A glimpse into ISIS’ highly disciplined “elite” murderers.

Fanatical and disciplined, the unit of Islamic State (ISIS) group fighters infiltrated the Syrian border town of Kobani and unleashed mayhem, battling Kurdish forces. In the end, the terrorists were all killed, but not before they had accomplished their mission of spreading fear by slaughtering more than 230 civilians, nearly half of them children.

These are ISIS’s elite shock troops, known as “Inghemasiyoun,” Arabic for “those who immerse themselves,” a sort of special forces unit parallel to its regular forces. They fight to the death, wearing explosives belts to blow themselves up among their opponents if they face defeat.

They are credited with many of the group’s battlefield successes. In the case of the attack on Kobani late last month, the aim was to underscore with blood that the town was not safe even after Kurdish forces wrested it from ISIS control earlier this year. But the Special Forces fighters have also been the vanguard repeated in IS attacks to capture territory.

“They cause chaos and then their main ground offensive begins,” said Redur Khalil, spokesman for the US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units, which have led a string of military successes against the IS in Syria.

Though best known for its horrific brutalities, the Islamic State group has proved to be a highly organized and flexible fighting force, according to senior Iraqi military and intelligence officials and Syrian Kurdish commanders on the front lines.

Its tactics are often creative, whether it’s using a sandstorm as cover for an assault or a lone sniper tying himself to the top of a palm tree to pick off troops below. Its forces switch between conventional and guerrilla warfare, using the latter to wear down their opponents before massed fighters backed by armored vehicles, Humvees and sometimes even artillery move to take over territory. The fighters incorporate suicide bombings as a battlefield tactic to break through lines and demoralize enemies, and they hone them to make them more effective. Recently, they beefed up armor of the vehicles used in those attacks to prevent gunfire from killing the driver or detonating explosives.

Those strategies are being carried into new fronts as well, appearing in Egypt in last week’s dramatic attack by an ISIS-linked militant group against the military in the Sinai Peninsula.

Andreas Krieg, a professor at King’s College London who embedded with Iraqi Kurdish fighters, said ISIS local commanders receive overall orders on strategy but are given freedom to operate as they see fit to achieve them. That’s a sharp contrast to the rigid hierarchies of the Iraqi and Syrian militaries, where officers often fear acting without direct approval.

ISIS fighters are highly disciplined — swift execution is the punishment for deserting battle or falling asleep on guard duty, Iraqi officers said. The group also is flush with weaponry looted from Iraqi forces.

ISIS stands out in its ability to conduct multiple battles simultaneously, Iraqi army Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi said. “In the Iraqi army, we can only run one big battle at a time,” said al-Saadi, who was wounded twice in the past year as he led forces that retook the key cities of Beiji and Tikrit.

Even the group’s atrocities are in part a tactic to terrorize its enemies. It beheads captured soldiers, releasing videos of the killings online. Stepping up the shock value, recent videos showed caged captives being lowered into a pool to drown and the heads blown off other captives with explosive wire around their necks.

‘Victory or Martyrdom’

The number of ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria is estimated between 30,000 to 60,000, according to the Iraqi officers. Former officers from the military of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein have helped the group organize its fighters. Veteran jihadis with combat experience in Afghanistan, Chechnya or Somalia have brought valuable experience.

Foreigners who join ISIS often end up as suicide bombers. “People go to the Islamic State looking to die, and the Islamic State is happy to help them,” said Patrick Skinner, a former CIA officer now with The Soufan Group, a private geopolitical risk assessment company.

The group’s tactics carried it to a sweep of northern and western Iraq a year ago, capturing Mosul, Iraq’s second-biggest city. Shortly thereafter, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” spanning its territory in Iraq and Syria.

In May, it captured Ramadi, capital of Iraq’s vast western Anbar province. In Syria, it seized the central city of Palmyra.

The elite shock troops were crucial in capturing Ramadi. First came a wave of more than a dozen suicide bombings that hammered the military’s positions, then the fighters moved in during a sandstorm. Iraqi troops crumbled and fled as a larger IS force marched in.

Around the same time, they also overran a central Syrian town, al-Sukhna. In an online video released by the group, the elite fighters are shown pumping themselves up for the attack. “Victory or martyrdom,” the fighters, wearing blue bandanas, scream in a circle around their commander, pledging their allegiance to God and vowing never to retreat.

Since US-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria have hampered the group’s movements, ISIS has lost ground. Iraqi troops and Shiite militiamen retook some cities, like Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit. In Syria, Kurdish fighters backed by heavy U.S. airstrikes recaptured Kobani, on the Turkish border, after weeks of devastating battles. More recently, IS lost Tal Abyad, another Syrian border town.

But last month, ISIS attacked not only Kobani — with 70 elite fighters battling for two days against a larger Kurdish force — they also launched a similar incursion in Tal Abyad, where they fought for days until they were killed. They also attacked the northeast Syrian city of Hassakeh, where they continue to hold out.

“They weren’t planning to leave alive,” Kurdish commander Ghalia Nehme said of the IS fighters in Kobani. “It seems they were longing for heaven.”

By:AP

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