The Arabic term amiliya amniya literally translates as 'security operation' and refers to an operation that is conducted inside enemy territory. Thus, for the Islamic State, examples of security operations would include an assassination operation inside the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces' territory, a mass-casualty car bombing in Baghdad and IED attacks against Syrian rebels in Idlib. Attacks against targets in Europe would also be classified as security operations.
To manage security operations within Iraq and Syria in particular, the Islamic State developed an 'external security' apparatus, widely known by the Arabic term Amn Khariji. It is this apparatus that is the focus of this post. At the end of last month, the 'extremist' Telegram channel al-Nadhir al-Uryan posted the testimony of a former member of the Islamic State, who criticizes the Amn Khariji for its conduct of operations, strategies and administration. The channel's aim in publishing this testimony is to record things for the historical record and in the hope that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated.
It would appear that this critique forms part of a larger set of criticisms that the author intends to make regarding how the Islamic State was run on the ground, but those other parts have yet to emerge.
To summarize, the writer makes the following notable points:
- I will not focus my critique on the Islamic State's deviation in its creed and manhaj as that topic has already been covered by others. Speaking about the failings of the Islamic State in its establishment and administration is necessary for multiple reasons. Hopefully those to come can draw lessons from the mistakes.
- I will not speak about 'lone wolf operations' in Europe conducted by Islamic State supporters, for the Islamic State had no part in them and would only learn of them through media, so the success or failure of these operations was down to the skills of the individuals perpetrating them. Instead, I will focus on the external security apparatus that dealt with enemy territories inside Iraq and Syria.
- Shari'i violations were committed in sending operatives to infiltrate the rebels (the Free Syrian Army). By joining the rebel groups, these operatives fell into kufr (disbelief).
- At the height of its power, the Islamic State would take secret allegiance pledges from rebels in the rebel-held areas, but made no effort to teach them correct doctrine or have them study it. As such, it permitted them to remain in kufr and idolatry despite the allegiance pledge to the Islamic State, which thought that it was more useful for these rebels to remain in their places and serve the Islamic State's interests.
- The budget of the external security apparatus was distinguished from financial budgeting of other apparatuses, with lack of proper oversight and accounting particularly in the case of funds for emergency matters. As such, the door was open for corruption within the external security apparatus.
- Intelligence gathering was excessively focused on the rebels with pointless wasting of resources, whereas the focus should have been on the two main enemies who were destroying the Islamic State: the Syrian government and the Syrian Democratic Forces.
- Security operations in the form of assassinations of prominent personalities were misdirected, again focusing overwhelmingly on the rebels and not on the Syrian government and the Syrian Democratic Forces.
- Security operations were not appropriately done in coordination with military personnel for offensive and defensive purposes (diverting the enemy's defenses elsewhere and sowing confusion in their ranks respectively). While the Islamic State did inflict mass casualty attacks with suicide bombings, the overall level of success was poor in comparison with the resources made available to it. Also, mass casualty attacks often served a deceptive media purpose, distracting supporters and members from large-scale territorial losses.
- There was little oversight of work with regard for risks and vetting of recruits for security operations. As such, the external security apparatus was liable to being swindled by e.g. people who had homes in rebel-held areas and wanted to return to them without having to pay for being conveyed there, so they proposed to become external security operatives and their requests were heeded. An amusing case is also mentioned regarding the son of a rebel commander from Kanaker in west Damascus countryside who scammed the Islamic State's external security apparatus out of thousands of dollars.
- Lack of coordination between the external security apparatus on the one hand and the Delegated Committee and the military personnel on the other. There was even lack of coordination within the external security apparatus on account of different affiliations of contingents. For example, in Deraa (south Syria), you had three kinds of external security contingents: some operating within Fawj al-Qa'qa' (a seemingly autonomous security unit), some affiliated with the security apparatus of the Damascus wilaya (province) of Islamic State, and some affiliated with the affiliate Jaysh Khalid bin al-Waleed in the Yarmouk Basin. Rather than cooperating, these contingents' interests clashed.
