While Obama Called ISIS a “Jayvee” Team, They Were Detailing Caliphate Plans
The leaked Islamic State document sets out a blueprint for a building an Islamic caliphate. (Photo: Guardian)
A leaked ISIS manual shows the Islamic State has at least for one year had a detailed plan to establish a caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the Guardian reported on Monday. The plan details government departments, including a treasury department and an economic development program to sustain existence and growth.
“Principles in the administration of the Islamic State” was written by an Egyptian called Abu Abdullah as an outline to train “cadres of administrators” in the months after Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria on June 28, 2014. The document lays out how to organize proposed government agencies, including education, natural resources, industry, foreign relations, public relations and military training camps.
Regarding the latter, the plan calls for separate training camps for regular troops and veteran fighters. Veterans subsequently go through an annual refresher course to receive instruction in the “latest arts of using weapons, military planning and military technologies.”
The leaked document is revealed as an internal White House review concluded the Islamic State has actually increased in size, scope and reach, as well as the revelations that the president received detailed intelligence in his Daily President Brief a year before he called them the “jayvee” team. The document serves as reenforcement for critics of the administration who claim the president and his allies on the left simply do not understand and have underestimated the threat.
“If the west sees ISIS as an almost stereotypical band of psychopathic killers, we risk dramatically underestimating them,” said General Stanley McChrystal, a Green Beret and the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, who was relieved after he criticized Obama’s strategy and commitment to the war.
Lt. General Graeme Lamb, the former head of UK special forces, echoed McChrystal and said the ISIS document serves as a warning to leaders arguing we should continue with the current military strategy, something President Obama just proposed in the Oval Office Sunday.
“Seeing Daesh [ISIS] and the caliphate as simply a target to be systematically broken by forces other than Middle Eastern Sunnis … is to fail to understand this fight,” Lamb said. “It must be led by the Sunni Arab leadership and its many tribes across the region, with us in the west and the other religious factions in the Middle East acting in support.”
“It is not currently how we are shaping the present counter-ISIS campaign, thereby setting ourselves up for potential failure.”
