"The Islamic State has turned cartoonish violence into real-life tragedy as a means of control," strategic security firm The Soufan Group reports.

"Yet the state of fear cuts both ways, and the Islamic State is increasingly terrified of the people it claims to protect and rule."

Unlike other terror groups, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) sees seizing and controlling territory as essential to its mission and purpose.

The terror army has declared a "caliphate," a 7th-century-style Islamic empire that aims to unite the world's Sunni Muslims under a single religious and political entity, in parts of Iraq, Syria, and beyond.

ISIS militants enforce a strict interpretation of Sharia law, punishing crimes with physical abuse and banning music and cigarettes.

ISIS also leaves bodies in the street of its de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria and releases propaganda videos showing brutal executions as part of its scare tactics to keep people in line.

"Sunnis are indeed being given a stark choice: Either you accept the caliphate, renounce the international [US-led] coalition and its proxies, or you will meet with ignoble death, of which even your own families won’t want to speak," ISIS experts Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan wrote in The Daily Beast this week.

"You will not be martyred; you will be tried and found guilty, branded a turncoat to your faith, abominated as a murderer of your fellow Sunnis, and destroyed as something less than a human being."

In addition to using these fear tactics to ward off an uprising, ISIS goes to great lengths to protect its positions and weed out possible spies within its ranks.

Soufan notes that "the recent videotaped execution of 15 alleged spies demonstrates just how afraid the group is of internal revolt through informants and potential Sunni tribal opposition."

The paranoia makes sense, considering that many top ISIS leaders are former Iraqi intelligence officers from ousted-dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, as Christoph Reuter of Der Spiegel reported.

Haji Bakr, the former Iraqi colonel credited with creating the blueprint for ISIS, had modified "Saddam Hussein's omnipresent security apparatus, in which no one, not even generals in the intelligence service, could be certain they weren't being spied on," Der Spiegel reported.

(The Institute for the Study of War)

Some ISIS policies reflect this experience with intelligence tactics: The group reportedly banned GPS-enabled devices in its territory to avoid giving away the positions of certain locations that could be targets for US air strikes.

This fear turned out to be legitimate. Earlier this month, the US Air Force struck an ISIS headquarters location after an intelligence team geo-located the building based on a social-media comment from an ISIS militant. Despite the apparent ban on GPS-enabled devices, ISIS recruiters still access social media to lure new people into the "caliphate."

Ultimately, however, air strikes aren't likely to take out ISIS on their own. The real danger to ISIS' survival is a Sunni uprising against the militants.

(Reuters)

"Without this group, ISIS’s self-portrait as the true custodians and defenders of the Sunnis in the mosques and souks and cafes — from Raqqa City to Fallujah — falls to dust."

ISIS has used the atrocities committed by Shia militias in Iraq and the Assad regime in Syria against Sunnis as a recruiting tool in an effort to convince Sunnis that ISIS is the only true protector of the Sunni populace.

But considering how brutal ISIS rule has become, it's unclear if this tactic is sustainable.

"The Islamic State knows all too well the destructive power of spies and so-called 'sleeper cells,' as these tactics have played an integral part in most of its successes, even predating the current iteration of the group," The Soufan Group noted.

"With defenses and attention guarding against the external threat, the impact of a relatively small internal threat is amplified. ... It does not take much to destabilize a rigid system built on forced compliance, especially with external threats growing in such public and visible fashion."

WSJ Live
French Taxi Drivers’ Uber Protests Turn Violent

Paris (AFP) - Protests against ride-booking app Uber turned violent in France on Thursday as taxi drivers set fire to vehicles and blocked major roads.

American rocker Courtney Love was caught up in the demonstrations when a vehicle she was travelling in outside Paris was attacked.

Around 3,000 cabbies took part in the strike, blocking access to the capital's Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports, and preventing cars reaching train stations around the country.

Ten people were arrested, seven police officers were injured and 70 vehicles were damaged in clashes between Uber drivers and taxi drivers.

The service, known as UberPOP, has been illegal in France since January, but the law has proved difficult to enforce and it continues to operate.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after meeting taxi drivers' unions following a fraught day: "UberPOP is an illegal service, it must be closed down."

Until that was done, "the vehicles of UberPOP drivers should be systematically impounded when they are openly breaking the law", the minister said.

"Governing the country will never be done by the law of the jungle," Cazeneuve added.

One of the taxi drivers' representatives, Ibrahima Sylla, described the minister's words as "promises, again" and said the drivers were considering continuing the demonstrations.

Love, Kurt Cobain's widow, was caught up in a confrontation near Charles de Gaulle airport.

She tweeted that protesters "ambushed" her vehicle and "were holding our driver hostage".

She appealed to the French president in another message, writing "Francois Hollande where are the ****ing police???"

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French taxi drivers burn tyres during a protest against taxi app Uber in the southern city of Marsei …

"This is France?? I'm safer in Baghdad," she added.

- Two vehicles torched -

In the most serious incident in Paris, one private chauffeur, who said he did not work for Uber "or any other app" was dragged from his van when he reached a blockade in the west of Paris.

