This is the Hussein family. They lived under ISIS control for a year and eight months, before managing to get the fuck out of there.
Magenta Vaughn/Cracked
Behind them is everything they own.
I traveled to within a mile of ISIS's border in Northern Iraq (no, really) to talk to some of the fleeing victims of the world's most famous bloodthirsty assholes. This is part three of our series. So what's everyday life like under the self-proclaimed Islamic State? Worse than you think ...
5The ISIS Justice System Relies on Child Informants And Medieval Torture
"In the village [nearby], we would see people hanging in the bazaar. It's usually crowded, so they hang them there. From the power lines, they were hanging."
This was relayed to me by a man who spent nearly two years living under ISIS rule. He explained that those people were being hung to death by power lines for sins like "not giving up their cellphones" and "trying to escape from the kind of people who commit murder over cellphone use."
You don't ban phones and cameras to keep people from finding out how well things are going.
Another person told me, "They cut the hands off of thieves," and that cigarette smugglers faced public decapitation. But the surest path to execution is to try to get out. "A couple of days ago, a bunch of women and kids were trying to leave," says another refugee. "They let the kids go, but they executed the women."
You might have noticed that I've avoided using any proper names in this article, and there are relatively few pictures of our sources. That's because most of them still have family inside ISIS-held territory, and they were terrified that ISIS would execute their loved ones over them talking to the media. The folks who agreed to be photographed had no more family left, and also balls of steel.
Magenta Vaughn/Cracked (click for larger pic)
Sorry, ovaries of steel.
Now, the death penalty isn't ISIS's only penalty. For a light crime, like shaving, you might merely might get beaten with a belt over and over again "for two days." I conducted the bulk of these interviews with an interpreter who spoke Arabic. At this point, I asked the source for clarification, believing that something had been lost in translation. "Surely, they can't beat someone with a belt for two entire days?" Her reply was brief:
"They can."
She then added that this was a common punishment in Saudi Arabia as well, where people are often sentenced to a thousand or more lashes for crimes like "promoting public debate."
Via The Daily Mail
Another crime that clears the multi-day lash threshold? Discussing religion online.
Like in Saudi Arabia, ISIS maintains its own religious police. They call them the Hisbah. These are the guys Vice made famous in a 2015 documentary.
Vice News
Don't let the family minivan fool you; these guys will literally crucify you (NSFW).
A few of the people I spoke with reported interactions with the Hisbah, but they were adamant that the real threat didn't come from uniformed ISIS cops rolling around in minivans. It came from their neighbors, and sometimes even their own children. "Some people from the village, [ISIS] would pay them for information ... they even used kids, this age [around 10] and a bit older, and they'd get information and give them cars, money in return. Not even their stuff, they take the property of people who'd left and give them out for information."
Looting and confiscating property from their own citizens is more than a way for ISIS to enforce control; it's the organization's primary source of money, especially now that the price of oil has collapsed. When ISIS started taking over chunks of Iraq, one of their first actions, before hiring religious police or otherwise turning their territory into the town from Footloose, was to confiscate the pensions of elderly government workers ("We didn't receive any of our money," one woman complained). But this reliance on robbery means that when the Iraqi government stopped paying people in the occupied areas, ISIS lost out on much of their funding.
This should highlight something important ...
4ISIS Is Both Brutal And Laughably Bad At Being A State
ISIS has seen most of its territorial success in regions of Iraq and Syria where the average civilian's choice of government was either "evil dictator," "incompetent, corrupt assholes," or "assorted armed nuts." So when a group calling itself the Islamic State showed up and promised to finally make life safe for Sunni Muslims, a lot of people were willing to give them a chance. As one man explained, "At first, they said in the Islamic State, there would be no punishment, no prison. They would treat everyone in a good way. People accepted them at first. They thought they were going to do all of this."
But people quickly tired of seeing their neighbors strung up on telephone poles. Many folks hid their cellphones, in flagrant violation of ISIS law, prompting the new "government" to take drastic(ally stupid) action: "They blew up phone lines and cell towers." That's right: To spite the modern world, they cut off their own best lines of communication. I saw this in action. During our trip to a part of the front line near Bashik, an ISIS-held suburb of Mosul, a Kurdish intelligence officer and I listened to ISIS chatter over a walkie-talkie. Tapping cell phone lines would've required equipment and technical know-how, but since ISIS only had walkie-talkies, their enemies could listen in as long as they used the right frequency.
Magenta Vaughn/Cracked (click for larger pic)
"We, uh, didn't think this one over. Over."
ISIS propaganda brags a lot about how their officials are incorruptible and virtuous, but the civilians we spoke with pointed out that many "crimes," like being affiliated with the Iraqi police or military, could be made to go away with a basic bribe. ("They had to pay money -- 1.5 million Iraqi dinar," or about $1,500 US dollars.) My sources also claimed that ISIS would accept your old service weapon in lieu of a bribe ... sometimes. It sort of depended on the mood of the particular militants on your doorstep.
So where ISIS propaganda portrays it as a utopia of Islamic law and order, actually living there is more like being ruled by a bunch of petty bandits. Contrast this with the life ISIS portrays in a "documentary" they forced kidnapped British journalist John Cantlie to make for them. Inside Mosul describes life in ISIS's Iraqi capital as "business as usual" and emphasizes its bustling markets.
ISIS
Look! Handbags! Clearly, all is well.
But outside of those city centers, it looks like this ...
Magenta Vaughn/Cracked (click for larger pic)
Look! Ragged lean-tos! Clearly all is ... well ... fucked.
Every refugee I spoke with reported widespread hunger and little access to clean drinking water. One man told me that an ISIS fighter told him he was "still good" because, "You didn't reach the point where you kill cats and eat them."
325 Comments