When Terrorists Run City Hall

April 5, 2018 10:24 AM

We unearthed thousands of internal documents that help explain how the Islamic State stayed in power so long. "One of the keys to their success was their diversified revenue stream. The group drew its income from so many strands of the economy that airstrikes alone were not enough to cripple it...More surprisingly, the documents provide further evidence that the tax revenue the Islamic State earned far outstripped income from oil sales. It was daily commerce and agriculture — not petroleum — that powered the economy of the caliphate." (Warning: descriptions of assault and murder, also just freaky)

“Garbage collection was No. 1 under ISIS,” he said, flashing a thumbs-up sign... “The only thing I could do during the time of government rule is to give a worker a one-day suspension without pay...Under ISIS, they could be imprisoned.”

On five trips to battle-scarred Iraq, journalists for The New York Times scoured old Islamic State offices, gathering thousands of files abandoned by the militants as their ‘caliphate’ crumbled.

posted by Toddles (17 comments total)

Previously on Metafilter.

It’s interesting how they seem to have learned from some of the mistakes in revenue generation over the last ten years by shifting from mostly expropriation of property to a somewhat lighter touch.

For disclosure: I was involved in the report from the previous link so this comment is self-referential.
posted by seejaie at 10:49 AM on April 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

If they had found some moderation and reduced the insane public horrors there would probably be the germination of a new country. The pretty much universal agreement to "put the mad dogs down" would have been an ongoing indecision and that group could have established themselves into a really wretched state. Where have all the extremists gone? Have they given up or just biding their time?
posted by sammyo at 10:51 AM on April 5, 2018

holy crap, they have pre-printed forms.
posted by GuyZero at 1:20 PM on April 5, 2018

Man, could there be a more terrifying institution than the ISIS D.M.V.?
posted by neroli at 1:49 PM on April 5, 2018 [13 favorites]

Somehow I'm not surprised that they were all about basic governance. Unlike we here in the US, most people don't take it for granted. Between our constant complaining about the dysfunction of ours and the pervasiveness of the libertarian self sufficiency mythos that has recently come to be so prevalent in society we forget how important it is.

People who have lived with marginally functional or no government don't have that same blind spot.

I am surprised they were able to collect quite that much money, but I suppose it makes sense given that people aren't going to complain publicly about such a repressive regime.
posted by wierdo at 2:22 PM on April 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm not surprised that they were all about basic governance.

Yeah, in a lot of ways the Taliban were seen as a force for stability in early-mid-90s Afghanistan after the decade-plus of Russian invasion and the Mujaheddin civil war. Providing the bare minimum of a functioning state or social structure is enough for a lot of people if they've been knee-deep in blood and shit for years, and it puts the lie to the intelligence, motivations, or general credibility of foreign interventionists who seem surprised or incapable of recognizing it, time after time after time.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 3:02 PM on April 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

The documents describe how it made money at every step in the supply chain: Before a single seed of grain, for example, was sown, the group collected rent for the fields it had confiscated. Then, when the crops were ready to be threshed, it collected a harvest tax. It did not stop there.

The trucks that transported the grain paid highway tolls. The grain was stored in silos, which the militants controlled, and they made money when the grain was sold to mills, which they also controlled. The mills ground the grain into flour, which the group sold to traders.

Then the bags of flour were loaded onto trucks, which traversed the caliphate, paying more tolls. It was sold to supermarkets and shops, which were also taxed. So were the consumers who bought the finished product.

In a single 24-hour period in 2015, one of the spreadsheets in the briefcase shows, the Islamic State collected $1.9 million from the sale of barley and wheat.

::low whistle:: And they made everyone pay multiple fees and taxes on every damned thing! Where is all that money now? All of it spent fighting? If they were collecting until the last day, then there is still money somewhere!
posted by droplet at 4:01 PM on April 5, 2018

Hezbollah provide public services in southern Lebanon in a similar way.
posted by fay at 5:26 PM on April 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is interesting reporting but is simply support for a well known empirical claim in political science: rebel groups gain legitimacy by providing governance.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:46 PM on April 5, 2018 [7 favorites]

rebel groups gain legitimacy by providing governance

I hope if it works out for them we can convince our major political parties to follow their example.
posted by Grangousier at 11:35 PM on April 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'll be stunned if this hasn't already been turned into "See! Liberals are just like ISIS!" in the garbageverse
posted by thelonius at 5:48 AM on April 6, 2018

Neroli: From the reporting, I suspect the ISIS DMV was probably pretty decently run - staffed by a lot of the same people as the former DMV, but with tighter discipline due to fear of the new regime.
posted by Mr. Excellent at 7:22 AM on April 6, 2018

Notes for the easily confused:
Taliban .NE. ISIS
Hezbollah .NE. ISIS
(excuse my fortran)
posted by fredludd at 1:59 PM on April 6, 2018

Thanks, fred.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:46 PM on April 6, 2018

A lot of commentators here are missing the bits about the taxes having been imposed on stolen property. Of course ISIS raised a lot of money. They were using the Nazis' strategy of confiscating homes, farms, businesses etc. from one group and giving or selling them to another. The losers are bankrupt - where did that money go? Well, the recipients get the property cheap and don't have to pay mortgages and so forth, so they're vastly more profitable - for a time, at least. ISIS can charge high taxes and tariffs at every stage, but the excess profits are coming from the difference between the "real" value of the property and the price the new owners paid for it.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:25 PM on April 7, 2018 [2 favorites]

I was also struck by the astonishing similarities to Nazi bureaucracy. The mechanisms of confiscation, redistribution and surveillance are so similar, as is the way in which grotesque violence and thuggery are casually deployed to keep people compliant. That ghastly email from the Frenchwoman celebrating her free apartment reminded me nothing so much as the burglary scene in Alone in Berlin.
posted by Aravis76 at 2:40 AM on April 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

Mr. Hamoud began taking side streets to dodge the frequent executions that were being carried out in traffic circles and public squares. In one, a teenage girl accused of adultery was dragged out of a minivan and forced to her knees. Then a stone slab was dropped onto her head. On a bridge, the bodies of people accused of being spies swung from the railing.

But on the same thoroughfares, Mr. Hamoud noticed something that filled him with shame: The streets were visibly cleaner than they had been when the Iraqi government was in charge.

Say what you like about Mussolini ISIS, at least he they made the trains garbage collections run on time.

And the NYT being the NYT, we get lots of approving remarks about the improved social services and how pleased the populace was with ISIS' firm hand. It's as if they were channeling their paper's editorial line from the 1930s.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:35 AM on April 8, 2018 [1 favorite]