Via Daily Star:
Iraq’s Al-Qaeda-inspired militants who took over the city of Fallujah are now trying to show they can run it, providing social services, policing the streets and implementing Shariah rulings in a bid to win the support of its Sunni population.
Gunmen in ski masks and Afghan-style tunics patrol the streets, but also perform a sort of community outreach. On a recent day, they were seen repairing damaged electricity poles and operating bulldozers to remove concrete blast walls and clear garbage. Others planted flowers in a highway median, and some fighters approached residents in the street and apologized for gaps in services, promising to address them.
The Islamist militants have also made themselves the law in the city and aim to show they are acting to prevent crime. On Thursday, militants cut off the right hand of a man accused of robbing a mobile phone shop and paraded him through Fallujah in the back of a pickup truck, forcing him to raise his stump to show people, according to witnesses in the city.
The push by the Al-Qaeda breakaway group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, marks an effort to bolster their standing in a community that remains under siege and exhausted by three months of clashes between the insurgents and government forces.
The group is trying to increase its appeal among the broader Sunni minority in Iraq, where resentment against the Shiite-led government runs deep – and it is trying to correct past mistakes. In the 2007, many major Sunni tribes turned against Al-Qaeda militants and formed U.S.-backed militias to battle the group, angered by its rampant killings during the height of the country’s sectarian bloodbath following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Many in the Sunni community still bitterly hate the militants, and some tribes have joined government forces in fighting the group in Fallujah.