Syria is clearly on the verge of collapse in terms of the economy and humanitarian situation.

The country's southern province of al-Suwayda', whose population primarily comes from the Druze minority, is currently witnessing protests on an unprecedented scale. While the province has previously seen protests motivated primarily by the country's deteriorating economic and livelihood situation, these protests are now far more widespread in the province and larger in scale.

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As I noted in my West Point CTC Sentinel study on the Islamic State's more recent caliphs, the group has had little to say in an official capacity about those who have succeeded the first caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in an American raid in October 2019. While some 18 months have passed since the killing of Baghdadi's successor Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, the Islamic State has yet to publish an official biography of him. Virtually all the information so far has come from the group's enemies.

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https://aymennaltamimi.substack.com/p/a-brief-biography-of-abu-ibrahim

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While the ongoing protests in Syria's southern province of al-Suwayda' against the Syrian government and its policies are noteworthy, the tribal uprising in the eastern countryside of the eastern province of Dayr al-Zur against the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is arguably of greater significance, as it amounts to an actual armed revolt that has posed a serious challenge to the SDF's authority over the area- an authority that was only established because of the American-led campaign against the Islamic State. In turn the revolt raises very serious issues about U.S. policy in the region and the supposed ongoing American mission to ensure the "enduring defeat" of the Islamic State.

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The protests against the Syrian government and its policies in Syria's southern province of al-Suwayda' have been ongoing for around two weeks, and are unprecedented in terms of the number of demonstrators, how widespread they are in the province, and the openness of the calls for political change. Yet the demonstrations still raise questions about their future direction and what they can achieve.

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Drawing primarily on internal Islamic State documents and the group's literature, this paper seeks to explore the organisation's confiscation of mobile and immobile property, examining the rationale and mechanisms of confiscation and also how the confiscated property was exploited.

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http://cja.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/AlTamimi_islamicstatepillageeconomy.pdf

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