vs other groups like the Taliban who folded over in a few months in 2001 or Al Qaeda?
>stalled for a while the Turks, the second largest army of NATO in Al Bab
>Retook Palmyra from the SAA and elite Vatnik troops
>held on for years against 100k SDF troops and tens of thousands of coalition airstrikes
inb4 jooz or glowies
They constantly get wiped out and run away what are you talking about OP
ali
>
CIA backing. also really effective propaganda and really good usage of their early momentum, taking town after town and city after city. As soon as they stalled it was downhill from there
This. Also high-publicity stunts like beheadings and attacks on European soil bolstered recruiting. For a while, the glowies (not the CIA - like homeland security types) were talking about a battle of the brands between Al Qaeda and ISIS. The brand helped them bring in new members and made people with actual skills prefer them to other groups.
>Also high-publicity stunts like beheadings and attacks on European soil bolstered recruiting
It really did. The wave of people from around the world flocking into Syria and Iraq at the time were massive. Huge manpower support and while plenty of them are useless cannon fodder, there's still numerous amount that made use of the experience from there and wreak havoc everywhere. Pretty stupid of them to alienate other Jihadi groups though, they could've last much longer if they didn't imo.
>Pretty stupid of them to alienate other Jihadi groups though
every jihadi group does this shit, it's purely because the vast cultures in every muslim country being near impossible to mesh at all together. it's honestly amazing that the only time they manage to not kill each other is when doing their Hajj, and even then attempts are still made
it's hilariously hard for jihadist groups to actually band large swaths of people together under their own system, because over the littlest things members will want to attempt splinters or join other organizations
Wasn't some fat german guy turned into a sex slave
There's also some Australian incel teen who went over there and got himself into being a suicide bomber. Anons used to post the guy's pics here.
I won't ever forget how many of those traitors in the midst there were eager and enthusiastic to rush over to join ISIS when the going was good. Especially because you heard over and over in the Sunni world until ISIS started to really frick up Sunnis the same shit you hear righties/lefties over here do about antifa or trump:
>They're a little extreme/violent/rough for me but I like what they stand for
They only really turned on ISIS more when ISIS was getting its ass kicked and 'maybe' because it was starting to brutalize Sunnis (the Jordanian pilot). Not because of some moral reason. Validated Osama's claims of "When people see a weak horse and a strong horse by default they will favor the strong horse"
It also bodes real well for Europe if/when you have some ISIS equivalent movement in a future European conflict. Sure all those migrant communities will be very loyal to you. Only divisions I expect will be because of some intra-islamic dispute like "these arab shits running [new islamic jihad group] won't let us Turks/Chechens have power" rather than any loyalty to the European state or EU identity.
It's also a bit of that maoist(?) "10% of the population will fight for the revolution but a lot more will support it"
CIA backing is complete media bullshit pushed primarily by Syrian and Russian media. Im a globo terror scholar and Ive done extensive research on the Islamic State and theres absolutely no evidence for this. There is however extensive evidence the CIA was involved with the SDF and several Iraqi pro government paramilitaries that fought IS.
This anon is for the most part right, the core of the organization are very dedicated and motivated 3raqi ex-Ba'athists who have experience both running a state and waging an open war. The extent of the belief in IS salafist ideology of these induviduals varies but for the most part they are islamists as the US occupation radicalized even the most secular of Ba'athists. Further most people dont understand but IS was in the period of 2013-2014 a broad coalition and it basically took over many groups or at least their members, you even have some relatively wacky alliances such as their siphoning of manpower from the army of the Naqshbandi order which is a sufi-ba'athist group that was led by Izaat al Douri, a Saddamist general.
In short the Islamic State was genuinely competent as it had both pool of skilled manpower and ideological zeal that overcame typical arab shortcomings such as corruption or nepotism. However this zeal also prevented any form of diplomacy as everyone was an enemy by default which led to them overextending and having the whole world declare war on them thru the UN and even so the fact that they managed to hold so long proves their fighting capabilities.
>IA backing is complete media bullshit pushed primarily by Syrian and Russian media. Im a globo terror scholar and Ive done extensive research on the Islamic State and theres absolutely no evidence for this. There is however extensive evidence the CIA was involved with the SDF and several Iraqi pro government paramilitaries that fought IS.
This and same. I have been studying terrorism and world politics for 25 years and what I do associate with ISIS is Assad and Russia but not the USA and not the CIA. This was a MASSIVE Russian propaganda exercise designed to defect and distract from what they were at with Assad. They even weaponised the refugee crisis caused by ISIS to tray and destabilise European politics and advance their quislings and it was during this period that Russia got very into establishing mass people smuggling networks through southern Libya. You can see the same with them shoving immigrants over the border in Belarus. Syria was a failure by the USA, in this instance Obama failed completely in foreign policy, his meaningless red lines on chemical weapons and allowing the Russians a free hand. At the same time he blocked US weapons exports to Ukraine that might have ended the Donbass conflict early (javelin).
