While the Obama administration was compiling a plan to send American advisers to work with Iraqi troops and tribesmen in “lily pad” bases near the frontlines, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant adopted a new strategy. DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and counter-terror sources disclose that ISIS is going underground to pursue guerilla tactics on all five of its active fronts in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egyptian Sinai and the Palestinian Gaza Strip. They turned to this strategy after being impressed by the effectiveness of Hamas’ assault and smuggling tunnel system for terrorist assaults on Israel and Egyptian forces in Sinai.
Military experts expect to see soon small, highly-trained squads of ISIS fighters jumping out of underground lairs to strike their victims.
One Western intelligence source told DEBKAfile: This is the end of the long columns of armed jihadis appearing on the horizon to fall on major locations, such as we last saw in mid-May when 400 US-made trucks loaded with thousands of jihadis carrying a variety of weapons captured the central Iraqi city of Ramadi. A similar column from the ISIS base in Raqqa seized the strategic Syrian heritage town of Palmyra.
