al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2015 part 19-138-caliphate- the state of...

C de Waart; CdW Intelligence to Rent [email protected] In Confidence

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaida-45-Our Performance-55

U.S. officials say, if and when they pick up Baghdadi's trail, they will not hesitate to take a shot. "Anytime you can take someone like that out, it always has impact," "The second- and third-order effects of prematurely targeting Baghdadi are too great," one official told. "He would be seen to his supporters as the caliph who was martyred for the sake of the caliphate."But if Baghdadi is alive to see the remnants of his self-declared caliphate fall to U.S.-backed forces, the impact could be lasting. "This would be a precision strike at the group's ideology, a feat that has been quite difficult to date for the coalition," ...

The former head of the National Directorate of Security, said Pakistan helped create a strike force called the Red Force or Red Brigade in late 2014, Nabil also accused Pakistan of reopening and distributing weapons from at least four depots that he said were last used to dispense firearms to Mujahedeen fighters during the conflict with the former Soviet Union. Commenting on reports of Iran’s support for the Taliban, the former spy chief said the country is using the Taliban as a tactical tool because it is afraid of Islamic State gaining ground.

Islamic State specifically trains militants to camouflage themselves as ordinary refugees and pass necessary application procedures to be granted asylum in European countries, according to sources in German intelligence.

Germany said Friday that all of the employees at its consulate in northern Afghanistan were unhurt and accounted for, following an overnight Taliban suicide assault on the diplomatic facility.The bomb-and-gun attack in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif left at least six civilians dead and wounded around 130 others, mostly civilians, according to hospital officials. A group of heavily armed Taliban suicide bombers staged the coordinated attack shortly before midnight on Thursday, detonating an explosives-packed vehicle in the vicinity of German Consulate.

An explosion rocked Bagram airfield, the largest US base in Afghanistan, early Saturday morning, killing at least four people and injuring 14 others, according to a NATO-led Resolute Support Mission press release.

“An explosive device was detonated on Bagram Airfield resulting in multiple casualties. Four people have died in the attack and approximately 14 have been wounded,” Resolute Support said in a statement.

The US Embassy in Afghanistan was closed on Sunday after militant attacks on the largest US military base in the country and the German Consulate.

Former Afghan Intel Chief Accuses Pakistan of Militarily Supporting TalibanAyesha Tanzeem, Voice of AmericaAfghanistan’s former spy chief has accused Pakistan of helping the Afghan Taliban militarily, as well

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as providing them with safe havens. In an exclusive interview with VOA in Kabul, Rahmatullah Nabil, the former head of the National Directorate of Security, said Pakistan helped create a strike force called the Red Force or Red Brigade in late 2014, and that it started operating in early 2015 when international forces had mostly left and surveillance had been reduced.Initially, Nabil added, almost 3,000 people were recruited to fight in southern Afghanistan. They were divided into cells of 25 fighters assigned to one handler from Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI.Each fighter was armed with an AK-47 and each cell received portable rocket launchers or machine guns like an RPG-7, a PKM, an 85-millimeter gun, and a Dushka machine gun. He said there were signs that these cells were involved in conflict in Farah, Helmand, Ghazni, and Uruzgan, some of the provinces that have seen heavy fighting between members of the Afghan security forces and Taliban.

Explosive Charges Nabil also accused Pakistan of reopening and distributing weapons from at least four depots that he said were last used to dispense firearms to Mujahedeen fighters during the conflict with the former Soviet Union.He said the depots were close to the Pakistani cities of Quetta, Miramshah, Peshawar, and Spin Tal.Pakistan strongly denies allegations it supports the Afghan Taliban.

Lt. Gen. Ehsanul Haq, the former head of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, called the allegations “absolutely ridiculous.” If Afghanistan was worried about militants coming from this side, he said, the best solution was to “harden, regulate, and stabilize” the border between the two countries, but that the Afghan government balked at any such suggestion.Nabil, a longtime critic of Pakistan, was forced to resign after he publicly criticized his boss, President Ashraf Ghani, for engaging with Pakistan and trying to secure Pakistan’s help in restarting peace talks with the Afghan Taliban after an initial round failed.

