RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week April 1 toApril 6 Featured Investigation ISIS dreamed of establishing not just a nation but a caliphate over the world. For nearly three years (2014-17) it did, in fact, control an area the size of Britain, with 12 million inhabitants that included territory in Libya, Nigeria and Philippines and at least 13 other countries. The largest city it ran was Mosul, Iraq. Over the last year,journalists for The New York Timeshave made five trips to theold Islamic State officesin Mosul,gatheringmore than15,000 pages of internal documents "abandoned by the militants as their ‘caliphate' crumbled." Although ISIS is famous for its murderous ideology, the documents suggest that its leaders understood the importance of the mundane tasks of government. RukminiCallimachireports: Individually, each piece of paper documents a single, routine interaction: A land transfer between neighbors. The sale of a ton of wheat.A fine for improper dress. But taken together, the documents in the trove reveal the inner workings of a complex system of government. They show that the group, if only for a finite amount of time, realized its dream: to establish its own state, a theocracy they considered a caliphate, run according to their strict interpretation of Islam. The world knows the Islamic State for its brutality, but the militants did not rule by the sword alone. They wielded power through two complementary tools: brutality and bureaucracy. ISIS built a state of administrative efficiency that collected taxes and picked up the garbage. It ran a marriage office that oversaw medical examinations to ensure that couples could havechildren. It issued birth certificates — printed on Islamic State stationery — to babies born under the caliphate's black flag. It even ran its own D.M.V. The documents and interviews with dozens of people who lived under their rule show that the group at times offered better services and proved itself more capable than the government it had replaced. … One of the keys to their success was their diversified revenue stream. The group drew its income from so many strands of the economy that airstrikes alone were not enough to cripple it. Ledgers, receipt books and monthly budgets describe how the militants monetized every inch of territory they conquered, taxing every bushel of wheat, every liter of sheep's milk and every watermelon sold at markets they controlled. From agriculture alone, they reaped hundreds of millions of dollars. Contrary to popular perception, the group was self-financed, not dependent on external donors. 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