ISIS’s Newest Face-Lift
Are we about to see a kinder, gentler Islamic State (IS)? Probably not. But it seems the ruthless terrorist organization has decided that publishing videos of its members beheading civilians might be a little too damaging to its reputation. Arabic language publication All4Syria.info reported recently that IS has ordered its members to stop filming and posting beheading videos online because many Muslims find the scenes “disgusting” and because many children also find them scary. You don’t say!
Now that IS has seized substantial territory in Iraq and Syria and continues to recruit an estimate of 1,000 foreign fighters a month, the shock value of their videos might not be their top priority.
They collect millions of dollars a day through oil sales, taxes and extortion. They pave roads, set up medical clinics, pick up trash, operate power stations, and offer social welfare programs.
In their stronghold in Syria and Iraq, they have appointed nearly two-dozen governors and ministers, including one for finance and another for social services. They pay their soldiers even more than some nations in the Middle East.
Despite being targeted for nearly a year by a U.S.-led bombing campaign, IS is on a drive to establish a functioning, legitimate government. The territory under IS control continues to grow, which is a reality that challenges the Obama administration’s attempt to characterize the group as mainly a terrorist organization with no long-term legitimacy.
The U.S. intelligence community and the Obama administration’s wider foreign policy team are reluctant to acknowledge that the organization is succeeding in setting up the nuts and bolts of a functioning state.
According to private analyst, Thomas Joscelyn, IS leaders have taken a page out of the playbook of totalitarian dictatorships to subjugate millions of people to their authoritarian order. “Of course their tactics are brutal and violent; that’s what totalitarian governments always offer,” said Thomas Joscelyn at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “That’s what North Korea offers, are you going to say North Korea is not a government? You want to say the North Korean government hasn’t terrorized its citizens into submission? They rule by intimidation, and this is the same type of thing the Islamic State is doing.” Mr. Joscelyn goes on to say, “the fundamental flaw in our policy since 9/11 is that we keep treating these guys like terrorists, when in reality they’re political revolutionaries who use terrorism as a tactic or tool to achieve their goals, and their goal is to conquer territory and implement their radical version of Shariah law.”
Despite suggestions that IS has ‘peaked’ or is already in ‘decline,’ its concern for establishing a law-based political order indicates that the group has aspirations for long-term governance and these aspirations should be taken very seriously.
