Aaron Y. Zelin is the Gloria and Ken Levy Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy where his research focuses on Sunni Arab jihadi groups in North Africa and Syria as well as the trend of foreign fighting and online jihadism.
Articles & Testimony
The group's approach to other areas it has seized -- a mix of harsh repression and soft-power outreach -- offers insight into how it might consolidate control in Mosul.
While the governance and social services that ISIS provides shouldn't overshadow the repression and deadly violence it carries out, they do illustrate that the group runs a sophisticated and well-organized operation. The $425 million (almost half a billion!) that ISIS seized from Mosul's central bank this week won't only aid the militants on the region's battlefields. It will also help underwrite the group's campaign to win hearts and minds. And that will make it even more difficult to dislodge the nascent proto-state from Syria and Iraq...