Angry taxi drivers slashed the tyres of his vehicle, smashed a window and then set it and a chauffeur-driven van on fire.

Police eventually fired teargas to break up the protest on the western stretch of the ring road around the capital and cleared burning tyres.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said during a visit to Colombia that the perpetrators of the "unacceptable" violence "can be found in both camps" and they would be found and prosecuted.

Taxi drivers are furious at what they see as unfair competition from Uber, which puts customers in touch with private drivers at prices lower than those of traditional taxis.

Licensed cabbies say the service is endangering their jobs by flooding the market with low-cost drivers.

One driver said the strikers had been driven to desperation.

"Taxi drivers -- alright, they've got big mouths -- but normally they're not aggressive," said Malia, 50, who has driven a taxi for three years.

"But these guys have families to feed, debts. They've been pushed to the brink."

- Illegal in France -

More peaceful protests took place at transport hubs in other major cities including Bordeaux, Marseille and Toulouse.

Cabbies argued that the disruption was justified.

"UberPOP is banned, but it's still here," cabbie Stephane Molla said in Bordeaux, southwest France.

Cabbies in France, like their colleagues in several other countries, have held several protests against the app -- some of which have turned violent.

On at least two occasions in Strasbourg in eastern France last week, taxi drivers posed as customers in order to lure Uber drivers to isolated spots where they were assaulted by cab drivers and their vehicles damaged.

In Paris, the government tried to strengthen its hand on Wednesday by obtaining a court order banning Uber from operating in the capital, but the company dismissed the move.

"We will fight it (in the courts) and we'll see what happens on appeal. For the time being it changes nothing, UberPOP can continue to operate," the head of Uber France, Thibaud Simphal, told the BFM Business channel.

San Francisco-based Uber, which offers several types of ride-sharing services, claims to have 400,000 UberPOP users in France.

However, its drivers do not pay taxes, do not need to undergo the 250 hours of training mandatory for French cabbies and do not require the same insurance as taxis.

French anti-Uber protests turn violent as cars burn

Taxi drivers are furious over UberPOP, which puts customers in touch with private drivers at prices lower than those of traditional taxis.
Endangering jobs

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Vandals have targeted monuments dedicated to the leaders and soldiers of the Confederacy, painting the slogan "Black lives matter" on memorials in a half-dozen states where the landmarks stand tall in parks and outside government buildings.

The graffiti reflects the racial tension that permeates post-Ferguson America, more than a week after a white man was accused of shooting and killing nine black congregants at a Charleston, South Carolina, church.

Michael Allen, a lecturer in American culture studies at Washington University in St. Louis, compared the vandalism to the toppling of statues in Russia at the end of the Soviet empire.

"If the monuments are strong statements of past values, defacing them is the easiest and loudest way to rebuke those statements," Allen said.

Confederate symbols including the rebel battle flag have been the subject of resentment for years. The anger boiled over after last week's massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The suspect, Dylann Roof, posed in photos with the Confederate flag.

Politicians throughout the South are taking steps to remove the flag from public places. Black activists say the monuments should meet the same fate.

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FILE - This June 21, 2015, file photo shows a statue memorializing the Confederacy spray-painted wit …

One of the defaced monuments was the Confederate Memorial in St. Louis' Forest Park, 10 miles from Ferguson. The same graffiti was reported on memorials in Charleston; Baltimore; Austin, Texas; Asheville, North Carolina; and Richmond, Virginia. No arrests have been made.

Racial wounds in the U.S. were torn open last August, when a white police officer in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black and unarmed. Officer Darren Wilson was cleared of any wrongdoing, but the shooting raised new awareness about the treatment of blacks.

"Black lives matter" became a rallying call in protests that followed police shootings of black men in other cities, too. With the Charleston shooting refocusing attention on Confederate symbolism, experts said, it isn't surprising that some people would take out their anger on monuments to those who fought on the side of slavery.

Elizabeth Brondolo, a psychology professor at St. John's University in New York who studies the effects of race on mental and physical health, said the defacing of memorials reflects a "consensus that there's been a very serious failure of empathy, a failure to understand what these symbols might mean to people who suffered from slavery and ongoing aggression."

Defaced monuments at the University of Texas in Austin and in Richmond honor Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The Asheville monument pays homage to Zebulon Vance, a Confederate officer and later a governor and senator. Others, like the St. Louis memorial, are more generic tributes to those who fought for the South.

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FILE - In this June 21, 2015, file photo, the word "racism" is painted next to a statue me …

The future of the 32-foot-tall, 101-year-old statue in St. Louis was already in doubt. In April, Mayor Francis Slay ordered a study of what to do with it and asked for the review to be complete by the end of the summer. Options include altering the wording of the plaque, moving the monument out of Forest Park or removing it entirely.

The University of Texas in Austin is weighing options for its statues of Davis and other Confederate war heroes, with a decision expected by Aug. 1. Three of those statutes were damaged this week.

