No, its' not The Onion or Duffelblog, it's hard news reporting: "Fair-weather fighters: ISIS jihadists claim headaches, bad backs to get out of battle, documents show."
Headaches, bad backs and general malaise are plaguing the ranks of ISIS, with jihadists calling out sick from the fight to save their caliphate, according to a report.
Foreign fighters in particular seem to be going soft in the face of an offensive led by the Iraqi national military, Kurdish fighters and international forces. Documents discovered in recently liberated sections of Mosul show how the fair-weather jihadists go to great lengths to get out of combat.
The Washington Post reported that Iraqi forces who took over an ISIS base in Mosul found a document lamenting 14 “problem” fighters from the Tariq Bin Ziyad battalion. On the surface, reports that militants are on the ropes in former stronghold cities appears to be a good thing, but some disenfranchised members may work their way back to Europe.
“He doesn’t want to fight, wants to return to France,” one note reportedly said about a 24-year-old Algerian, who is a resident of France. “Claims his will is martyrdom operation in France. Claims sick but doesn’t have a medical report.”
Another man from Kosovo complained of a headache. A Belgian militant got out of fighting by offering a doctor's note saying he had back pain.A former US Marine infantry officer with several years' Middle East service emailed me the article with the comment,
I love the light-duty-chit approach that is shared by [slackers] around the globe - the mysterious, but ubiquitous, "Oh my back!!".Yeah, "martydom operations" ain't all they're cracked up to be, right? So legions of jihadis seem to be as smart as Simpkins here:
Things will go rapidly downhill from here for ISIS, especially since the US Marines accidentally mis-routed one of their regimental clerks to Raqqa, Syria, capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
RAQQA, Syria — The self-proclaimed Islamic State has been reportedly paralyzed by administrative paperwork and bureaucracy after a U.S. Marine administrative clerk was mistakenly sent there, Duffel Blog has learned.I'll bet one reason that the Greeks' Trojan War lasted 10 years was because it took that long to get the requisitions approved for the Trojan Horse.
Marine Staff Sgt. Alonso Gray executed a mistaken set of permanent change-of-station orders to Raqqa earlier this month, moving to ISIS’s de facto capital and starting work in their administrative section. Within days of his arrival however, pay errors, late morning reports and “improperly routed routing sheets” have caused the group to crumble from within.
Seemingly unaware that he was working for the global terrorist organization, Gray insisted they submit their DTS vouchers to him at least 90 days prior to going TDY. Commanders then panicked when he told them that their units were “non-mission capable” due to incomplete annual training requirements.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former leader of the group, says taking Gray on board was the worst decision he ever made.
“I was supposed to PCS from Mosul to Raqqa before the Iraqi Army attacked, but instead he sent me here,” said Baghdadi, speaking from his cell in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
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