Outlook Magazine, ISIS Special

ISIS Where they get their money from Where they came from

What they want

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The Origin of

What led to the beginning of the most powerf

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ISIS

ul terrorist organization in the world

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By Lee Smith

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he Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the terrorist army many thousand strong now rampaging through the Levant, embraces such an extreme, violent ideology that it makes even al Qaeda squeamish, argue many Western experts. On this reading, al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri was forced to distance himself from ISIS’s bloody practices. In reality, the notion that ISIS’s gory campaign turns the stomach even of an arch-terrorist, America’s public enemy number one, is colorful but inaccurate.

To be sure, ISIS—or the Islamic State, as it now calls itself—is an extremist movement, attracting militants from all over the world eager to help build the new caliphate.

Given the thousands of foreigners—including Chechen snipers, Saudi car bombers, and Western misfits like American Douglas McAuthur McCain—who have signed on to fight alongside ISIS, security officials are right to fear that the United States will become an ISIS target.

The group kidnaps and murders American journalists. It threatened the existence of the Yazidi community in Iraq, and it slaughtered at least 700 members of the Sheitat, a tribe in Syria, last month. It regularly employs the vicious hudud punishments to enforce sharia law in the areas it controls in Syria and Iraq.

None of this, however, is outside the norms of a region where governments regularly incite hatred of America and Israel, wage wars against their own populations, and kidnap, imprison, and kill foreign nationals. Cutting off the hands of criminals, as prescribed by sharia, is hardly out of the ordinary; the Islamic Republic of Iran hangs gay teenagers from construction cranes, and the legal authorities of Saudi Arabia—an American ally—regularly separate accused criminals from their heads in public executions in what is popularly known as Chop-Chop Square.

What’s extraordinary about ISIS is not the violence.

Indeed, the reason Zawahiri denounced the group was not its cruelty but its refusal to follow his orders and merge with another extremist organization. In other words, the dispute between ISIS and al Qaeda was not about the conduct of the former but about who was in charge, a regular feature of regional power dynamics.

Nor are ISIS’s money-raising schemes especially novel in the Middle East. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, the organization’s key source of income is oil, especially in the Syrian provinces of Deir al-Zour and Raqqa and the Iraqi province of Nineveh. “They sell it to opposition groups, to the tribes, back to the Syrian regime, or on the Iraqi black market,” says Faysal Itani, an ISIS expert at the Atlantic Council. The other main source of revenue is taxation, or rather, extortion. As one source in the city of Raqqa, ISIS’s so-called capital, explained to us, merchants pay 3,000 Syrian pounds (close to $20) every two months. The kidnapping of foreigners or wealthy Syrians for ransom also brings in millions.

And yet it’s true that ISIS is not exactly what we’ve become accustomed to seeing in the Middle East of late.

“This is not a classic insurgency,” says Itani, “or a non-state actor. Rather, it’s a state-building organization.” ISIS’s effort

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right now is to secure borders and lines of communication.

Comparing ISIS’s project with al Qaeda’s, Itani notes that bin Laden’s logic was to draw the United States into conflict with the Muslim world in the hope of making the people so disgusted with their regimes that al Qaeda could take over. ISIS is different: It aims to take territory, hold it, and build a state. That is, at a moment when much of the rest of the Middle East is moving toward chaos, the Islamic State is consolidating.

ISIS’s leader, Ibrahim Awwad al-Badri, is the selfproclaimed caliph, also known as Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, a 43-year-old jihadist from the Iraqi city of Samarra. During the American occupation, he was arrested on unclear charges, but deemed a low security threat and released after six months. Once out of jail, he joined Al Qaeda in Iraq, then under the leadership of the Jordanian Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Long before he proclaimed his caliphate, Baghdadi came to understand something that was lost on Zarqawi. As a member of the Banu Badr clan, Baghdadi saw that he needed to court the tribesmen on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border.

His strategy was greatly facilitated by the Obama administration’s December 2011 withdrawal from Iraq and the anti-Sunni policies pursued by the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. ISIS’s project was further aided by the Syrian uprising, which began in March 2011. Over the last three and half years, it has evolved into a civil war in which Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has slaughtered Sunnis. The White House and the rest of the international community have done nothing to stop him.

In other words, any policy addressing ISIS also has to address the root problem: What gave ISIS room to take hold and blossom is the Iranian-backed order of the Levant, consisting of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Nuri al-Maliki and his successor, Haidar al Abadi, in Iraq. All these are sustained by the Shiite Islamic revolutionary regime in Tehran. And the White House has virtually signed onto this regional security apparatus. It is the tacit agreement the Obama administration has made with Tehran that has not only galvanized ISIS but also made foes out of former allies. Sunni Arab tribes that sided with the United States during the surge to defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq less than a decade ago are now joining the Sunni extremists of ISIS. Western commentators often marvel that ISIS, unlike other terrorist organizations, is capable of mounting serious military campaigns. For instance, in a June 10 blitzkrieg, ISIS units stormed Iraqi military bases and police stations in the country’s second-largest city of Mosul. The fighters swept through Nineveh, most of Salaheddine, and parts

• Foreigners from all over the world joining ISIS • Harsh Sheria Law being imposed • Al Qaeda is also staying away from them

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Excecutions Journalist James Foley in a video grab from ISIS before he was excecuted.

of Diyala provinces. They linked up with tribal fighters from Anbar Province who had been in revolt against the government of Nuri al-Maliki for months. The reason ISIS and its allies seem to operate like a real army is that their military council is made up of former officers from an Arab army—Saddam Hussein’s.

Accordingly, it might be most useful to see the current sectarian conflagration tearing through the Middle East as an extension of the Iran-Iraq war. After that nearly decadelong conflict (1980-1988), Saddam Hussein, ever fearful of coups, liquidated senior army officers who’d emerged from the war as heroes. One such officer was his cousin, childhood friend, and brother-in-law, Defense Minister Adnan Khairallah Talfah. Having thus hollowed out the Iraqi army, Saddam built special units, like the Republican Guards and Fedayeen Saddam, that were well trained in espionage work and explosives. After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, some of these officers, along with others from Saddam’s M4 directorate of the Iraqi intelligence service, joined the insurgency against coalition forces and Iraq’s new Shiite-dominated ruling order, which from their perspective was a collaborative American and Iranian piece of art.

