The Iraqi army has launched an offensive against the terrorist militia IS. But they are dealing with a difficult adversary: the jihadists mix modern war tactics with apocalyptic attacks – quickly and ruthlessly.

The weathered Kurdish commander Mahmud, or “Dr. Mahmoud,” as he is known to young fighters, has experienced a lot in his 20 years as a fighter: Helicopter raids by the Turkish air force, tank fire, week-long battles. But something like two weeks ago, he has never seen before: “They came like a swarm, raging, shooting as if nothing could stop them 70 to 80 cars, of which about 50 armored Humvees.”, Those beefy monsters, with those U.S. troops for years moving through Iraq and Afghanistan.

The rest are pick-ups have been with fitted machine guns and anti-aircraft guns, which raced to the small town Mahmour like a cavalry charge from earlier centuries. In fact, nothing held the stormtroopers of the “Islamic state” (IS) in Mahmour – up on the hill, where the Kurdish PKK fighters had holed up.

From other attack sites report refugees from the apocalyptic attack formations of the jihadists “. They rolled in a broad line through the desert, dozens of vehicles next to each other, and shot it does not matter if we could turn off a car, the other resting just continue,” said already in June a soldier escaped from a garrison near Mosul.

“They only sent several suicide bombers with explosive-laden car”, a peshmerga, a fighter of the Iraqi Kurdish troops, was used in the far east near the village Jalawla recalls: “Then came the main force – and so soon after the explosions that could not respond. Anyone who could fled. ”

IS-War Tactics:Thirst or surrender and be killed

What Kurds, Christians, Yazidis in the past two and a half months in northern Iraq (and Syria in eight months) have experienced, can al-Qaeda appear as a youth gang in retrospect. What da zoom rolled across the steppe, is not a terrorist group, but an army. And one who fights in various facets, as it was in the early days of Islam common to their barbaric rules of IS want to go back: Storm attacks of cavalry on enemies and all other “infidels” whose men you kill at will, their wives can enslave.

And who does not surrender, is besieged:

  * how to before days of Sinjar Mountain, on which tens of thousands Yazidis had taken refuge,

  * how to date the Shiite Turkmen town Emeli further east, where 12,000 or more people of electricity, water and food supplies have been cut off.                Until they die of thirst, so        the calculus of jihadists – or surrender and be killed.

The scenery looks like a nightmarish reenactment of the 7th century, with armored SUV instead of camels.

But to get that far, the IS operates not at all like a rabid fanatic horde in the background. Completely independent of the radical ideology of the IS is a tactical alliances, as long as it seems useful – in Syria about only with the rebels, then by Assad’s regime. The movement announces on this as soon as it is powerful enough. Strategic supply facilities are housed possible undamaged control: oil fields, substations, hydroelectric power plants, even grain and potato cylinders and large bakeries.

Each attack is preceded by discrete planning phases: spy networks and clandestine cells are constructed, bribed defectors. Only then proposes to the IS. Quick as a flash. He rolled over the stunned and often downright betrayed opponents.

Islamic State-War Tactics:”Sharia courts” as a means of terror

Then waits again, potential enemies are trafficked into the newly conquered territories or equal murdered. The IS-infantry may enjoy it to spoon-feed the local population with their absurd prohibitions and bring people indiscriminately before their “Sharia courts” to have nothing to do with a legal system. They are merely a guise for boundless terror.

Then wait until the excitement in the rest of the world has settled again – until Gaza and the Ukraine, the public and the politicians deal with again more than the advance of Allmachtsfantasten who want to spread their caliphate favorite all over the world.

This Janus-faced makes the IS as successful as puzzling: High Modern, rational, flexible and active on all social networks, it falls at the same time as the flesh has become Apocalypse on getting more land here.

But this time the United States has intervened militarily. Since it is not quite as easy to speculate on the rapid forgetting. Should it Refit the next storm wave of jihadists will come sometime: lightning fast, overnight, and once again victorious in doubt.

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