>Russia got very into establishing mass people smuggling networks through southern Libya.
Damn didnt know russians were sponsoring western ngos to bring illegal immigrants into europe. Wonder where they get this kind of money?
Russians/Soviets have a long history of sponsoring NGOs that destabilize Europe.
Damn so EU funded NGOs who have been bringing foreign economic migrants into europe have become Russian funded on a snap of a finger?
How the frick hasnt Russia conquered the world with this ability?
>Best intentioned NGO's can't be subverted by people who have all their time on their hands to waste doing "volunteering" and "offering support" because they're funded by foreign countries.
Really pickles my cucumber
>How the frick hasnt Russia conquered the world with this ability?
well mostly because you can't bribe everyone if your economy is the size of Italy's.
>EU funded NGOs
If my taxes pay for politicians salaries then why do they keep taking bribes?
>Wonder where they get this kind of money?
They're one of the largest exporters of natural gas, and also because their government doesn't spend on anything other than the military, Putin's mansions and yachts and bribes.
>public infrastructure? indoor plumbing? wtf is that?
Its fricking hilarious how easy it is to memory hole certain things. IS released a video in 2015 of them infiltrating the FSA training camp at Al Tanf near the jordan-3raq tristate border and they doxxed and exposed all the US advisors and CIA assets. This incident has been completely wiped from the internet and it shows you how spooked glowies are by IS, the video included footage of said american advisors and training personal as well as their full names and dox info. I might have the video saved somewhere in my archive and Ill try to dig it out, but it just further proves how IS did more damage to spooks than Syria Iran and Russia combined in the war. But people here will disregard such things and completely ignore them because muh assad defending orthodox against sand savages. Syria threads on /k/ were great until 2017 when it just got completely swamped by Mandic pro assad shilling and tbh it kinda worked as most people now just larp cia mossad isis while assad is fighting globohomo.
>This incident has been completely wiped from the internet
how convenient for you
I remember this being discussed on 8ch but never got to see the vids.
The CIA didn't directly back ISIS. They backed rebels, many of whom literally defected and became ISIS. More importantly, ISIS captured weapons from rival groups, and the US knew very well that was going to happen when they flooded the weapons in.
If the US wanted they could have drone-striked ISIS caravans early into the Syria War. The US didn't even do that in Iraq when they were capturing territory where the US has always had free-reign. This was because they wanted the havoc to weaken and potentially topple the Syrian regime. It's called "Strategy of Tension".
Yes many defected but thats rather a show of US incompetance in understanding local factors and allowing such infiltration rather than an active campaign to help IS, ie its further proof of IS capabilties rather than the US helping them. As stated previously check out the IS operation of infilitrating Al Tanf.
But they did anon, not to the degree of 2015 onwards but they actively hit IS assets in 2013/4 but the scope was limited for several reasons, the primary one being the Maliki government in 3raq having very very bad relations with the US...the other being Obama getting spooked of using air superiority in Syria because of the failure of Libya and his own political standing. The large propaganda drive against IS in primarily russian then western media allowed it.
It seems that the everyone keeps forgetting these facts because ISIS has been branded as an irrational boogeyman that mustve been invented or helped by some spooks so it couldnt have been a grassroots insurrection that managed to achieve limited success by their own merit. Ive been actively following the organization since its reorganization in ~2011. I think thats an extreme underestimation of IS equal if not more so than the one in 2013/4 that allowd then to sieze Mosul. Its a very complex organization internally and to downplay their abilities is plain wrong at best and downright dangerous and stupid at worst.
>CIA backing. ISIS was not backed by the CIA, the FSA was. The GRU Russian military intelligence and Assad created ISIS to legitimize Assads regime, Assad released extremists who from priston so as to join it, bought oil from areas it controlled and while Assads air force bombed the FSA and later the Russians they never bombed ISIS and then, the Russian creation attacked Iraq and started WW3. Every single one of 'isis' attacks in Europe were designed to polarise and get Russian populist traitors elected who would tow Moscows line on foreign policy. ISIS was also like the 2014 invasion of Ukraine a bif moment for internet shill propaganda here we had /sg/ effectively a general devoted to the Syrian electronic army a state funded Assad government propaganda shill farm run from Damascus under Russian direction. The FSB were funnelling Chechens and extremists from Dagestan including pass [ort and visa clearance, many of the were in the senior ranks of ISIS. What teh CIA did not do was support the actual democratic resistance in Syria, they basically left them to be murdered by extremists funded by saudi and the Russia/Syrian ISIS. Very late into the syrian war, after the invasion of Iraq, Russia and Assad lost control of ISIS and it started essentially telling Assad to frick off at whioch point it had to be shut down, even then that was left to the USA and Allies while the Russians and Assad continued most of their efforts on the remaining pro democracy forces.
