The Daring Journalists’ Startling Revelation : ISIS Files
The New York Times’ courageous Correspondent Rukmini Callimachi’s ISIS Files reporting is considered one of the finest examples of investigative journalism. She and her team of committed journalists unearthed nearly 15000 documents. To collect this mammoth information, they’d visited Iraq 5 times and went 11 different cities and unearthed these documents from the ground zero. We can learn what are all the tactics used by ISIS to stay in power so long. Kudos to the team who gave us valuable insights with their indomitable spirit and valour.
What these documents revealed?
The New York Times worked with outside experts to verify their authenticity, and a team of journalists spent 15 months translating and analyzing them page by page.
Individually, each piece of paper documents a single, routine interaction: A land transfer between people. The sale of wheat. A fine for improper dress.
But putting all the pieces together, the documents in the trove reveal the inner workings of a complex system of government initiated by ISIS. They show that the group, if only for a finite amount of time, realized its dream: to establish its own state, a theocracy they considered a caliphate, run according to their strict interpretation of Islam.
The world knows the Islamic State for its brutality, but the militants did not rule by the sword alone. They wielded power through two ruthless tools: brutality and bureaucracy.
ISIS built a state of administrative efficiency that collected taxes and picked up the garbage. It ran a marriage office that oversaw medical examinations to ensure that couples could have children. It issued birth certificates — printed on Islamic State stationery — to babies born under the caliphate’s black flag. It even ran its own D.M.V. (Department of Motor Vehicles).
The documents and interviews with dozens of people who lived under their rule show that the group at times offered better services and proved itself more capable than the government it had replaced.
Likewise, the 15000+ documents is the standing tesimony of the various faces of ISIS.
Those who are interested in this topic, they can visit her Twitter page and find out more.
https://twitter.com/rcallimachi
And if you want read her NY Times article, kindly click the below-quoted link
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/04/world/middleeast/isis-documents-mosul-iraq.html
by
Srini