Flow of Militants He now runs the charity Help for Afghan Heroes, which works for families of Afghan national security personnel killed or wounded in battle.The former spy chief also criticized Pakistan’s military operation, called Zarb-e-Azb, saying it deliberately helped push some militants across the border into Afghanistan. The operation, he said, was intentionally launched at a time when Afghan forces were busy with the second round of presidential elections and could not control militants crossing to their side of the border.

Nabil accused Pakistan of relocating several Afghan Taliban, particularly members of the Haqqani network, to other areas of Pakistan before launching its military operation, along with opening several mountain passes to allow some of them — along with members of other international militant groups like Jundullah, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) — to cross over to Afghanistan.Pakistani officials have said they shared their plans with both the government in Kabul and NATO forces in Afghanistan well ahead of time, but that both failed to take the necessary actions against possible infiltration of militants during the operation.

Competing Interests Commenting on reports of Iran’s support for the Taliban, the former spy chief said the country is using the Taliban as a tactical tool because it is afraid of Islamic State gaining ground. Most of the Iranian support, he explained, was in western Afghanistan bordering Iran, in the form of money or small arms.

He also said Russia’s interest in Afghanistan had increased since 2014 when violence reached northern Afghanistan near areas Russia considered its backyard. Intelligence cooperation between China and Afghanistan, according to Nabil, had increased significantly during the last few years.Afghanistan, he added, handed several members of ETIM to China that had been trained in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city. That was when, according to Nabil, China’s interest in Afghanistan’s peace process increased and it became part of the efforts to help facilitate peace talks between the Afghan Taliban and Afghan government.


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On April 12, the Afghan Taliban announced the launch of their annual spring offensive in Afghanistan: “Operation Omari.” The spring offensive has been named after the movement’s late founder Mullah Muhammad Omar. Ahead of the offensive, the statement on the Taliban’s website mentioned the use of large-scale attacks against government positions, while employing a combination of hit-and-run assaults and suicide attacks in urban areas. While there was no lull in the fighting in Afghanistan throughout 2015, The launch of the spring offensive by the Taliban is a major setback for the fledgling peace process in Afghanistan. The Taliban has been buoyed by last year’s military victories in Afghanistan. The senior leadership of the Taliban has defied the pressure of Pakistan’s powerful military establishment by plainly refusing to talk to Kabul. By doing so, they have emerged out of the shadows of Pakistani military’s dictates and have done much to dispell their image as a proxy.

Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada is not a new man in Taliban leadership; he was the second deputy of (killed) Mullah Mansoor," was very active and a senior member of the Quetta Shura," "Akhunzada is from Kandahar, from the Noorzai tribe. "The new Taliban leader is known to be 'a Stone Age mullah' who strongly believes in the Taliban," he has the title “Amir-ul-Momineen,” or the “Emir of the Faithful.” The title has profound ramifications in the jihadists’ world.

The leader of the Haqqani network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, Mullah Yaqoob, the elder son of Mullah Omar, strengthen the Taliban’s military position. Sirajuddin Haqqani and Mullah Yaqoob appointed deputy leaders of Afghan Taliban. More importantly, several influential commanders and fighters of IS-Khurasan, the local ISIS affiliate, have re-joined the Taliban. The Mehsud faction of the Pakistani Taliban has also merged its fighters with the Afghan Taliban.

In a rare Jan 2010 interview with The Wall Street Journal conducted by email and telephone, Mr. Haqqani declared, "We have managed to besiege the Afghan government. We sustain very few causalities; we can inflict heavy casualties to the enemy's side." During an interview with an American news organization, Sirajuddin admitted planning the January 14, 2008 attack against the Serena Hotel in Kabul that killed six people, including American citizen Thor David Hesla. Sirajuddin also admitted to having planned the April 2008 assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Karzai.Sirajuddin Haqqani is the operational commander of the Haqqani network, and now reportedly the deputy emir of the Taliban. Siraj’s dossier is filled with ties to al Qaeda. For instance, files recovered in Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound show that he was working closely with bin Laden’s lieutenants in the months leading up to the al Qaeda master’s death.

April 2016, Mullah Omar's eldest son Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob and brother Mullah Abdul Manan were both called to the Rahbari Shura or leadership council, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi said. Mullah Yaqoob will be in-charge of military commission in 15 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, a Taliban statement said. The Taliban have also inducted Mullah Abdul Manan, Mullah Omar’s brother and Yaqoob’s uncle, into the leadership council. The statement added that both Yaqoob and Manan had formally assumed their offices at a meeting of Taliban leaders, members of the leadership council and senior commanders.


