The Isis papers: leaked documents show how Isis is building its state

Blueprint lays bare new contours of Islamic state, complete with civil service, regional government and Soviet levels of economic control

Shiv Malik, The Guardian

A leaked internal Islamic State manual shows how the terrorist group has set about building a state in Iraq and Syria complete with government departments, a treasury and an economic programme for self-sufficiency, the Guardian can reveal.

The 24-page document, obtained by the Guardian, sets out a blueprint for establishing foreign relations, a fully fledged propaganda operation, and centralised control over oil, gas and the other vital parts of the economy.

From control of oil and land to rules governing leisure, internal memos seen by the Guardian show how deliberate Isis’s state-building exercise has been

The manual, written last year and entitled Principles in the administration of the Islamic State, lays bare Isis’s state-building aspirations and the ways in which it has managed to set itself apart as the richest and most destabilising jihadi group of the past 50 years.

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