One of the Western intelligence officers said human intelligence - as opposed to information gathered from devices such as mobile phones - was now crucial because the militants increasingly avoid means of communication prone to surveillance. They use the tribal links," said Samer al Ahmad, an expert on jihadist groups who comes from the region. "They want revenge so they resort to cooperating with their relatives to leak information and give locations of leaders of IS. Many of the spies come from the Sheitaat tribe, an offshoot of Syria's biggest tribe, the Akaidat, who fought with U.S.-backed forces to drive Islamic State from swathes of northeast Syria, taking the city of Raqqa after a long battle in 2017.
The three Western intelligence officers and a regional security official corroborated their accounts. The U.S.-financed tribal networks have penetrated Islamic State sleeper cells and compiled data on new recruits, who include fellow tribesmen in some cases, five tribal sources said. military officer confirmed that informants were paid but did not elaborate. Others were contributing directly via a phone line set up by the coalition to receive tips, Sheitaat tribal chief Kassab said. Some informants were being recruited by tribal intermediaries who were already part of the network.
While four sources familiar with the intelligence gathering operation say money is sometimes paid for information, many informants are driven by revenge for the atrocities committed by the group at the peak of its power. With many of Islamic State's foreign commanders killed or detained, Syrians have become increasingly significant in its leadership, making the militants more vulnerable to penetration by fellow Syrians keen to settle scores, Western and regional intelligence sources and three senior tribal figures said. Central Command said at the time that the strike against Agal followed extensive planning. military, which has about 900 troops in northeastern Syria, said Agal was one of the group's top five leaders and had been responsible for developing Islamic State networks outside Iraq and Syria. The Western intelligence officer who confirmed the account of Agal's assassination, and the lengthy period of tracking by tribesmen before the strike, has been briefed on tribal support for counter-insurgency activities by the U.S.-led coalition. "This is something that required a deep network in the region," said the official, who declined to be named as he was not authorised to speak publicly about the matter. military official said that in the operation against Agal, the targeting was almost entirely based on human intelligence. "Informants from the same tribe are tipping off about their own cousins in Islamic State," he said.Īsked about the role of tribal informants in Syria, a U.S. "These networks of informants are working with the Americans who are planting them everywhere," said Yasser al Kassab, a tribal chief from the town of Gharanij in the Deir al-Zor area. military's campaign to further degrade the group, three Western intelligence sources and six tribal sources said. The Arab tribesmen in Syria seeking vengeance are now part of a growing network of tribal spies playing a significant role in the U.S.
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While Islamic State is a shadow of the group that ruled over a third of Syria and Iraq in a Caliphate declared in 2014, hundreds of fighters are still camped in desolate areas where neither the U.S.-led coalition nor the Syrian army, with support from Russia and Iranian-backed militias, exert full control. In one of its bloodiest atrocities, Islamic State massacred more than 900 members of the Sheitaat tribe in three towns in Syria's eastern Deir al-Zor region in 2014 when they rebelled against jihadist rule. "It has healed the burning in our hearts." "I exacted revenge in blood for those of my tribe whom Daesh crucified, executed and beheaded without mercy," the person, who declined to identified for security reasons, told Reuters by phone from Syria. The tribesman, whose account was confirmed by a Western intelligence officer in the region, said tribal relatives in contact with the Islamic State commander's immediate family had secretly been keeping tabs on him for months in northern Syria.
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