generalspeaking

God's Bounty in the Caliphate

"If you had asked me before the revolution, I would have said I wanted to be the richest person, with houses and cars."
"But after we sat with their [Islamic State's] religious teachers, we changed our way of thinking."
Raqqa resident

"The biggest threat we have is that the children have a new curriculum that is very extremist."
"This is a ticking time bomb for the future."
Kurdish security official

"Their policy is to make people hungry while they pay their fighters so that becoming one of them is the only way to live and eat."
Syrian anti-ISIS activist

According to an activist with the group DeirEzzor24, one of his cousins had seen fit to join Islamic State. He is paid $100 monthly with an additional $100 given his parents and $40 going to each of his siblings. This is quite the strategy; the entire family becomes devoted Islamic State followers, earning a living by so doing.

Around Deir al-Zour where the fight against Islamic State was bitter, their presence contested by local tribal fighters, though Islamic State won in the end after a protracted year-long conflict where over a thousand people died, it's a bit of a different story. Islamic State  jihadis still face ambushes on a regular basis. Their response has been to stage public executions and impose heavy taxation on harvests, telephone lines, water and electricity.

But in northern Syria where the Islamic State reigns supreme, they administer civil authority with a measure of responsible care, a pattern that was first initiated by the Muslim Brotherhood to win the hearts and minds of the poor in Egypt, in Somalia and wherever they spread their tentacles. Hamas, an offshoot of the Brotherhood, instituted the same kind of social welfare and security program to earn the trust of those in Gaza where dysfunction and violence reigned supreme.

While in Deir al-Zour taxes have been imposed on farmers and shopkeepers and men wearing short beards face fines, elsewhere the Islamic State repairs power lines, digs sewage systems and is otherwise useful to the residents. There are millions of Syrians and Iraqis living under Islamic State rule, part of their 'caliphate' extending from Syria to Iraq, covering one-third of each of those fractured nations.

Buses running across the border with Iraq to Mosul represent a regular event.Though in Mosul Islamic State publicly slaughters those it captures while training the city's children in guerrilla warfare. A luxury hotel was reopened in Mosul and newlyweds offered three free nights to stay over, with meals part of the bargain. Mosul, despite the U.S.-led airstrikes, remains firmly in Islamic State hands as it becomes an integral part of the life in the city.

Since there are vast areas of both Syria and Iraq with no national government control or services, Islamic State has filled the need offering security, however harsh, and providing employment in economies which war has destroyed. A sense of order prevails in a region that has been turbulent with conflict. All the while the jihadists make themselves indispensable to those whom they now control, as citizens of the brave new caliphate.

According to Hassan Abu Hanieh, a Jordanian expert on Islamist groups, government soldiers, the police and any who refuse to become affiliated with Islamic State as well as minorities, have little option to preserve themselves but to flee elsewhere for safety. With their absence those who remain behind are the Sunni Arabs for the most part focusing on making the most of their lives, with as little disruption as possible.

The jihadists have recognized their future in the children in the places they occupy. And the curricula used in their schools have been changed to reflect the new ideology brought with the advent of Islamic State conquest. A new history is being propagated, pride in the heritage of pure Islam practised through the imposition of strict Sharia law interpreted by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Who appeals to all Muslims to join Islamic State, their new home. Those who remain on the exterior are sadly "homeless", living in "humiliation" whereas Muslims who become proud Islamic State residents live "with might and honour, secure by God's bounty alone."

Labels: Iraq, Islamic State, Social Welfare, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, June 18, 2015