Some may question the authenticity of this testimony, but besides the fact that everything al-Nadhir al-Uryan publishes is authentic as I have established previously, I myself know that Fawj al-Qa'qa' is a real external security entity within the Islamic State, as confirmed to me by someone who used to be a senior official within Jaysh Khalid bin al-Waleed. This source also corroborated the existence of an Abu Anas al-Ghazawi (whose kunya suggests he is of Gazan origin) who is mentioned in this text.
I find this testimony to be of value as a useful counter to the idea that Islamic State is masterful in its execution of external security operations. It is also of relevance as the Islamic State has lost nearly all of the territory it once formally controlled in Iraq and Syria.
Below is the text translated in full. Any parenthetical insertions in square brackets are my own.
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In the name of God and praise be to God and prayers and peace be upon the Messenger of God. The Almighty says:
"Oh people, fear your Lord who created you from one breath and created from it its spouse and spread from it many men and women, and fear God about whom you ask each other and the wombs. Indeed God has been overseeing you."
And the Almighty has said:
"Oh you who have believed, fear God and say right words. He will make right your deeds for you and forgive you for your sins. And whoso obeys God and His Messenger obtains a great reward."
The Dawla [state] of al-Baghdadi:
How much I have wished that all my criticism of it should be limited to making clear how it has separated from the Prophetic methodology that it claims! So we make the confused one realize its state of affairs, and we make clear to the deceived one its defect, and all of zeal will review his state and resolve his will. And in this we call the people to Tawheed and through it we prohibit them from idolatry. But it is a pulpit that has been ascended by those of knowledge and good and precedence and they have clarified, made clear and explained. May God reward them best for that. And they are among the victims of the Dawla and people of experience. For one of them was the learned one and the teacher and the adviser and the claimant and the defendant and the witness to the reality, and I am not qualified for this or that. But I would like to speak about the negative aspects of the Dawla and its mistakes on the route of its establishment and the conduct of its work in general in its Diwans, administrations, offices, commissions and members.
And the reasons are many, among them:
. Lack of control of the volume of spreading of these issues from declaring as foolish the manhaj of the Dawla and making clear its defects, for they have become public for the review of those who conspire against the religion from secularists and others besides them, as they have begun citing as evidence for their falsehoods against Salafism all that we display from how the experiences of these groups that claim the manhaj of the predecessors went astray. And the matter becomes something against us and not for us.
And how much I have wished that what I write were reserved only for the review of those I intend to address from:
1. Those of the correct manhaj who have remained steadfast without hesitation on their manhaj and they have not been deceived by the glitter of releases.
2. Those who have left the Dawla and have disavowed it for what they found from its deviation so it should be tazkiya for themselves for what they have done.
3. And even the soldiers of the Dawla who are still with it and perhaps this will clarify to them what they are living through from its mistakes and they will be deterred and repent.
I do not intend to address anyone besides this group.
. Another reason is the lack of disparaging of any experiment to establish an Islamic state in reality, for the prestige of the matter in its totality disappears among those who will be preoccupied with these particulars as they perceive the weakness of this Ummah and that it is not suited for anything, and that the components of the men cannot rise to bear a great responsibility like this. And the thinker thinks that the solution is in waiting for a miracle or something extraordinary in order to await the Mahdi, and that we have no power at all to contend with the states of kufr in the grandeur of their development and the size of their armies. And this was my state of affairs regrettably.
. Concern for creed and manhaj is too great to discuss, and the idolatry that it [the Dawla] has perpetrated cannot be disputed except by the one ignorant in his Tawheed. As for the mistakes like this, we will find the one ignorant of their reality and says words of truth perhaps even if he intended by them something else besides that. And he will justify what we reproach it for on the grounds that it is of that which can be excused and explained and the one who commits may get it right or wrong and there is no objection for the size of the matter as well as the state of necessity that was more widespread than the state of leisure and other lines of defence.
And as there are things done right in this work sometimes I am obliged to be fair in speaking about them even if I speak about its errors.
