Dear Anshin

I meant to say thanks for your reply and your excellent article. Your article raises many questions about IS's structure and workings - a much needed preliminary to ultimately beating IS.

On the flow of the counter-insurgency:

- it seems that the US is following a hesitant buildup strategy of US forces

- Obama may be aware that after US forces largely left Iraq at the end of 2011 the return around 32 months later may seem to Iraqis as a reoccupation of their country by Western "infidels".

3. perhaps the US is consciously balancing against Iranian forces and Iranian influence in Iraq?

4. with the US in the last 2 weeks announcing the doubling of US forces of what are really combat troops (defined by carrying weapons and exposure to danger) Abbott may well announce in the next few weeks a doubling of Australian Special Forces to 400.

5. I also make a prediction that by November 2015 Australia will also have sent or announced the deployment of a regular Royal Australian Regiment battalion (of around 600 troops) to hold part of an Iraqi province.

Regards

Pete

Very interesting observations about Islamic State. If those details are valid, it is clear that IS is a VERY narrow operation.

IS seems only capable of doing what it is now doing (ie conducting military manoeuvres). It has narrow tribal roots. Its ideology is not the basis for actually achieving anything if it were to succeed with its military activities and establish an 'Islamic State' (for reasons suggested in
http://cpds.apana.org.au/Teams/Articles/discouraging_extremism.htm)

If IS's massive limitations were made known in the Muslim world I would be surprised if it would last 6 months. There are Muslim leaders who are seeking a much more more solid foundation for Islam to actually have a future.

Dear Pete,
Thank you for your feedback and comments. As mentioned, the purpose of the article was to primarily illustrate the complicated nature of the foe. If Australia, or the rest of the world for that matter, is to continue in its efforts to achieve militarily only defeat, then we will be in for a long and likely bloody war. I also wanted to show that this coming war is more than what most politicians, think tank researchers, and many professors believe, which is that the coming war is solely about defeating a small section of believers of a particular religion.

With regard to your comments about the growing counter insurgency, you make some interesting and relevant observations. Each one of which is worthy of a long and detailed analysis, unfortunately outside the scope of this post

Dear CPDS,

In physical terms, IS is a rather narrow organisation, and there are certainly weaknesses within IS when seen within the 3 Pillar model. Such weaknesses could be exploited by coordinated Western, Middle Eastern and Muslim actors. Unfortunately, it is the connections and networked links across the globe that allow IS to have influence. Given the continued growth of globalisation, and especially the ease of travel and communications, these links will likely only increase in diversity and strength.

It would also appear that as yet IS has not acquired an ideologue similar to Zawahiri, in his former role in al Qaeda. When IS does acquire one, and an ideological message to go with it, IS will be a much more difficult beast to control, let alone defeat

Interesting thread, I have wondered about the economic stability of Islam without oil.
Non oil Islamic states such as Pakistan are economic basket cases.
In the long term as oil production in the middle east declines it can be expected that
their ability to war war will also decline. Examine Egypt as an example.
If countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq can prevent ISIS getting its stolen oil to
market together with western countries boycotting countries that are buying it then
ISIS will quickly run out of steam and will have trouble buying food for their thousands
of followers.
Reverting to the age old military technique of seizing food from the farmers will very
quickly stir up the tribal sheiks. I am sure military planners must already be looking at
cutting ISIS's money tree.

As Napoleon said, an army marches on its stomach.

Meant to ask, has there ever been a study of the economic ability of a sharia law
governed moslem country ?
A country with a large number of genetically damaged people operating under the
restrictions of sharia and not having the outside support of oil sales and not a lot of
other resources would have a very hard time I would think.

Think of Saudi Arabia when the oil becomes too expensive to burn.