I’m sure many of us have had the thought: Why not just let the Islamic State keep the land it conquered? (Who knew conquering was still a thing? Or a caliphate, for that matter?) After all, thus far, unlike Al Qaeda, it’s shown it’s ready and willing to govern on a local as well as pan-national level.
The answer, of course, is that besides beheading captives, the Islamic State metes out a form of justice to those it rules that harkens back to a time when disorder and threats to the state ran rampant. I didn’t want to say it because it’s become a cliché, but, yeah, the 1300s. Of course, that can’t be allowed to stand.
At the New York Review of Books Blog, Sarah Birke elaborates in a post titled How ISIS Rules.
During the initial phase of ISIS rule, locals told me they disliked the excesses of the Islamic State, but some were pleased that the corruption and chaos of rebel rule had ended. One businessman from Raqqa who now lives in Turkey told me that, though he hated the group, it was easier to ship goods through ISIS territory because the checkpoints did not take bribes like other rebel groups. The group was also pragmatic in running municipal services in Raqqa, keeping expert employees in position, including in government-run services such as the phone network, but making clear they now work for the Islamic State.
… But it quickly became clear that ISIS’s ability to maintain power depended overwhelmingly on outright repression. Although the beheadings of two American journalists and one aid worker, and two British aid workers have caught headlines, far more Syrians and Iraqis have been murdered by the group and scores have been tortured.
… several people from Raqqa said that ISIS is failing at ruling, particularly since coalition airstrikes began this fall. “Electricity comes almost never so everyone uses a generator, water is scarce when there is no power for pumps, medical care is worsening, most schools are shut and rubbish lies on the street,” a mother of two from the city told me in southern Turkey last month.
In fact
American-led airstrikes appear to be doing more damage to ISIS’s ability to govern than to its military strength (although it can no longer run convoys across the desert openly without worrying about being hit). The airstrikes have hit at least sixteen oil refineries, compromising a main source of funding of the Islamic State—but only in Syria, because the Iraqi government doesn’t want to ruin its oil infrastructure.