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“As leader of the al Qaeda organization for jihad, I extend my pledge of allegiance once again, the approach of Osama to invite the Muslim nation to support the Islamic Emirate,” al-Zawahri said in a 14 minute recording late June.

Warning Update: al Qaeda's Global Attack CampaignBy Katherine Zimmerman, Jennifer Cafarella

November 6, 2016

Al Qaeda never stopped planning attacks against the US even when it was prioritizing the local fights and working within local dynamics. The group seeks to lead a global insurgency, rooted in these local fights, that it will take to the West. Al Qaeda’s increasing involvement in local conflicts, especially the Syrian Civil War, accelerates rather than contains the threat of the group globally.Al Qaeda has active attack planning cells based in its safe havens in Syria and Afghanistan. Safe havens provide al Qaeda bases from which to launch attacks against the US. US officials have been warning of al Qaeda’s re-emergence in Afghanistan and also its sanctuary in Syria. Two recent American strikes targeted high-level al Qaeda operatives involved in external operations in both countries.Al Qaeda has had planning cells developing external attacks from Syria since at least 2014. The US initially launched airstrikes in September 2014 against the “Khorasan group,” an al Qaeda cell in Syria that had entered the “execution phase” of an attack against US interests in Europe. In response to these targeted strikes, Al Qaeda altered its operational methods in Syria but never abandoned its efforts to develop an external attack capability and deploy it.The US does not have a global strategy to eliminate the safe havens that al Qaeda uses to design and execute attacks abroad. American airstrikes to disrupt imminent al Qaeda attacks from Syria and Afghanistan are necessary but insufficient. The US needs a plan to deprive al Qaeda of the terrain it holds in Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in order to deprive the group of continued ability to regenerate its attack capability. The US must also recognize that the foreign fighter problem transcends ISIS and take immediate steps to address al Qaeda recruitment abroad, including in US allies in the Middle East as well as Europe.

Ethiopian AMISOM WithdrawalsBy Colin Lahiff November 4, 2016

Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia, al Shabaab, is occupying areas vacated by withdrawing Ethiopian forces and regaining its strength in south-central Somalia. Ethiopian troops supporting the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) peacekeeping force began redeploying back to Ethiopia in August 2016 as anti-government protests spread across the country.[1] These forces abandoned military bases in strategic locations in Hiraan and Bakool regions after the Ethiopian government declared a state of emergency on October 9.[2] Al Shabaab militia forces immediately re-occupied key towns such as Halgan, which is along a major road between the capital, Mogadishu, and Beledweyne, a regional capital.[3] AMISOM does not have the manpower to replace the Ethiopian units, and Ethiopian forces are unlikely to return to Somalia any time soon. Local Somali security forces are unlikely to have the strength to prevent al Shabaab’s re-emergence in the area. They may further clash with each other for control of terrain.[4] Al Shabaab will probably continue to recapture


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positions in southcentral Somalia, positioning itself to gain strength in 2017.

[1] Live From Mogadishu, Twitter, September 29, 2016, https://twitter.com/Daudoo/status/781545132617334784?lang=en; Live From Mogadishu, Twitter, October 11, 2016, https://twitter.com/Daudoo/status/785794927317819392?lang=en; and “Al-Shabaab takes control of Somalia’s Moqokori district,” Ayyaantuu News and CCTV, September 16, 2016, http://www.ayyaantuu.net/al-shabaab-takes-control-of-somalias-moqokori-district/. [2] “AMISOM and SNA pull out of El-Ali village in central Somalia,” Goobjoog News, October 11, 2016, http://goobjoog.com/english/amisom-sna-pull-el-ali-village-central-somalia/.[3] “Al Shabaab recapture town after allied troops pull out,” Shabelle News, October 23, 2016, http://www.shabellenews.com/2016/10/somalia-al-shabaab-recapture-town-after-troops-pull-out/; and “Two Somali soldiers killed, kin abducted as Al-Shabaab retakes Tiyeglow,” Goobjoog News, October 26, 2016, http://goobjoog.com/english/two-somali-soldiers-killed-kin-abducted-al-shabaab-retakes-tiyeglow/. [4] “Hir-Shabelle president speaks about Ethiopian troops pull out,” Shabelle News, October 27, 2016, http://www.shabellenews.com/2016/10/hir-shabelle-president-speaks-about-ethiopian-troops-pull-out/.


