Conflicting information regarding the Islamic State and the evolution of the war emerge everyday from the media, while analysts, commentators and official statements are no less swaying. For example, on 13 April 2015, “Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman” stressed that the Islamic State had “ceded 5,000 to 6,000 square miles of territory”, painting a “rosier portrait” as reported by Mitchell Prothero and James Rosen for McClatchy DC (15 April 2015). A mere two days later, the same spokesman was describing battles in Ramadi and Baiji in a sobering way, even though Prothero and Rosen also underline that “U.S. officials have been cautious about overstating Iraqi successes against the Islamic State” (Ibid.) – since then Baiji is again under Iraqi government control, while fighting continues in Ramadi and more generally Anbar, see Rudaw, 22 April 2015; 29 April 2015; 26 April 2015.

As another example, if the Islamic State has lost ground and the city of Tikrit and if the situation in Anbar remains contested (e.g. Bill Roggio & Caleb Weiss, The Long War Journal, 26 April 2015), on the other hand, a first psyops video from Yemen, “Soldiers of the Caliphate in the Land of Yemen – Wilāyat Ṣana’ā’” was also published on 24 April 2015 (see Jihadology.net*), after the 20 March 2015 first statement “Adopting the Martyrdom Operations Against the Dens of the Ḥūthīs – Wilāyat Ṣana’ā’” (Jihadology.net). This could signal the start of real activities there. Indeed, Yemen was declared a Wilayat in November 2014 (Aaron Zelin, “The Islamic State’s model“, The Washington Post, 28 January 2015, Ludovico Carlino, IHS Jane’s, 25 March 2015), but, according to Zelin (Ibid.), hardly activity had been seen by the end of January. We would thus have both attrition and expansion.

Psyops and propaganda, the fog of war, as well as the difficulty to obtain reliable information on the Islamic State, all interacting, contribute to this  complicated situation.

The scope, intensity and evolution of the threat constituted by the Islamic State, its Khilafah and the worldview and system they seek to establish (see the Psyops series), as well as the length of the war and the prospects for its fate, fundamentally depend upon the Islamic State’s ability to be successful in meeting aims located along three interacting dimensions: consolidating and developing the Islamic State and its Khilafah as a polity in all its facets, asserting supremacy over actual or potential competing groups and fighting victoriously against attacking foes (see H. Lavoix, “The Islamic State Psyops – Worlds War”, The Red Team Analysis Society, 16 January 2015). As a result, defeating the Islamic State implies attacking along these three dimensions, permanently hindering each aim.

Previously, we focused on the Islamic State’s psyops as a way to understand better its belief-system, way of thinking, worldview and objectives. We notably underlined that its current and potential influence, as well as the related power of its approach, are grounded in its ability to promote a specific coherent ideology anchored in a real material territorial state-like power, thus synthesising idealism and materialism (see for the detail H. Lavoix, “Worlds War“, Ibid.). Now, we shall address the material or concrete side of the Islamic State, although not forgetting the socio-ideological model which is at its foundation, focusing on the Islamic State’s ability to indeed create a real polity. We shall seek to improve our understanding of the type of polity, with its specificities, that is being formed. Our ultimate aim is to be able to contribute to a foresight assessment of the sustainability of the Islamic State, in other words to answer to questions such as: Is the Islamic State about to collapse? Is it reinforcing? Will it last one, two, or ten years? Continue reading “Understanding the Islamic State’s System – Structure and Wilayat”