The CIA *should* have supported the democratic resistance in syria, Obama gave the Russians a free hand to do as they liked there, resulting in atrocity and slaughter. The solution is kill all Russians. Then their friends in Iran, North Korea etc will sober up quite quickly.
>inb4 jooz or glowies
Why even ask if you don't want the answer?
>DOOD EVERYTHING IS A CIA/ZOG PLOT AND NOTHING CAN BE NUANCED
blame Assad and moronic American foreign policy in Iraq
It was kind of insane actually, totally dwarfed the mujahideen. 30,000 fighters from all over the globe is already a massive force without the already existing Syrians and Iraqis they had.
Massive security vacuum in Syria allowed them to get set up, then they went over to Iraq to steal all of the Iraqi Army's shit.
>vs. Taliban or Al Qaeda
Al Qaeda doesnt have 'land' to claim other than a vague concept of muslim lands and The US didnt invade Syria.
My mental timeline is a little fuzzy but they held multiple major cities in heavily destabilized countries and had a strong recruitment campaign plus plenty of equipment from taking over other jihadi groups and walking into mosul. They fought like shit like any other jihadist group but had determined enough fighters that they were a b***h to remove, note that against competent enemies that didn't get rolled over they struggled to take ground.
They were mostly Ba'athist professional army officers and civil servants larping as religious nutjobs. At least back when they were strong and relevant.
This. I believe some former Ba'athist people who lead the insurgencies joined ISIS some point after Mosul got captured.
Obama being weak and the Gulf states desperate enough to get Assad
We also left them weapons and stuff when we fricked off
When Obama was giving weapons to 'moderate' rebels they were actually islamic fascists who gave shit to ISIS
A goal and unified purpose, it's something that lots of MIddle Eastern peoples lack outside of immediate community interests
CIA
>ISIS was better than Taliban even though they got annhilated from existance while the Taliban literally won and controls afganistan
???
they wanted to die
Israel
In 2001 the Taliban had never experienced a bombing campaign so they weren't prepared for it. A number of their troops were also tribal militias that went home or switched sides when things went south.
Al Qaeda never tried to hold its ground in face of heavy firepower like ISIS did, at least not on the same scale.
>What made ISIS so strong?
drugs
also they got annihilated in a few months
What drugs? Didnt you watch the hours of footage they put out burning drugs and spilling alcohol? Also they held out for years, not months...it surprising how many assad/vatnik mouthbreathers post here.
>What drugs?
Fenethylline
So you're trying to tell me IS waged a 6 year war in which they took several large population centres because their fighters used speed? Something that basically every fighting force in the syrian civil war used, dont you even remember the massive captagon factory JaN siezed from the SAA, in fact the biggest factory of said drugs was in SAA territory? This is some pure vatnik shilling right now about drug crazed wahhabis.
Assad
>What made ISIS so strong?
Mossad
they had zoomers
So they had technology and the internet unlike the Taliban
Heavy funding from Gulf folks, Assad/Russia mostly focusing their efforts on other rebel groups instead of ISIS, and big ethnic tensions in Iraq between Sunni and Shia.
>Heavy funding from Gulf folks, Assad/Russia mostly focusing their efforts on other rebel groups
This. Assad wanted to destroy liberal rebel groups because they posed an immediate threat to his legitimacy. Better to boil the conflict down to insane Islamists and him and then deal with the islamists.
And keep in mind, the conflict started because Assad decided to shoot protestors. Who just wanted food/employment because of an extremely bad drought in Syria that had put farmers out of work
the fact that they were funded by mossad and the cia, like certain other militaries
literally provide 1 (one) source
Deathwish. They had men who thought dying would give them muh virgins in heaven. That coupled with the opponents being disorganized Arabs with zero loyalty to their country.
Continued support of Israel and the USA
see
But the USA bombed them and backed the SDF/Iraqi army against them. If we really wanted to support ISIS then we wouldn't have done shit, don't you think?
the propaganda footage they would put out showing firefights sometimes were decently impressive. again its what they wanted you to see, but their guys were good fighters who shot and moved well. far better than what ive seen from comparative groups and even 3rd world armies. add in a lot of amphetamines and a high morale from thinking its fine if they get killed in this life, and drop them in a region thats already problem filled and there you go.
for a while the Turks, the second largest army of NATO in Al Bab
this was due to turkey didnt want bomb al bab into dust. also turkey did operation with limited personal after 2016 coup attempt, situation in the army was fricked up and turkish forces was mostly fsa militias on the ground .
>Taliban
>Folded
>letting Americans swing their dicks around on your land and indiscriminately bomb any village they see fit for 20 years is not folding
Its not that they were strong
Is that ME armies cant fight