[Saletan] ISIS is Breaking Al-Qaida’s Seven Rules for the Effective Terrorist

Al-Qaida’s Seven Rules for the Effective Terrorist

ISIS is breaking all of them. It will live to regret it.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is scaring the hell out of everyone. It has infested Syria, overrun Iraq, alarmed Iran, and convinced U.S. politicians it’s the most dangerous terrorist organization ever. But frightening everyone isn’t a long-term growth strategy. ISIS is destroying itself.

Al-Qaida, the organization from which ISIS recently split, understands this truth. For years, Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants tried to explain to their affiliates the folly of unchecked brutality. In letters and directives captured in the 2011 raid on his compound, Bin Laden stressed the importance of patience, discretion, and public opinion. His advice, boiled down to seven rules, forms a clear outline of ISIS’s mistakes.

1. Don’t fight civil wars. Bin Laden recognized that battling for territory against local governments was a lousy way to get to theocracy. In a 2010 letter, he explained why this wouldn’t work in Yemen:

As for the local enemy, such as if the Yemenis were to begin a long battle against the security services, this is a matter that will weigh on the people. As time goes by, they will begin to feel that some of them have been killed and they will start to want to stop the fighting. This would promote the ideology of secular governments that raise the motto of pleasing all sides.

ISIS rejects this rule. It calls itself a state. It measures its progress in territory. It’s trying to control as many as 40,000 square miles with an estimated 10,000 fighters. Meanwhile, the parties that have won seats in the new Iraqi parliament are scrambling to form a government that can appease all sides and pacify the country, just as Bin Laden anticipated.

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