Perhaps my words about them are arrows by which I intend to strike the heart of al-Baghdadi's Dawla and nothing else, but they strike by error the throats of others.
But what has pushed me to lower my bucket into this wretched well is that some of these catastrophes are due to errors caused by contravention of the law of God in this very cause, without recourse to the Book [Qur'an] and Sunna but rather the recourse has been to following arbitrary whims. It has even been of their habit to cover up Shari'i violations and falling into kufr and idolatry with the cloak of interest and act of corruption and Shari'i politics and the fiqh [jurisprudence] of reality so it has been obligatory to mention them.
And advice is for the words of SAWS: "Religion is advice. It was said to him: for whom oh Messenger of God? He said: for God, and His Messenger, and the imams of the Muslims and their mass."
And there is hope that a generation will take the initiative as we wait and look out for the opportunity to turn the tables, working to build this edifice if God wills. So the experience of the failed Dawla will be a laboratory that will make available for the cadres correction of its mistakes, so the monotheist will thus have an idea about operations at the level of large organizations and broadening his general understandings.
As desired by a brother of mine in God, I ask God to make us among those who have mutual affection in Him. In Him he has signalled to me by allusion and here I thus respond to him in statement.
I begin seeking help in God, and God is the one behind the intention, on 5 matters from the portfolios of the al-Baghdadi Dawla.
First matter: External Security [Amn Khariji]
My matter will not be about the lone wolf operations that have happened in the European states and elsewhere, for I have an extended discussion about it first, and second the Dawla has not had any preoccupation or hand in them, therefore we do not hold the Dawla responsible for their mistakes if they happened because they are carried out on the basis of skills of individuals and in general the Dawla does not know of them except after they are publicised in the media. And I will speak about what I know during the time of my presence since I entered into the battle ground of the Dawla and until I left it, so I will limit the discussion to an apparatus the Dawla designated for this matter and its geographic space was only limited to Syria and Iraq within lands outside the control of the al-Baghdadi Dawla.
I will not prolong talking about the establishment of this apparatus and its men.
And I will display the burdensome errors that spread in it and came to dominate its temperament.
The Shari'I aspect:
Permitting entry into kufr on the basis of interest:
The first of the clashes that occurred in this regard concerns the issue of sending individual security personnel who had pledged allegiance and were inside the land of the Dawla to brigades and battalions in the Free Army to go and join them and thus be the Dawla's eye that provides it with news and its hand by which it strikes.
And note that joining entails formalities of recording and taking the name and life biography in entirety and the person is compelled to fight and remain with them and has jobs entrusted to him of course in order for him to continue remaining, and he may remain for years and not merely for a transient matter in one assignment only. Is not the one who has gone to join in this regard to be considered a disbeliever apostasising from his religion if we suppose his Islam at the time of it? And I was following and witness to two who were sent for an assignment like this.
Permitting remaining in idolatry
With the fashion of secret allegiance pledges that circulated in the golden age of the Dawla in 2015-2016, the Dawla permitted a number of leaders and battalions of the Free Army to remain in their state and be content with sending an audio clip by the leader of the faction announcing his allegiance to al-Baghdadi without requiring him or his soldiers to repent, while its banner could remain as it was. In addition, they did not teach them or ask them to learn matters of the religion that they are wholly ignorant of even as they commit its nullifiers night and day.
And their intentions became clear with time.
Among them those who seek to appease the Dawla to keep its evil away and nothing more, and on being tested they were neutral.
Among them those who deceived it and exploited it and awaited the strong horse to lean towards it, and on being tested they turned against the Dawla and even fought it.
Among them those who thought that the Dawla is 'superman' so spoke in its tongue and threatened with its spearhead and on being tested found themselves implicated, as the Dawla overlooked them and had no regard for this fate of theirs at the level of groups.
