ISIS/ISIL hasn’t yet conquered an area that hasn’t had a Sunni majority population. Here’s the welcome they are receiving from Sunni’s (victory parade):
ISIL/ISIS show off there new arsenal in Mosul 13 June 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAxNZfWmhMQ
You’ll note that in other ISIS/ISIL videos they take extreme care to protect the identity of their members. There are probably a number of reasons for this, but no doubt one reason is that some of the members are former Saddam loyalists and/or bathists -people who once (for Saddam Hussein) tortured and kill these people they purport to be liberating. For them (or now their sons) this jihadi-kinda-thingy is a means to renewed power, a means to recover lost prominence.
On a side note...I’ve been wondering about this for a while. We know that Islam as a religion is constantly trying to legitimize itself in earlier history (pre 600 AD). This movement could have chosen any name. Is it just a coincidence that the acronym ISIS that they chose to represent their cause is the name of the Greco-roman name for the pagan Egyptian goddess “Isis” (the mother)? We know that the Kaaba stone in Mecca was a pagan idol that Mohammed salvaged. Just strikes me as a strange coincidence that that would use an acronym that in the name of a pagen goddess.
I like your concepton the ISIS/ISIL...and FEAR is the biggest element to defeating your enemy...so yes they are probably using propaganda to ‘run off’ as many as they can to predict a victory, even though their numbers aren’t that great compared to an Iraqi Army.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27838435
The Sadaam loyalist or Bath members would have had help from a certain amount of the civilian population.
“You say ‘ISIS’, and we say ‘ISIL’ — let’s cut a few heads off ...”