Morale isn’t falling — it’s hit the ground,” said an opposition activist from Isis-controlled areas of Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province. “Local fighters are frustrated — they feel they’re doing most of the work and the dying . . . foreign fighters who thought they were on an adventure are now exhausted.”
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Analyst Torbjorn Soltvedt, of Verisk Maplecroft, a UK-based risk analysis group, said morale may be taking a hit as militants grapple with the shift from mobile army to governing force.
They feel they are the ones going to die in big numbers on the battlefield but they don’t enjoy any of the foreigners’ benefits- Activist in Deir Ezzor
“Before they were seizing territory, forcing armies in Iraq and Syria to retreat,” he said. “Now they’re basically an occupying force trying to govern.”
After flocking to Syria and Iraq during Isis’s heady days of quick victories, some foreigners may also be questioning the long, gruelling fight ahead.
Mr Solvedt said his organisation has had many reports of foreign fighters, including Britons, contacting family members and state authorities seeking ways to return home.
Isis members in Raqqa said the organisation has created a military police to crack down on fighters who fail to report for duty. According to activists, dozens of fighters’ homes have been raided and many have been arrested. Militants told a local journalist that they must now carry a document identifying them as a fighter and showing whether they are assigned to a mission.
An opposition activist in close contact with Isis fighters in Raqqa showed the Financial Times a document listing new regulations restricting jihadis’ behaviour. The paper, which could not be verified and which did not appear to have been issued in other Isis-held areas, warned that those who did not report to their offices within 48 hours of receiving the regulations would be punished.
“In Raqqa, they have arrested 400 members so far and printed IDs for the others,” the activist said.
The identification document for one fighter from the Gulf consisted of a printed form stating “name, location, section and mission assignment”, with his details filled in by hand.
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Activists in Isis-held parts of Syria said many fighters in Raqqa were angry about being sent to Kobani, a small Kurdish town near the Syrian border with Turkey that has become a focal point for coalition strikes. The fighters argued that the town was not strategically important enough to justify the losses they were incurring. According to a December 7 report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group with a network of activists across Syria, Isis lost about 1,400 fighters in 80 days of fighting. The US official said many Isis fighters have been killed in the town.
Foreign militants have often been the most active in major battles but opposition activists said as fighting intensifies, more demands are being made on local fighters who do not have deep-rooted loyalties to Isis.
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