Excerpted from
‘ISIL, JAN, and the war economy in Syria,’ by Rim Turkmani, (LSE, 2015), which
is based on original empirical research drawing on interviews with a range of
respondents who live both inside and outside ISIL held areas in Syria. It
explores how the collapse of the state and the spread of the war economy enable
ISIL’s expansion and JAN’s infiltration in Syria with particular focus on ISIL
and presents options to counter this dynamic.
Demotix/Björn Kietzmann. All rights reserved.One of the least
discussed aspects of ISIL is its practice of governance. ISIL’s governance
highlights a pragmatic side backed up by effective planning, and is informed by
an awareness of the impact that poor governance would have on its ability to
hold on to power. Governance is more
important to ISIL than JAN because the sole control of territory is at the core
of ISIL’s vision. It seeks to impose itself as the only legitimate actor, the
state, the actor who has monopoly over violence and the only one in charge of the
public good as it defines it. It thus assumes responsibility for governance,
which in itself becomes a way for ISIL to reinforce its control. Its reputation
for governance, centred on security provision and delivery of basic services,
is a key recruiting tool not only for fighters but also for civilians to move
to or remain in their areas. The local populations in areas under ISIL control
fear the consequences of rising up against the new oppressor but also see no
urgent need to, as they are frequently more secure under ISIL control.
ISIL enters
areas afflicted by weak governance, an active war economy and ongoing conflict
with the intention of changing this situation and imposing control. This is
done not for the benefit of the people but as a means to ensure longevity of
its rule. The imposition of law and order is always the first priority. This
ensures that like a state, ISIL has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
No other parties are permitted to carry weapons, with the exception of tribes
that have sworn allegiance to them and were allowed to keep their arms under
the condition that they are not used against ISIL. Unlike in the rest of Syria,
there are no rival militias or any other form of power to rival the dominant
one in ISIL-controlled areas. As a proto-state ISIL provides its own police, security
services and even its own intelligence. Robbery, extortion and murder are reported to have almost
disappeared in ISIL-controlled areas. Even tribal disputes seem to have
decreased.
ISIL has
achieved this through tough, brutal but organised security measures, adopting
both hard and soft power measures. ISIL has established Makhfars that function as police centres. These serve to resolve
conflicts and issue incident reports. Disputes are referred to Dar Al Qada’a, the House of Justice. They
have also established Religious Police, al-Hisba,
which carry out patrols, control the prices in the market and other violations of
their rules. In some areas such as Aleppo and Raqqa there are also local ISIL police,
which function with al-Hisba as the executive
body for the Shar’ia court. Crucially, ISIL members are subjected to the law
and are held accountable by Dar Al Qada’a
if they violate ISIL’s rules. ISIL also established the Islamic
Administration of Public Services (IAPS) to oversee various public services especially
bakeries. ISIL uses a highly strict interpretation of sharia law. It detains
people arbitrarily and uses torture; abuses of human rights in its detention
centres are rife. ISIL prisons, such as the one in Manbij and Al Bab, are reported to be not much better than
those of the Syrian government itself. They have also established a Religious
Outreach and Proselytisation (Da‘wa) Department and their own education system.
In terms of security and governance, ISIL-controlled areas benefit positively in comparison with other areas of Syria.
The villages in
ISIL-controlled areas tend to be subject to less governance and oversight than
the cities and towns. They are left to be run by the local people with allegiance
to ISIL. There are no al Hisba or Makhfars there. According to those we interviewed, this is mainly
because ISIL does not have the capacity to cover all the villages and because
it does not see many of them as strategic at this stage.
In terms of
security and governance, ISIL-controlled areas benefit positively in comparison
with other areas of Syria. Many areas controlled by opposition forces have a
reputation for lawlessness, corruption and gangster-like rule.
In opposition-controlled
areas, the newly emerging governing structures, mainly the Local Administrative
Councils (LACs), have struggled within an environment of diverse actors and differing
ideologies. They have had to rely on varying and unstable sources of funding.
The relationship of the LACs to the political, armed and economic actors is not
one that fits into the model of a coherent state, and at times these actors
become enemies or competitors. ISIL, on the other hand, has the advantage of
presenting an integrated model where the ideology, governance and military are
all intertwined into one comprehensive system supported by one economy and
central planning. The system of governance that ISIL has built is also very
well integrated with all its other aspects as described in the Middle
East Security Report on
ISIL’s governance “ISIS has built a
holistic system of governance that includes religious, educational, judicial,
security, humanitarian, and infrastructure projects, among others.”
ISIL
coordinates hospitals, bakeries, humanitarian aid and the running or repair of
infrastructure of all kinds, from the water pipelines to large dams and power
stations. It ensures that civil servants paid by the Syrian government actually
carry out their work, which again is not the case in all areas of Syria. All
this is to ensure that, just as it secures a monopoly over the use of force, it
has a similar monopoly over vital services.
