Military

Estimates of the size of ISIL's military vary widely, from tens of thousands[158] up to 200,000.[33] In early 2015, journalist Mary Anne Weaver estimated that half of ISIL fighters are foreigners.[159] A UN report estimated a total of 15,000 fighters from over 80 countries were in ISIL's ranks in November 2014.[160] US intelligence estimated an increase to around 20,000 foreign fighters in February 2015, including 3,400 from the Western world.[161] In September 2015, the CIA estimated that 30,000 foreign fighters had joined ISIL.[162]

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According to Abu Hajjar, a former senior leader of ISIL, foreign fighters receive food, petrol and housing, but unlike native Iraqi or Syrian fighters, they do not receive payment in wages.[163]

 

Conventional weapons

ISIL relies mostly on captured weapons with major sources including Saddam Hussein's Iraqi stockpiles from the 2003–11 Iraq insurgency[164] and weapons from government and opposition forces fighting in the Syrian Civil War and during the post-US withdrawal Iraqi insurgency. The captured weapons, including armour, guns, surface-to-air missiles, and even some aircraft, enabled rapid territorial growth and facilitated the capture of additional equipment.[165] For example, ISIL captured US-made TOW anti-tank missiles supplied by the United States and Saudi Arabia to the Free Syrian Army in Syria.[166][167]

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Non-conventional weapons

The group uses truck and car bombs, suicide bombers and IEDs, and has used chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria. ISIL captured nuclear materials from Mosul University in July 2014, but is unlikely to be able to convert them into weapons.[168][169] In September 2015 a US official stated that ISIL was manufacturing and using mustard agent in Syria and Iraq, and had an active chemical weapons research team.[170][171] ISIL has also used water as a weapon of war. The group closed the gates of the smaller Nuaimiyah dam in Fallujah in April 2014, flooding the surrounding regions, while cutting the water supply to the Shia-dominated south. Around 12,000 families lost their homes and 200 km² of villages and fields were either flooded or dried up. The economy of the region also suffered with destruction of cropland and electricity shortages.[172]

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During the Battle of Mosul it was reported that commercially available quadcopters and drones were being used by ISIL as surveillance and weapons delivery platforms using extemporised cradles to drop grenades and other explosives.[173] The ISIL drone facility became a target of Royal Air Force strike aircraft.[174]

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Non-combatant recruits

Although ISIL attracts followers from different parts of the world by promoting the image of holy war, not all of its recruits end up in combatant roles. There have been several cases of new recruits expecting to be mujahideen who have returned from Syria disappointed by the everyday jobs that were assigned to them, such as drawing water or cleaning toilets, or by the ban imposed on use of mobile phones during military training sessions.[175]

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ISIL publishes material directed at women. Although women are not allowed to take up arms, media groups encourage them to play supportive roles within ISIL, such as providing first aid, cooking, nursing and sewing skills, in order to become "good wives of jihad".[176] In a document entitled Women in the Islamic State: Manifesto and Case Study released by the media wing of ISIL's all-female Al-Khanssaa Brigade, emphasis is given to the paramount importance of marriage and motherhood (as early as nine years old). Women should live a life of "sedentariness", fulfilling her "divine duty of motherhood" at home, with a few exceptions like teachers and doctors.[177][178] Equality for women is opposed, as is education on non-religious subjects, the "worthless worldly sciences".[178]

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Organization

ISIL is headed and run by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Before their deaths, he had two deputy leaders, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani for Iraq and Abu Ali al-Anbari (also known as Abu Ala al-Afri)[136] for Syria, both ethnic Turkmen. Advising al-Baghdadi is a cabinet of senior leaders, while its operations in Iraq and Syria are controlled by local governors.[137][138] Beneath the leaders are councils on finance, leadership, military matters, legal matters (including decisions on executions) foreign fighters' assistance, security, intelligence and media. In addition, a shura council has the task of ensuring that all decisions made by the governors and councils comply with the group's interpretation of sharia.[139] While al-Baghdadi has told followers to "advise me when I err" in sermons, according to observers "any threat, opposition, or even contradiction is instantly eradicated".[140]