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ISIS: A Revolutionary Group, Fighting a Textbook InsurgencyOctavian ManeaInterview with Professor Stathis Kalyvas conducted during the Nafplio Olympia Summer Academy, Summer 2016, Greece. Stathis N. Kalyvas is Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science and Director of the Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence. He is the author of The Logic of Violence

in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2006) The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Cornell University Press, 1996), and Modern Greece (Oxford University Press, 2015), as well as the co-editor of Order, Conflict & Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2008).The interview was first published by Defence MattersHow does a

counterinsurgent/insurgent obtain the support and collaboration of the people? Is it about legitimacy? Is it about control? Bernard Fall used to talk about establishing a “competitive systems of control”. What does your research suggest about this?My research suggests that like in many social activities it is always about a mix of consent and coercion. I find it that the behavior in civil wars has a lot in common with taxation. There is an element in which people have to be induced to do certain things because they think it is acceptable.


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For example, the capacity of a group to effectively govern a territory and supply public goods and governance is important. But on the other hand, without any coercion, no one would pay anything. The other thing that I find very important is that sources of consent do not necessarily emerge out of abstract promises, political promises of some sort. There is a source that has been overlooked which is the fact that insurgents can take advantage of the negative externalities of the activities of counterinsurgents and vice-versa. For instance, counterinsurgents are very good at generating collaboration through consent of the local population by taking advantage of excessive and misguided behavior of the insurgents. In Iraq a big reason why the surge worked was that many tribes in the Anbar provinces switched sides. Of course for that to happen it is not enough to point out that the insurgents are bad. You also need to provide security so that the people who want to defect are protected from reprisals. If there is no security, defectors are going to be punished by the insurgents and that makes it very difficult for the others to follow their example.Winning hearts and minds has become a mantra of the post 9/11 counterinsurgency doctrine. Can hearts and minds be ultimately won?As the experience of counterinsurgency (but also insurgency) shows, they are often won. The key question, of course, is how. The answer, in my opinion, has to incorporate the fluid dynamic of war. There is a strong self-reinforcing dynamic in these processes: by winning, you show that you are stronger and by appearing stronger, you can win more easily. A lot hinges on perceptions, perceptions then shape reality and in turn this new reality alters future perceptions. Of course, the process can be reversed, which is why you need consistency and willingness to fight over the long term.For many of the current or past conflicts there is the tendency to blame the so-called “ancient hatreds”. In early 1990s, the Clinton administration used to invoke the thesis of ancient hatreds as an argument for justifying its non-intervention in the ethnic conflicts that were destroying the Balkans and former Yugoslavia. And in the Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview with Obama, the president talks about the power of tribalism as an argument to stay away from these spots. Do you see any validity in the ancient hatreds thesis?It is true that ethnic identities (and in general what we call “ascriptive identities”) tend to be good predictors of behavior. But it is not true that they are impossible to overcome. Very often, they have been overcome, but that does not mean that people change their identities. In a paper (“Ethnic Defection in Civil War”) I argue that in many wars, people fight against their ethnic group. That requires a political armed actor to appeal to people to defect from the political organization that claims to represent their group and its best interests. People are not going to defect if there is nowhere to defect. Secondly, there has to be some sort of reason for people to do so. Either they were victimized or they operate on sub-ethnic, clan logics.Bernard Fall remains famous for saying that “when a country is being subverted, it is not outfought, it is being out-administered. Subversion is literally administration with a minus sign in front”. The implication of his point was that countering a robust insurgency meant first of all countering its ability to govern, to administer territories, perform and establish parallel state-like functions. Is this point still valid today in the current security environment where we see a myriad of entities that replicate a similar behavior from narco-gangs to warlords?I believe so. Fundamentally, I think civil wars are about state-building. Therefore, the ability to develop state capacity not just in military terms, but also in administrative terms is an essential feature of both insurgency and counterinsurgency. That’s why effective counterinsurgency is so hard; because it requires the kind of commitment that produces state building-the provision of public goods and the creation of effective governance, i.e. a very tall order. Over the past few years we’ve seen a growing literature about rebel governance. Criminal groups and warlords that can out-administer actual states, assume the burdens of government, as well as provide justice and order in the territories they control. Roving bandits become stationary bandits, in the terminology used by Mancur Olson. Fighting against