On the other side, Tehran’s first order of business in 2003 after Saddam had been toppled was to take revenge on the Iraqi military and intelligence personnel the Iranians had fought in the 1980s. Many of Iran’s allies in Iraq—including, some say, former prime minister Maliki—formed death squads to go after these officers.

Saddam’s onetime officer corps went into hiding and

used their expertise and money to wage war against the regime that had replaced them. When the United States, in partnership with major Sunni tribes, defeated the Sunni insurgency, American officials pleaded with Maliki to stop hunting the former Baathists and allow them to resettle peacefully in a post-Saddam Iraq. Maliki didn’t, nor did his allies. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers like Quds Force commander and Iran-Iraq war veteran Qassem Suleimani as well as Iranian-backed militias like Asa’ib ahl al-Haq continued to prosecute their war against Iraq’s Sunni community. Eventually the Sunnis came to see ISIS as one of their few lines of defense against this Shiite persecution.

Today, some of these former Iraqi officers constitute ISIS’s core military leadership. As the New York Times reported last week, the last two heads of ISIS’s military council were officers under Saddam, as was the current head of ISIS’s military operations, Adnan al-Sweidawi, also known as Abu Ayman al-Iraqi, who worked as a colonel in Saddam’s air defense intelligence unit. Other former Saddam loyalists have fought alongside ISIS. They include Jaysh Rijal al-Tariqah al-Naqshbandiyah (JRTN), a well-trained group of former Iraqi intelligence and army officers, led by Ibrahim Izzat al-Douri, a former high-level Baath party official. Douri was the king of clubs in the U.S.led coalition’s deck of playing cards of most-wanted Iraqi officials, yet he evaded American forces. It was reportedly JRTN that provided the main muscle in ISIS’s takeover of Mosul in June.

The other key players in the ISIS-led Sunni rebellion

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Saddam Huaaein The major generals of Saddam Huaains army were fired by him, who then went on to join ISIS

are the Arab tribes on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border. Indeed, the map of ISIS’s new caliphate, with its so-called capital in Raqqa and encompassing Deir al-Zour in Syria and Nineveh, Anbar, Salaheddine, and Diyala in Iraq, overlays a much older map of tribal lands forming a contiguous territory with a total area of around 168,000 square miles, bigger than Great Britain (143,000 square miles). To see how ISIS has succeeded, it is of paramount

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importance to understand the tribal politics behind its achievement and victories.

ISIS’s first success in tribal politics was in Raqqa, which it snatched from the hands of the Assad regime and turned into its capital. Until the middle of 2013, Raqqa remained loyal to Assad. Although few Syrian security forces were present in the city, and the capital, Damascus, is nearly 300 miles away, making it virtually impossible to maintain

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communications and supply lines, Raqqa remained in Assad’s control because the city was run by the Sharabeen tribe.

In the tribal world, the Sharabeen is and are not part of the elite. They are a cattle-raising tribe, considerably less prestigious So, basically: ISIS’ ultimate plan is to take over responsibility for, and control of, the whole world’s Muslim population — by force if need be. And of course, that force has been in constant supply — stories of ISIS’ grisly campaign throughout Iraq and Syria are consistently harrowing than, say, the camel-raising Shammar, one of the biggest tribes in the Middle East, whose members are known for their valor. When the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud, defeated the Shammar in 1910, the tribe pledged allegiance to him. Even as the British and French forced Ibn Saud to relinquish much of the Shammar territory he’d won, the Saudi king issued many Shammar Saudi passports.

Former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar, well understood the significance of the ties between the Shammar and the Saudis. To counter Saudi influence in Raqqa, he propped up the Sharabeen, funding them, arming them, and giving them government jobs.

All this came at the expense of the Shammar, many of whom picked up and moved to Saudi Arabia. When the anti-Assad rebellion erupted in 2011, Riyadh sent some Shammar tribal leaders back to Syria, like onetime head of the Syrian Council Ahmed al-Jarba. The potential return of the powerful Shammar became a pressing concern not just for the Sharabeen, but for other tribal groups as well, which is what prompted 14 Raqqa clans to pledge allegiance to ISIS in November 2013. This is how Raqqa turned, quickly and peacefully, from an Assad stronghold into ISIS’s capital.

Baghdadi repeated the same exercise in Syrian border towns like Al-Qaim and Bou Kamal, as well as Al-Omar, which is Syria’s largest oil field, in Deir al-Zour Province.

The Iraqi native had an even easier time with tribal politics on the Iraqi side of the border.

When British diplomat Gertrude Bell assembled modern Iraq, it was with an eye to securing a pipeline that linked the oil fields of Basra, in southern Iraq, to the Port of Haifa, in northern Palestine. This required integrating the Dulaim, an enormous tribe of around three million people today, and its territory, Dulaim Province, into Iraq.

The Dulaimis would produce two Iraqi presidents, the last of whom was deposed by the Baathists, who changed the name of Dulaim Province to Anbar. Between 1993 and 1996, the CIA reportedly encouraged the Dulaimis to revolt against Saddam, which they did, and, losing, paid dearly. Nonetheless, one of the leading clans of the Dulaim, the Abu Risha, came to ally itself with the United States during the occupation, and without them, the coalition forces almost certainly would not have won the surge.

Maliki alienated the tribes that the surge had won over.

He refused to share power with them. After the Obama administration’s December 2011 withdrawal, the tribes— including the Dulaim—defied Maliki by holding antigovernment rallies inspired by the Arab Spring. When Maliki cracked down on protesters and his forces ejected Sunni leaders from the government, the tribes went into open revolt.

To be sure, not all the Iraqi tribes have pledged allegiance to the new caliph, though they are fighting government forces alongside ISIS. Even as Baghdadi tried to woo some clans from the Dulaim, the tribe’s leader, Sheikh Ali al-Hatem, a former Awakening Council member and a staunch opponent of the Iraqi government, stood up to Baghdadi and kept him out of most of Anbar’s towns, including the biggest, Ramadi.

