Islamic State: "In the eyes of his enemies an army of heroes..."
Below is a translation of the editorial from issue 192 of the Islamic State’s weekly newsletter al-Naba. The editorial – which is presumably aimed at the Islamic State’s core supporters, including militants active in the field – takes a derisive tone on Iraqi security forces’ pursuit of Islamic State fighters, and emphasizes the futility and emptiness of their efforts. Per the editorial, Iraqi forces’ energetic operations are driven by their fear of once more ceding the country’s countryside to the insurgent group, allowing it to reorganize and penetrate Iraq’s cities. Islamic State militants must therefore cultivate that fear and recall the divine reward awaiting them, even as they now live as fugitives.
Set aside the editorial’s posturing: It’s worth noting the editorial seemingly indicates an understanding of the complementary logics of insurgency and counterinsurgency. Its authors describe, correctly, why Iraqi forces and their international partners are working to keep up pressure on Islamic State insurgents with operations like “Will of Victory,” thus preventing the group’s small units from coalescing and organizing more dangerous attacks.
The editorial is also an apparent acknowledgement that, for the Islamic State’s insurgents in Iraq, times are hard, albeit spiritually rewarding. It seems to admit that Islamic State militants are ragged and hungry, even if their enemies think they’re “an army of heroes on the verge of storming cities anew.” For the Islamic State, stoking fears of its resurgence (for example) is evidently a deliberate strategic choice, even as the group’s ambitions, for now, may not rise far beyond continued insurgent survival.
Translation follows:
Indeed, God does not waste the reward of the good
Before the conquest of Mosul, Iraq’s Rafidhah [derog., Shi’a] would persistently muster thousands from their army and police to march in the Anbar desert and Badiyat al-Jazirah searching for the Islamic State’s camps and its soldiers’ hiding places. These columns were huge, sometimes reaching hundreds of armored vehicles. They move like parades, while, really, all their soldiers hoped for was not to happen on any mujahid whom they might be forced to engage. These campaigns would usually end with a photo of their commanders at the bottom of a ravine or near the wreckage of a village, which let them claim that the remains indicated the Islamic State’s soldiers had passed by that day.
Typically the rapture of those empty parades would come to an end with a calamity befalling the apostates, far from the locales of their supposed victories, as the mujahideen’s security detachments surprised them with powerful blows in the most fortified areas inside Baghdad, Mosul, Samarra, Kirkuk and Baqouba. They would awake once more from their beautiful dreams to horrible nightmares that would bring down their security and military commanders, force them to reorder their forces and reorganize their formations, then take off once more into the desert towards some new dream of a conclusive victory over the Islamic State.
Someone considering these campaigns, which the Rawafidh [derog., Shi’a] have repeated today at an even greater pace and scale, will find they are a ruse by the incapable and the choice of someone with no other option. The alternative is for them to sit in their bases and barracks waiting for shells and missiles to fall on them, or for [explosive] charges and ambushes to cut their roads. At the same time, these campaigns represent for them one form of the control on the ground they are working to preserve, as, by halting [these campaigns], these areas in which the Islamic State’s soldiers move today would become effectively fallen militarily. The apostates would become encircled in the urban areas they are attempting to secure, which would turn little by little into fortresses, for fear that the Islamic State might storm them once more. Likewise, what the Rawafidh and their Crusader allies fear most today is that the mujahideen now spread out shift from the mode of small bands carrying out military attacks with limited force to the mode of semi-conventional formations that can – with the permission of God Almighty – carry out coordinated, medium-size or even large operations, in terms of their range and the nature of their targets. Through these ongoing campaigns, therefore, they are attempting to keep the mujahideen in a state of constant movement and dispersal, by continuously pursuing them and preventing them from establishing long-term settlements by searching for and destroying [those positions]; in that way, they pressure [the mujahideen] to prevent them from receiving large numbers of nafirin [incoming, newly mobilised fighters], especially in areas of operation surrounding cities and main roads. And so we find that no sooner do the Rawafidh today hear of a tent pitched in the desert than they move columns to it to confirm that those sheltering in it are not among the Caliphate’s soldiers. No sooner does a spy tell them that he saw some people in a remote, mountainous area than they launch a sweeping campaign on it, for fear that [those people] might be among the Islamic State’s mujahideen. This terror is not the exclusive to the Rawafidh in Iraq, rather – praise to God Almighty – it pervades the souls of infidels and apostates everywhere. Since the announcement of the Caliphate, they have been in a state of constant alert, one that their supposed announcements of final victory over the Islamic State have not ended, for they know, before others, that [these announcements] are nothing but vain lies.
And so, the Islamic State’s mujahideen ought to rejoice at this great blessing from their Lord Almighty, that He has made the continued existence of their raised banner a source of wrath and fear and panic, and a reason for the infidels’ attrition, exhaustion and constant movement. What they instill in the hearts of God’s enemies is all jihad on the path of God Almighty, for which they will be rewarded with good deeds through which their belief will grow and which will disavow their ill deeds and elevate their [divine] status. Perhaps they pay this no mind, given the height of their morale and their aspiration to what is higher and greater than these deeds, and more damaging and deadlier to the enemies of God, Lord of Worlds. How could they, when added to that is hunger, fear, concern and sorrow they encounter, even as they hold fast to their religion, gripping their monotheism. As God Almighty said: “It was not becoming for the people of Medinah and those Bedouins around it not to follow God’s Messenger, nor to prefer their own souls over his. For they are not afflicted by thirst, fatigue or hunger on the path on God, nor do they tread a path that enrages the infidels, nor do they gain at the enemy’s expense, but that a righteous deed is recorded for them. Indeed, God does not waste the reward of the good. They do not spend anything, small or large, nor cross a valley, but that it is recorded for them that God might reward them with the best of what they have done (9:120, 9:121).”
[The mujahideen] must be confident that they are, with God’s permission, made victorious by their Lord with terror and with what He wishes from His soldiers. For many a mujahid grown weak, with little aid, unable to afford ammunition, with the Crusaders’ planes hovering overhead and surrounded by masses of apostates, may be in his own eyes put-upon, a fugitive; but in the eyes of his enemies an army of heroes on the verge of storming cities anew, their spirits broken before him, unable to hold fast in the face of his fierce, terrifying advance. So let [the mujahideen] work to further frighten their enemies, and to terrify them more, and let them endure what they encounter on the path of God Almighty. For what is all their work but worship, and what is its fruit but the best [reward] and more. For their Lord Almighty said: “And say, ‘Act! For God will see your work, as will his Prophet and the believers. And you will be returned to the Knower of the Unseen and the Seen, and He will inform you of what you used to do (9:105).”