Islamic State in hunt for spies
A senior commander with the Islamic State group was driving through northern Syria on orders to lead militants in the fighting there when a drone blasted his vehicle to oblivion.
The killing of Abu
Hayjaa al-Tunsi, a Tunisian jihadi, sparked a panicked hunt within the
group’s ranks for spies who could have tipped off the U.S-led coalition
about his closely guarded movements. By the time it was over, the group
would kill 38 of its own members on suspicion of acting as informants.
They
were among dozens of IS members killed by their own leadership in
recent months in a vicious purge after a string of airstrikes killed
prominent figures. Others have disappeared into prisons and still more
have fled, fearing they could be next as the jihadi group turns on
itself in the hunt for moles, according to Syrian opposition activists,
Kurdish militia commanders, several Iraqi intelligence officials and an
informant for the Iraqi government who worked within IS ranks.
The
fear of informants has fueled paranoia among the militants’ ranks. A
mobile phone or internet connection can raise suspicions. As a warning
to others, IS has displayed the bodies of some suspected spies in public
— or used particularly gruesome methods, including reportedly dropping
some into a vat of acid.
IS
“commanders don’t dare come from Iraq to Syria because they are being
liquidated” by airstrikes, said Bebars al-Talawy, an opposition activist
in Syria who monitors the jihadi group.
Over
the past months, American officials have said that the U.S. has killed a
string of top commanders from the group, including its “minister of
war” Omar al-Shishani, feared Iraqi militant Shaker Wuhayeb, also known
as Abu Wahib, as well as a top finance official known by several names,
including Haji Iman, Abu Alaa al-Afari or Abu Ali Al-Anbari.
In the northern Iraqi city of
Mosul, the biggest city held by IS across its “caliphate” stretching
across Syria and Iraq, a succession of militants who held the post of
“wali,” or governor, in the province have died in airstrikes. As a
result, those appointed to governor posts have asked not to be
identified and they limit their movements, the Iraqi informant told The
Associated Press. Iraqi intelligence officials allowed the AP to speak
by phone with the informant, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
fearing for his life.
The
purge comes at a time when IS has lost ground in both Syria and Iraq. An
Iraqi government offensive recaptured the western city of Ramadi from
IS earlier this year, and another mission is underway to retake the
nearby city of Fallujah.
Rami
Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights, said some IS fighters began feeding information to the coalition
about targets and movements of the group’s officials because they
needed money after the extremist group sharply reduced salaries in the
wake of coalition and Russian airstrikes on IS-held oil facilities
earlier this year. The damage and the loss of important IS-held supply
routes into Turkey have reportedly hurt the group’s financing.
“They
have executed dozens of fighters on charges of giving information to
the coalition or putting (GPS) chips in order for the aircraft to strike
at a specific area,” said Abdurrahman, referring to IS in Syria.
The
militants have responded with methods of their own for rooting out
spies, said the informant. For example, they have fed false information
to a suspect member about the movements of IS leader Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi, and if an airstrike follows on the alleged location, they
know the suspect is a spy, he said. They stop fighters in the street and
inspect their mobile phones, sometimes making the fighter call any
unusual numbers in front of them to see who they are.
After
the killing of al-Anbari, seven or eight IS officials in Mosul were
taken into custody and have since disappeared, their fates unknown, said
the informant.
“Daesh is now
concentrating on how to find informers because they have lost commanders
that are hard to replace,” said a senior Iraqi intelligence official in
Baghdad, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. “Now any
IS commander has the right to kill a person whom they suspect is an
informer for the coalition.”
Another
Iraqi intelligence official said at least 10 IS fighters and security
officials in Mosul were killed by the group in April on suspicion of
giving information to the coalition because of various strikes in the
city.
Mosul also saw one of
the most brutal killings of suspected informants last month, when about a
dozen fighters and civilians were drowned in a vat filled with acid,
one senior Iraqi intelligence official said.
In
the western province of Anbar, the Iraqi militant Wuhayeb was killed in
a May 6 airstrike in the town of Rutba. Wuhayeb was a militant veteran,
serving first in al-Qaida in Iraq before it became the Islamic State
group. He first came to prominence in 2013, when a video showed him and
his fighters stopping a group of Syrian truck drivers crossing Anbar.
Wuhayeb asks each if he is Sunni or Shiite, and when they say Sunni, he
quizzes them on how many times one bows during prayer. When they get it
wrong, three of them admit to being Alawites, a Shiite offshoot sect,
and Wuhayeb and his men lay the three drivers in the dirt and shoot them
to death.
After Wuhayeb’s
killing, IS killed several dozen of its own members in Anbar, including
some mid-level officials, on suspicion of informing on his location, and
other members fled to Turkey, the two intelligence officials said. They
spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to
talk to the press.
Some of the suspects were shot dead in front of other IS fighters as a lesson, the Iraqi officials said.
After
the Tunisian militant Abu Hayjaa was killed on the road outside Raqqa
on March 30, IS leadership in Iraq sent Iraqi and Chechen security
officials to investigate, according to Abdurrahman and al-Talawy, the
Syria-based activist. Suspects were rounded up, taken to military bases
around Raqqa, and the purge ensued. Within days, 21 IS fighters were
killed, including a senior commander from North Africa, Abdurrahman
said.
Dozens more were taken
back to Iraq for further questioning. Of those, 17 were killed and 32
were expelled from the group but allowed to live, Abdurrahman and
al-Talawy said, both citing their contacts in the militant group. Among
those brought to Iraq was the group’s top security official for its
Badiya “province,” covering a part of central and eastern Syria. His
fate remains unknown.
Non-IS
members are also often caught up in the hunt for spies. In the Tabqa,
near Raqqa, IS fighters brought a civilian, Abdul-Hadi Issa, into the
main square before dozens of onlookers and announced he was accused of
spying. A masked militant then stabbed him in the heart and, with the
knife still stuck in the man’s chest, the fighter shot him in the head
with a pistol.
Issa’s body was
hanged in the square with a large piece of paper on his chest
proclaiming the crime and the punishment. IS circulated photos of the
killing on social media.
According
to al-Talawy, several other IS members were killed in the town of
Sukhna near the central Syrian city of Palmyra on charges of giving
information to the coalition about IS bases in the area as well as
trying to locate places where al-Baghdadi might be.
Sherfan
Darwish, of the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces, which has been
spearheading the fight against IS in Syria, said there is panic in
IS-held areas where the extremists have killed people simply for having
telecommunications devices in their homes.
“There is chaos. Some members and commanders are trying to flee,” Darwish said.
The
U.S. -led coalition has sought to use its successes in targeting IS
leaders to intimidate others. In late May, warplanes dropped leaflets
over IS-held parts of Syria with the pictures of two senior militants
killed previously in airstrikes. “What do these Daesh commanders have in
common?” the leaflet read. “They were killed at the hands of the
coalition.”
The jihadis have responded with their own propaganda.
“America,
do you think that victory comes by killing a commander or more?” IS
spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani said in a May 21 audio message. “We
will not be deterred by your campaigns and you will not be victorious.”
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