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incipient state-builders requires that you state-build yourself.Everyone is turning away from expeditionary COIN. Both Obama and now Trump are bluntly challenging the notion of nation-building overseas. The alternative is highly kinetic CT and aerial bombardment. Do you see any chance to deal with movements and actors whose focus is on state-building only through kinetic means?CT can prove useful as a way of containment in short and medium term but if you want to address more fundamental issues (such as state building, by the way…) and make sure that the war is brought to conclusion without necessitating a need for new intervention you have to invest. Today there is reluctance on behalf of the international community to invest in state building. That is true for both the economic side, especially development, and also for the political and military side.There is also a huge emphasis on good governance. The argument is that we need good governance in order to produce a stable host nation society. But in many expeditionary counterinsurgency campaigns we end up supporting host nation governments that are at the other side of the spectrum from the good governance perspective. Can a counterinsurgency campaign be effective without good governance?The problem with good governance is that it is a very long-term project and it is good not be thinking of shortcuts because there are not that many. But there is also a concept of effective governance which may be less demanding than good governance and more achievable in the short and medium term. Perhaps the way to good governance is effective governance. But it might be a necessary way; it is clearly not a sufficient one.What made robust insurgency the preferred technology of rebellion during the Cold War?It was a package of things that are associated with the Cold War that made robust insurgency intertwined with this particular historical context. On the one hand you had the ability of the major superpowers like the Soviet Union to provide military assistance, massive material support, and all kinds of training for recipient insurgent movements all over the world. The second thing was the idea that you can actually set-up a political organization based on a revolutionary ideology and beliefs. Thirdly it was the organizational dimension, the idea of a transnational network of activists, revolutionaries and radical entrepreneurs that were supported by Soviet Union that gave the ability to fight others’ people wars. All these elements should be understood in the context of the proliferation of a very specific military doctrine of revolutionary war which became known as the Maoist approach – where success was based on the incremental construction of a political organization whose aim was to govern territory, provide effective administration and build an effective counter-state – that gave a lot of these movements not necessary a set recipe but a set of tools to implement some of those ideas. It was the combination of all these factors that were combined during the Cold War that explains the emergence and the relative success of the robust insurgency. It is also this combination of factors that transformed traditional guerrilla in a very powerful and effective technology of rebellion.Don’t we have today a similar sequence where we see the competition between external actors - like Russia and the U.S. - overlapping with the proxy wars between regional competitors?Exactly. In Syria, the competition between Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Turkey on the one hand and Russia and Iran on the other hand, with the U.S. somewhere in between certainly creates a similarity with the so-called proxy wars in the Cold War. Essentially the outside actors contribute both to the escalation and to the longer duration of the conflict and make it appear intractable. The resolution of this conflict is likely to come from outside as well.It seems that we have the same dynamic in Ukraine. Russia exploited various societal cleavages, a weak state and hollow institutions to back its proxy actors in Eastern Ukraine. On the other side, the EU and some NATO actors are providing support for Kiev. It is a competition between rival external actors.That is correct. We see that in Ukraine, although to a far smaller extent compared to Syria. The


