Cracks Begin to Show in ISIS Areas

SANLIURFA, Turkey — After the Syrian government stopped paying him, a technician who had spent two decades pumping the country’s oil received an enticing offer: do the same work for the Islamic State — starting at three times the salary.

He was soon helping to fill tanker trucks with crude oil to fund the Islamic State. But frequent executions of those suspected of spying and deadly airstrikes made life hard, and he grew angry that the country’s resources were financing the jihadists while schools and hospitals were being shut down.

“We thought they wanted to get rid of the regime, but they turned out to be thieves,” the technician said after fleeing to this city.

The Islamic State claims to be more than a militant group, selling itself as a government for the world’s Muslims. But that statehood project is in distress, according to interviews with people who have recently fled.

Under pressure from airstrikes by several countries and new ground offensives by Kurdish and Shiite militias, the jihadists are showing the strain. Some fighters have taken pay cuts, while others have slipped away. Important services have been failing because of poor maintenance. And as its smuggling and oil businesses have faltered, the Islamic State has further squeezed people in the region for taxes and tolls.

Those stresses do not point to its imminent collapse.

Ground forces ready to fight the Islamic State — also known as ISIS or ISIL — in its strongholds in Syria and Iraq are still lacking. And the group is keeping its international profile high by launching foreign attacks like those that brought down a Russian airliner in Egypt and paralyzed Paris. It is also investing in new affiliates in countries like Libya, where it faces little resistance.

But the promise of statehood on land it controls in Syria and Iraq is the main factor distinguishing it from Al Qaeda and a powerful draw for recruits from around the world.

That call to join the Islamic State is still going out. But its promises seem false as residents living in ISIS- controlled areas flee deprivation, an intensifying barrage of airstrikes and an organization that many Sunni Muslims say has acted more like an organized- crime ring than their defender.

“So many people are migrating,” said a teacher from the Syrian city of Deir al-Zour who fled to Turkey last month. “ISIS wants to build a new society, but they’ll end up all alone.”

When the schools run by the Syrian government closed, the teacher said, she set up an informal one and kept it going when the jihadists arrived. But she gave up, she said, after some activists were executed, worried she would be next.

The jihadists have long recognized and acted on the need for skilled professionals to build statelike institutions. The caliphate “is in more need than ever before for experts, professionals and specialists who can help contribute to strengthening its structure and tending to the needs of their Muslim brothers,” read an appeal last year in the group’s English- language magazine, Dabiq.

But that call has come up short, leaving the jihadists struggling to find people able to run oil equipment, fix electricity networks and provide medical care, former residents say. “They don’t have professionals, so they have to pay people to do things,” said a pharmacist from eastern Syria.

Stories abound of the Islamic State putting loyal members in positions they are not qualified for. The head of medical services in one town is a former construction worker, residents said. The boss at an oil field was a merchant, a former employee said.

Fleeing is difficult, as the jihadists try to keep people in. Unable to get permission to leave, Naef alAsaad, 55, paid a smuggler $150 per person to get his family out. “ISIS would not let us leave,” Mr. Asaad said. “They said, ‘ You are going to the infidels.’ ”

The group still terrifies those who have lived under it, and many who have sought refuge in southern Turkey fear that ISIS agents there will target them for criticizing the group. They spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Like many, a technician who worked in a natural gas field said that the jihadists’ promises of statehood had failed to materialize. “Public support is important, and they don’t have it,” he said. “People heard good words from them but didn’t see anything good come out of it.”