The use of an array of tactics to baffle the perception in conflict is not new, nor is the strategy confined to the human species. Predators who exploit the perceptual deficiencies of prey are common in nature. As human hunters wear camouflage spread scents and simulate game calls to imitate prey animals, Paussid beetles forge chemical signals, blinding ant species they prey on to their presence among them in the nest.
A famous human organization employed similar tactics. Hasan ibn Sabah’s Assassins. Sabah reputedly learned the art and science of mind control from priests of the mysteries in Egypt, but whatever the source, Sabah’s Assassins used hypnotic induction, symbolism, stage magic and drugs create a belief system which delivered 100 % loyalty from adherents, and instant complete compliance with leader’s instructions even “suicide missions.”
Nation states have great difficulty securing large numbers of people willing to die on command. Hasan al Sabah’s Assassins prospered for 300 years, spreading their agents throughout the middle east because they knew how to create thousands of fanatically loyal followers.
When, after 300 years, the Assassin’s luck ran out and their fortress at Alamut (in what is now Iran) was overrun, the Assassin’s leadership captured and executed by the Mongols. What happened to the thousands of faithful assassins scattered throughout the middle east?
The assassins did what companies do after a scandal or serious defeat, they changed the name of the organization and continued to practice extortion and blackmail of nation states which had prospered them for three hundred years.
Just as the Arthur Anderson consulting firm changed itself to Accenture after being implicated in the Enron fraud, the Assassins reconstituted themselves under new leadership and rebranded, terrorized and blackmailed under a new name – the Ismailis.
His excellency the Aga Khan is the fabulously wealthy leader of the Ismaili sect today. While the Ismailis are frequently described as Muslim, both Sunni and Shia, the two principal sects of Islam consider them heretics.