Iraqi forces have liberated the city of Ramadi and on Monday raised the national flag above the flashpoint government complex, a spokesman for the Joint Operations Command said.
“Ramadi has been liberated and the armed forces of the counter-terrorism service have raised the Iraqi flag above the government complex,” Brigadier General Yahya Rasool announced on state television.
Meanwhile, ISIS has set up departments to handle “war spoils,” including slaves, and the exploitation of natural resources such as oil, creating the trappings of government that enable it to manage large swaths of Syria and Iraq and other areas.
The hierarchical bureaucracy, including petty rivalries between officials, and legal codes in the form of religious fatwas are detailed in a cache of documents seized by US Special Operations Forces in a May raid in Syria that killed top ISIS financial official Abu Sayyaf. Reuters reviewed some of the documents.
US officials say the documents have helped deepen their understanding of a militant group whose skill in controlling the territory it has seized has surprised many. They provide insight into how a once small insurgent group has developed a complex bureaucracy to manage revenue streams – from pillaged oil to stolen antiquities – and oversee subjugated populations.
“This really kind of brings it out. The level of bureaucratization, organization, the diwans, the committees,” Brett McGurk, President Barack Obama’s special envoy for the anti-ISIS coalition, told Reuters.
For example, one diwan, roughly equivalent to a government ministry, handles natural resources, including the exploitation of antiquities from ancient empires. Another processes “war spoils,” including slaves.
“Islamic State is invested in the statehood and Caliphate image more so than any other jihadist enterprise. So a formal organization, besides being practical when you control so much contiguous territory and major cities, also reinforces the statehood image,” said Aymenn al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum think tank and an expert on ISIS’s structure.