As for at the level of individuals, I will speak frankly, for allegiance pledges were taken in bulk from members in the Free Army and they were allowed to remain in their kufr by fatwas from seniors of the Shari'i officials, and I am of those whose hands perpetrated this matter (I ask God for forgiveness). And the surprising thing is that my amir at the time praised contacts that I and another person working with me had established with members inside the Free Army and the formation of a network of personnel under allegiance to the Dawla inside them. And the fatwa from him was when I asked him about the legitimacy of this deed: "Oh brother, the Dawla has been doing these things for a long time, and if they were not right and permitted in law, I would not do them."
And this continued until a person from the Free Army contacted me and I knew him as changeable in temperament and very inquisitive. He intended to make a secret allegiance pledge as had become the fashion in the area, and he was desiring to join. So I spoke to one of the judges of the Dawla and its experienced Shari'i officials (Abu al-Muthanna al-Jazrawi) and said that I feared for this man that he would relapse if he remained in his place and it was better for his state of affairs to enter into the embrace of the Dawla, but as assignments go, he would be more useful in his place.
(For the fatwa was let him benefit us there more, and here indeed I had misgivings about the lack of attention to the religion of the people, whoever they were).
This was so despite the fact that what we were doing was kufr, but why wasn't there sadd al-dhari'a [shutting off the pretext]?
And what dhari'a puts an end to kufr? And refuge is to be sought in God (for repugnant it is from an ignorant soldier, and repugnant it is from a knowledgeable judge).
And regarding the two aforementioned matters, there was stirred up between me and one of the amirs of the besieged areas of al-Lajat (Emad al-Sabti) [NB: al-Lajat is a region in northeast Deraa province] this debate at the end of 2016 approximately as he wished to send kafala [salary] payments to soldiers reckoned within his sector and working in the ranks of the Free Army (Jaysh al-Asha'ir and Alwiyat al-Omari) [NB: both of these factions were southern rebel groups] and after a long debate I declared him to be mistaken in it and said this is among the muddles that the Dawla is silent about. He disappeared for a period of two days and returned to me and said that he met by chance with Turki Binali [a Bahraini cleric seen as a more 'moderate' figure in the Islamic State] and he asked him about the issue and the response was as follows:
"In the event they were in the Free Army originally and they were kept in their state in their place by asking their repentance in secret and likewise taking allegiance pledges, there is no harm. As for personnel who were not present in the ranks of the Free Army being sent to go and join, this is kufr that is not permitted."
And my question here is: what is the defect that made Binali distinguish between entering into kufr from the outset and remaining in it?
Not to mention the Shari'i violations regarding stockpiling, distributing spoils and silence about the one who misappropriates, steals and remains a glorified, dignified amir, and God is the One whose help is to be sought.
Financial Matters
I am not speaking about costs and expenses that may be required by necessity of external work instead of other operations and this is a natural thing. But rather I am speaking about wealth unduly used. Making the budget of this apparatus distinguished in its items from the financial table for the rest of the apparatuses gave ample opportunity for rampant corruption in action in comfort and especially in the item of emergencies and its distinguishing feature is that it has no oversight from any receipts and documentations in this apparatus. But rather what God willed was taken from it without itemization and explanation and at the end of month the surplus would be restored to the Bayt al-Mal in the event that the sheikh preserved anything from it.
And one of their men bore witness against himself, as one of the financial officials of Fawj al-Qa'qa' (Abu Anas al-Ghazawi) spoke about this particular to me in the sense of wonder at this distinguishing feature (regrettably) and not in the sense of one sorry for the squandering. He said:
"At the first month for me in the Fawj, there came a delegate of the Bayt al-Mal to give the budget of the month of Rajab, and it was a shock to me when he gave me items I did not know to be present anywhere else previously and I had a general overview about the cap of the budget for the rest of the Diwans. As for here, the matter was different: in short, open. And in particular there was the doubling of sums that I considered fixed with all the sectors of the Dawla, and when we came to the item of emergencies, the financial official from the Bayt al-Mal said: how much do you want for this month oh sheikh of emergencies?
And out of naivety I said to him: $100,000. And without a second thought the financial official gave to me the sum but he commented saying: "God make right your shooting. It seems you have pressure this month a little more than the preceding month."
