From the way they have run Raqqa city and parts of eastern Syria, we can make an educated guess as to how jihadis from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) will govern Mosul. Women probably won’t be able
to go out on their own. Coke and other Western products will likely be banned. Suspected thieves may well be detained and might risk amputation, execution or public flogging. As the group sweeps through Iraq in
a surprise advance that’s left everyone from Assad to Obama wondering how to halt it, Mosul’s residents just need to look next door for evidence of the extremist group’s notoriously harsh governing
tactics.
Syrian journalists reporting for Syria Deeply, where I am managing editor, were in Raqqa 10 days ago speaking with beleaguered civilians there. They discovered a pervading sense of dread that with ISIS proliferating across the border, both they and their counterparts in Mosul – which may be the first Iraqi city under ISIS’s violent brand of Shariah law – will have no escape from life in the extremists’ grip.
“Our dreams of getting rid of ISIS’s unfair rule and fatwas are vanishing as every city falls under [its] control,” said Khalaf, a 45-year-old employee at a local electric company. “We gradually started losing hope in restoring the life we have had for hundreds of years.”
Salma, a 48-year-old housewife, told the reporters that ISIS’s gains in Iraq gave its fighters in Raqqa high hopes. “So they started to treat everyone badly and be even stricter in implementing their laws,”
she said. “No woman is allowed to go out on the street now during Ramadan without a male.”
Then there was Suliman, 33, unemployed since the militants’ takeover, who said: “I lost my job after ISIS came to Raqqa, but I kept on hoping that the Syrian government
would be able to impose its control over the city and that I would get to go back to my work,” he said. “But I have no hope now. I am totally convinced that after ISIS took over several Iraqi cities
and villages, it will be impossible to get free of them.”
Mosul’s residents are likely already feeling ISIS’s cold pinch. Media outlets have reported fuel shortages and power outages throughout the city, Iraq’s second-largest after Baghdad. Though they initially welcomed ISIS, they could quickly grow weary of the rifle-toting militants patrolling the streets and nervous about the direction their lives will take under extremist law.
It’s likely that as in Raqqa, some civilians will try and protest. If so, they’ll be met with ire. ISIS has a habit of jailing, torturing and even killing those who dare oppose it. In Syria, even the rebel coalition led by Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic Front could not oust ISIS from Raqqa when it challenged the group in January. Following the tussle, ISIS returned with a vengeance, further tightening its restrictions on civilians. The message was clear: don’t even try to resist.
Media activists and civilians in Raqqa, now home to about half a million Syrians, report that basic freedoms have been all but stripped from those who have chosen to stay.
Raqqa has always been one of Syria’s more conservative cities, and now drinking alcohol or having unmarried sex is now illegal. Women are in the worst position: they’re no longer allowed to attend school
or apply for jobs. They must be fully covered at all times. Thousands of residents have fled to other parts of Syria.
The question facing those of us who focus on Syria is whether or not, as Middle East Forum analyst Aymenn al-Tamimi so bluntly put it, ISIS “wants to make Mosul its Iraqi Raqqa.”
If ISIS wants to implement the same laws in Mosul as they have in Raqqa, they might run into a few roadblocks. Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow Aaron Zelin, an expert on the Syrian insurgency, told me that they “absolutely” want to implement the same laws on the Iraqi side of their would-be caliphate as they have in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor provinces. But the dynamics of each country are different, and it looks like the rollout of Mosul’s new normal will be a slower – if no less jarring. To put it in perspective: while there will likely be restrictions on female freedom and things like alcohol consumption, we probably won’t see ISIS executing people via crucifixion in Mosul’s public squares.
It’s more likely that we’ll see ISIS shoring up its relations with local tribes, whose support is key to the group’s ongoing control of Mosul, especially as Iran readies its troops, Hezbollah readies its troops, and the Syrian regime follows up on yesterday’s aerial hits on key ISIS strongholds. In order to win that support, the militants are going to have to dilute their usual brand of violence.
Shiraz Maher, a specialist in Syrian jihad at Kings College London, said ISIS would tinge its Iraq strategy with “local flavor.” Maher said he interviewed a British jihadi fighting with ISIS, who him the group was “waiting on a few things” before installing its laws in Mosul.
Karen Leigh is the managing editor of Syria Deeply, a single-topic news site focusing on stories and commentary about the Syrian conflict.