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difference is a power mismatch with a very strong Russia vis-à-vis the Ukrainian state. An important dimension is that Russia is a contiguous state to the Ukraine with very concrete interests there. Certainly the presence of a safe haven in the contiguous country is increasing the duration of the conflict.How should we understand the nature of the Islamic State? Is it an insurgency, a terrorist group?I see ISIS as a revolutionary group, presently fighting a textbook insurgency. I start with a very simple premise: revolutionary actors tend to believe in radical social change. And this comes with a number of implications. It is not so much about transforming the external boundaries of states although that can be part of the agenda. Revolutionary actors tend to motivate their cadres, they tend to have a long-term strategy and planning, and they also raise an existential threat for the governments they fight against, which may actually backfire. During the Cold War, revolutionary Marxist groups were both high quality rebels and more likely to be defeated by the governments they fought against.What are the policy implications that derive from understanding ISIS as a revolutionary group? What do past cases of dealing with revolutionary groups tell us about the options to counter them?You should fight against ISIS the way governments fought against Marxist rebels: by designing a counter-revolutionary counterinsurgency, namely one that addresses the many political and social dimensions that motivate the insurgency and by crafting a powerful alliance of external backers. Right now, this does not seem to be the priority of either the Iraqi state or the Syrian regime.Has ISIS become a powerful external sponsor who has the ability to support clandestine networks far away from its homeland? The attacks in Paris and Brussels seem to be an example, another is the ISIS branch in Libya. It seems that ISIS is acquiring the same traits that made the robust insurgency successful during the Cold War: funding, transnational movement and organizational doctrine.ISIS lacks a key feature of many Marxist rebels: a powerful external sponsor. Its resort to transnational terrorism is counterproductive - a sign of weakness already backfiring against it.How useful do you find the FM 3-24?These kinds of manuals tend to be very broad and general. This particular one should be seen more in terms of dynamics internal to the U.S. military - getting it to pay attention to a non-state entity it is not conventionally organized for than in terms of a specific recipe on how to defeat an insurgency.What insights from political science research should be incorporated into the elaboration of the COIN/stabilization doctrine?I will mention three key insights: international politics, state capacity, and political dynamics at the ground-level, including ethnic and clan politics.Was the AQI insurgency both a Maoist people’s war and at the same time a sectarian/inter-communal war? What strategies should/could follow from this example?Yes, but so were many Marxist insurgencies, such as the PKK in Turkey. From the perspective of the counterinsurgent, decoupling the revolutionary dimension from the ethnic one is key. It worked during the “surge” and then it failed due to the Maliki government ethnic sectarianism, leading to the transformation of the AQI insurgency into the present ISIS one. Underneath both of them, we can clearly distinguish the Baathist infrastructure that channels communal Sunni grievances.

Coalition Closing in on Heart of Islamic State, But Not its HeadJeff Seldin, Voice of AmericaFor weeks, Iraqi forces backed by U.S. and coalition air power have moved ever closer to the city of Mosul, the heart of the Islamic State terror group's holdings in Iraq.

Yet for all the progress, these forces would appear to be no closer to cutting off the group's


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head, the elusive cleric Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. "We don't know where he is," Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. John Dorrian told Pentagon reporters via a videoconference from Baghdad last week. "If we knew where he was, he would be killed at once."In the place of certainty, there is rumor. In recent weeks, Iraqi military officials have insisted that the 45-year-old Baghdadi was hiding in tunnels and bunkers in Mosul, directing the defense of the city himself.More recently, reports from Iraq quote various sources as saying Baghdadi is in Mosul preparing for his own death and in the process of selecting a replacement.Western intelligence officials are highly skeptical. They say that even though IS and its predecessor groups have strongly embraced martyrdom — to the extent that some see it as a sort of death cult — the group's leaders have consistently opted to live to fight another day.

Where is He? Just last week, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the most recent intelligence on Baghdadi suggests he has "vacated the scene" in Mosul. And pinpointing his current whereabouts will be a tall order, with some suggesting the IS leader is more skilled at evading detection than even al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden.

"He has an intense OpSec [Operational Security] posture," said Michael Smith, co-founder of Kronos Advisory, a private intelligence firm, who has served as a contributing expert to the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.Smith and others say IS has leveraged its own experiences with high-level espionage techniques from Iraqi intelligence officers once loyal to former dictator Saddam Hussein, making the group a potent and sophisticated adversary.

"They keenly understand our tech capabilities," Smith said. "They have a very strong sense of our targeting tactics and how to flout them."Ready to Shoot U.S. officials say, if and when they pick up Baghdadi's trail, they will not hesitate to take a shot. "Anytime you can take someone like that out, it always has impact," one official told VOA. Yet there are some who argue that not killing Baghdadi, at least not yet, may actually help in the efforts to destroy IS."The second- and third-order effects of prematurely targeting Baghdadi are too great," according to Nicholas Glavin, a senior researcher at the U.S. Naval War College's Center on Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups. "He would be seen to his supporters as the caliph who was martyred for the sake of the caliphate."But if Baghdadi is alive to see the remnants of his self-declared caliphate fall to U.S.-backed forces, the impact could be lasting. "This would be a precision strike at the group's ideology, a feat that has been quite difficult to date for the coalition," Glavin said.


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