And when I reviewed to the financial tables days later I laughed at my stupidity and naivety. If only I had told him: I did not know that the biggest sum sought for the item of emergencies was $25,000."
And he added: "The prestige of Fawj al-Qa'qa' did not make him seek to discuss, hahahahaha."
"To be honest, I will not mention the detailing of the sum demanded exactly but what I will mention is that the disparity between the two ratios is very great and that the sum is considered huge, so I have mentioned this in approximation and perhaps it is much greater."
Work, Target and Accomplishments
In security sciences, the types of external security work are:
Intelligence
And it is to gather information about the movements of the enemy and detailed information about their storehouses and leadership and the like.
And the Dawla expended its efforts in the wrong place. For 95% of this work targeted the Free Army in al-Sham and in truth the Free Army is the one that was too weak for the greatest effort of intelligence work to be expended on it. For one browsing session on the Internet of official pages for any faction will make you learn many things, and if you want to delve a little deeper, use an account in the name of a girl and speak with its leaders on their legitimate pages: they will tell you of their sources of drink and food even. But why this interest in them and leaving aside the enemy that has destroyed the Dawla: that is, the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Nusayri regime [Syrian government]? And in general they did not know of their movement except after they seized areas. And as far as I know, the rest of the 5% was aimed at the Kurds. As for the Nusayris, there was no attempt at this matter at all.
Note: no one should reckon my words as asserting that the lack of penetration of the Kurds and the regime was due to the firmness of their ranks and the difficulty of penetrating them at all, but rather it was due to the weakness of this apparatus in this particular and lack of expertise.
Security operations in the depth of the enemy
In security sciences the custom of the external apparatus is that its work targets personalities themselves who are influential and the killing of whom is useful, and the target is to be specified and observed and assassinated. And work was done in this regard despite its extreme paucity and rareness and little energy after 2017 and in an estimated proportion whose estimation does not require a specialist, but rather a general follower will observe:
99% in Idlib and Deraa and directed at the Sahwa forces and the Jabha [Jabhat al-Nusra]
1% in the regions of the Kurds against the Syria Democratic Forces
0% in the regions of the Nusayris
Places
Blowing them up if they were storehouses
Or attacking them if they were bases
Also those that happened were confined to the Free Army or Jabha.
And I do not know that this thing occurred except four or five times in Deraa.
Randomness of the direction
And they [the operations] should not be pursued except for need. For in events of intending to attack and assault by land the area of the enemy, they are utilized for camouflage by their occurrence in another place and their aim is to camouflage and divert the defenses far off.
Or in the event of defending when the enemy assaults an area under your control you make use of the rearguard to confuse the attackers and divert the tip of their assault away from its target. And both matters require coordination with the military personnel, and I do not know of a case where this was utilized in the Dawla.
Inflicting severe damage on the enemy and harvesting a great number of their slain by targeting symbolic centres for them or specific days like their festivals so that the result of them will be quasi-catastrophic for the enemy as they will be done in a civilian place and harvest many victims and reverberate in the media and have an economic impact. The Dawla did that a lot in the regions of the regime, and a few times in the regions of the atheist Kurds, but as for the regions of the Sahwa forces, I do not know of an incident and I expect that it did not do them.
Through the quick expounding on security work and a relative assessment of the type of work and the targetings, the focus of your minds will be nearer now to the reality if I expose the foolishness of this farcical work to you. And indeed amateurs from the children of security personnel, if they were given these capabilities that were offered to this apparatus, they would have undertaken exploits and inflicted on the enemies killing like catastrophes and earthquakes.
Consider the capabilities made available:
This apparatus is allowed to take any human resource it wants in the Dawla so if they want any person they can take him, or if they merely think of asking about their need for any characteristics of a man in the Dawla that they want, their request will be heeded.
The Bayt al-Mal offers an open budget for any security operation however much it costs without condition or restriction.
The guest house of the martyrdom operatives and inghimasi personnel is mandated for this apparatus whenever it wants and at any time it wishes.
