by Ilan Berman
Quite suddenly, all eyes are riveted on the Islamic State group. Ever since its self-proclaimed "emir," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared the creation of a new "caliphate" during a speech in Mosul, Iraq, in June, his group has become global Public Enemy No. 1.
Islamic State is
"beyond anything that we've seen," both in terms of its ambitions and
its capabilities, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned
last month. Similar sentiments abound within the global
counterterrorism community, which has made Islamic State a near-singular
focus in recent weeks. At the recent summit of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya,
one of the pre-eminent gatherings of its kind, Islamic State was the
dominant topic of discussion over four days of meetings and workshops.
Iran and Hezbollah, both of which remain pressing security challenges
for the Jewish state, received remarkably short shrift. And Russia's
actions in Ukraine -- which U.S. and European leaders have termed a type of "hybrid" warfare that has significant implications for the West -- got nary a mention.
All of this attention
has served to inflate the image of Islamic State, positioning it as the
next great adversary of the West. Often overlooked in this discourse,
however, is the fact that Islamic State suffers from some real
limitations and strategic constraints -- vulnerabilities that need to be
understood and exploited as part of any serious Western strategy.
First, Islamic State's size is relative, in both human and territorial terms. The CIA now estimates
that Islamic State could have upwards of 31,000 men under arms. That
number makes it one of the largest terrorist groups on record. (By way
of comparison, the State Department's counterterrorism bureau gauges
al-Qaida's "core" and its two most potent affiliates, al-Qaida in the
Arabian Peninsula and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, to number in the
low thousands -- although, when indirect affiliates such as Nigeria's
Boko Haram and Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah are factored in, the number
is considerably higher.)
As impressive as this
is, however, it is still far too meager to administer the group's
current holdings. Experts now estimate that the group controls territory
straddling Iraq and Syria exceeding the size of the state of Maryland.
Controlling such a land mass requires massive manpower and materiel --
something that Islamic State, even with its growing ranks and current,
deep pockets -- will find it difficult to amass and sustain.
Second, Islamic State is less popular than commonly understood among the constituency that really counts: Islamists themselves. As counterterrorism expert J. M. Berger recently pointed out in Foreign Policy,
with a few notable exceptions, Islamic State seems to be experiencing
considerable difficulty in wooing other significant jihadist groups to
its cause despite its battlefield successes. Al-Qaida, in other words,
remains the ideological center of gravity for Islamic militants, at
least for the moment. That is perhaps why, rather than consolidating
control of the territory it already possesses, the group is now actively
taking the fight to ideological competitors like the Nusra Front in
Syria as a way of burnishing its brand.
Third, there is good
reason to believe that the current force strength of Islamic State is
"soft," and could diminish quickly. The group may have become a magnet
for foreign jihadists eager to fight in the next great holy war, but the
growing administrative and policing responsibilities that it will need
to assume in the weeks ahead may not appeal to many of these zealots.
Nor will all of them stay and fight to the end if Islamic State begins
to sustain serious battlefield reverses as a result of U.S. and
coalition military operations. As a result, an attrition of forces --
perhaps even a significant one -- is reasonable to expect in the weeks
ahead.
None of this means that
urgent action is not needed. Like a rising tide, Islamic State's
successes so far have elevated its status among extremists the world
over. Denting the group's mystique and appearance of invulnerability is
therefore key to eroding its global standing. Moreover, the longer
al-Baghdadi's "caliphate" remains in existence, the easier it will be
for his followers to frame Western action against it as a new crusade,
or a civilizational conflict pitting the West against Islam.
For these reasons, time
-- and determination -- remains of the essence. But the United States
and its allies do themselves no favors by making Islamic State out to be
a more formidable foe than it actually is. Just like al-Qaida, the
organization from which it sprang, Islamic State has real
vulnerabilities that can and should be leveraged.
Ilan Berman is vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington.
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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