{"id":29414,"date":"2016-11-07T06:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T19:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=29414"},"modified":"2016-11-04T14:53:01","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T03:53:01","slug":"mind-islamic-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/mind-islamic-state\/","title":{"rendered":"The mind of the Islamic State"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/p>\n

\u2018We have finally reached the gates of Hell.\u2019\u2014<\/em>Robert Manne\u2019s final sentence in The Mind of the Islamic State<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Australia has been at war with Islamic State<\/a> since ISIS took Mosul in June, 2014.<\/p>\n

As Iraq\u2019s second city fell, Australia\u2019s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, was about to meet US President, Barrack Obama, in the White House. Instead of the expected argument about climate change, the talks became an alliance hug-moment.<\/p>\n

Mosul\u2019s fall had blindsided Washington as Iraq plunged towards chaos. Abbott later recalled<\/a>: \u2018I said in meeting with Obama and with [Secretary of State] Kerry, \u201cif you propose to do anything about this you can count on Australia\u2019s strong support, to the limits of our ability. We will certainly do everything we can to support you\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\n

In the war against ISIS, the Australian Defence Force has 780 personnel<\/a> in the Middle East: 400 in an Air task group; 80 for Special Operations; and 300 helping train Iraqi troops<\/a> at the Taji Military Complex.<\/p>\n

The fight for Mosul, David Kilcullen<\/a> notes, is shaping up as the largest, most challenging urban battle anywhere this century. Retaking Mosul will end the conventional phase of the present conflict in Iraq, reducing ISIS, \u2018to a primarily rural (though still very powerful) guerrilla force, rather than the state-like army.\u2019<\/p>\n

ISIS will lose the territory of its state and the city from which it proclaimed the caliphate. Yet the threat won\u2019t be defeated<\/a> when Mosul falls. What will remain is a set of ideas and the modern tools to sell those ideas.<\/p>\n

ISIS\u00a0has adapted the old tactics of terror to the new rules of the social media age, as The Atlantic<\/a><\/em> observed:<\/p>\n

\u2018The\u00a0ISIS\u00a0propaganda machine is equal parts frightening and surreal: Prisoners who are about to be beheaded are fitted with lavalier microphones; synchronized murders are set to booming chorales; brutal clips of death and martyrdom are stitched together with Final Cut Pro. Just how did a throwback death cult with a seventh-century worldview come to dominate 21st-century social media so swiftly and completely?\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The way ISIS weaponised social media helps explain the grim reality that its thoughts matter in Australia\u2019s suburbs. How to gage that influence? As usual, Jacinta Carroll<\/a> offers practical answers, pointing to passport cancellations as \u2018one of the few tangible and public measures of how Australia\u2019s going in the fight against terrorism.\u2019<\/p>\n