A Guide to the Islamic State’s Way of Urban Warfare
Robert Postings | July 9, 2018
The Islamic State group (IS) has spent the last few years fighting a series of defensive battles—many of them in cities—trying to halt a series of territorial losses. In urban battles IS put up stiff resistance despite facing numerically superior and better equipped opponents, who were backed with airpower. In Raqqa the battle was described as taking place in two cities, one above ground and one below, where IS members moved through tunnels to stage attacks where they choose. Anti-IS fighters in Raqqa and Mosul talked about the dangers from snipers, armed drones, IEDs, and suicide vehicle-borne IEDs (SVBIEDs). Often these tactics were used to try to counter advantages of IS’s opponents. Learning lessons from these cases—the most current and relevant examples of urban warfare—is essential. If they fail to do so, militaries will risk learning them the hard way when it is their own forces experiencing new and deadly tactics firsthand on the battlefield.
Part of IS’s ability to grow rapidly and attract thousands of new recruits was its effective use of media for propaganda purposes. But this media—especially the slickly produced videos aimed at highlighting the group’s battlefield victories—also serve to document specific IS tactics, and help us to understand the specific way IS set out to fight in cities.
https://mwi.usma.edu/guide-islamic-states-way-urban-warfare/
