ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (25 page)

Governance has been a winning strategy for ISIS. Its model of governance has driven many to join its ranks, work with it, or at least not to oppose its existence in their areas. Since this aspect is key to its existence and survivability, it is important to understand how the group set out to winning hearts and minds despite its pathological brutality. 

When the Syrian rebels started to control areas across the country, lawlessness was somewhat tolerated by the local communities as a necessary price before the removal of the regime. Also, as it came to be exposed later, some FSA-affiliated groups engaged in theft and robbery and claimed the Assad forces were behind it. As time went by, however, lawlessness became more pronounced and a major source of grievance for the local communities. Some FSA factions opted to leave the front lines and busy themselves with moneymaking activities in their areas. Factionalism, profit-making, and incompetence started to alienate people. 

Toward the end of 2012, independent Islamist factions started to gain a foothold as they proved to be more effective, in terms of governance and fighting, than the ragtag militias of the FSA. Across the country, Islamists began to hold sway in rebel-held areas. They established Sharia committees, regulated resources, and ran government facilitates. In some areas, al-Nusra worked with Islamists to strengthen the enforcement mechanism of the Sharia courts. But the model did not prove sustainable for several reasons. 

Since most of Islamist insurgents received financial backing from a variety of donors who demanded a say in how the money would be spent, division was inevitable. Ideological differences also contributed to the inability to establish strong courts and security forces. Islamists were also more attuned to the local communities
and could enforce Sharia law only through mediation and public consent, especially when the matter involved another armed group or a powerful family. Even al-Nusra, which was far more powerful and disciplined than other forces up until the rise of ISIS, had to retract some of its decisions to avoid clashes with local families. Al-Nusra, as well as Islamists, also shied away from enforcing their rules to avoid alienating the population. 

ISIS’s model was high-risk. It was consistent and determined about enforcing its rules, often at the cost of turning more powerful local forces against it. Even at times when it seemed clear that ISIS had little future in Syria—around February 2014, for instance—it insisted on its ways. It would not tolerate any rivalry or recognize any Sharia commissions other than its own. It demanded uniformity at any cost. “If you’re an FSA commander and you have a civilian relative, [FSA and other rebels] would accept mediation,” said Hassan al-Salloum, a former rebel commander from Idlib residing in Antakya, Turkey, referring to the time when ISIS was still a marginal player in Syria. “But with ISIS, if I complain about an FSA member, they would go and bring him to interrogate him. They would not accept mediation. People started to go to complain to them. People made them intervene. A person comes to them and asks for help. FSA would not do it. ISIS gets you what you want, and then you start talking about it. If I hit one of my soldiers, he goes to ISIS. They give him weapons, salary, pocket money.”

Once ISIS controls an area, it establishes a semblance of order and shows zero tolerance for any rivalry or public display of weapons. It immediately disarms the local communities, primarily of heavy weapons. For Syrians who lived under the control of FSA militias, the change was welcome. “You can drive from Aleppo to Raqqa to Deir Ezzor and into Iraq, and nobody will bother you,” a resident of Deir Ezzor said. “Before, you’d have to be stopped at ad hoc checkpoints and you [would] have to bribe this and tolerate that.”

Lawlessness is even more irksome for those who work in transportation or trade or live in areas that have oil fields. Whole armed groups were formed to control oil fields, impose road taxes, escort oil traders, perpetrate smuggling, or to accumulate wealth in any way possible. Constant shooting, random killing, kidnapping, and extortion were common in most places. It was often the case that when a person with heavily armed relatives killed another person, the family of the victim despaired of justice, unless they had allies in a militia that could ask for justice through a Sharia commission. The situation changed 180 degrees when ISIS came. People seemed pleasantly surprised at first, sometimes to the extent that they would overplay their sense of relief. “We never felt this safe for twenty years,” said one old resident of Deir Ezzor. “We no longer hear shooting. We no longer hear so-and-so killed so-and-so. We can travel with no problems.” Later, the same people expressed satisfaction with the current situation but were less keen to praise ISIS’s rule.