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According to Iraqis, Syrians and analysts who study the group, almost all of ISIL's leaders—including the members of its military and security committees and the majority of its emirs and princes—are former Iraqi military and intelligence officers, specifically former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath government who lost their jobs and pensions in the de-Ba'athification process after that regime was overthrown.[141][142][143] The former Chief Strategist in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism of the US State Department, David Kilcullen, has said that "There undeniably would be no Isis if we had not invaded Iraq."[144] It has been reported that Iraqis and Syrians have been given greater precedence over other nationalities within ISIL because the group needs the loyalties of the local Sunni populations in both Syria and Iraq in order to be sustainable.[145][146] Other reports, however, have indicated that Syrians are at a disadvantage to foreign members, with some native Syrian fighters resenting "favouritism" allegedly shown towards foreigners over pay and accommodation.[147][148]

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In August 2016, media reports based on briefings by Western intelligence agencies suggested that ISIL had a multilevel secret service known in Arabic as Emni, established in 2014, that has become a combination of an internal police force and an external operations directorate complete with regional branches. The unit was believed to be under the overall command of ISIL's most senior Syrian operative, spokesman and propaganda chief Abu Mohammad al-Adnani[149][150] until his death by airstrike in late August 2016.[21]

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Civilians in ISIL-controlled areas

In 2014 The Wall Street Journal estimated that eight million people lived in the Islamic State.[151] The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has stated that ISIL "seeks to subjugate civilians under its control and dominate every aspect of their lives through terror, indoctrination, and the provision of services to those who obey".[152] Civilians, as well as the Islamic State itself, have released footage of some of the human rights abuses.[153][154]

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Social control of civilians is by imposition of ISIL's reading of sharia law,[155] enforced by morality police forces known as Al-Hisbah and the all-women Al-Khanssaa Brigade, a general police force, courts, and other entities managing recruitment, tribal relations, and education.[152] Al-Hisbah is led by Abu Muhammad al-Jazrawi.[156]

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Terrorist attacks outside Iraq and Syria

In 2015 and 2016, ISIL claimed responsibility for a number of high-profile terrorist attacks outside Iraq and Syria, including a mass shooting at a Tunisian tourist resort (38 European tourists killed),[303] the Suruç bombing in Turkey (33 leftist and pro-Kurdish activists killed), the Tunisian National Museum attack (24 foreign tourists and Tunisians killed), the Sana'a mosque bombings (142 Shia civilians killed), the crash of Metrojet Flight 9268 (224 killed, mostly Russian tourists), the bombings in Ankara (102 pro-Kurdish and leftist activists killed), the bombings in Beirut (43 Shia civilians killed), the November 2015 Paris attacks (130 civilians killed), the killing of Jaafar Mohammed Saad, the governor of Aden, the January 2016 Istanbul bombing (11 foreign tourists killed), the 2016 Brussels bombings (32 civilians killed), the 2016 Nice attack (86 civilians killed), the July 2016 Kabul bombing (at least 80 civilians killed, mostly Shia Hazaras), the 2016 Berlin attack (12 civilians killed) and the 2017 Istanbul nightclub shooting (39 foreigners and Turks killed).[304][305][306]

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Mass killings

On 30 August 2016, a survey conducted by the Associated Press found that around 72 mass graves have been discovered in areas that have been liberated from ISIL control. In total, these mass graves contain the bodies of approximately 15,000 people killed by ISIL. The report stated that the mass graves were evidence of genocides conducted by ISIL in the region, including the genocide of Yazidis. Seventeen graves were discovered in Syria, with the rest being found in Iraq. At least 16 of the graves in Iraq contained remains that were not counted, as they are located in dangerous conflict zones. Instead, the number of dead in these graves has been estimated.[307]

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Goals

Since at least 2004, a significant goal of the group has been the foundation of a Sunni Islamic state.[110][111] Specifically, ISIL has sought to establish itself as a caliphate, an Islamic state led by a group of religious authorities under a supreme leader – the caliph – who is believed to be the successor to Prophet Muhammad.[112] In June 2014, ISIL published a document in which it claimed to have traced the lineage of its leader al-Baghdadi back to Muhammad,[112] and upon proclaiming a new caliphate on 29 June, the group appointed al-Baghdadi as its caliph. As caliph, he demands the allegiance of all devout Muslims worldwide, according to Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh).[113]

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ISIL has detailed its goals in its Dabiq magazine, saying it will continue to seize land and take over the entire Earth until its:

Blessed flag...covers all eastern and western extents of the Earth, filling the world with the truth and justice of Islam and putting an end to the falsehood and tyranny of jahiliyyah [state of ignorance], even if American and its coalition despise such.