Perhaps eventually, the various components of the Sunni rebellion—the Dulaim, the Shammar, JRTN, ISIS, and the rest—will turn on each other. Already clashes have erupted between them, over booty or territory. But it is still too early for them to fall into open conflict. With ISIS spearheading the effort, the Sunni rebellion will likely continue to grow.

Last week President Obama announced that the White House has no policy to deal with ISIS. The revelation came

• Arab tribals are key players in their expansion • Al Qaeda is also staying away from them •Millitary Counsil made up of former officers from Saddam Huaaein’s army

as no surprise since it was the administration’s handling of Iraq and Syria that gave ISIS room to grow. Before tackling the problem of Sunni extremism, the administration needs to address the pro-Shiite, pro-Iranian extremism that led to it. Even if the administration wanted to address the root causes of the Sunni rebellion, it has little power to affect facts on the ground: It took its troops and went home in 2011. The Iranians, by contrast, through their allies and through the military assets they are willing to use, from Hezbollah to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, have lots of leverage. Iraq’s new prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi—named to the post by Quds Force commander Suleimani — is every bit as much an Iranian asset as Maliki.

But the reality is that Obama doesn’t want to change the equation. As the president has explained in a series of interviews over the last year, he wants to build a new geopolitical equilibrium that would bring Iran back into the community of nations. And to do that, the White House has to respect Iranian regional interests—which amounts to signing off on Iranian hegemony across the Levant, at the expense of America’s traditional regional partners, the Sunni muslims.

What’s most extraordinary about the Middle East at present isn’t ISIS and the rest of the Sunni rebellion. Rather, it’s the Obama administration’s inability to formulate a policy that would protect American interests by pushing back against Iran’s project for the region. Instead, the White House is squared off against traditional American allies in a way we’ve never seen before—with the Sunnis now galvanized by a 4,000-year-old tribal code and led by a caliph.

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Finances of ISIS

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By Raheem Salman

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ometimes they came pretending to buy things. Sometimes they texted, sometimes they called, but the message was always the same: “Give us money.”

Months before they took control of the Iraqi city of Mosul in June, Islamic State militants were already busy collecting money to finance their campaign of setting up a 7th century-style caliphate.

The owner of a Mosul grocery store recounted how, when he hesitated to pay, militants exploded a bomb outside his shop as a warning. “If a person still refused, they kidnapped him and asked his family to pay ransom,” he said.

The shopkeeper, who declined to be identified out of concern for his safety, said he had paid the militants $100 a month six or seven times this year since they took over.

In return, he was given a receipt that says: “Received from Mr. ...., the amount of ...., as support to the Mujahideen.”

The shop keeper’s tale illustrates how Islamic State has long been systematically collecting funds for a land grab that already includes a stretch of northern Iraq and Syria. Another Mosul worker corroborated the account of IS tactics.

“The tax system was well-organized. They took money from small merchants, petrol station owners, generator owners, small factories, big companies, even pharmacists and doctors,” said the shop owner who, out of frustration and fear, closed his store and is now trying to make a living as a taxi driver.

Learning from their previous incarnation as the Islamic State of Iraq, when they received money from foreign fighters, Islamic State has almost weaned itself off private funds from sympathetic individual donors in the Gulf. Such money flows have come under increased scrutiny from the U.S. Treasury.

Instead the group has formalized a system of internal financing that includes an Islamic form of taxation,

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looting and most significantly, oil sales, to run their ‘state’ effectively.

This suggests it will be harder to cut the group’s access to the local funding that is fueling its control of territory and strengthening its threat to the Middle East and the West.

Nevertheless, financing from Gulf donors may prove more critical in months to come, if U.S. President Barack Obama’s mission to “degrade and destroy” the group succeeds and the group loses territory and finds itself looking abroad for funds.

Controlling Commerical Centers :In

the eastern Syrian city of Mayadin, an Islamic State supporter who goes by the name of Abu Hamza al-Masri, said the militants had set up checkpoints in the last few months demanding money from passing cars and trucks. The money purportedly goes into a ‘zakat’ or ‘alms’ fund, but Abu Hamza admitted some sums go to pay bonuses or salaries of fighters.

“Passengers are asked to open their wallets ... in some instances they are threatened at gunpoint if they resist,” said another Syrian secular activist in Deir ez-Zor contacted by Reuters via Whatsapp.

But extortion is not Islamic State’s top money-spinner.

Analysts and activists say the majority of the group’s money comes from oil sales to local traders from wells under Islamic State control.

Luay Al-Khatteeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center who has done extensive research into Islamic State’s oil smuggling, says the group now has access to five oilfields in Iraq, each of which have between 40 to 70 oil wells.

“They deal with a sophisticated network of middle men, some of whom are affiliated with the (Iraqi) oil companies. They have to pay various checkpoints to move around all these oil convoys and specifically to export

“Passengers are asked to open their wallets ... in some instances they are threatened at gunpoint if they resist,” 9

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They control 4 oil fields, 25,000 bpd, $1.2million per day the oil to Turkey,” Khatteeb said.

“It is estimated that now, after recent territory losses, they can produce, give-or-take, 25,000 bpd, easily getting them about $1.2 million a day, on and off, even if they sell at a discount price of $25-$60 a barrel.”

“It is estimated that now, after recent territory losses, they can produce, give-or-take, 25,000 bpd, easily getting them about $1.2 million a day, on and off, even if they sell at a discount price of $25-$60 a barrel,” Khatteeb said.

This volume of oil production would be on par with a small offshore field on the north slope of Alaska.

A high-level Iraqi security official put the number of oilfields under the group’s control at four, with a fifth in contest between them and Kurdish

peshmerga forces.

The group appears to have chosen areas of conquest carefully, with an eye to funding.

In the Syrian province of Raqqa, a stronghold of the group, the militants made sure they could effectively manage the area before moving on to conquer territory across the border in Iraq. They moved into Fallujah in Iraq’s Anbar province in early 2014, before reaching Mosul in June, a major urban center.

ISIS isn’t just made of men :“It’s about

controlling financial nodes. It’s controlling commercial centres, it’s controlling roads for checkpoints and there’s no surprise in that, because there’s significant value in that control. And the more finance you earn, the more you can develop. It’s a reinforcing circuit,” said Tom Keatinge, a finance and security analyst at the Royal United Services Institute.

