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/Emma Suleiman. All rights reserved.The conflict in Syria has left society deeply divided. The political fault-line is not the sole issue that has polarised society: the crisis has also awakened old dormant disputes, such as the Kurdish/Arabic sectarian tensions and other inter-tribal disputes. Many of these disputes are identity-related, which is a typical characteristic of such wars where identity becomes a means for social mobilisation.
These rifts have enabled ISIL to play people from certain communities or areas off against each other. In most of its wars, ISIL has used people from the area at the forefront of its attacks against their own area. In the battles for Kobani, for example, ISIL used Kurdish recruits. One of the interviewees from Hasaka reported to us that ISIL used members of the Sheitat tribe in attacking the Sheitat and they participated in committing the horrific massacres against the tribe. In Palmyra, people reported to us that the day after ISIL entered Palmyra, their men went around the houses asking people to show their IDs. When they spotted people whom they were after, they would assassinate them in the street. In these groups patrolling houses there were people from Palmyra itself who had joined ISIL upon its arrival in Raqqa and assisted the organisation in its subjugation of the city.
