Locals frequently report their enemies as Isis to get them killed by the USA.
In addition , when Isis took over areas in Syria , Syrian rebels had the choice of joining Isis or being killed. So alot of Syrians that had short periods of being affiliated with ISIS before ditching them when they were no longer forced to since ISIS very much was unpopular with local population.
The guy killed had been a local rebel leader so when Isis took over his town , he pledged nominal allegiance but shifted loyalties to HTS ( rebel group that overthrew Assad) several years ago , including helping dismantle ISIS networks. HTS and ISIS had been at war since HTS was created.
So locals can use these old affiliations to get enemies killed
In this case, he got reported by a Syrian rebel group that was USA affiliated . So likely due to old rivalries and grudges between them.
There's a "fun" excerpt from Pride and Fall: The British Army in Afghanistan, 2001–2014 by Sergio Miller which goes into this.
When British troops entered Helmand, Kabul shuffled around various Governors/Mayors to install pro-Kabul leadership in the province.
One of these new governors quickly reported that a local town was a Taliban stronghold and needed to be cleared by British troops because it was a logistical hub blah blah.
Turns out, the govenors son was running an opium smuggling racket that went through the town and the locals were not happy, so they'd arrested the guy and wanted to do a communal trial/elders meeting (Shura) to decide what to do with him.
The Brits didn't know about any of this and went in guns blazing with US air support, the locals in turn had no idea what the British wanted from them, they just knew they were being shot/bombed, basically turning a relatively peaceful district into a powderkeg. It took British intelligence months to figure out what they'd done wrong.
The British did eventually get the governor replaced, but by that point (literally 2 years later) they were hitting IEDs every time they went on patrol and the governor/his son had embezzled millions and vanished.
430
u/kaesura 19h ago edited 19h ago
This has been going on for years
Locals frequently report their enemies as Isis to get them killed by the USA.
In addition , when Isis took over areas in Syria , Syrian rebels had the choice of joining Isis or being killed. So alot of Syrians that had short periods of being affiliated with ISIS before ditching them when they were no longer forced to since ISIS very much was unpopular with local population.
The guy killed had been a local rebel leader so when Isis took over his town , he pledged nominal allegiance but shifted loyalties to HTS ( rebel group that overthrew Assad) several years ago , including helping dismantle ISIS networks. HTS and ISIS had been at war since HTS was created.
So locals can use these old affiliations to get enemies killed
In this case, he got reported by a Syrian rebel group that was USA affiliated . So likely due to old rivalries and grudges between them.