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Collaboration with the Islamic State

Cooperation and assistance given to ISIS

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Through Caliphate and Iraq

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

Name of the group

The name Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) originally referred to the territory they controlled during their first peak in the mid 2010s. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi shortened their name to Islamic State when he attempted to declare a Caliphate. This was rejected by the Islamic world in their Letter to Baghdadi and elsewhere. Part of this rejection was to continue to refer to the group by the acronym, ISIS or in Arabic Daesh (Arabic: داعش), a name that was never used by the group. The name Daesh was adopted in numerous other languages ranging from modern Hebrew (Hebrew: דאעש, romanized: Daesh, lit. 'ISIS') to New Zealand English, and continues to be used to refer to the group more broadly after the loss of their territory.

Islamic State territory in Iraq and Syria

At its peak in 2015, the Islamic State governed approximately eight million people within a territory of around 90,000 square kilometres spanning parts of Syria and Iraq. The group sought to establish a state-like structure, mirroring other sovereign nation-states in the Middle East. It did so by creating various governing institutions, including ministries and offices responsible for healthcare, education, the economy, and security. This served not only to consolidate its authority over the region but also to gain acceptance and support from the local population by addressing grievances and improving living conditions that had been neglected by the previous Syrian and Iraqi governments.

Matthew Bamber roughly estimates that approximately 22,000 civilian employees worked for IS at some point, categorising them into muba’yain, those who had pledged allegiance to IS, and munasirin, those who worked for IS without formally pledging their allegiance. He argues that this distinction is important, as the counterterrorism community often treats IS's affiliates as a single homogeneous group, failing to recognise that some individuals employed by IS were unaware of their employer's identity due to the sudden regime takeover. In certain cases, civilian employees faced the threat of lethal retaliation against themselves or their families if they attempted to resign. Furthermore, he questions whether local employees who continued their work after IS's takeover should be punished simply for maintaining their jobs, even if their salaries were paid by the Islamic State.

In her book A Landscape of War, Munira Khayyat takes this argument further, asserting that people living amidst war defy its political and military outcomes by finding ways to live with its realities, which is, according to her, a form of resistance in its own right. From this perspective, one could argue that Syrians and Iraqis who lived and worked under IS's rule without pledging allegiance to the group were not necessarily collaborators but, in fact, engaged in a form of resistance. IS sought to establish an Islamic society governed by Islamic law, Sharia, in which its subjects would not only submit to its authority but actively embrace and uphold its rule.

Iraq

Between 2014 and 2019, the Islamic State undertook an extensive state-building project but soon realised that it could not rely solely on its local and foreign members, as they lacked the necessary expertise and competencies to implement such an endeavour. Consequently, IS recruited former Ba’ath Party members and Iraqi military officers, recognising their experience in state-building and the provision of essential services. This decision was made despite IS's hostility towards these former officials of Saddam Hussein’s secular-nationalist government, as their skills were deemed crucial for consolidating IS's political and military authority over its newly acquired territory.

At the same time, these former Ba’athists sought to regain control over the newly established Shia-dominated Iraqi government, which had replaced the Sunni-led administration under Hussein. Even though their ideological vision clashed with that of IS, they were willing to collaborate with the jihadist group as a means of advancing their own political ambitions. This alliance contributed to atrocities such as the Camp Speicher Massacre in Iraq, where 57 members of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region participated in the execution of at least 1,566 Shia cadets from the Iraqi Air Force on June 12, 2014.

Sunni Arabs in Iraq have been accused of collaborating with IS against Assyrians, and Yazidis, and Shias. IS marked Christian homes with the letter nūn for Naṣārā and Shia homes with the letter rāʾ for Rāfiḍa, a derogatory term used to describe Shias by some Sunni Muslims. Properties were confiscated and given to local IS supporters or foreign fighters. Local Sunnis were reported to have betrayed Yazidis once IS arrived, or colluded in advance to lure them into staying put until the IS invaded.

Syria

In response to the effort to take Raqqa by the Syrian Democratic Forces, whose main component is the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), some Syrian Arabs in Raqqa sided with the Islamic State.

Syria

During the Syrian civil war, the Syrian opposition and some analysts had accused President Bashar al-Assad and the Ba'athist regime of strategically releasing Islamist prisoners during the start of the Syrian crisis in an attempt to strengthen jihadist factions over other rebels. The Syrian opposition have also accused Assad of having intelligence operatives within the ranks of IS, and even directing IS attacks. However, "despite repeated announcements by opposition figures", there exists "no solid evidence ... that the jihadists as a whole are controlled by the [Syrian] regime.

The Assad government has also been accused of funding IS through oil purchases. Western officials stated in 2015 that the Syrian government and IS jointly ran a gas plant in Tabqah using intermediates to supply electricity to both Ba'athist and IS-held areas. A report in 2015 suggested that IS kept gas flowing to Assad regime-controlled power stations. Furthermore, IS allowed grain to pass from Rojava to government-controlled areas at the cost of a 25% levy. IS defectors interviewed by academics in 2015 and 2016 reported being "disillusioned by... upsetting alliances that included the sale of wheat stores and oil to Assad, oil some of which later found its way into barrel bombs raining down on Syrian civilians." This was confirmed in 2016 in Wall Street Journal reporting of documents extracted by US Special Forces in raids on IS operatives. In 2017, US and European officials said that oil sales to the Syrian government were IS's largest source of revenue.

An unpublished IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center database analysis showed that only 6% of Syrian government forces attacks were targeted at IS from January to November 2014, while in the same period only 13% of all IS attacks targeted government forces. Academics who interviewed IS defectors in 2015–16 said their interviewees "observed regime forces strangely giving up territory to ISIS without much of a fight, and even leaving their weapons for ISIS rather than destroying them." Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi had disputed such assertions in 2014, arguing that "ISIS has a record of fighting the regime on multiple fronts", many rebel factions have engaged in oil sales to the Syrian regime because it is "now largely dependent on Iraqi oil imports via Lebanese and Egyptian third-party intermediaries", and while "the regime is focusing its airstrikes [on areas] where it has some real expectations of advancing" claims that it "has not hit ISIS strongholds" are "untrue". He concluded: "Attempting to prove an ISIS-regime conspiracy without any conclusive evidence is unhelpful, because it draws attention away from the real reasons why ISIS grew and gained such prominence: namely, rebel groups tolerated ISIS." Similarly, Max Abrahms and John Glaser stated in the Los Angeles Times in December 2017 that "The evidence of Assad sponsoring Islamic State... was about as strong as for Saddam Hussein sponsoring Al Qaeda". According to an April 2017 IHS Markit report, IS fought Syrian government forces more than any other opponent between April 1, 2016, and March 31, 2017: "43 percent of all Islamic State fighting in Syria was directed against President Assad's forces, 17 against the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the remaining 40 percent involved fighting rival Sunni opposition groups".

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