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Isis caliphate drivers#
At checkpoints, the Hisbah inspect mobile phones for subversive text messages or Facebook entries, and ensure taxi drivers are listening to the official ISIS radio station. So in cities such as Raqqa, ISIS's de facto capital in northern Syria, and Mosul, in Iraq, "morality police" - called the Hisbah - patrol the streets, checking that shops are closed during prayers, men are bearded, and women are properly dressed. What is daily life like?ISIS is devoted to restoring the earliest, "purest" form of Islam, as practiced under the Prophet Mohammed and his followers in the 7th century. "If they don't take it," explains Mahmoud, a gas engineer in Syria, "they tax you for it." It has also established some very basic bureaucracies and taxes: Trucks are charged 10 percent of their cargo's value when they enter ISIS-controlled regions businesses pay 2.5 percent tax on their revenue each year. The group is said to make about $1 million a day through extortion, kidnapping, and selling crude oil from captured wells in Syria. ISIS's major challenge is paying and organizing its force of more than 30,000 fighters, operating across an area the size of Maryland. People in its territory use Syrian pounds, Iraqi dinars, and U.S. ISIS's grand ambitions, such as building its own currency, have yet to come about. Kirk Sowell, a Middle East analyst and risk consultant, says ISIS operates "like something between a mafia, an insurgency, and a terror group." But its civilian administration of the territory it has conquered is primitive, with the population strictly controlled though draconian laws, barbaric punishments, and fear. On the battlefield, ISIS is quite competent, because it is led by a cadre of ex-Iraqi generals and veteran al Qaeda commanders with deep military training and experience. In reality, its "state" in Syria and Iraq consists of several cities and many small towns and villages occupied by a large, brutal military force. Is the Islamic State a state?It doesn't operate as one, despite the grand declaration of a new "caliphate" last summer by its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Yet, ISIS remains, hiding amid the rubble, threatening anyone who works with the government.Up to 8 million people in Syria and northern Iraq are living under the brutal rule of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The people waiting in her office are in desperate need of just about every public service, from power, to running water, and housing.Īs a woman, under ISIS, she would never have been allowed this kind of public leadership role. She is co-chair of the Raqqa Civil Council. Making life bearable for the survivors is Leila Mustafa's mission. The reality is that we will likely never know how many civilians died in this war, how many bodies around here will never be pulled from the rubble. This neighborhood was a residential one, these apartment buildings, in the distance, upper-middle class homes. It's only by walking through neighborhoods like this that you can truly grasp the cost of the war against ISIS, and particularly in Raqqa city.
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U.S.-led coalition airstrikes hammered the city, and U.S.-backed Syrian fighters on the ground fought house-to-house in bloody battles.īy the time it was over, four months later, the city was destroyed. In June 2017, the campaign to drive ISIS out of Raqqa was launched. More than 4,000 bodies of ISIS fighters and civilians have been discovered in the city, they tell us. These men wrestle lumps of concrete and steel to find whatever remains of the people who were at home here when the bombs hit, their tools no more advanced than what you might find in a garden shed. In this building, a family says a loved one is still buried. Back in the city, teams are still pulling more bodies from the ruins of buildings destroyed by the airstrikes.