“There’s no point in controlling acres of desert. You want to control

What ISIS Really Wants To establish a new Islamic Caliphate across the middle east

By Chris Tognotti

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ecently, we’ve all become pretty familiar with ISIS, the militant Islamic group cutting a violent path through both Iraq and Syria.

But in spite of their high-profile acts of terror — with the executions of American journalists James Foley and allegedly Steven Sotloff likely ranking as the most overt threat directed at the U.S. — there’s a simple question that’s on a lot of people’s minds. Namely, what does ISIS want?

Luckily, with a little digging, you get a fairly clear picture — the stated mission goal of ISIS, as they voiced publicly back in June, is to establish a new Islamic caliphate across the Middle East.

It’s possible you’ve heard the word “caliphate” in the reporting on ISIS to date. Basically, it’s the idea

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of an enormous Islamic state that encompasses all Muslims worldwide.

However, as Vox points out, the sectarian forces of ISIS aren’t counting Shia Muslims in that equation, only Sunnis. ISIS’ desire (and apparent strategy) is to overthrow the existing governments of unstable, heavily Muslim nations and establish their own theocratic state in its place. The leader of this new caliphate would be the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr alBaghdadi, who claims he’s the ”caliph.”

To be clear, interpretations of caliphate aren’t limited to the sort of bloodthirsty vision ISIS seems to have. As detailed in journalist Khaled Diab’s excellent op-ed in The New York Times, the era of the Abbasid caliphate (from 750 to 1258 A.D.) was a time of relative diversity, plus dramatic advances in science and mathematics.

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the financial nodes so that you can continue to expand. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin financially before you can operate effectively in an expanded area.”

Less Reliance on Private Funds:Docu-

ments from al Qaeda in Iraq captured

by U.S. forces near Iraq’s Sinjar town in 2007 included reams of finance and expense reports, showing the group, a predecessor of Islamic State, “relied heavily on voluntary donations”, says a 2008 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.

The report, “Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedout”, said the “financial reports and receipts in the Sinjar documents show that the Islamic State of Iraq relied on three sources of

They would recieve money from foreign fighters and sympathetic donors

As The New Republic details, the organization’s names according to different outlets are actually of consequence here. You’ve probably noticed this — a lot of places, Bustle included, say “ISIS” (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), while President Obama says “ISIL” (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). But the group itself has a different self-appointed title these days — simply “IS,” the Islamic State, which they adopted in late June, according to Al Jazeera.

The switch coincided with alBaghdadi claiming the vaunted title given to the leader of the Islamic caliphate — the “caliph.” As Vox explains, the original vision of the caliph was the inheritor of the prophet Muhammad’s legacy, in two big ways.

First, governing over the Islamic State, and second, claiming responsibility for all Muslims worldwide. Over the course of hundreds of years, however, it ultimately assumed the form of a sort of imperial leadership position.

There are lesser strategic goals that ISIS has staked out along the way to forming their concept of caliphate, however. The execution of James Foley

funding: transfers from other leaders in al Qaeda in Iraq, money foreign suicide bombers brought with them and fundraising from local Iraqis.”

The study said it was unclear from the documents whether the funds from locals were given voluntarily.

The bureaucratic obsession with accounting proved ironic - while it helped the group track funds, the documents, once in the hands of the U.S. military, helped Washington understand how the financing worked from the operatives who moved money, to the ones who donated money, to how the money was spent.

One lesson learned, the Sinjar documents show, was the need for more reliable financing, especially with countries trying harder to disrupt the flow of funds, Keatinge said.

“If you have a sophisticated understanding of financial management like Islamic State or al Shabaab in Somalia, you know very well that relying on diaspora or private donations or funds that can be disrupted by the in-

The french paid 18 million for 4 hostages ternational community is a risky way to go,” said Keatinge. “(IS) receives some money from outside donors, but that pales in comparison to their self funding through criminal and terrorist activities.”

By its own admission, Washington realizes funds from outside donors are not as significant a threat as their self-financing methods, but the United States and its allies have been slow to move to cut those sources off. “(IS) receives some money from outside donors, but that pales in comparison to their self funding through criminal and terrorist activities,” a senior State Department official said.

Ransoms from kidnappings do not seem to compete with oil sales, and not much is reliably known about the amounts they have received. ABC News reported that one U.S. hostage

Iraq The Excecution of journalists was in responce to Obama bombing millitant bases

was, by their own claim, a response to President Obama’s authorization of U.S. airstrikes against ISIS near the strategic Mosul Dam — a response

which didn’t halt the bombings, as President Obama authorized further strikes last week. But controlling territory and infrastructure like the

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held by Islamic State is a 26-yearold female aid worker, for whom the group has demanded $6.6 million.

British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament he had no doubt that tens of millions of pounds of ransom payments were going to Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

Focus, a German magazine said in April that France paid $18 million for the release of four French hostages who had been held by Islamic State, citing NATO sources in Brussels.

French officials say the French state does not pay ransoms.

Then there is crime. IS raided the central bank in Mosul and reportedly seized substantial sums of money, though the figures are disputed. The group apparently allows Iraqis in Mosul to withdraw 10 percent of their bank deposits and give 5 percent of the withdrawn amount, as zakat, or Islamic alms.

What Can Be Done :Kuwait has been

one of the biggest humanitarian do-

dam is really just means to an end for ISIS. More stability means more recruitment, and more opportunity to conquer new lands, spreading their sphere of influence further.

The path to this full-fledged Islamic State is a very bloody one, at least the way ISIS sees it. Partially because asserting oneself as a caliph is a major and controversial path, and not all Muslims will necessarily agree to submit to al-Baghdadi’s particularly brutal interpretation of Islam. And ISIS’ attitude towards such nonbelievers, Muslim and nonMuslim alike, is pretty straightforward — either get on board, or get killed.

According to Human Rights Watch, ISIS killed nearly 200 Iraqis in Tikrit between June 11 and June 14.

As for what their shorter-term political goals are, however, ISIS seems dedicated to stoking conflict with the U.S. — it’s feared that they could turn attention to launching attacks both at America and Europe. This possibility has heightened tensions within the U.K. and U.S., and was echoed by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Saturday.

