(The blog formerly known as) All Things Counter Terrorism

I have been doing some reading instead of writing this afternoon and came across this interesting snippet over at Aymenn’s website http://www.aymennjawad.org/2015/06/islamic-state-training-camps-and-military

He has some source material outlining training and deployment. With his cautions about source veracity noted, I was interested in how closely this material appears to mirror training regimes in other militant salafist groups. What jumped out at me in particular was this mention about screening and deployment to various functional areas within IS:

4. The Caliphate army (choice depends on stern conditions the most important being not thinking of marriage and service will be in the lands of the Caliphate in the wilayats outside of Iraq and al-Sham, and other conditions).

The “not thinking of marriage” jumped out because although this implies deployment is for military service, so to speak, the language has echoes of the wording AQ uses for its external operations selections processes when it sends people out to do ‘work’ in the west, or in other locations away from where it has a base of operations. This may not be the case here but nonetheless that is what came to mind as I read it.  Although as I’m typing (this is a think out loud blog post folks)  I’m also remembering that in the past “marriage” has also been code for a suicide attack. So in coded terminology, it could mean those who are not thinking about martyrdom operations, not that it seems to be the case in this listing. Anyway, I found it quite interesting. Then too is the interesting question of why, if they’re deploying to other wilayats, would wanting to marry while there be frowned upon. Usually marrying locally is seen as a good thing. Is this potentially indicative of problems with marrying locally? Or does it mean they’re not actually going somewhere where they could easily marry, i.e. they’re not actually going to another wilayat? It’s very curious.

Also interesting was the mentions of the textbooks used. More sharia focus too in this account of training than what I have seen in other groups.  I’d be curious if this is a new addition relating to command and control issues IS is facing, particularly in relation to keeping the foreign volunteers in check, or the quality of these new arrivals in general, or whether it is aimed more at group cohesion more generally. In any event, it is interesting. More soon on these issues as this is what I’m gearing up to start writing about, among other things.

Update:

On my internet wanderings, I just read this piece Me and Abu Taubah and the below comment highlights why the extra  Sharia focus in training.

Aside from a lesson in scripted jihadi responses, our exchanges brought me insight into an individual who perhaps lacked the absolute conviction he first tried to project. It left me wondering how many others in the seemingly impenetrable Isis army could also be having doubts.