahideen groups.47 In February 2014, Zawahri was backed into a corner. He had no leverage over ISIS, which, like many of the affiliates, was largely self-sufficient in terms of cash flow, weaponry, and terrorist expertise, and he apparently lacked either the will or the operational capacity to have ISIS's recalcitrant emir, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, a.s.sa.s.sinated. His emissaries, including the veteran mujahid Abu Khaled al Suri, tried to mediate a settlement to stanch the flow of bad blood, to no avail.

Zawahiri finally played his only remaining card, issuing a statement in February 2014 that publicly disavowed ISIS, essentially firing it from the al Qaeda affiliate network. ISIS responded quickly, a.s.sa.s.sinating al Suri before the month had ended. It was not just a divorce, ISIS meant to wage war, and it soon began fighting al Nusra and several other Islamic rebel factions within Syria.48 The fighting was not confined to the battlefields. ISIS also mounted a systematic and devastating campaign for hearts and minds on social media, most visibly and noisily on Twitter. This propaganda program (discussed more fully in Chapters 5 and 7) had multiple purposes and multiple fronts, but its most immediate effect was to project strength and highlight al Nusra's weakness, a perception that became increasingly concrete as ISIS gained ground against its fellow rebels over the next few months.

But the information war was not limited to al Nusra. In March 2014, ISIS launched a Twitter hashtag campaign, with its supporters seemingly rising up as a populist ma.s.s to tweet, "We demand Sheikh Al Baghdady declare the caliphate." In fact, the campaign, like many that would follow, was an orchestrated social media marketing effort, but as such, it was a rousing success. For some jihadi sympathizers, the idea of reviving the historical Muslim empire was exciting, and many rallied around the demand. Others were horrified, tweeting their angry objections about an idea they found heretical.49 The caliphate trial balloon (see Chapter 7) was the first of many shots across the bow of al Qaeda Central, which had for years been playing a long game, an incremental strategy whose goal of a global caliphate was constantly off on the vanis.h.i.+ng horizon. Al Qaeda's affiliates, born-again insurgents, had been toying with seizing territory and attempting to govern for some time, but none had the audacity to claim the mantle of the caliphate, a concept freighted with huge religious and historical significance.

Just days later, ISIS leaked an al Qaeda Central video featuring Adam Gadahn, an American believed to be close to Zawahiri, who had guided and professionalized the parent's media operations in the post-9/11 era (see Chapter 5). The leak was almost certainly a direct result of the fitna on the forums, where most of al Qaeda's media operatives were members, including some who had defected to side with ISIS.50 In the video-which al Qaeda never officially released, perhaps intending it for an internal audience-Gadahn slammed ISIS as "extreme" and "radical" and intimated it was responsible for the "sinful attack" on al Suri. Gadahn went on to honor a number of "martyrs"-notably including Omar Hammami and Ibrahim al Afghani, who had both died at the hands of al Shabab.51 ISIS used the video's harsh criticisms as a bludgeon against its critics and tried to make it a wedge between al Qaeda Central and al Shabab-unsuccessfully, at least in public. The few surviving Shabab dissenters were buoyed by the apparent support from Gadahn, backhanded or not.52 The March "caliphate" hashtag was a broad clue to a plan that ISIS fully intended to implement, although many were still shocked when it came to fruition.

The official announcement came in late June 2014, at the start of Ramadan. The announcement included an official announcement of al Baghdadi's real name and lineage, and video of his appearance in public and unmasked to deliver the Friday khutba (sermon) at a mosque in Mosul.53 Each of these details conveniently undermined objections to al Baghdadi's ascension that had been raised during the trial balloon in March.

The age of terrorist focus-group testing had arrived. Instead of the jihadi elite living (sometimes literally) on the mountaintop, reading the New York Times and watching Al Jazeera to gauge the mood of the Muslim ma.s.ses, the newly rechristened Islamic State had adopted a feedback loop model, polling its const.i.tuents and making shrewd calls about when to listen and who could safely be ignored.

Offline, ISIS followed the model of a functional-if limited-government. Online, it played a different game. It ama.s.sed and empowered a "smart mob" of supporters-thousands of individuals who shared its ideology and cheered its success, all the while organizing themselves into a powerful tool to deploy against the world, hara.s.sing its enemies and enticing new recruits.