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Iraq A ISIS checkpoint on the highway to collect more money

nors to Syrian refugees through the United Nations. It has also struggled to control unofficial fund-raising for opposition groups in Syria by private individuals and people.

Ahmed al-Sanee, head of charities in Kuwait’s Social Affairs ministry, inance minister Anas al-Saleh said on Tuesday Kuwait was “committed to international efforts in fighting this terrorist outfit”.

“Whomever has been identified by the United Nations as a terrorist, we will be implementing our law on them,” he said.

Washington has moved to cut off sources of private donations. Last month it imposed sanctions on three men it said funneled money from Kuwait to Islamic militant groups in Iraq and Syria. Kuwait briefly detained two of the men, both of whom are prominent clerics.

“If I were the Chief Financial Officer of IS or ISIS as it was then, I would be watching that development very closely. Because if I were receiving money from the Gulf states, at that

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point I for sure knew that it would get harder,” said Keatinge.

No Simple Solution: In the end,

squeezing the group’s finances will involve a mixture of intelligence and force. Ending the group’s control of a given area using military might would remove its ability to raise local taxes, for example. Tracking smuggling routes or Gulf donors, in contrast, would involve local informants.

Khatteeb, who is also the director of the Iraq Energy Institute, says Turkey must clamp down on oil smuggling routes through southern Turkey.

This would dent a revenue stream Islamic State has used to fund a significant recruitment drive.

“Turkish authorities (need) to really pay attention in closing down these markets, put more work in intelligence and enforce the rule of law.”

The “terrorist group’s bookkeepers, its oil business and cash holdings” should be the targets of greater intelligence and scrutiny to help “disrupt ISIS’s financing and provide addition-

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al intelligence on its inner workings.”

In an op-ed last month published in the New York Times Patrick Johnston and Benjamin Bahney of the RAND Corporation argued that strategies that focused on sanctioning international financial activities were unlikely to be effective.

The authors say that “the terrorist group’s bookkeepers, its oil business and cash holdings” should be the targets of greater intelligence and scrutiny to help “disrupt ISIS’s financing and provide additional intelligence on its inner workings.”

Johnston told Reuters that even with the rapid expansion of Islamic State and its need to pay a larger number of recruits, the group could still make an estimated $100-$200 million surplus this year, given the amount of money it is making.

“They’re making more money, they have less opposition militarily ... the question is what are they going to do with it?”

The Effect of ISIS Numbers on what is being called a genoside by the Islamic State

By Courtney Kube Iraq :Over the past few months, the Islamic State, an al-Qaeda offshoot formerly known as ISIS, has mounted a brutal campaign in Syria and Iraq that has allowed it to expand its ranks and win large swaths of new territory.

With the stated goal of establishing a Sunni caliphate – or an Islamic state governed by a religious figurehead – the insurgent group’s fighting has taken a heavy toll on Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority, as well as a number of minority groups, including Kurds and other religions.

While reports of the Islamic State carrying out mass executions, placing heads on fence posts and imposing harsh religious restrictions have

sparked concern across the world, they haven’t elicited military involvement until now. Over the weekend, U.S. warplanes began bombing Islamist fighters following an announcement by President Barack Obama that he had authorized airstrikes to prevent “genocide.”

In light of the recent news, here’s an update on the militant group by the numbers: 13,000: The number of square miles thought to be under Islamic State control, a stretch between Syria and Iraq that is roughly the size of Belgium.

Other estimates suggest the Islamic State controls an area closer to 35,000 square miles, or roughly the size of Jordan and some people even consid-

er it to be bigger than UK. 1,922: The number of people killed in Iraq in June, according to government figures, making it the deadliest month since May 2007. Official figures report 1,393 civilians, 380 soldiers and 149 policemen among the dead. Another 2,610 people were wounded, the majority of them civilians.

30,000 - 50,000: The number of militants now fighting with the Islamic State, according to a recent estimate by Dr. Hisham al-Hashimi, an expert on the group. Many former Iraqi Army soldiers have been forced to join and others have been recruited from around the region and beyond.

5: The number of nations with which the Islamic State has engaged in direct fighting. In an effort to expand its holdings, insurgents have attacked soldiers from Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey this summer alone.

The group is currently pursuing a large offensive against the Syrian Arab Army in the northeast of the country,

Baghdad Refugees have been fleeing from their hometown in fear of a ISIS invasion

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Raqqa ISIS soldiers parading through the Syrian city of Raqqa

snatching up large quantities of munitions from military bases. $2,000,000,000: The approximate value of the Islamic State’s cash and assets, according to estimates from terrorism experts. In the midst of its most substantial campaign in June, Islamic State fighters captured the city of Mosul, looting hundreds of million of dollars from banks and acquiring hundreds more in military assets from the Iraqi Army. $3,000,000: The estimated daily revenue of the Islamic State, from its oil and gas resources alone. Fighters with the group have taken control of oil and gas fields across northern Iraq and Syria, and it “now controls a volume of resources and territory unmatched in the history of extremist organizations,” according to Janine Davidson.

3: The number of high-profile jail-

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breaks carried out by Islamic State forces in the past several months, which led to the freeing of at least 1,500 insurgents, likely including leaders, bomb makers and other militants, according to reports. In an apparent response to these incidents and widespread brutality by Islamic State fighters, Human Rights Watch accused Shiite militia members and other Iraqi Army soldiers last month of having illegally executed at least 255 Sunni prisoners in at least five different massacres.

0: The number of openly practicing Christians thought to be left in the city of Mosul, where the Islamic State has made Christianity punishable by death. While it’s impossible to know if Islamic State militants have actually chased every Christian out of the city, recent reports suggest that all remaining Christians had fled Mosul.

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Up to 40,000: The number of civilians initially estimated to have been trapped on Mount Sinjar last week after the Islamic State captured the town of Sinjar, near the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, and drove people out of the surrounding areas. While at least 20,000 were reportedly rescued over the weekend by Kurdish rebels from neighboring Syria, the remaining Yazidis are still trapped.

At least 500: The number of Yazidis killed so far by Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq. An Iraqi government minister told Reuters on Sunday that militants had buried some of the Yazidis alive, while they killed others in a mass execution.

