Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

Abu Ibrahim vividly remembered ISIS’s triumphant entry into the city. The prelude was a week of heavy street fighting that left scores of bodies lying in the streets and most of the city’s civilians trapped in their houses, afraid to venture out for fear of being hit by sniper fire. Stores and bakeries closed, and many families ran out of food. “If you had bread, it was like having a million dollars,” he recalled. “These were the hardest days.” The fighting gradually waned, as militiamen opposed to ISIS either fled or switched sides. Then, all at once, columns of foreign fighters—mostly Iraqis, Abu Ibrahim later learned—appeared in the streets. ISIS’s men raised their black flags over the main government buildings and claimed Raqqa as the new capital of the Islamic State. “They walked around with their weapons, saying everything was going to be good now,” he said. “They even began removing the bodies that had been lying around in the streets.” Many in Raqqa initially did not know what to make of the newcomers, Abu Ibrahim said. Some were relieved at least to see the fighting come to an end. Shops reopened and the city began to feel safe again. But then the executions started. The first one witnessed by Abu Ibrahaim involved a young man that ISIS commanders described as a criminal, though the man’s offense was never made clear. The condemned man was forced to stand in Raqqa’s main plaza, where his sentence was publicly read. Then he was shot in the head as a small crowd loo...