— 5th edition of Dabiq, the Islamic State's English-language magazine [114]

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According to German journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer, who spent ten days embedded with ISIL in Mosul, the view he kept hearing was that ISIL wants to "conquer the world", and that all who do not believe in the group's interpretation of the Quran will be killed. Todenhöfer was struck by the ISIL fighters' belief that "all religions who agree with democracy have to die",[115] and by their "incredible enthusiasm" – including enthusiasm for killing "hundreds of millions" of people.[116]

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When the caliphate was proclaimed, ISIL stated: "The legality of all emirates, groups, states and organisations becomes null by the expansion of the khilafah's [caliphate's] authority and arrival of its troops to their areas."[112] This was a rejection of the political divisions in Southwestern Asia that were established by the UK and France during World War I in the Sykes–Picot Agreement.[117][118][119]

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All non-Muslim areas would be targeted for conquest after the Muslim "lands" were dealt with, according to the Islamist manual Management of Savagery.[120][121][122]

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Treatment of civilians

During the Iraqi conflict in 2014, ISIL released dozens of videos showing its ill treatment of civilians, many of whom had apparently been targeted on the basis of their religion or ethnicity. Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned of war crimes being committed in the Iraqi war zone, and disclosed a UN report of ISIL militants murdering Iraqi Army soldiers and 17 civilians in a single street in Mosul. The UN reported that in the 17 days from 5 to 22 June, ISIL killed more than 1,000 Iraqi civilians and injured more than 1,000.[652][653][654] After ISIL released photographs of its fighters shooting scores of young men, the UN declared that cold-blooded "executions" by militants in northern Iraq almost certainly amounted to war crimes.[655]

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ISIL's advance in Iraq in mid-2014 was accompanied by continuing violence in Syria. On 29 May, ISIL raided a village in Syria and at least 15 civilians were killed, including, according to Human Rights Watch, at least six children.[656] A hospital in the area confirmed that it had received 15 bodies on the same day.[657] The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that on 1 June, a 102-year-old man was killed along with his whole family in a village in Hama province.[658] According to Reuters, 1,878 people were killed in Syria by ISIL during the last six months of 2014, most of them civilians.[659]

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In Mosul, ISIL has implemented a sharia school curriculum which bans the teaching of art, music, national history, literature and Christianity. Although Charles Darwin's theory of evolution has never been taught in Iraqi schools, the subject has been banned from the school curriculum. Patriotic songs have been declared blasphemous, and orders have been given to remove certain pictures from school textbooks.[660][661][662][663] Iraqi parents have largely boycotted schools in which the new curriculum has been introduced.[664]

After capturing cities in Iraq, ISIL issued guidelines on how to wear clothes and veils. ISIL warned women in the city of Mosul to wear full-face veils or face severe punishment.[665] A cleric told Reuters in Mosul that ISIL gunmen had ordered him to read out the warning in his mosque when worshippers gathered. ISIL ordered the faces of both male and female mannequins to be covered, in an order which also banned the use of naked mannequins.[666] In Raqqa the group uses its two battalions of female fighters in the city to enforce compliance by women with its strict laws on individual conduct.[667]

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ISIL released 16 notes labelled "Contract of the City", a set of rules aimed at civilians in Nineveh. One rule stipulated that women should stay at home and not go outside unless necessary. Another rule said that stealing would be punished by amputation.[668][669] In addition to the Muslim custom of banning the sale and use of alcohol, ISIL has banned the sale and use of cigarettes and hookah pipes. It has also banned "music and songs in cars, at parties, in shops and in public, as well as photographs of people in shop windows".[670]

According to The Economist, Saudi practices also followed by the group include the establishment of religious police to root out "vice" and enforce attendance at salat prayers, the widespread use of capital punishment, and the destruction of Christian churches and non-Sunni mosques or their conversion to other uses.[106]

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ISIL carried out executions on both men and women who were accused of various acts and found guilty of crimes against Islam such as sodomy,[671] adultery, usage and possession of contraband, rape, blasphemy, witchcraft,[672] renouncing Islam and murder. Before the accused are executed their charges are read to them and the spectators. Executions take various forms, including stoning to death, crucifixions, beheadings, burning people alive, and throwing people from tall buildings.[673][674][675][676] The Islamic State in Iraq frequently carries out mass executions in Mosul and Hawija.