At least 300: The number of Yazidi women taken as slaves by the Islamic State, according to human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. Sudani said there are still concerns that

ISIS using weapons made in USA

By Chris Tognotti

many of the victims will be moved outside of the country, which would make it harder to rescue them. Recent reports also suggest that at least two women were publicly stoned to death by the Islamic State, one of whom faced the punishment for adultery.

would roar toward the city of Mosul if the Islamic State decided to destroy the Mosul Dam, or if were to suffer a catastrophic collapse for any other reason, according to a 2007 letter from U.S. generals stressing the need to secure the dam.

500,000: According to a 2011 report in Water Power magazine, this is the number of civilians who could die if the Mosul Dam, the largest dam in Iraq, stops working. Late last week, the Islamic State reportedly seized the dam, which lies on the Tigris River and provides power and water to Mosul and other parts of the region. It requires extensive engineering work to remain operational. It remains unclear what the Islamic State intends to do with it, but simply neglecting the required upkeep would potentially lead to large-scale structural failure.

1,500,000: The estimated population of Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

This numberincludes an unknown number of foreign workers, some of whom are American military personnel who were dispatched earlier this summer to aid Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in their resistance efforts against the Islamic State. On Saturday, American warplanes began launching airstrikes to help Kurdish forces fighting to defend Erbil.

2: The number of towns reclaimed by Kurdish forces on Sunday following U.S. airstrikes to protect the area from Islamic State militants.

65: The amount of water (in feet) that

9 October 2014 Outlook

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is using “significant quantities� of U.S.-made weapons which it seized from Syrian rebels and Iraqi government forces, according a report released Monday.

The London-based weapons research organization Conflict Armament Research said the American armaments being used by the militant group include M-16 assault rifles and bear U.S. government markings.

The report also indicated that the group had in its possession anti-tank rockets that were identical to 1980s-era M79 rockets used by the moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA).

ISIS is also believed to have seized large quantities of weapons from Syrian military installations it has captured, including warplanes.

In Iraq, ISIS militants seized vast quantities of military gear and U.S. equipment which Iraqi army soldiers abandoned as they fled in the face of the offensive in June.

The equipment seized by the group includes a number of U.S.made armored Humvees which ISIS has reportedly used in suicide bombings against Iraqi forces.

Over the past several years the United States spent billions of dollars to train and equip Iraqi military and security personnel, to ensure they could maintain security in the country after American troops departed at the end of 2011.

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Human Rights Vio

They give en example of how the empire is going to be after they win Jordan: The new U.N. human rights chief urged world powers on Monday to protect women and minorities targeted by Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, saying the fighters were trying to create a “house of blood.”

Jordan’s Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, the first Muslim to hold the position, called for the international community to focus on ending the “increasingly conjoined” conflict in the two countries, and abuses in other hotspots from Ukraine to Gaza.

Islamic State’s Sunni Muslim fighters have over-run large parts of Syria and Iraq since June, declaring a cross-border caliphate. The Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Coun-

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cil last week agreed to send a team to investigate killings and other abuses carried out by the group on “an unimaginable scale.”

Zeid, Jordan’s former U.N. ambassador and a Jordanian prince, described Islamic State in his maiden speech to the Council as “takfiris” hardline Sunni militants who justify killing others by branding them apostates and aethists.

“Do they believe they are acting courageously? Barbarically slaughtering captives? ... They reveal only what a Takfiri state would look like, should this movement actually try to govern in the future, said Zeid who succeeds Navi Pillay in the Geneva hotseat.

“It would be a harsh, mean-spirited, house of blood, where no shade would be offered, nor shelter given, to any non-Takfiri in their midst,” Zeid had added.

He called on Iraq’s new govern-

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ment and prime minister to consider joining the International Criminal Court (ICC) to ensure accountability for crimes committed there.

“In particular, dedicated efforts are urgently needed to protect religious and ethnic groups, children – who are at risk of forcible recruitment and sexual violence – and women, who have been the targets of severe restrictions,” Zeid said.

The ambassadors of Iraq and Syria, in separate speeches, called for combating “terrorist groups” in their homelands and for halting the flow of weapons and funds to Islamist militants and terrorists.

“Terrorists must not be armed, the source of financing must be stopped.

Infiltration of terrorists from abroad must be stopped,” said Syria’s new envoy Hussam Edin Aala.

The Council has an independent investigation into war crimes

lations by the ISIS

by all sides in Syria, where more than 190,000 documented killings have occurred during the conflict that began in March 2011, according to a report

by Pillay last month.

“In the takfiri mind, as we have seen in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Kenya, Somalia, Mali, Libya, Syria and Iraq ... there is no love of neighbor - only annihilation to those Muslims, Christians, Jews and others, altogether the rest of humanity, who believe differently to them,” Zeid said.

Zeid called for an end to Israel’s seven-year blockade of the Gaza Strip and said Palestinians in Gaza and the

Jordans former UN embassidor said they kill people and justify them as apostates

West Bank deserved to lead a normal life free of illegal settlements and what he called excessive use of force.

“On this point, I also note that Israelis have a right to live free and secure from indiscriminate rocket fire,”

19000 documented killings since march 2011 he said, referring to rockets fired by militants in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Israel’s deputy ambassador Omer Caspi chastised the Council for not naming Hamas as “the perpetrator of war crimes” in a resolution that set up an inquiry last month on the latest war in Iraq.

“One cannot allow the institutionalized bias against Israel to override the international community’s posi-

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tion against terrorism. One cannot allow one country to protect itself against terror and condemn another for doing just that. It is called double standards and it should end,” Caspi had said.

On Ukraine, Zeid said “at least 3,000 people” have been killed since fighting began in April and called on the Kiev government, armed groups and neighboring states including Russia to protect civilians and ensure compliance with international law.

Italy’s envoy Maurizio Enrico Serra, speaking on behalf of the European Union (EU), condemned what it called “the aggression by Russian armed forces on Ukrainian soil in clear contravention of international law. set by the UN” Russia denies accusations by Kiev and the West that it has sent troops into eastern Ukraine to prop up a revolt by pro-Russian separatist rebels.

