Mara Revkin is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Yale, where her research focuses on governance and lawmaking by armed groups. Her dissertation examines variation in civilian cooperation with and resistance against rebel governance through multi-method data collection on the case of the Islamic State. Mara holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was an Islamic Law & Civilization Research Fellow in 2016–17. Her legal scholarship focuses on the treatment of civilians who have lived in areas controlled and governed by terrorist groups under international humanitarian law and domestic material support laws. She has served as the lead researcher on Iraq and Syria for two projects on (1) child recruitment by armed groups and (2) post-IS transitional justice implemented by United Nations University, the research wing of the U.N. system.
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“[The Islamic State]’s ideology is so dangerous that we cannot afford to show any leniency” —an Iraqi judge interviewed in Mosul (Dec. 13, 2017)
Last month, the Islamic State’s official media outlet, al-Furqān, released its first video in over a year, entitled, “The Structure of the Khilafah.” Al-Furqān is known for producing the group’s most horrific propaganda, including infamous footage showing the torture and execution of journalists, aid workers, and POWs, so it is noteworthy that the latest video features relatively little violence.