The Islamic State group was able to harness the power of bureaucracy as effectively as it did the power of brutality to rule its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq, documents published by The New York Times over the weekend revealed.
New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi unearthed some 15,000 documents that showed ISIS took its government endeavors extremely seriously, formulating a well-oiled, self-sustaining administration, complete with its own logo and letterhead.
The documents, recovered from abandoned police stations, courts, and training facilities once used by the terrorist group in Iraq, reveal extensive civil systems through which Islamic State was able to generate substantial revenue based on taxes imposed on agriculture and commerce rather than on oil, as widely believed.
The Western coalition's effort to eradicate ISIS focused greatly on eliminating the terrorist group's access to oil fields, as it was assumed that the organization would crumble if deprived of oil revenue; but the documents show that ISIS was actually able to efficiently tax the everyday citizens under its rule, especially farmers, to the tune of $800 million annually – six times the estimated returns from oil revenue, and exponentially more than the revenue generated by ISIS' kidnappings for ransom enterprise.
Analysts who pored over the documents found that the terrorist organization was able to function more capably than the government it sought to replace and that ISIS terrorists maintained an orderly rule through wholesale taxation of every monetized good.
ISIS' government used the funds to support its expansion efforts across the Middle East and its terrorist attacks overseas, but it also used them to set up an extensive network of social services and created municipal offices that issued official birth, death and marriage certificates.
It even ran its own motor vehicle department that monitored and registered cars and maintained an extensive garbage collection department the documents show.
According to the report, "By developing diversified income sectors and strong social systems, the Islamic State was able to maintain power for years despite countless military strikes and global military intervention."
Callimachi's report further noted that in many ways, the jihadist group took the existing power structure and adopted its bureaucracy to enact its own strict set of laws, as existed in caliphates during the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
It rebranded all of the government ministries as "directorates" and those were responsible for agriculture, health, education, and finance. It also created new directorates, to oversee matters like the pillaging of antiquities, managing the spoils of war, and deploying its "morality police."
It also put in place a mechanism to seize land, properties and assets that belonged to non-Sunni Muslims – Shiites, Christians, Yazidis and other groups – for the purpose of redistributing them to farmers.
Analysts found that the terrorist group managed to streamline nearly every bureaucratic process, making for a highly efficient if indiscriminately brutal system of government.
"The documents reveal the inner workings of a complex system of government. They show that the group, if only for a finite amount of time, realized its dream: to establish its own state, a theocracy they considered a caliphate, run according to their strict interpretation of Islam," Callimachi wrote.
"The world knows the Islamic State for its brutality, but the militants did not rule by the sword alone. They wielded power through two complementary tools: brutality and bureaucracy."