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Profile of Iraq PM The person who is the face of the Anti Terrorist activity in Iraq

I

raqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki first came to power in 2006, at a time when sectarian violence was threatening to tear the country apart.

Mr Maliki resisted pressure from Washington to request an extension of US troop presence in the country, and presided over the formal end of the US military presence in Iraq.

However, despite his alliance narrowly winning the 2014 parliamentary election, he has struggled to contain a new tide of violence which has seen several cities slip from Iraqi government control, and has suffered shrinking support from Sunnis and Kurds. He was also forced to defend himself from accusations that he has used the judiciary to silence and imprison political rivals.

In August 2014, after months of political infighting, new President Fuad Masum asked MP Haider al-Abadi to form a new government,

First nominated for PM in 2006 20

First appointed as PM on 21 Dec, 2010 despite Mr Maliki’s protestations that the move was “unconstitutional”.

Self-imposed exile: Nouri Mohammed Hassan Maliki was born near the Iraqi town of Hilla in July 1950. He has a master’s degree in Arabic literature and is married with four daughters and one son.

Joined the Islamic Dawa Party in the late 1960s. He helped organise resistance against Saddam Hussein’s regime; Fled to Syria in the 1970s, led the Dawa Party in Syria in the 1980s, returned to Iraq after Saddam toppled in 2003, became lawmaker and deputy chair of de-Baathification committee under the Coalition Provisional Authority Appointed prime minister on 20 May 2006 as a compromise candidate among Sunni Arab, Shia and Kurdish

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parties, reappointed prime minister on 21 December 2010, his State of Law coalition won most seats in 2014 election.

However, in August 2014, his rival Haider al-Abadi was asked to form a government. His grandfather, Mohammed Hassan Abul Mahasin, was a poet and rebel fighter who opposed the British occupation of Iraq in the 1920s. He is widely seen as the inspiration for Mr Maliki’s strong nationalist ideals and his decision to join the Shia Islamist Dawa (Call) party as a university student in Baghdad in the 1970s.

Despite Dawa’s Islamist roots, Mr Maliki sought to position himself as a strong and unifying leader in post-Saddam Iraq after coming to power in 2006.

However, since the 2010 elections Mr Maliki has been accused of abandoning a consensus-building strategy in favour of concentrating power among his mostly Shia allies. He has also become more closely allied with Iran over issues such as the conflict in Syria and Iraq.

Return from exile: Mr Maliki returned to Iraq from exile after the US-led invasion in 2003 that overthrew Saddam Hussein and Dawa soon emerged as a major political force - with Mr Maliki among its vanguard.

Mr Maliki has struggled to contain a new tide of violence led by Islamist militants He served as a spokesman for the party as well as for the broader coalition of Shia parties, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), which won the most seats in legislative elections in December 2005. He was relatively unknown before being nominated for the post of prime minister in 2006.

Mr Maliki helped draft the country’s new constitution and was a member of a committee, set up by the US, tasked with purging Iraq of its Baathist legacy.

The work of the committee attracted criticism for apparently extending its crackdown to officials that had been Baath Party members.

Turbulent times: In 2007, Mr Maliki authorised a surge in US troop numbers that targeted al-Qaeda affiliated Sunni militants and led the 2008 cam-

Iraq He authorised the US sending troops into Iraq to fight the insurgents

He is known to have a masters in Arabic Literature paign against Shia militias loyal to the radical cleric, Moqtada Sadr.

President Bush, left, shakes hands with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, right, following their teleconference with members of the U.S. And Iraqi Cabinet members at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday (13 June 2006). Mr Maliki had to work closely with the US during his early years in power Under fire from his Shia allies and under pressure to reconcile with Iraq’s Sunni community, he split from the UIA in early 2009 and formed the broader-based State of Law coalition.

The alliance campaigned on a platform of a unified Iraq in the March 2010 elections, but lost by a mere two seats to the mostly Sunni-backed al-Iraqiyya alliance of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

In the months of deadlock that followed the poll, Mr Maliki was accused of turning to Tehran to help rebuild his power base and remain prime minister. The support of Moqtadr Sadr’s bloc - reportedly the result of pressure from the Iranian gov-

ernment - was crucial.

Fragile coalition: After nine months of tortuous negotiations, Mr Maliki eventually formed a fragile government which included members of the al-Iraqiyya bloc. However, the government quickly unravelled when, after the withdrawal of US troops, arrest warrants were issued for a senior member of al-Iraqiyya, Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi.

Mr Hashemi, Iraq’s most senior

Senior officials of his government accused of funding attacks against Iraq Sunni Arab politician, was accused of funding attacks on government and security officials during Iraq’s bloody insurgency. He was sentenced to death in absentia in September 2012 but has since sought refuge in Turkey.

Mr Maliki denied that the charges against Mr Hashemi were politically motivated.

Militant insurgency: Since 2012, Mr Maliki has faced both popular pro-

Outlook Magazine

tests and an increasingly violent insurgency, led by groups fighting for an “Islamic state” in the region.

He has struggled to confront new militant groups operating across the Syria-Iraq border.

One of the biggest groups, the Islamic State (formerly known as Isis), pushed Iraqi government forces out of several cities in the north and east of the country. Large parts of Anbar province had already been under the control of al-Qaeda-inspired militants for several months. Mr Maliki has accused Saudi Arabia of being behind much of the unrest.

Political survival: Many Iraqis accused Mr Maliki of nepotism and mismanagement of Iraq’s vast oil wealth. Both of his sons-in-law worked for his office and his son Ahmed was head of his security. Many parts of Iraq have remained poor and undeveloped during his time in office.

Despite these difficulties, his State of Law coalition won the most votes in the last parliamentary elections in April 2014, and Mr Maliki made clear his desire to serve a third term as prime minister.

However, there followed months of political infighting as parliament refused to give him a third term and he lost the backing of the US.

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What Fuels Success BAGHDAD — As fighters for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria continue to seize territory, the group has quietly built an effective management structure of mostly middle-aged Iraqis overseeing departments of finance, arms, local governance, military operations and recruitment.

At the top the organization is the self-declared leader of all Muslims, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a radical chief executive officer of sorts, who handpicked many of his deputies from among the men he met while a prisoner in American custody at the Camp Bucca detention center a decade ago.

