ISIS Incorporated: See How the Terror Network is Raising Millions in Sophisticated Scheme

They’re known for the grisly, videotaped mass beheadings of Christians and other enemies, but the jihadis running the Islamic State are doing far more than that.

They collect millions of dollars a day through oil sales, taxes and extortion.

They pave roads, set up medical clinics, pick up trash, operate power stations and offer social welfare programs.

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“Of course their tactics are brutal and violent; that’s what totalitarian governments always offer,” said Thomas Joscelyn at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “That’s what North Korea offers — are you going to say North Korea is not a government? You want to say the North Korean government hasn’t terrorized its citizens into submission? They rule by intimidation, and this is the same type of thing the Islamic State is doing.

“The fundamental flaw in our policy since 9/11 is that we keep treating these guys like terrorists, when in reality they’re political revolutionaries who use terrorism as a tactic or tool to achieve their goals,” said Mr. Joscelyn, who edits the foundation’s Long War Journal. “And their goal is to conquer territory and implement their radical version of Shariah law.”

To do that, he said, “you have to have a massive government and all sorts of people who monitor behavior — a common thing for totalitarian states.”

Mr. Joscelyn argued that the Islamic State’s success or failure at governance varies from city to city and region to region. In Iraq’s heavily Sunni Muslim Anbar province, for instance, the group may have success because “the Sunni population in Anbar doesn’t want to be governed by the Shiite government in Baghdad,” he said.

“So at least some portion of the Sunni population there is willing to abide by the Islamic State’s rules,” Mr. Joscelyn said. “But they always run into problems with their governance because there are a lot of people who don’t want to live under their control.

“The problem is that there has so far been no force to tap all those dissenters and get them working toward countering the Islamic State’s government from within,” he added. “The longer it goes without a viable challenger, the more entrenched it will become as the only government option in some areas.”

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