ISIS Kept Detailed Paper Records of Strategy and Brutality

When the Islamic State captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June 2014, the terrorist group wanted legitimacy and revenue. In order to maintain that order, leaders mobilized armed militants as well as seasoned bureaucrats. They kept detailed records of all their moves, and over the course of five trips to Iraq, The New York Times gathered such documents.

The Times writes that even suicide bombers had to fill out forms. One will, from Tariq al-Bozaidy al-Alami, directed ISIS to pay $600 to a family in Morocco. ISIS also took the land of “nonbelievers” and rented it back to whoever they considered more worthy. If someone was thought to be a nonbeliever, ISIS workers would go and map the land and determine whether its former owner practiced the “wrong” religion, The Times writes. They would then draw up a contract for a more “worthy” person to gain legal possession.

ISIS was also very adept at tax collection, The Times reports. They left a paper trail that shows the militants taxed anything and everything they could. Farmers, who already paid rent to ISIS, also had to fill out more government forms at harvest time that allowed an ISIS-directed combine driver to harvest the crop. Ten percent of the harvest was taken as a religious tax and then farmers needed a tax receipt to sell the rest.

The bureaucracy also enforced religious rules, and within days of taking over Mosul, the militants handed out their City Charter, which demanded no drinking, stealing or smoking, and decreed women must wear veils. Prayer times were to be strictly observed. The religious police had official ISIS license plates (the militants had their own D.M.V.), and residents soon knew and feared them. O

fficers would issue citations to rule breakers. The Times writes that there is documentation shows a group of 13-and 14-year-old boys being taken into custody for “making fun during prayer.” ISIS had their own curriculum and workbooks as well, and children born under ISIS rule were given Islamic State birth certificates. Documents were kept until ISIS’s final days in power, when United States-led forces retook Mosul.