The concept was defined by Howard Rheingold, a technologist who has written extensively about how virtual communities affect human behavior, in his 2002 book, Smart Mobs: Smart mobs consist of people who are able to act in concert even if they don't know each other. The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing abilities. Their mobile devices connect them with other information devices in the environment as well as other people's telephones.54 The smart mob paradigm kicks in when a large group of people spontaneously begin to act in synchronized ways due to the density of connections in their technology-a.s.sisted social network, where it is possible to connect with more people at different levels of intimacy than allowed by simple physical proximity.

Although ISIS methodically shaped and manipulated its social media networks, it also benefited from this sort of self-organization. Small blended groups of ISIS members and supporters would take jobs upon themselves, including translating communiques and propaganda into multiple languages and crafting armies of Twitter "bots"-sc.r.a.ps of code that mindlessly distributed its content and amplified its reach. In some ways, it was the realization of al Suri's leaderless jihad, except that activity that appeared spontaneous could often be traced back to the organization's social media team, which in turn coordinated with its leaders.h.i.+p.

Meanwhile, back on the ground, ISIS had routed Iraqi government forces and seized a significant swath of northern Iraq,55 and it pushed its message out on social media at the same time and with similar aggression.

By mid-2014, its messaging machine was well oiled and effective. The differentiation from al Qaeda was sharp. Despite the occasional dud, the overall storytelling and production quality of ISIS video was often incredible, the likes of which had been rarely seen in propaganda of any kind, and certainly leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor's often-sophisticated attempts.

ISIS benefited from the constant, lethal pressure on al Qaeda Central, which was forced to abandon its more ambitious media efforts in favor of sporadic talking-head releases. Ayman al Zawahiri was not a particularly strong orator to start with. His charms were not enhanced by a format that boiled down to him lecturing tediously while staring straight at a fixed camera for forty-five minutes.

But the change in content was even more striking. ISIS was offering something novel, dispensing with religious argumentation and generalized exhortation and emphasizing two seemingly disparate themes-ultraviolence and civil society. They were unexpectedly potent when combined and alternated.56 The ultraviolence served multiple purposes. In addition to intimidating its enemies on the ground (Iraqi troops who fled before the IS advance had reportedly been terrified by footage of ma.s.s execution of prisoners),57 ultraviolence sold well with the target demographic for foreign fighters-angry, maladjusted young men whose blood stirred at images of grisly beheadings and the crucifixion of so-called apostates.

But the emphasis on civil society, in videos and print productions, provided a valuable counterpoint and validation of the violence, offsetting its repulsion. ISIS would not shy away from whatever needed to be done, but its goal was to create a Muslim society with all the trappings-food aplenty, industry, banks, schools, health care, social services, pothole repair-even a nursing home with the insurgents' unmistakable black flag draped over the walls.58 The narrative tracks ultimately advanced the same message-come to the Islamic State and be part of something.

Throughout its long history, al Qaeda never put forward such an open invitation. Following the model of a secret society, al Qaeda had created significant obstacles for would-be members, from the difficulty of even finding it to months of religious training that preceded battle. The ISIS message was exactly the opposite-you have a place here, if you want it, and we'll put you to work on this exciting project just as soon as you show up (although in reality, some less radical recruits were quietly subjected to indoctrination anyway).

It was yet another lesson from Abu Bakr al Naji's The Management of Savagery. The media campaign's "specific target is to (motivate) crowds drawn from the ma.s.ses to fly to the regions which we manage," Al Naji wrote, as well as to demotivate or create apathy and inertia among who might oppose the establishment of the self-styled Islamic State.59 The vanguard was dead. The idea of a popular revolution had begun.

In the end, al Qaeda's failure was the ironic failure of all vanguard movements-an a.s.sumption that the ma.s.ses, once awakened, will not require close supervision, specific guidance, and a vision that extends beyond fighting.

Al Qaeda's vision is-often explicitly-nihilistic.60 ISIS, for all its barbarity, is both more pragmatic and more utopian. Hand in hand with its tremendous capacity for destruction, it also seeks to build.

Most vanguard extremist movements paradoxically believe that ordinary people are afflicted with deep ignorance, yet such movements also expect that once their eyes have been opened, the ma.s.ses will instinctively know what to do next.

ISIS does not take the ma.s.ses for granted; its chain of influence extends beyond the elite, beyond its strategists and loyal fighting force, out into the world. Its propaganda is not simply a call to arms, it is also a call for noncombatants, men and women alike, to build a nation-state alongside the warriors, with a role for engineers, doctors, filmmakers, sysadmins, and even traffic cops.

It's the opening act on a brave new world. It's too soon to know how the invitation to the ma.s.ses will be received, or even if ISIS will last long enough to find out. But win or lose, extremism will likely never be the same again.