One of the most cited praises for ISIS in its territories is that it gets the job done. Unlike the FSA and Islamist groups, ISIS will send a patrol to fetch someone if another person files a complaint about him. Even if the complaint in question dates back to the years before the uprising, said one resident who was involved in such a case, ISIS will settle the situation if the person has the appropriate documents. Rifaat al-Hassan, from Albu Kamal, told the story of an uncle who lost hundreds of thousands of Syrian pounds years before the uprising, in a fraud scheme by a local businessman. When ISIS controlled the city of Albu Kamal, the fraudulent man was arrested and forced by ISIS to return all money taken unlawfully. 

More important, laws apply to ISIS members and commanders too; ISIS has executed scores of members and commanders for unlawfully profiteering or abusing power. In November 2014, ISIS executed one of its leaders in Deir Ezzor after it accused him
of embezzlement and robbery. According to the group, the commander robbed residents after claiming they were apostates. Similar stories are commonly told by members of communities under ISIS control. Imad al-Rawi, from the Iraqi border town of Qa’im, who pledged allegiance to ISIS in August 2014, spoke of ten ISIS members who were executed because they sold tobacco they seized from smugglers. “When they raid shops that sell tobacco, they don’t burn the tobacco,” al-Rawi said. “When they raid a house, they also steal from it. The state executed them when it discovered them. None of those members smoked, they just sold the tobacco.”

With such tactics, ISIS established itself as a viable law enforcer and won credit from two important societal segments: those who were disillusioned with the Syrian revolution and started to reminisce about safety and security under the regime, and those who were alienated by the FSA and Islamist factions. For those categories, among others, ISIS served an acceptable temporary role. “The regime made mistakes and repeated them,” said Ghassan al-Juma, from Hasaka. “The FSA, too, made mistakes, and nobody could stop them. But when ISIS makes mistakes, it does not repeat them. You go and complain. If nobody responds to your complaint, you go to the perpetrator’s leader, and you always get what you want if you are right.”

In Iraq ISIS also sought to avoid the mistakes it had made in the years prior to the Awakening councils. Part of its strategy in the areas it controlled was to win hearts and minds and reach out to the local community leaders. After the takeover of Mosul, ISIS members avoided being heavily present in the streets. Residents of Mosul said that in the first weeks after the Iraqi Security Forces left the city, most of the fighters roaming the streets were from the neighborhoods. 

In Mosul and elsewhere, ISIS allowed local forces to govern their own state of affairs, especially in areas where it felt relatively secure or lacked manpower. The reduced visibility of ISIS helped establish confidence in the new order, especially in the Iraqi cities. In Syrian areas,
before it established control, ISIS had less leeway to do so given the dominance of hostile rebel groups. Instead, it benefited from sleeper cells and loyalists from within those communities to incrementally establish a foothold. The group’s notorious brutality helped it create a sense of calm in the first days before it started reaching out to people. 

“People were terrified of ISIS because its reputation preceded it,” said al-Rawi from Qa’im. “At first, people avoided them, but once they started meeting people in mosques and engaging them, people became too comfortable with them. They liked their dedication and slowly started working with them even if they were still not with them. [ISIS] interfered when they had to. Local people were more present.”

That is still particularly the case in areas where ISIS is in need of manpower. After the takeover of Mosul, ISIS came up with a new system of membership for existing local forces that it still does not trust. It called them
munasir
(“supporter”)—to be distinguished from
ansar
, a term jihadists use to refer to local members of a group as opposed to
muhajirin
, or foreign fighters. A munasir has to pledge allegiance to ISIS without having access to its structure. These second-tier members receive salaries and mostly work to fill low-level municipality and police roles in their areas, tasks ISIS often refers to as khidmat al-muslimeen. This strategy helps ISIS be less visible and thus more capable of dodging responsibility, and increases rivalry within the local community over governance. ISIS can call on such forces to serve as reinforcement to its troops on the front lines, such as in Kobane, according to residents in Raqqa. Despite the leeway it allows for local forces, ISIS still has an overarching military, religious, and political control.

The combination of brute force and effective governance means that the local population has little motivation and a huge deterrent to rise up against ISIS, particularly in the absence of a viable and acceptable alternative. Such policies also make it much harder for any force from outside to retake these areas from ISIS, owing to the difficulty of filling the void and forming new alliances with the local communities.

EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE 

While it tends to be minimally visible as a military force, ISIS also refrains from micromanaging a town as much as possible. Local forces and their relatives often run day-to-day administrative affairs. Typically when ISIS takes over a new town, the first facility it establishes is a so-called Hudud Square, to carry out Sharia punishments, such as crucifixions, beheadings, lashings, and hand-loppings. (This is the area in al-Bab that Barry Abdul Lattif referred to as the town square, just opposite the shuttered hookah cafe.) It then establishes a Sharia court, police force, and security operation station. The work of Sharia police, known as
hisbah
, is not restricted to the implementation of sharia, but also to the regulation of the marketplace, and these police forces are more active in urban centers. ISIS divides regions into wilayat (provinces, of which there are roughly sixteen in Iraq and Syria) and smaller
qawati’
(townships). One military commander, one or more security commanders, and a general emir are appointed for each township. They all answer to a
wali
(governor).

Top leaders don’t live in the same province they rule. For example, the governors of Minbij, al-Bab, and the parts of Deir Ezzor ISIS designated as Wilayat al-Khair (from the city of Deir Ezzor to the borders of Albu Kamal) tend to live in Raqqa or in Shaddadi, in Hasaka. The governor of
Wilayat al-Furat
(Albu Kamal and Qa’im) lives in Iraq and rarely travels to Syria. The same applies to the governors of Iraqi provinces.

Raqqa and Mosul serve as ISIS’s de facto capitals, and envoys from its territories often meet in palaces occupied by the group. ISIS members are instructed to display very few of their weapons in public; as in Minbij, they hide arms in confiscated homes.

Checkpoints are also manned by a small number of fighters, in some cases by those who have recently joined ISIS and are still undergoing basic training.
 

When ISIS security units carry out an operation, foreign and local fighters from the town and nearby towns gather as reinforcements. The exaggerated show of force in cases of security operations is a hallmark of ISIS’s deterrent strategy. This everywhere-but-nowhere strategy serves at least two purposes for ISIS. First, it deters local forces from rebelling against it, because it allows flexibility for locals to run their own affairs, within limits. Second, it enlists ISIS as the paramount conflict resolver. It is very common for residents to voice their anger about one another rather than about ISIS as an organization, with some going so far as to claim that foreign fighters are more disciplined and better behaved than natural-born residents.

ISIS allows fighters from other groups to keep their arms after it overruns an area, so long as these fighters continue to fight exclusively on the front lines. Anyone who receives weapons, ammunition, and food from ISIS must report to an ISIS emir and serve a set number of hours per week. Leave of absences from the battlefield require the relinquishing of weapons. Members of other groups have to follow a similar pattern if they wish to govern in their areas. In Fallujah and newly captured areas in Syria, ISIS offers a stark choice: pledge allegiance or leave. “At first, ISIS sets harsh conditions to pressure them,” an FSA fighter from Deir Ezzor said of the jihadists’ administration of the province in the summer of 2013. “It tells them that if you don’t turn up at the [Deir Ezzor] airport regularly, you have to hand over your arms.”

Disarming the local communities is also key to residents accepting ISIS. During FSA rule, buying and carrying weapons became necessary protection for moving from place to place in the face of rampant lawlessness and theft. As one resident from Hasaka put it, “Everybody carried weapons, from children on up. If you didn’t have a gun, you’d walk into the market and be scared. If you got into a small fight, you were doomed.” ISIS thus caters to popular fears about the absence of law and order by offering itself as the
only alternative to societal collapse. Like any government, it seeks to retain a monopoly on violence.

TAKFIRINOMICS

ISIS has married its authoritarian governance with a remarkably successful war economy. FSA and Islamist groups that controlled oil fields in eastern Syria, for example, did dedicate some of the revenue to run schools and supply electricity, telecommunications, water, food, and other services. Some villages and towns saw a decline in such services because ISIS distributed oil revenue to other towns under its control in Syria and Iraq, establishing its own pan-territorial patronage system. As a result, in oil-rich areas, warlordism—a side effect of strictly localized rebel governance—dropped steadily.