Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

At 4:30 p.m. came the decisive blow. A large water truck packed with explosives barreled into the hotel, exploding in flames and killing or injuring many of the Iraqi force’s senior officers. “The sound shook the whole of Mosul,” said Obeidi, whose leg was torn open by the blast. The rest of the army’s defenses collapsed soon after that. By evening, police and army troops were discarding their uniforms and fleeing the battlefield in civilian clothes. Those who were caught were lined up in groups and shot. By noon on June 10, just four days after the start of the offensive, the jihadists controlled Mosul’s airport and most of the town’s central district. They emptied the cash reserves from downtown banks and stripped an Iraqi military base of millions of dollars’ worth of U.S.-made weapons and equipment. Then they seized control of Mosul’s main prison, releasing the Sunni inmates and summarily executing the others—about 670 Shiites, Kurds, and Christians. By the end of the day, Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, was fully under ISIS’s control. Iraq’s army eventually regrouped and launched a counteroffensive that stopped ISIS from advancing into Baghdad, even as ISIS continued to gain ground in other parts of the country. By late June, the terrorist group’s total land holdings, from western Syria to central Iraq, was greater than the areas of Israel and Lebanon combined. The man who presided over this expanse now controlled more than just real estate. He owned oil wells, ref...