The Master Plan: ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory

by Brian H. Fishman

Overview

An incisive narrative history of the Islamic State, from the 2005 master plan to reestablish the Caliphate to its quest for Final Victory in 2020

"With its original and powerful analysis, The Master Plan should be required reading for anyone attempting to understand both ISIS and al-Qaeda and the implications for contemporary global security."—Bruce Hoffman, Georgetown University

Given how quickly its operations have achieved global impact, it may seem that the Islamic State materialized suddenly. In fact, al-Qaeda’s operations chief, Sayf al-Adl, devised a seven-stage plan for jihadis to conquer the world by 2020 that included reestablishing the Caliphate in Syria between 2013 and 2016. Despite a massive schism between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, al-Adl’s plan has proved remarkably prescient. In summer 2014, ISIS declared itself the Caliphate after capturing Mosul, Iraq—part of stage five in al-Adl’s plan. Drawing on large troves of recently declassified documents captured from the Islamic State and its predecessors, counterterrorism expert Brian Fishman tells the story of this organization’s complex and largely hidden past—and what the master plan suggests about its future. Only by understanding the Islamic State’s full history—and the strategy that drove it—can we understand the contradictions that may ultimately tear it apart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300221497
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	11/22/2016
Pages:	376
Sales rank:	873,152
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Brian Fishman is a counterterrorism research fellow with the International Security Program at New America. He previously served as director of research at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy. As a professor at West Point, he taught the first dedicated course on the Islamic State of Iraq in spring 2008.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Note on Sources, Spelling, and Names xv

Key Characters xvii

Prologue: The Kandahar Meeting 1

1 The Awakening Stage (2000-2003) 4

2 The Eye-Opening Stage (2003-2006) 31

3 The Stage of Standing Upright (2007-2010) 85

4 The Stage of Recuperation (2010-2013) 140

5 The Stage of Declaring the State (2013-2016) 182

6 The Stage of Absolute Confrontation (2016-2018) 215

7 The Stage of Final Victory (2018-2020) 247

Appendix: The 2005 "General Plan" of the Army of the Foil of the Sunna and Collective 261

Notes 265

Index 339

Editorial Reviews

"A sage assessment showing how IS world domination could never come to pass because it has alienated too many Muslims worldwide."—Kirkus Reviews

"Fishman’s Master Plan is now the standard by which every other analytical book about ISIS should be judged."—Nibras Kazimi, Bustan

"The definitive history of the Islamic State—told by one of a handful of experts who studied the group long before it became what it is today.”—Peter Neumann, King’s College London

"With its original and powerful analysis, The Master Plan should be required reading for anyone attempting to understand both ISIS and al-Qaeda and the implications for contemporary global security."—Bruce Hoffman, Georgetown University

"For too many years, the United States and its allies have failed to understand the ideological drive of the people who lead ISIS. Brian Fishman tells us who they are, what they think and where they hope to be headed. His work needs to be read by policy makers and average citizens alike."—General John P. Abizaid, U.S. Army (Ret.), former commander, U.S. Central Command

"Brian Fishman's Master Plan is a deeply researched account of ISIS' rise to prominence from its obscure roots in pre-9/11 Afghanistan. Fishman masterfully elucidates the organization's history, tactics and strategy."—Peter Bergen, author of United States of Jihad

From the Publisher

“Brian Fishman’s The Master Plan provides a comprehensive history of the Islamic State’s strategic evolution, covering the personalities and events that shaped one of the most feared terrorist­insurgent groups that has ever existed. Eminently readable, in places even amusing — no small feat in a book about IS — Fishman flips with ease between the overview and the granular to demonstrate his points, using new sources that will allow as much supplementary research as a reader could wish for, and ties it together in a narrative that will be of use to both specialists and generalists.”—Kyle Orton, Fathoms

Fathoms - Kyle Orton

"For too many years, the United States and its allies have failed to understand the ideological drive of the people who lead ISIS. Brian Fishman tells us who they are, what they think and where they hope to be headed. His work needs to be read by policy makers and average citizens alike."—General John P. Abizaid, U.S. Army (Ret.), former commander, U.S. Central Command

John Abizaid

"With its original and powerful analysis, The Master Plan should be required reading for anyone attempting to understand both ISIS and al-Qaeda and the implications for contemporary global security."—Bruce Hoffman, Georgetown University

Bruce Hoffman

"The definitive history of the Islamic State—told by one of a handful of experts who studied the group long before it became what it is today.”—Peter Neumann, King’s College London

Peter Neumann

Sept. 8, 2016
A clinical dissection of the Islamic State group’s blueprint for waging jihad and establishing a caliphate.Fishman, a counterterrorism research fellow with the International Security Program at New America, analyzes the ideological motivation of the progenitors of IS, namely that of Jordanian “thug” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was first financed by al-Qaida to run a training and recruiting camp in Afghanistan, alongside the Taliban. With the United States invasion of Iraq, al-Zarqawi learned from the Kurdish jihadi community (Ansar al-Islam) much about violent governance and digital tools that he would later use in making IS a global phenomenon. By 2004, al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida had created a joint vision that took the form of a seven-stage “master plan” calling for the establishment of a caliphate by 2014—exactly as it happened. Fishman divides the book into these seven stages, supposedly culminating in the rallying of 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide “under a single banner to overthrow remaining apostate Muslim regimes and destroy Israel.” The other operational blueprint that delineated this murderous vision was the widely accessible manual The Management of Savagery (2004). Fishman pursues al-Zarqawi’s masterminding of terrorist attacks in Iraq, including the explosion at the Shia holy city of Najaf in 2003, an act aimed at polarizing relations between the Shiites and the Sunnis. Important tenets of what Fishman calls Zarqawiism are the dispensability of apostates (actually, the vast majority of the world’s Muslims) and the populist notion that the highest form of religious devotion is being an active warrior. The author notes how the Iraqi jihadi movement was greatly enhanced by disenfranchised Baathist policemen and by Bashar al-Assad’s release of political prisoners. The bedfellows the jihadi movement has engendered are strange indeed, and Fishman wonders, “just who would benefit most from the Islamic State’s defeat?” A sage assessment showing how IS world domination could never come to pass because it has alienated too many Muslims worldwide.

Kirkus Review

Read More