the Islamists, including the conserva-
tive Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra,
a group now known as Hayat Tahrir al-
Sham that was linked to al-Qaeda at the
time. But none were more powerful, or
more distinctive, than the fighters of the
Islamic State. Their uniform was theshal-
war kameez, a loose-fitting outfit from
the Indian subcontinent that was nearly
unheard of in Syria. “They opened their
centers in every neighborhood. We knew
something was going to happen, because
they didn’t mix with the people,” remem-
bers Hassan.
ISIS crushed the other rebel groups
in Raqqa over the remainder of 2013,
using a car bomb to wipe out one rival
brigade. From there, the group spread
its tentacles into Iraq and Syria. Raqqa
became the purest example of the
Islamic State’s experiment in jihadist
governance. ISIS carried out public
executions, displaying severed heads
in a public square. Satellite dishes,
cell phones and music were banned.
The tiniest infraction could provoke a
beating or arrest by thehisba patrols, the
religious police. A man named Mohamed
Qassam, 59, told TIME he was beaten
for saying, in an argument with his wife
inside a government office, “I swear by
my honor,” rather than “I swear by God.”The group’s aspiration to build a state
was fatally undermined by its other ide-
ological aim, which was to provoke an
apocalyptic confrontation with its oppo-
nents. Following ISIS’s sweep across Iraq,
its massacres of Yezidis and the video-
taped executions of American journal-
ists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, for-
mer President Barack Obama sent the
U.S. back to war in the region in Septem-
ber 2014. U.S. and allied countries de-
ployed airpower, artillery and special-
operations forces to support Iraqi and
Syrian forces fighting back against ISIS—
an effort that has continued under Presi-
dent Donald Trump. After more than twoClockwise from top left: A living room in Raqqa, an ISIS warehouse window,
the Ein Issa camp for internally displaced people, a battered cash machine