The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) recently seized
control of wide swaths of northern and central Iraq in June 2014. In Mosul,
Iraq’s second largest city, ISIS has issued a charter for how it will be run.
Long before that the Islamic State was administering sections of Syria such as
the city of Raqqa. This is a new turn for the organization, which is far more
notorious for its terrorist attacks. To help explain how ISIS has tried to
create its own proto-state is Aaron Zelin who is the Richard Borow Fellow at
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and also runs Jihadology. He can be followed on Twitter @azelin.
Rally for burning cigarettes organized by ISIS in Raqqa, Syria. ISIS has issued rules about not smoking, drinking and doing drugs in that city and in Mosul, Iraq (Guardian)
Sign in Raqqa telling women to wear the hijab (Reuters)
1. You just wrote the
article “The Islamic State
of Iraq and Syria Has a Consumer Protection Office” for The Atlantic about how the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has tried to administer the areas it
controls in Syria. Could you explain how it is going about doing that?
What I was trying to do in the article was to highlight that
while everyone is very much aware of all the terrible things ISIS does in terms
of criminal types of behavior -- whether it is the beheadings, chopping off
hands, crucifixions, etc -- ISIS has gained a level of support because it has
been providing social services. For example, they’ve created religious schools
for children, they have an administrative building, a complaints office,
they’re also involved with transportation, and a number of other things people
would want from an administration.
Parade for ISIS in Mosul (via Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi)
2. ISIS is trying to do
the same thing in Mosul now. Can you go over some of the things they are doing
there like the code of conduct they issued?
I believe a day or two after they took over Mosul they issued a
charter for the city. It’s important to note that there were other groups
involved in the attack that took the city. ISIS then released a charter for the
city that laid out rules that people needed to live by. The Islamic State when
they liberate a territory, they then believe it is their sovereign territory,
and therefore everyone in it needs to follow their rules. The code talked about
typical things like people cannot smoke, drink or do drugs. If people steal
they will get their hands cut off. If people apostatize they’ll get killed,
whether it is a summary execution or a crucifixion. Women have to dress
modestly (a euphemism for the full body niqab). It also highlighted that the
Sunnis who worked in the Maliki government’s institutions or military could
repent and be safe, but as we saw two or three days ago they claimed they had
killed up to 1700 Shia soldiers. Then it posted a number of pictures of the
gruesome nature of it. They lined people up in trucks and then shot them or had
them dig their own graves and then shot them there with their Kalashnikovs.
Man crucified by ISIS in Raqqa (CNN)
3. The administration of
territory appears to be a major change in philosophy and strategy from the old
Al Qaeda in Iraq. AQI seemed to be just interested in sowing chaos and starting
a civil war in Iraq, and that was their whole goal. Do you think they’ve
learned lessons from how most Iraqis rejected them and how the Americans were
able to take out most of their cadres?
I think they’ve learned that they need to have a soft power,
hearts and minds type of strategy. Ideologically they haven’t changed at all as
we have continued to see with all the examples of violence and how they
interpret Islamic law. Though we’ve seen in Syria and now on a smaller level in
Iraq that they do realize they just can’t alienate the population completely.
They’ve reached out in Syria and in Iraq to local tribal leaders, and have even
allowed people who were in the Sahwa movement to repent and join ISIS if they
decide to. Otherwise they’ll assassinate and kill those individuals as well.
But they have definitely been able to try and implement these newer programs to
ingratiate themselves better with the local populations. Part of it is that
they had to do that in the Syrian context just to survive because there is so
much competition with all the different rebel groups whether it’s the
mainstream Syrian rebels, whether it’s the radical Salafis like the Islamic
Front or ISIS’s competition with the other global jihadi faction Jabhat al-Nusra.
So ISIS started doing more of this outreach with proselytization, social
services, and governance type of actions. Then they’ve injected that back into
Iraq although on a smaller level. It is likely that with the new resources
they’ve taken over along with the alleged amount of money they got from Mosul’s
central bank they will use that for not only their military aspects, but also
in terms of pushing their soft power programs as well.
4. Right before ISIS’s
big victories in Iraq in June there were reports that it was getting into
conflicts with the Baathists and Ansar al-Islam with tit for tat killings and
such. Do you think with ISIS now trying to impose administration over certain
areas that those kinds of conflicts will increase in the future?
Yes, ISIS doesn’t submit to the will of anyone not even Al
Qaeda for that matter. While they might have had a marriage of convenience with
other insurgents that have been involved in taking over some of these villages
and cities, ISIS is not going to listen to anybody and they’re not going to
want any type of power sharing deal with anybody. They’ve already had issues
with Ansar al-Islam going back at least a year, and of course they’re not going
to like the Baathists. I imagine if ISIS is able to consolidate their hold that
you’ll start seeing in-fighting between the insurgents just as we’ve seen in
the Syrian context. We saw this in the last decade as well when they were Al
Qaeda in Iraq and they were fighting not just the Shia and the Americans, but
also other insurgent factions as well. Based off of their past, based off of
what we’ve seen in Syria, based off of how we know they operate it is
definitely likely to see more conflicts, and that will continue to add to the
list of enemies they have in the region overall.
SOURCES
Zelin, Aaron, “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Has a
Consumer Protection Office,” The Atlantic, 6/13/14
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