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The Islamic State militants were accused of using civilian residents of towns as human shields.[677] The Telegraph reported that "Extremist fighters are deliberately hiding among civilian buildings and residents to try to prevent strikes."[678][679] Civil rights activist told ARA News that "ISIS militants prevent the people of Manbij and Jarablus from leaving their hometowns despite the fierce airstrikes by Russian warplanes".[680]

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Child soldiers

According to a report by the magazine Foreign Policy, children as young as six are recruited or kidnapped and sent to military and religious training camps, where they practice beheading with dolls and are indoctrinated with the religious views of ISIL.[681] Children are used as human shields on front lines and to provide blood transfusions for Islamic State soldiers,[681] according to Shelly Whitman of the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative. The second instalment of a Vice News documentary about ISIL focused on how the group is specifically grooming children for the future.

 

A spokesman told VICE News that those under the age of 15 go to sharia camp to learn about religion, while those older than 16 can go to military training camp.[681] Children are also used for propaganda. According to a UN report, "In mid-August, ISIL entered a cancer hospital in Mosul, forced at least two sick children to hold the ISIL flag and posted the pictures on the internet." Misty Buswell, a Save the Children representative working with refugees in Jordan, said, "It's not an exaggeration to say we could lose a whole generation of children to trauma."[682] A UN report indicated that at least 89 children, mostly from the ages of 12 to 16 had been killed fighting for the Islamic State in 2015, 39% of which died in suicide bombing attacks.[683] Der Spiegel estimated in 2016 that 1,500 boys were serving as child soldiers for ISIL.[681] It was reported that on 12 March 2017, ISIS used 6 child suicide bombers against the Syrian Army soldiers besieged in Deir Ez-zor.[684]

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Sexual violence and slavery

Sexual violence perpetrated by ISIL includes using rape as a weapon of war;[685] instituting forced marriages to its fighters;[686] and trading women and girls as sex slaves.[687]

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There are many reports of sexual abuse and enslavement in ISIL-controlled areas of women and girls, predominantly from the minority Christian and Yazidi communities.[688][689] Fighters are told that they are free to have sex with or rape non-Muslim captive women.[690] Haleh Esfandiari from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars has highlighted the abuse of local women by ISIL militants after they have captured an area. "They usually take the older women to a makeshift slave market and try to sell them. The younger girls ... are raped or married off to fighters", she said, adding, "It's based on temporary marriages, and once these fighters have had sex with these young girls, they just pass them on to other fighters."[691]

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The capture of Iraqi cities by the group in June 2014 was accompanied by an upsurge in crimes against women, including kidnap and rape.[692][693][694] According to Martin Williams in The Citizen, some hard-line Salafists apparently regard extramarital sex with multiple partners as a legitimate form of holy war and it is "difficult to reconcile this with a religion where some adherents insist that women must be covered from head to toe, with only a narrow slit for the eyes".[695]

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As of August 2015, the trade in sex slaves appeared to remain restricted to Yazidi women and girls.[687] It has reportedly become a recruiting technique to attract men from conservative Muslim societies, where dating and casual sex are not allowed.[687] Nazand Begikhani said of the Yazidi victims, "These women have been treated like cattle ... They have been subjected to physical and sexual violence, including systematic rape and sex slavery. They've been exposed in markets in Mosul and in Raqqa, Syria, carrying price tags."[696] According to UN Reports the price list for IS sex slaves range from 40 to 160 US dollars. The younger the slave the more expensive. Girls and boys between the age 1–9 are referred to as the most expensive, with the cheapest being women between 40 and 50 years old.[697]According to another source the price of a slave equals the price of an AK-47.[698]

