TSG Report Mentioned on The National Interest: Welcome to Islamic State 101: What Makes ISIS Tick

November 30, 2015

Welcome to Islamic State 101: What Makes ISIS Tick

The National Interest
By: Daniel R. DePetris

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The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has become akin in the western imagination to the sociopathic murderers that you would typically see in Homeland—those who would think nothing of rounding up other human beings, torturing them over days or weeks for the masochistic pleasure of inflicting pain and then killing them in front of a video camera. The organization that swept into Fallujah in January 2014 and into Mosul in June 2014—that has been running its own personal fiefdom across vast sections of western Iraq and eastern Syria for over a year—represents the type of indiscriminate and wholesale slaughter that would make Abu Musab al-Zarqawi proud…

Indeed, the strength of the organization depends on its large collection of foreign fighters who have chosen to make the journey to Syria and Iraq. In one of the most extensive studies into the Syrian civil war’s foreign fighter phenomenon, Richard Barrett of The Soufan Group estimated in June 2014 that approximately 12,000 foreigners from 81 countries are either fighting with the Islamic State or some other radical extremist faction on the ground. ISIL’s bankroll and slick propaganda in jihadist media circles have allowed the organization to attract many of those recruits…

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Download The Soufan Group’s special report on the Foreign Fighters here.

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To read the full article please click on the link below:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/welcome-islamic-state-101-what-makes-isis-tick-14453

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