STRUCTURE OF A STATE - CAPTURED DOCUMENTS AND THE ISLAMIC STATE’S ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

These findings touch on three key areas: the size of the male population on the payroll of the Islamic State, the size of the larger population supported by the male population, and the organizational structure of the Islamic State as revealed by the information contained in these documents. [...] This fact provides an important answer to one of the pressing questions related to the success of the Islamic State in governing a territory that at one point was as large as the United Kingdom: how was the group able to do it? Based on this evidence, the answer was in part that the organization was actually quite large in terms of the number of individuals that had pledged loyalty to it, much mor. [...] This number is a sobering reminder of the expansive nature of the Islamic State’s governance project, but also of the associated challenges in dealing with the territorial defeat of the caliphate. [...] These individuals essentially rented the land and paid a tax to the Islamic State or agreed to give it a share in the revenue yield from the crops.39 In other words, it is likely that the actual number of people contributing to the agricultural sector is more than just those who were designated and paid by the Islamic State for pertaining to the Ministry of Agriculture. [...] The starting point was a propaganda video released by the Islamic State on July 12, 2016, titled “The Structure of the Khilafah,” in which the Islamic State discussed the various ministries (dawawin) that presented the institutional structure of the organization in each of the provinces under its control.41 According to the video, these ministries “have offices in every wilayah [province] that ass.