The sector of manufacturing and rigging explosives and development offers the best of its works from cars rigged secretly with explosives or updated connections or silencers of manufacturing or foundational device and mines on demand.
The ideas, operations, targets and information became amassed: indeed, a bank of targets available, offered and suggested to them by a number of those outside the apparatus in order that they should do them and give them the order in readiness. Generally only interest and tracking of the matter were given because the routine requires for it to pass before you and you are not the one who will venture, but dawdling and lethargy and the mood of selection of the assignment and other things.
So by God upon you, does the number of these operations and their results at all accord with what is available? Especially as you possess an army from the guest house of martyrdom operatives and tons of C4. For merely by these two distinguishing features you can turn the night of your enemy to day. So what about if I tell you that the security work that has been offered, if you were to cut out from it the operations in which they use the martyrdom operatives, you would be shocked at the softness of the content and realize that it is an empty drum? Usually the timing of the operation or its publicizing is accompanied by military failure so this operation is employed in media and makes the results seem frightening and usually the operations inflict severe damage and their voice rises high in media inside the Dawla such that it covers the current failure:
Example:
How much we were preoccupied with the killing of 10 of the citizens of the regime in the Latakia services garage at the time the Dawla lost half of the wilaya of Aleppo and Homs.
Oversight over their work
Limiting the work of the security personnel to WhatsApp and coordinating between the financial transfer offices and the smugglers and the their lack of attention to the reality or regard for any danger made naivety reign and also as a result of this they relied on any recruit to implement the operation and they sent whosoever wanted that- whoever he might be- without taking into account considerations that are supposed to be among the givens in the Dawla, the least of which are:
Tazkiya, the period of allegiance, the Shari'i courses, superficial security study of the person.
So these procedures are undertaking with regards to any soldier in the Dawla, so they are all the more necessary for the one who wishes to be sent for an assignment like this one but they opened up the door on its hinges to whosoever wants to bear for them the burden of the work they were entrusted with originally, so it made them victim to every Tom, Dick and Harry.
Examples
Abu al-Fida' al-Qatanawi, a boy of 18 years of age, who had not been affiliated with the Dawla for more than a few months. He came upon the fortress of the security personnel and offered them his project that he has hundreds of men in west Ghouta in Damascus, all of them under his command and under obedience to him and under his supervision and that he would form a Dawla there and assassinate the Jabha and break the gathering of al-Ahrar [Ahrar al-Sham].
So the naïve Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was taken in by him and adopted this boy and helped him with thousands of dollars and a Glock pistol with its silencer and his preparations, while securing for him a 5 star route to arrive to the place. And lo, Abu al-Fida' was in the embrace of his father who was considered among the leaders of Liwa al-Furqan in Kanaker. And Abu al-Fida' contacted Abu Abdullah to inform him that he had fully completed his assignment for which his father had sent him and he cursed him and cursed his Dawla.
Also, I know a person well, well-known for tasayyub and moodiness. He had not been in the Dawla for a year without moving in more than six different sectors. He often took leave permits and had flimsy pretexts and he was not easy to deal with. I subsequently learnt that he was sent to establish a security group in Deraa after he offered his project to the frothy security officials of Wilayat Dimashq (Abu Hajer and his ilk), so I asked a person close to him and of the same sort about the reason that pushed him to that.
He responded to me: I expect he will not be absent for more than two months and you will see. And were it not that he had heard that firewood gathering is an occupation there and copious for profit, he would not have gone. Thus he was encouraged and went to gather money.
And indeed not more than a month and a half had passed when he concocted a dispute in his group and he returned by himself from Deraa after he rejected the request for him to return from the frothy people of Damascus who said to him: We bore expenses and took the trouble of conveying you in order for you to depart.
And many people whose intention was to abandon and return to their homes if their place of residence was in the Sahwat areas and they wanted to be conveyed without recompense: all they had to do was to offer the security officials that they wanted to conduct operations. And I know many who did that, not to mention those who fled and took money, and the one who is implanted and a traitor and a spy and they protected him. But the very regrettable thing that was occurring without accounting was the negligence of everything and how often operations failed because of lack of presence of silencers and personnel were taken prisoner because of lack of experience of the smugglers or financial disagreements or prejudices.