He had a preference for military men, and so his leadership team includes many officers from Saddam Hussein’s long-disbanded army.

They include former Iraqi officers like Fadel al-Hayali, the top deputy for Iraq, who once served Mr. Hussein as a lieutenant colonel, and Adnan al-Sweidawi, a former lieutenant colonel who now heads the group’s

They have a effective management team, managing departments of finance, arms, recruitment, etc.

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military council.

The pedigree of its leadership, outlined by an Iraqi who has seen documents seized by the Iraqi military, as well as by American intelligence officials, helps explain its battlefield successes: Its leaders augmented traditional military skill with terrorist techniques refined through years of fighting American troops, while also having deep local knowledge and contacts. ISIS is in effect a hybrid of terrorists and an army.

“These are the academies that these men graduated from to become what they are today,” said the Iraqi, a researcher named Hisham Alhashimi.

ISIS, which calls itself Islamic State, burst into global consciousness in June when its fighters seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, after moving into Iraq from their base in mainland Syria.

The Iraqi Army melted away, and Mr. Baghdadi declared a caliphate, or Islamic state, that erased borders and imposed Taliban-like rule over a large territory. Not everyone was surprised by the group’s success. “These guys know the terrorism business inside and out, and they are the ones who survived aggressive counterterrorism campaigns during the surge,” said one American intelligence official, referring to the increase in American troops in Iraq in 2007. “They didn’t

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The deputies were handpicked by Baghdadi, who met them when under American custody a decade ago survive by being incompetent.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing intelligence reports.

After ISIS stormed into Mosul, one official recalled a startling phone call from a former major general in one of Mr. Hussein’s elite forces. The former general had appealed months earlier to rejoin the Iraqi Army, but the official had refused. Now the general was fighting for ISIS and threatened revenge.

“We will reach you soon, and I will chop you into pieces,” he said, according to the official, Bikhtiyar al-Qadi, of the commission that bars some former members of Mr. Hussein’s Baath Party from government posts.

ISIS’s success has alarmed American and regional security officials, who say it fights more like an army than most insurgent groups, holding territory and coordinating operations across large areas.

The group has also received support from other armed Sunni groups and former members of the Baath

of ISIS Party — which was founded as a secular movement — angry over their loss of status.

“In the terrorism game, these guys are at the center of a near perfect storm of factors,” the American official said.

Mr. Baghdadi’s deputies include 12 walis, or local rulers; a three-man war cabinet; and eight others who manage portfolios like finance, prisoners and recruitment.

Its operations are carried out by a network of regional commanders who have their own subordinates and a degree of autonomy, but they have set “drop times” when they open a shared network to coordinate.

For example, ISIS responded to American airstrikes on its positions in Iraq by distributing a professionally produced video last week of the beheading of the American journalist James Foley more than 200 miles away from the airstrikes.

ISIS is the current incarnation of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgent group that battled American forces under the leadership of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi before his death from an American airstrike in 2006.

According to a map of the group developed by Mr. Alhashimi, the Iraqi expert, Mr. Baghdadi has 25 deputies across Iraq and Syria. About onethird were military officers during

Mr. Hussein’s rule, and nearly all were imprisoned by American forces.

The last two leaders of ISIS’s military council were former Iraqi military officers: a colonel and a captain.

Both have been killed — and have been followed by a former lieutenant colonel, Adnan al-Sweidawi, who is about 50 years old.

Ahmed al-Dulaimi, the governor of Anbar Province, which is now largely controlled by ISIS, said that all three men graduated from the same military academy.

Mr. Dulaimi said he had taught one of them, Adnan Nijim, who graduated in 1993 to become an infantry officer with the Iraqi army.

“It was never clear that he would turn out like that,” Mr. Dulaimi said.

“He was from a simple family, with high morals, but all his brothers went in that direction,” becoming jihadists.

After the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Mr. Nijim joined Al Qaeda in Iraq and was detained by American forces in 2005, Mr. Dulaimi had said.

One third of depities are Saddams former officers “All of these guys got religious after 2003,” Mr. Dulaimi said. “Surely, ISIS benefits from their experience.”

Other former military brass have also fought for ISIS. Mr. Baghdadi’s top deputy in Syria, Samir al-Khlifawi, was a colonel.

He was killed in Syria by other insurgents.

Derek Harvey, a former Army intelligence officer and specialist on Iraq who now directs the University of South Florida’s Global Initiative for Civil Society and Conflict, said that former officers also had professional, personal and tribal relationships that had strengthened ISIS’s coalition.

The group’s campaign to free hundreds of militants from Iraqi prisons was executed with former Baath Party

Outlook Magazine

The officers are seasoned through years of fighting american troops loyalists. These included intelligence officers and soldiers in Mr. Hussein’s Republican Guard.

Hassan Abu Hanieh, a Jordanian expert on Islamist groups, said that while Mr. Baghdadi had relied mostly on Iraqis, he had left areas like religious guidance, recruitment and media production to foreigners.

Many of them, like the head of ISIS’s media department, are Saudis.

This is at least partly to make ISIS appear “globalized,” Mr. Abu Hanieh said. “They want to appeal to international jihadists so that they come and join the battle.”

Some non-Iraqis have risen to prominence. Mr. Baghdadi’s chief spokesman is Syrian. And one group of foreign fighters is led by an ethnic Chechen who goes by the name Omar al-Shishani.

Michael Knights, an Iraq analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said it was no surprise that so many officers from Mr. Hussein’s era had joined ISIS. Discontent in the military was widespread near the end of his rule, and underground Islamist movements were gaining strength, even inside the military, he said during an interview.

Political changes after the American invasion accelerated their rise.

Members of Mr. Hussein’s Baath Party were barred from government positions, and the political dominance of Iraq’s Shiite majority made many Sunnis feel disenfranchised.

“After 2003, what did these guys have to do but get more radical?” Mr. Knights said.

For those who had served in Mr. Hussein’s staunchly secular army, that transformation was complete by the time they joined ISIS. “There is no one in Baghdadi’s state who is not a believer,” Mr. Alhashimi said.

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Letting the world know, what is going on.