BEYOND SYRIA IRAQ

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tough challenges. Insecurity, intimidation, and outright mortal danger are
the plausible if not predictable risks to would-be researchers, and to any willing
informants, in such inhospitable terrain. As a result, while anecdotes
about life under IS proliferate, precious little reliable or useful hard data is
available about it.
But not zero data. In fact, some notable efforts have been made to surmount
these daunting obstacles, chiefly in the major original IS strongholds
of Syria or Iraq. A few intrepid experts have actually conducted long-distance—admittedly
imperfect, yet intriguing—surveys in Mosul and parts of
Syria, using cellphones, Facebook, or other relatively anonymous means to
contact respondents. Usually the samples are not textbook random ones but
referral (also known as “snowball” or “chain-link”) samples, in which a few
selected and trusted interviewers solicit information from an expanding network
of contacts suggested by previous participants.
To be sure, controls must be applied to reduce the unavoidably incestuous
or self-selected nature and the built-in biases of such techniques—for example,
degrees of separation, demographic quotas, and, most of all, explicit acknowledgement
of their limitations. Frequently, given the practical difficulties, the
samples are not only nonrandom but also small, typically comprising a few
hundred, although online surveys may attract thousands of responses.
The results of such IS-frontline field research in Syria and Iraq probably
give some hints about local support or opposition to that organization in
other provinces. Surveys conducted in Mosul by Iraqi pollster Munqith al-
Dagher, who freely concedes their methodological limitations, suggest that
many ordinary Sunni Arabs forced to live under IS rule are still opposed to
anti-IS bombing raids by the coalition and fearful of “liberation” by Shiite or
Kurdish militias. The point is that even if they do not support their IS overlords,
some may prefer “the devil they know” to the danger and uncertainty
of either urban warfare or conquest by another contending faction.
Similarly, in Syria, small-scale private surveys of anti-IS Arab communities
on the front lines also indicate widespread opposition to Kurdish militias,
which are fighting against IS, too, but are nevertheless broadly distrusted.
Less than a third of those Arab respondents support any alignment with the
Kurds against the common IS foe. A slightly larger minority, but still less
than half, recognize that the dominant Kurdish party must play some role in
a post-IS Syrian political configuration. In other words, the enemy of their
IS enemy is mostly not their friend.
The anecdotal evidence is also mixed. Civilians fleeing besieged Tikrit,
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