Perfect anarchy, which Haji Bakr knew how to exploit.
Syria was a means to achieving an end: Sunni-dominated control of Iraq. First, Syria was to be conquered bit by bit and appropriate territories put to use as bridgeheads into Iraq. In the village of Tal Rifat, Haji Bakr put the finishing touches to his plan. The key to success was a mix of strategic calculations and fanatical believers. The colonel himself was far from an Islamist; he was a nationalist and an opportunist.
In all the cities and towns that the Free Syrian Army or other rebels had captured, missionary, or dawa, offices were to be opened. These would serve as recruitment posts. Among those who came to listen to lectures and attend courses, a couple of men would be selected and instructed to spy.
“We will train them for a while and then dispatch them,” Haji Bakr wrote.
The spies were to do as follows:
Make lists of powerful families and their most important men
Find out their sources of income
Record activities forbidden according to sharia
Gather information on illicit affairs and homosexual activity
Provide details about rebel groups
Find out the identity and familial background of brigade leaders
Note political and religious orientation
In this way, ammunition for threats and blackmail would be stockpiled.
The spies would enable the structure of the local populations to be understood, who supported democratic ideas, who were loyal to the regime, which families were religious, which direction within Islam they followed, what kind of sermons the imam gave, what his views on jihad were, how much he was paid, who paid him, what other sources of income people had, how many wives a leader had, and how many children he had and their ages.
All this knowledge would provide an overview of where any cracks existed. Wedges could then be driven in, widening these cracks into cleavages, gradually fracturing the structure of the society until it split and fell apart. Even though the word of God was scarcely mentioned in Haji Bakr’s detailed written plans, the colonel had a conviction that the faith of others could and should be exploited.
The intricate, thorough structure of Haji Bakr’s method was created to spread fear. Each provincial council was to be led by an emir in charge of espionage, extortion, abduction, and murder. He was also in charge of all communication and its encryption. Meanwhile, another emir would monitor him and several other emirs “in case they did not do their job properly.” Who was monitoring whom would not be clear to any of the individuals involved.
The provincial system was to be supervised by an intelligence department. This would in turn report to a security emir in each region, who was responsible for deputy emirs for individual districts. A head of secret spy cells reported to each deputy emir, sometimes bypassing several chains of command. At the local level, the spy cells would report to the district emir’s deputy. Haji Bakr, who by now was nicknamed “Lord of the Shadows,” had spun a sticky web, with the goal of everyone keeping an eye on everyone else.
From early 2013, a large number of dawa offices opened up in rebel-controlled towns across the whole of northern Syria. The offices could easily be mistaken for charitable organizations: Everyone was addressed as brother, and there was no mention of any Islamic State. Haji Bakr’s men quietly rented rooms and lodgings. He had expressly forbidden any Iraqi soldiers from being among their number, and neither did he want to recruit too many Syrians. They might have strong local allegiances that could lead to a conflict of loyalties. The strategist wanted men from outside, and ISIS intensified their recruitment of muhajirin, foreign fighters. These newcomers knew no one outside their own camp, had no reason to show mercy, and could be quickly redeployed as needed. They were given a couple of months of training and religious instruction before being sent out to fight or being assigned a position within the state. Spies were also instructed to attempt to “penetrate” the most powerful families by marrying into them.
The local militias seldom sought direct confrontation with ISIS. They had many more men than Daesh in total, but they did not want to risk opening a new front. The government was still the main enemy. ISIS’s regional leaders were constantly kept up-to-date on weaknesses, splits, and signs of conflict by the spy network. This allowed them to enter into a crisscross of alliances with the different militias, without any of their “allies” having knowledge of the deals they had made with others.
* * *
By winter 2013, the Syrian opposition had defeated the regime in large parts of northern Syria. But they had yet to take a large city. Rebel groups planned a surprise attack on the provincial capital of Raqqa.
The civil war had led to road closures and a lack of basic necessities. For the people in Raqqa, the situation was growing desperate. The city was located in a desert area, with the only fertile ground to the south along the Euphrates. There was a shortage of food and constant power outages. The cutting of supply lines was Assad’s punishment against cities held by the opposition.
Early on the morning of March 3 the FSA, al-Nusra, and Ahrar al-Sham entered the city, first from the north, then from the east, finally from the west and south. By the end of the day they had taken control of most of the city center. There was jubilation as the golden statue of Hafez al-Assad was pulled down.
How could an entire city fall in a matter of hours?
Assad’s forces on the east side of the city had left their positions before