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A United Nations report issued on 2 October 2014, based on 500 interviews with witnesses, said that ISIL took 450–500 women and girls to Iraq's Nineveh region in August, where "150 unmarried girls and women, predominantly from the Yazidi and Christian communities, were reportedly transported to Syria, either to be given to ISIL fighters as a reward or to be sold as sex slaves".[689] In mid-October, the UN confirmed that 5,000–7,000 Yazidi women and children had been abducted by ISIL and sold into slavery.[638][699] In November 2014 The New York Times reported on the accounts given by five who escaped ISIL of their captivity and abuse.[700] In December 2014, the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights announced that ISIL had killed over 150 women and girls in Fallujah who refused to participate in sexual jihad.[701] Non-Muslim women have reportedly been married off to fighters against their will. ISIL claims the women provide the new converts and children necessary to spread ISIL's control.[702]\

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Shortly after the death of US hostage Kayla Mueller was confirmed on 10 February 2015,[703] several media outlets reported that the US intelligence community believed she may have been given as a wife to an ISIL fighter.[704][705][706] In August 2015 it was confirmed that she had been forced into marriage[707] to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who raped her repeatedly.[708][709][710] The Mueller family was informed by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had sexually abused Ms. Mueller, and that Ms. Mueller had also been tortured.[710] Abu Sayyaf's widow, Umm Sayyaf, confirmed that it was her husband who had been Mueller's primary abuser.[711]

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In its digital magazine Dabiq, ISIL explicitly claimed religious justification for enslaving Yazidi women.[712][713][714] According to The Wall Street Journal, ISIL appeals to apocalyptic beliefs and claims "justification by a Hadith that they interpret as portraying the revival of slavery as a precursor to the end of the world".[715] ISIL appeals to the hadith and Quran when claiming the right to enslave and rape captive non-Muslim women.[712][716][717] According to Dabiq, "enslaving the families of the kuffar and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Sharia's that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Quran and the narration of the Prophet ... and thereby apostatizing from Islam." Captured Yazidi women and children are divided among the fighters who captured them, with one fifth taken as a tax.[717][718] ISIL has received widespread criticism from Muslim scholars and others in the Muslim world for using part of the Quran to derive a ruling in isolation, rather than considering the entire Quran and hadith.[712][716][717] According to Mona Siddiqui, ISIL's "narrative may well be wrapped up in the familiar language of jihad and 'fighting in the cause of Allah', but it amounts to little more than destruction of anything and anyone who doesn't agree with them"; she describes ISIL as reflecting a "lethal mix of violence and sexual power" and a "deeply flawed view of manhood".[702] Dabiq describes "this large-scale enslavement" of non-Muslims as "probably the first since the abandonment of Shariah law".[717][718]

 

YJÊ are women fighters trained by the Kurdish Workers Party guerillas to defend themselves against Islamist extremists.

In late 2014, ISIL released a pamphlet that focused on the treatment of female slaves.[719][720] It claims that the Quran allows fighters to have sex with captives, including adolescent girls, and to beat slaves as discipline. The pamphlet's guidelines also allow fighters to trade slaves, including for sex, as long as they have not been impregnated by their owners.[719][720][721] Charlie Winter, a researcher at the counter-extremist think tank Quilliam, described the pamphlet as "abhorrent".[721][722] In response to this document Abbas Barzegar, a religion professor at Georgia State University, said Muslims around the world find ISIL's "alien interpretation of Islam grotesque and abhorrent".[723] Muslim leaders and scholars from around the world have rejected the validity of ISIL's claims, claiming that the reintroduction of slavery is un-Islamic, that they are required to protect "People of the Scripture" including Christians, Jews, Muslims and Yazidis, and that ISIL's fatwas are invalid due to their lack of religious authority and the fatwas' inconsistency with Islam.[378][376]

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The Independent reported in 2015 that the usage of Yazidi sex slaves had created ongoing friction among fighters within ISIL. Sajad Jiyad, a Research Fellow and Associate Member at the Iraqi Institute for Economic Reform, told the newspaper that many ISIL supporters and fighters had been in denial about the trafficking of kidnapped Yazidi women until a Dabiq article justifying the practice was published.[724][725] The New York Times said in August 2015 that "[t]he systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution."[687] The article claims that ISIL is not merely exonerating but sacralising rape, and illustrated this with the testimony of escapees. One 15-year-old victim said that, while she was being assaulted, her rapist "kept telling me this is ibadah"; a 12-year-old victim related how her assailant claimed that, "by raping me, he is drawing closer to God";[687] and one adult prisoner told how, when she challenged her captor about repeatedly raping a 12 year old, she was met with the retort, "No, she's not a little girl, she's a slave and she knows exactly how to have sex and having sex with her pleases God."[687]

