Leaked Isis papers may contain old information but it is valuable

Documents purporting to be administrative records of foreign fighters who entered Syria to join Islamic State emerged on Wednesday, providing personal details of militants from all over the world who arrived to join the jihadi army. Some apparent inconsistencies, however, led some observers to question the veracity of the documents.

Are the documents new?

Tim Ramadan of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a group of anti-Isis journalists and activists operating clandestinely in territories held by the terror group, said there was a proliferation of similar administrative documents published online over the past two years after the recapture of territory that Isis had controlled. “The unfortunate reality is that I know people who forged documents and presented them as real and even received asylum as a consequence,” he said.

However, Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi expert who advises the government on Isis, said he believed the documents were authentic, saying similar ones had been found in Isis headquarters in Iraq’s Salaheddine province after the group was driven from towns in the area. He said he had seen the newly published documents six months earlier and vouched for their accuracy.

Islamic State logo

There are discrepancies in the name of the terror group – the logo describes it as “Dawlat al-Islam fil Iraq wal Sham” (the State of Islam in Iraq and the Levant) while the header describes it as “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fil Iraq wal Sham” (theIslamic State in Iraq and the Levant). Both names have been used in the past, though the second one appears on official correspondence.

Problematic dates

One of the entry dates into Syria for a British jihadi predates the existence of Isis, occurring in January 2013. This can be explained away by saying that the individual joined Isis after he had entered Syria to fight for another faction. This means, however, that the documents are not entry records into the caliphate. Another fact that indicates this purpose is that there are fields for when the fighter was killed.

Formatting

Some of the forms are formatted from left to right, when Arabic is written from right to left, though this can also be explained away as simply an error in formatting (earlier versions of Microsoft Word are notoriously finicky when it comes to writing in Arabic). The stamp at the bottom of the documents is clearly digitised, so we have to make the assumption that the records were entirely done electronically.