From The Cairo Review, Karen Koning AbuZayd, Carla Del Ponte, Vitit Muntarbhorn and Paulo Pinheiro on how ISIS militants are using severe brutality and radical interpretations of sharia law to govern a large civilian population. Life under ISIS in Raqqa and Mosul: “We're living in a giant prison”. Algerian writer Kamel Daoud ponders the brutal and senseless absurdity the jihadis seek to impose. ISIS women and enforcers in Syria recount collaboration, anguish and escape. ISIL sells its oil, but who is buying it? The group hasn’t only recruited suicide bombers, it has also drawn technicians and engineers to manage the oil fields. Confessions of an ISIS Spy: For all the attention paid to ISIS, relatively little is known about its inner workings, but a man claiming to be a member of the so-called Islamic State’s security services has stepped forward to provide that inside view.
An “independent historian” documents life under the Islamic State with “Mosul Eye”, a Facebook blog in both Arabic and English. Syrian journalists risk death covering life under airstrikes and ISIS occupation: “All of us are accepting that any one of us will be killed at anytime or anywhere”, one says. David Remnick on telling the truth about ISIS and Raqqa.
