By Liz Sly. Isis’s vaunted exercise in state-building appears to be crumbling, as living conditions deteriorate across the territories under its control, exposing the shortcomings of a group that devotes most of its energies to fighting battles and enforcing strict rules.

Residents say services are collapsing, prices are soaring and medicines are scarce in towns and cities across the “caliphate” that Isis proclaimed in Iraq and Syria, belying the group’s boasts that it is delivering a model form of governance for Muslims.

Slick videos depicting functioning governing offices and the distribution of aid fail to match the reality of growing deprivation and disorganised, erratic leadership, the residents say. A trumpeted Isis currency has not materialised, nor have the passports the group promised. Schools barely function, doctors are few and disease is on the rise.

In the Iraqi city of Mosul, the water has become undrinkable because supplies of chlorine have dried up, according to a journalist living there, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Hepatitis was spreading and flour for bread was becoming increasingly scarce, he said. “Life in the city is nearly dead, and it is as though we are living in a giant prison,” he said.

In the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s self-styled capital, water and electricity are available for no more than three or four hours a day, rubbish piles up uncollected and the city’s poor scavenge for scraps . . . (Read more about ISIS’s failures in ISIS controlled Syria and Iraq HERE)
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Despite ISIS’s Dysfunctional Self-Governance, Some Believe We’re Grossly Underestimating ISIS

By Noah Rothman. Following the news that Islamic State fighters had successfully downed a Jordanian warplane and captured its pilot, U.S. Central Command claimed that there was no evidence that ISIS was responsible for shooting that aircraft out of the sky. In a statement, CENTCOM offered glowing praise for America’s freshly demoralized regional ally and offered no alternative theory for why that aircraft was lost. Take that as you will.

For all the talk of ISIS’s military prowess, or lack thereof as the case above may be, there has until recently been a dearth of substantive discussion about the state of affairs in the areas occupied by ISIS. The dangerous campaign being waged by coalition forces on the fringes of the so-called Islamic State has only just begun, and it is already claiming American and coalition assets and lives. Eventually, that campaign will need to press on into the state’s interior.

But “eventually” seems farther and farther off as the weeks go by. . .

This situation brought to mind recent comments from . In an interview following his return from ISIS-controlled areas, the intrepid reporter wondered if Western leaders were not seriously underestimating the danger posed by ISIS’s brutish militants.

In an interview with CNN, [Juergen Todenhoefer, a journalist who recently toured areas under Islamic State control] told familiar tales of the horrors of child soldiers, systematic beheadings, and foreign fighters with an unshakable loyalty to ISIS’s cause for whom the word “zealotry” seems an insufficient description. He also told, however, of the status of the “state” aspects of the Islamic State. Perhaps Todenhoefer’s most terrifying revelation was his claim that a sense of routine is beginning to take hold amongst the remaining residents of the cities flying an ISIS banner. (Read more from this story HERE)