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In July 2016 it was reported by an AP investigation that ISIL was using mobile apps like Telegram to sell their sex slaves and identify the slaves of other ISIL members at checkpoints.[726] In 2016, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability said they had identified 34 senior ISIL members who were instrumental in the systematic sex slave trade and planned to prosecute them after the end of hostilities.[727]

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Attacks on members of the press

The Committee to Protect Journalists states: "Without a free press, few other human rights are attainable."[728] ISIL has tortured and murdered local journalists,[729][730] creating what Reporters Without Borders calls "news blackholes" in areas controlled by ISIL. ISIL fighters have reportedly been given written directions to kill or capture journalists.[731]

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In December 2013, two suicide bombers stormed the headquarters of TV station Salaheddin and killed five journalists, after accusing the station of "distorting the image of Iraq's Sunni community". Reporters Without Borders reported that on 7 September 2014, ISIL seized and on 11 October publicly beheaded Raad al-Azzawi, a TV Salaheddin cameraman from the village of Samra, east of Tikrit.[732]As of October 2014, according to the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, ISIL is holding nine journalists and has nine others under close observation in Mosul and Salahuddin province.[731]

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During 2013 and part of 2014, an ISIL unit nicknamed the Beatles acquired and held 12 Western journalists hostage, along with aid workers and other foreign hostages, totalling 23 or 24 known hostages. A Polish journalist Marcin Suder was captured in July 2013 but escaped four months later.[733] The unit executed American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and released beheading videos. Eight of the other journalists were released for ransom: Danish journalist Daniel Rye Ottosen, French journalists Didier François, Edouard Elias, Nicolas Hénin, and Pierre Torres, and Spanish journalists Marc Marginedas, Javier Espinosa, and Ricardo García Vilanova. The unit continues to hold hostage British journalist John Cantlie and a female aid worker.[734]

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Cyber-security group the Citizen Lab released a report finding a possible link between ISIL and a digital attack on the Syrian citizen media group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RSS). Supporters of the media group received an emailed link to an image of supposed airstrikes, but clicking on the link introduced malware to the user's computer that sends details of the user's IP address and system each time it restarts. That information has been enough to allow ISIL to locate RSS supporters. "The group has been targeted for kidnappings, house raids, and at least one alleged targeted killing. At the time of that writing, ISIL was allegedly holding several citizen journalists in Raqqa", according to the Citizen Lab report.[735]

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On 8 January 2015, ISIL members in Libya claimed to have executed Tunisian journalists Sofiene Chourabi and Nadhir Ktari who disappeared in September 2014.[736] Also in January 2015, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto was kidnapped and beheaded, after a demand for a $200 million ransom payment was not met.[737]

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Beheadings and mass executions

An unknown number of Syrians and Iraqis, several Lebanese soldiers, male and female Kurdish fighters near Kobanî, two American journalists, one American and two British aid workers, 30 Ethiopian Christians[738] and 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya[739] have been beheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. ISIL uses beheadings to intimidate local populations and has released a series of propaganda videos aimed at Western countries.[54] ISIL was reported to have beheaded about 100 foreign fighters as deserters who tried to leave Raqqa.[740]

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They also engage in public and mass executions of Syrian and Iraqi soldiers and civilians,[459] sometimes forcing prisoners to dig their own graves before shooting lines of prisoners and pushing them in.[741][742] Among the known mass executions of captured soldiers carried out by ISIL are those in Tikrit (ISIS executed up to 1,700 Shia Iraqi Air Force cadets from Camp Speicher near Tikrit on 12 June 2014),[743][744] Al-Thawrah (ISIS executed 250 Syrian soldiers captured at the Al-Tabqa air base between 27 and 28 August 2014),[745] Palmyra (up to 280 Syrian soldiers and government loyalists were shot in the head or beheaded in a public square on 22 May 2015),[746] and Deir ez-Zor (ISIS killed at least 300 Syrian soldiers, pro-government militiamen and their families on 16 January 2016).[747]