And I still remember when the security officials of Wilayat Dimashq asked to be shown the Sayyida Zainab route and they treated the matter with unrivalled foolishness such that they would send the secretly rigged car bombs because they passed through one checkpoint after another on the same route and target the same region. And of course as we tracked it, the targeting was usually of non-military and non-sensitive gatherings, indeed of a public area. And of course the results are not great because you do not want a taxi car to be made in which there is small quantity of explosives placed secretly in dead points in the car because it has been designed to be camouflaged and for its passing between the checkpoints to be facilitated so the destructive capacity for the explosion is limited.
But I do not know why they were not content with parking the car and blowing it up from a distance while the person is kept safe?
And when the explosions in Sayyida Zainab became numerous, the Nusayris were not so stupid, for the Nusayris changed the officers of the checkpoints from Najha until the Suwayda' road and this was the road followed, but the frothy ones did not change and remained on the same practice so that one of the personnel fell into a trap and was taken prisoner at one of the Nusayri checkpoints.
Administration and Planning
The stages of organizing the external security and defining its head and its basis. It was subject to alternations between al-Hajj Abd al-Nasir and al-Adnani, so its affiliation to whom exactly was usually unknown throughout the period. For sometimes it was affiliated with the Diwan al-Amn, and sometimes it was transferred to the competency of the wilaya, and at other times they made it a monopoly for the specialty of Fawj al-Qa'qa'. Then they opened up for it a wilaya under its administration and every area was attached and it was independent under the name of the security wilayas.
And it is notable that it was completely out of harmony in:
Lack of coordination with the Delegated Committee
Work was done without putting in place any plan or outline of vision or timetables or location tables. The apparatus worked energetically in periods of the appointment of a new amir generally. The compass of directing strikes at the first enemy whose danger was more imminent than others was lost, and there were frivolity and selection of the easiest target only without regard for the stage. Does it make sense that the armies of the Kurds were eating up the map of the Dawla and in the same month Idlib and Deraa witness more than one assassination operation while a bomb strikes a neighbourhood in Homs? Is balancing of this extent difficult in defining who deserves to have operations directed against him and striving for that so farcical?
No coordination with the military personnel and no thought into this either
And it is a pressing need that the military personnel need in defending or attacking to lighten the attack against them or to clear the land and throw the land of the enemy into confusion. And this is what made the war committee demand the abolition of the military intelligence and also have no trust at all between them because they knew of the foolishness of the external security apparatus in general.
With the external security itself and those working in it
For you would find it stumbling, complaining as though its concern were the greatest thing in this world, especially after it promoted the idea that it is a successful investment so whoso wants success need only request from the guest house of the martyrdom operatives. And it would send the person to his death and however he blows himself up, the sound of the explosives would resound and the al-Naba' newspaper would hear it. So the security personnel of the wilayas embarked on the tribulations of this experience even after they ended their work by arresting the monotheists.
For example:
In Deraa three apparatuses were operating.
Fanusi affiliated with Fawj al-Qa'qa'
3 groups all operating in the east region in Deraa, affiliated with the security official of Wilayat Dimashq (Abu Hajer al-Raqawi).
120 external security personnel registered with Abu Bara' Tel affiliated with Jaysh Khalid in the Yarmouk Basin.
Their interests conflicted more than once as they disagreed on individuals. The group affiliated with the Wilaya wanted to kill a person they kidnapped. Jaysh Khalid says they are cooperating with them and friends, so severe enmity arose that was referred to the wali. Jaysh Khalid would claim an operation done by al-Fanusi in order to get money from the wilaya, so al-Fanusi would be angry and denounce them to al-Adnani.
And this is the tip of the iceberg of the catastrophes of this apparatus.
I ask God to make use of us and not replace us.
And praise be to God the Lord of the Worlds.
Oh God bless and grant peace to our Prophet Muhammad and all his family and companions.