ISIS took control of Mosul in June 2014, capturing the city from the 30,000 strong Iraqi Army during a rapid offensive. The 1,500 (some sources say 800!) militants occupied the city for over three years. How did these amateurish, poorly-armed, hopelessly outnumbered militants, with no formal military training, manage to capture a city defended by thousands of regular Iraqi soldiers armed with cutting edge US military hardware? The answer 树上开花: 在自身力量薄弱时，通过外部手段制造假象，让敌人误以为自己实力强大。One of the 36 Dirty Tricks From Ancient China.
From the book Like War by PW Singer and Emerson T Brooking:
The prized target for ISIS was Mosul, a 3,000-year-old multicultural metropolis of 1.8 million. As the ISIS vanguard approached and #AllEyesOnISIS went viral, the city was consumed with fear. Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish neighbors eyed each other with suspicion. Were these high-definition beheadings and executions real? Would the same things happen here? Then young Sunni men, inspired by the images of the indomitable black horde, threw themselves into acts of terror, doing the invaders’ work for them.
The Iraqi army stood ready to protect the city from this tiny but fearsome horde – in theory, at least. In reality, most of Mosul’s 25,000-strong garrison existed only on paper, either having long since deserted or been invented by corrupt officers eager to fatten their pay-checks. Worse, the roughly 10,000 who actually did exist were able to track the invading army’s highly publicized advance and atrocities on their smartphones.
With #AllEyesOnISIS, soldiers began to ask each other whether they should fight or flee. The enemy hadn’t even arrived, but fear already ruled the ranks.Defenders began to slip away, and then the trickle became a flood. Thousands of soldiers streamed from the city, many leaving their weapons and vehicles behind. Most of the city’s police followed. Among Mosul’s citizens, the same swirling rumors drove mass panic. Nearly half a million civilians fled. When the invading force of 1,500 ISIS fighters finally reached the city’s outskirts, they were astounded by their good fortune. Only a handful of brave (or confused) soldiers and police re-mained behind. They were easily overwhelmed. It wasn’t a battle but a massacre, dutifully filmed and edited for the next cycle of easy online distribution.ISIS militants gleefully posted pictures of the arsenal they had captured, mountains of guns and ammunition, and thousands of American-made, state-of-the-art vehicles that ranged from Humvees to M1A1 Abrams battle tanks to a half dozen Black Hawk helicopters. They staged gaudy parades to celebrate their unlikely triumph. Those so inclined could follow these events in real time, flipping between the posts of ISIS fighters marching in the streets and those watching them march. Each point of view was different, but all promised the same: more much more to come.How had it gone so wrong? This was the question that haunted Iraqi officials ensconced in the capital, U.S. military officers now working marathon shifts in the Pentagon, and the hundreds of thousands of refugees forced to abandon their homes. It wasn’t just that entire cities had been lost to a ragtag army of millennials, but that four whole Iraqi army divisions trained and armed by the most powerful nation in the world had essentially evaporated into thin air.
It’s all hypothetical, but if the Iraqi army had held on in Mosul instead of fleeing, they would almost certainly have defeated the ISIS invaders with their overwhelming numbers and superior fire power. What ISIS accomplished with their gruesome HD images that went viral, was to strike not just fear but absolute terror in the hearts of conventionally trained soldiers who were stunned by the pure barbarism of the ISIS fighters. How often does one need to see executions like this in order not to be horrified? Even before the real war started, ISIS had psychologically invaded the Iraqi army. Nobody wanted to live the absolute nightmare they witnessed on social media.
First, the orange Guantanamo Bay jumpsuits. Next, the same style of execution adopted by 12th century Sultan Saladin. A hero worshipped by the Muslims and now the Western woke, he sacked Jerusalem and handed out swords to his people and let them enjoy beheading captured Crusaders. The gruesome spectacle and the effect it had on the 30,000 Iraqi defenders are a classic example of 树上开花.
By the end of 2016, the US and several other European countries worked with Kurdish forces, successfully liberating Mosul from ISIS by 2017.