LONDON: Residents of Baiji, an Iraqi town under the control of fighters belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, are trying to keep unmarried women safe from attempts to wed them to the Sunni militants, the UK’s Independent reported Sunday.
Residents who spoke to the daily said their worst fear came from ISIS fighters going door to door asking about the numbers of married and unmarried women in the house.
I told them that there were only two women in the house and both were married, Abu Lahid, one resident, told the paper.
They said that many of their mujahedin [fighters] were unmarried and wanted a wife. They insisted on coming into my house to look at the womens ID cards [which in Iraq show marital status].
Isis says its men have been ordered not to bother local people if they are Sunni, but in many places they are imposing their puritanical social norms in the towns they have captured. In Mosul people were at first jubilant that Isis had removed the checkpoints that for years had made movement in the city very slow.
Merchants and farmers were ordered to reduce the prices of their goods. But tolerance and moderation on the part of Isis is intermittent and may be temporary. In one case in Mosul a woman was reportedly whipped, along with her husband, because she was only wearing a headscarf rather than the niqqab cloak covering the whole body. In some captured towns fanatical Isis militants start imposing rules about womens clothing, watching TV in coffee shops and cigarette smoking almost before the fighting is ended.
The restraint, or lack of it, shown by Isis has important political implications. When al-Qaida in Iraq, the forerunner of Isis, insisted on local women marrying their fighters during the civil war between 2004 and 2008, they alienated much of the Sunni community. I would rather have my door kicked in by American soldiers than by al Qaida because, with the Americans, I would stand a better chance of staying alive, a young Sunni man in Baghdad said at the time. Such feelings enabled the Americans to create Sahwa, an anti-al-Qaida force among the Sunni community.
Isis could isolate itself again through its brutality and bigotry, though its leaders show signs of recognising where they went wrong last time.
Its fighters act as the shock troops of what has turned into a general Sunni uprising, but it is only one part, albeit the most important, of a loose alliance of seven or eight militant groups that could easily break apart.
For now, it is held together by a common sense of grievance and hatred against Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister. The departure of Mr Maliki will remove part of the glue holding together the Isis-led alliance.
Some strains between the Sunni rebel factions are already evident: When the Naqshabandi Army, of which Saddam Husseins former deputy Izzat al-Douri is titular head, put up posters of Saddam in Mosul, Isis gave them 24 hours to take them down or face the consequences. The Naqshabandi Army did not want a confrontation and complied.
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