In Kentucky, both candidates for governor, along with other prominent political leaders, are calling for the Jefferson Davis statue to be removed from its prominent place in the statehouse rotunda and placed in a museum.

Efforts have also begun to seek removal of Confederate monuments in Nashville, Tennessee; Shreveport, Louisiana; Orlando, Florida; Portsmouth, Virginia; and Birmingham, Alabama.

Darrell Maples, commander of the Missouri chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said the "citizen-soldiers who fought for the Confederacy personified the best qualities of America."

He said altering or removing monuments is "divisive and unnecessary."

Brandi Collins of the civil rights group ColorOfChange.org said the effort isn't about revising history.

"It's about saying that if we are truly about equity, about moving forward, we have to respect everybody who lives in and built this country," she said.

Vandals targeting Confederate monuments

Beirut (AFP) - The Islamic State group killed 164 civilians in its offensive on the Kurdish town of Kobane, in what a monitor Friday called one of the jihadists' "worst massacres" in Syria.

The killing spree, which took place mostly inside Kobane itself, was widely seen as vengeance for a series of defeats inflicted on the jihadists by Kurdish militia in recent weeks.

At least 120 civilians were killed in a 24-hour rampage on Kobane, and another 26 were executed in a nearby village, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The bullet-riddled bodies of 18 people -- including children -- were found Friday in the streets of Kobane, the Britain-based Observatory said, adding that they had been shot "at close range".

"The body of one child bore the impact of five bullets," it said.

The assault -- in which 42 IS fighters and 10 Kurds also died -- began Thursday when three IS suicide bombers blew up vehicles at the entrances to Kobane, a symbol of Kurdish resistance.

Women were among civilians whose bodies were found in homes and on the streets, the Observatory said.

"According to medical sources and Kobane residents, 120 civilians were executed by IS in their homes or killed by the group's rockets or snipers," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

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A wounded child is brought to the hospital inTurkey's Suruc Turkey on June 25, 2015 after the Is …

"When they entered the town, the jihadists took up positions in buildings at the southeast and southwest entrances, firing at everything that moved."

Kurdish journalist Mostafa Ali said there was no military dimension to the assault.

- 'Human shields' -

"IS doesn't want to take over the town. They just came to kill the highest number of civilians in the ugliest ways possible," he told AFP.

Kurdish activist Arin Shekhmos said: "Every family in Kobane lost a family member on Thursday."

The jihadists entered Kobane at dawn Thursday disguised as Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters, Ali said.

They took up positions in buildings in the south of the town, using civilians as "human shields".

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Turkish soldiers stand guard as Kurdish people wait for their relatives near fences on the Syrian bo …

"There are at least 70 civilians in these various neighbourhoods that have been taken hostage by IS," Ali added.

"The YPG has sent reinforcements and have encircled the buildings, but the situation is difficult. The YPG doesn't want to hurt the women and children there."

More than 1,000 fleeing civilians waited on the Syrian side of the frontier with Turkey on Friday, carefully watched by Turkish troops and police.

Relatives who had made it across the border cried in despair, an AFP photographer reported.

Kobane was the scene of one of IS's most dramatic defeats when Kurdish militia backed by US-led air strikes ousted the jihadists in January after four months of heavy fighting.

Kurdish fighters have gone on to seize Tal Abyad, another border town farther east, in a blow to the jihadists' supply lines.

IS has hit back against Kurdish victories with an offensive against Hasakeh in the northeast, capital of the mainly Kurdish province of the same name.

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Syrian Kurds wait behind barbed wired on the Syrian side after they fled the town of Kobane, also kn …

- Suicide bombing -

Abdel Rahman said IS had seized two neighbourhoods in the city's south as government forces, who jointly controlled the city with Kurdish militia, launched air strikes.

At least 20 jihadists and 30 pro-government fighters were killed when IS captured southern parts of Hasakeh.

An IS suicide bomber also killed at least 20 regime troops on Friday, when he targeted a criminal security headquarters, the Observatory said.

Pictures posted online by IS show what appear to be soldiers' bodies as well as weapons and ammunition.

On Thursday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the Hasakeh clashes had displaced an estimated 60,000 people, including 10,000 who fled north towards Amuda.

Shekhmos said civilians from southern neighbourhoods had fled to Kurdish-controlled parts of the city, but that the YPG was not yet involved in the fighting.

The jihadists previously advanced to the southern edge of Hasakeh in May but were pushed back by government forces.

Information Minister Omran Zohbi urged "anyone who is capable of carrying a gun" to "protect Hasakeh", official SANA news agency reported.

In southern Syria, a rebel alliance has been pressing an assault since Thursday on the city and provincial capital of Daraa that has killed 70 people, 40 of them rebels, said the Observatory.

Al-Jazeera news channel said its 19-year-old cameraman Mohammed al-Asfer was killed covering the Daraa clashes.

The Syrian regime has already lost two provincial capitals in the four-year-old civil war: IS-held Raqa in the Euphrates valley and Idlib in the northwest, which is held by a rebel alliance including Al-Qaeda.

At least 230,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict erupted in 2011 in Daraa.