ISIL’s
management of water and power is a prime example of how it ensures proper
service delivery to those under its control; it does so with the ambition of
creating an air of normalcy. In Deir Al Zour, people we interviewed reported significant
improvement in the provision of water and electricity in the area. They said
that before ISIL arrived they would typically have had several consecutive days
without electricity but after ISIL’s takeover, people had been getting at least
ten hours of electricity a day. ISIL’s IAPS had also fixed water pipes, managing
to provide water even to villages that had not had water for years, such as
Quria village in the eastern countryside of Deir Al Zour. Water supplies had been repaired for agricultural
areas, enabling farmers to farm again. People we interviewed who had escaped
Palmyra weeks after ISIL had taken it over reported to us that ISIL, very
quickly after it had entered the city, took over the main automated bakery in
the city; ISIL offered free bread for people while also working on restoring
services and fixing water pipes. They had also rapidly deployed their al-Hisba police forces. We were told
that typically ISIL starts by providing all these services for free when it
enters a new area and later charges people fees for services.
Demotix/Ibrahim Khader. All rights reserved.ISIL also seems
to plan for the long–term, reinforcing its state-like character. This contrasts
with other groups in Syria that tend to be trapped in emergency short-term
planning. Take for example the health system. ISIL medical services do not deal
just with emergency cases but also with primary health care issues. ISIL-run
hospitals are reported to be well run and kept very clean. People who attended
ISIL hospitals report meeting American, British and Pakistani doctors. We
interviewed a Syrian specialist doctor who had just fled Raqqa to Turkey. He
had worked in ISIL-run hospitals. They were paying him USD1500 per month in
addition to housing and other benefits and were very keen to keep him working
there, despite the fact that he did not swear allegiance to them. He described
how eager ISIL were to keep specialist doctors because most of the other
doctors who worked for them were inexperienced and some had just finished
medical school. He told us that to address this gap in medical expertise, ISIL has established a medical school where
students take three years to graduate. ISIL’s failure to keep this Syrian
doctor highlights its vulnerability. As he was becoming ever more valued and
his influence was growing, ISIL approached him and asked him to swear
allegiance. At this stage, he decided to
run for his life with his family because he knew rejection was not an option.
In Manbij, ISIL
gives medical financial assistance for people to purchase medicine, and assists
cancer patients financially. One interviewee reported that ISIL sends cancer
patients from Syria to a specialist hospital in Mosul.
ISIL’s capacity to reconstruct a state-like entity does not necessarily mean that ISIL is capable of building a viable enduring state.
Humanitarian assistance is another service ISIL
offers when it first intervenes in a community, partly, according
to the Institute for the Study of War, to create a culture of dependency.
For example, it provides lower-priced food to impoverished areas of high need. ISIL’s
control of bakeries also allows it to feed local populations and maintain this
dependency. In rural areas where ISIL cannot regularly provide aid and bread it
offers people the opportunity to restore their livelihoods, for example by
installing water pipes for agricultural use in villages. International aid is
being delivered regularly once a week to ISIL-controlled areas through Tel
Abyad crossing.[1]
It is difficult to know whether this aid is distributed according to need in
this area, but there is evidence that ISIL has abused supplies of international
aid. For example, ISIL is reported to use this aid to pay its fighters as a way
of rewarding them for their services. Tribal figures we interviewed also reported
to us that ISIL distributes aid to the tribes in return for loyalty. Lately
ISIL aired footage (Picture 1) showing ISIL members distributing what
they claimed to be the Zakat, which is the Islamic tax paid from the rich to
the poor. A camera zoom into the boxes they were distributing shows the UN WFP
logos. Other images showing ISIL distributing UN WFP in February 2015 also raised
serious concerns.
ISIL’s capacity
to reconstruct a state-like entity does not necessarily mean that ISIL is
capable of building a viable enduring state. It is isolated and inherently
exclusive; two factors which make long-term rule extremely difficult in the
context of globalisation. As the ISIS
Governance in Syria report
notes:
“In the process of establishing its
governance project, ISIS has dismantled state institutions without replacing
them with sustainable alternatives. The immediate provision of aid and
electricity, for example, does not
translate into the creation of a durable economy. The consequence of ISIS’s
failure, however, may not be the dismantling of the
Caliphate, but rather the devastation of the cities and systems that comprise Iraq and Syria such that they never
recover.”
What ISIL’s success thus far has highlighted is that security and governance
are issues that matter to civilian populations who are impoverished and fear
for their lives. Ideologically, ISIL has not been widely or fully embraced but
as an organisation with state-like operations it provides short-term relief
from many of the horrors of the Syrian and Iraqi crises. ISIL’s challenge,
which it appears to be well aware of, is to develop a sustainable long-term way
of forging loyalty to its fledgling entity that is not based on immediate
expediency. Those who oppose ISIL will have to counter efforts to build this
medium to long-term horizon by demonstrating that ISIL does not have a monopoly
on providing security and services.
[1] This was reported to us by OCHA in April 2015,
since then Tel Abyad was liberated from ISIL and the arrangements of delivering
international aid to ISIL-controlled areas may have changed.