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ISIS executed 600 Shia prisoners in Mosul in June 2014.[748] In November 2014, there were reports that ISIS fighters massacred more than 630 members of the Albu Nimr tribe in Iraq. Albu Nimr was one of the Sunni Arab tribes that fiercely opposed the Islamic State.[749] On 17 December 2014, it was reported by Turkish media, that the ISIS had executed at least 150 women from the Albu Nimr tribe in Falluja for refusing to marry ISIS militants.[750]

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Use of chemical weapons

Further information: Use of chemical weapons in the Iraqi civil war and Use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war

Kurds in northern Iraq reported being attacked by ISIS with chemical weapons in August 2015,[751] which was later confirmed to be mustard gas.[752] At Kobanî, it is highly likely that ISIS used chlorine gas. These chemical weapons may be from a chemical weapons storage site at Al-Muthanna, which contained 2,500 chemical rockets. Although the rockets' chemical contents were deteriorated, ISIS may have used them in a concentrated manner.[753]

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Destruction of cultural and religious heritage

UNESCO's Director-General Irina Bokova has warned that ISIL is destroying Iraq's cultural heritage, in what she has called "cultural cleansing". "We don't have time to lose because extremists are trying to erase the identity, because they know that if there is no identity, there is no memory, there is no history", she said. Referring to the ancient cultures of Christians, Yazidis and other minorities, she said, "This is a way to destroy identity. You deprive them of their culture, you deprive them of their history, their heritage, and that is why it goes hand in hand with genocide. Along with the physical persecution they want to eliminate – to delete – the memory of these different cultures ... we think this is appalling, and this is not acceptable."[754] Saad Eskander, head of Iraq's National Archives said, "For the first time you have cultural cleansing... For the Yazidis, religion is oral, nothing is written. By destroying their places of worship... you are killing cultural memory. It is the same with the Christians – it really is a threat beyond belief."[755]

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To finance its activities, ISIL is stealing artefacts from Syria[756] and Iraq and sending them to Europe to be sold. UNESCO has asked for United Nations Security Council controls on the sale of antiquities, similar to those imposed after the 2003 Iraq War. UNESCO is working with Interpol, national customs authorities, museums, and major auction houses in attempts to prevent looted items from being sold.[755] ISIL occupied Mosul Museum, the second most important museum in Iraq, as it was about to reopen after years of rebuilding following the Iraq War, saying that the statues were against Islam and threatening to destroy the museum's contents.[757][758]

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ISIL considers worshipping at graves tantamount to idolatry, and seeks to purify the community of unbelievers. It has used bulldozers to crush buildings and archaeological sites.[758] Bernard Haykel has described al-Baghdadi's creed as "a kind of untamed Wahhabism", saying, "For Al Qaeda, violence is a means to an ends; for ISIS, it is an end in itself".[13] The destruction by ISIL in July 2014 of the tomb and shrine of the prophet Yunus – Jonah in Christianity – the 13th-century mosque of Imam Yahya Abu al-Qassimin, the 14th-century shrine of prophet Jerjis – St George to Christians – and the attempted destruction of the Hadba minaret at the 12th-century Great Mosque of Al-Nuri have been described as "an unchecked outburst of extreme Wahhabism".[759] "There were explosions that destroyed buildings dating back to the Assyrian era", said National Museum of Iraq director Qais Rashid, referring to the destruction of the shrine of Yunus. He cited another case where "Daesh (ISIL) gathered over 1,500 manuscripts from convents and other holy places and burnt all of them in the middle of the city square".[760] In March 2015, ISIL reportedly bulldozed the 13th-century BC Assyrian city of Nimrud, believing its sculptures to be idolatrous. UNESCO head, Irina Bokova, deemed this to be a war crime.[761]

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ISIL has burned or stolen collections of books and papers from the various locations including the Central Library of Mosul (which they rigged with explosives and burned down),[762] the library at the University of Mosul, a Sunni Muslim library, a 265-year-old Latin Church and Monastery of the Dominican Fathers, and the Mosul Museum Library. Some destroyed or stolen works date back to 5000 BCE and include "Iraq newspapers dating to the early 20th century, maps and books from the Ottoman Empire, and book collections contributed by about 100 of Mosul's establishment families." The stated goal is to destroy all non-Islamic books.

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