SANLIURFA,
Turkey — After the Syrian government stopped paying him, a technician
who had spent two decades pumping the country’s oil received an enticing offer: do the same work for the jihadists of the Islamic State — starting at three times the salary.
He was soon helping to fill tanker trucks with crude oil
to fund the Islamic State. But frequent executions of those suspected
of spying and deadly airstrikes by government jets made life hard, and
he grew angry that the country’s resources were financing the jihadists
while schools and hospitals were being shut down.
“We
thought they wanted to get rid of the regime, but they turned out to be
thieves,” the technician said after fleeing to this city in southern Turkey.
The Islamic State claims to be more than a militant group, selling itself as a government for the world’s Muslims that provides a range of services in the territory it controls.
But
that statehood project is now in distress, perhaps more so than at any
other time since the Islamic State began seizing territory in Iraq and
Syria, according to a range of interviews with people who have recently
fled. Under pressure from airstrikes by several countries, and new
ground offensives by Kurdish and Shiite militias, the jihadists are
beginning to show the strain.
Some
fighters have taken pay cuts, while others have quit and slipped away.
Important services have been failing because of poor maintenance. And as
its smuggling and oil businesses have faltered, the Islamic State has
fallen back on ever-increasing taxes and tolls imposed on its squeezed citizens.
Those stresses could provide opportunities for the group’s many enemies, but they do not point to its imminent collapse.
Ground forces ready to fight the Islamic State — also known as ISIS or ISIL — in its strongholds in Syria
and Iraq are still lacking. And the group is adapting, keeping its
international profile high by launching foreign attacks like those that
brought down a Russian airliner in Egypt and paralyzed Paris. It is also
investing in new affiliates in countries like Libya, where it faces little resistance.
But
the promise of statehood on land it controls in Syria and Iraq remains
the main factor distinguishing it from Al Qaeda and a powerful draw for
recruits from around the world.
That
call to join the Islamic State is still going out, and having an
effect, on social media and within jihadist circles. But its promises
ring increasingly hollow as residents living in ISIS-controlled areas
flee deprivation, an intensifying barrage of airstrikes and an
organization that many Sunni Muslims say has acted more like an
organized-crime ring than their defender. Even some residents who chose
to stay when the jihadists took over are now paying smugglers to get
them around checkpoints designed to keep them in.
“So
many people are migrating,” said a teacher from the Syrian city of Deir
al-Zour who fled to Turkey last month. “ISIS wants to build a new
society, but they’ll end up all alone.”
When
the schools run by the Syrian government closed, the teacher said she
set up an informal one and kept it going when the jihadists arrived.
That meant buying the baggy black gowns they forced women to wear in
public and finding ways to entertain her students without music or art,
both of which were forbidden.
Sometimes, they sculpted with soap, she said.
But she gave up, she said, after some activists were rounded up and executed, worried that her turn would come next.
Even
as their cruelty has driven residents away, the jihadists have long
recognized and acted on the need for skilled professionals to build
statelike institutions.
The
caliphate “is in more need than ever before for experts, professionals
and specialists who can help contribute to strengthening its structure
and tending to the needs of their Muslim brothers,” read an appeal last
year in the group’s English-language magazine, Dabiq.
But
that call has come up short, leaving the jihadists struggling to find
people able to run oil equipment, fix electricity networks and provide
medical care, former residents say.
“They don’t have professionals, so they have to pay people to do things,” said a pharmacist from eastern Syria.
Stories
abound of the Islamic State putting loyal members in positions they are
not qualified for. The head of medical services in one town is a former
construction worker, residents said. The boss at an oil field was a
date merchant, according to a former employee.
In
Raqqa, the National Hospital featured in a propaganda video about
health services in the caliphate is all but closed because so many
doctors have fled, according to an aid worker with relatives in the
city.
And
a ban on male doctors’ treating female patients left women in one town
with no doctors at all, according to the pharmacist. The jihadists tried
to fill the gap by employing midwives.
Also
driving people out is an onerous tax system carried out in the name of
zakat, or Islamic alms. The jihadists collect, among other taxes, a
yearly share of every harvest and herd of livestock, and make
shopkeepers pay a share of their inventory. Infractions like failing to
wear proper clothing lead to fines equal to one gram of gold, payable in
local currency.
Fleeing has become increasingly difficult, as the jihadists try to keep people in.
What started as a popular uprising against the Syrian
government four years ago has become a proto-world war with nearly a
dozen countries embroiled in two overlapping conflicts.
Unable
to get permission to leave, Naef al-Asaad, 55, paid a smuggler $150 per
person to get 10 members of his family from the ISIS-held town of
Shadadi to the Turkish border. On the way, one person stepped on a land
mine, causing a blast that killed Mr. Asaad’s daughter, her husband, two
of their children and one other relative, he said.
“ISIS would not let us leave,” Mr. Asaad said. “They said, ‘You are going to the infidels.’ ”
The
group still terrifies those who have lived under it, and many who have
sought refuge in southern Turkey fear that ISIS agents there will target
them for criticizing the group. They spoke on the condition of
anonymity.
Even some who had much to gain from the jihadists’ rule had little interest in staying.
The
former oil technician said he had earned $150 per month from the Syrian
government before his salary was cut in March. The Islamic State then
hired him to work in the same oil field, he said, first paying him $450
per month, then $675.
He
said they paid him well because they had few others who could do his
job. They even caught him smoking at work once — a punishable offense
for the jihadists — but let him off with a warning.
But
it bothered him that his children had no school to attend, and he
worried that he could be forced to work in Iraq. So he paid a smuggler
to get him, his wife and their three children to Turkey. They recently
arrived in Greece by boat, hoping to continue to Germany.
Another
technician who worked in a natural gas field said he and his colleagues
kept working when the jihadists seized their plant, carrying out orders
their boss received from the Islamic State.
“Our job was to open this and connect that,” he said. “Who is in charge? We don’t ask.”
But
the plant had been damaged in the war, and instead of producing refined
gas products like they used to, they sent a much smaller amount of
unrefined gas to the Syrian government. He did not know what the
jihadists received in return.
Like many, he said that the jihadists’ promises of statehood had failed to materialize.
“Public
support is important, and they don’t have it,” he said. “People heard
good words from them but didn’t see anything good come out of it.”
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