Truckers struggle to navigate Iraq's Isis-controlled roads

Radad, a truck driver, is picking up a cargo of paint from Amman to take on the long trip to Baghdad, which runs via detours, roadblocks and dirt roads through territory controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis).

"Sometimes it takes four days, sometimes a week, and sometimes a month if there is congestion at the border," he says of the 500-mile trip that before war came to Iraq took less than a day.

The arduous and potentially perilous journey from Jordan through Iraq shows how the war against Isis has disrupted the region's trade links and economies.

It also illustrates the growing financial pressure Isis is under. Truckers say the group extorts large transit fees, typically $300 to $400 per truck, from vehicles passing through its territory.

Isis - Daesh to Arabic-speakers - controls a swath of land that runs for about 200km through Anbar, the large desert province in western Iraq.

The militant group recently launched an assault on Ramadi, the regional capital. "Where is the coalition?" says Abu Hussein, another truck driver picking up electronic goods from Amman to take back to Baghdad. "We can see Daesh in the streets."

Abu Hussein stopped to have his truck serviced at al-Ruwayshid, the last big town before the Iraqi border in the bleak, rock-strewn desert of Jordan's long eastern panhandle. Here, truckers have their vehicles washed, eat kebabs, and share information on changing road conditions in areas controlled by Isis or the Iraqi army and Shia militias fighting to dislodge it.

Drivers found carrying tobacco, which Isis forbids, will have their cargo destroyed or - says Abu Hussein - could be whipped. Sometimes, Daesh fighters ask truckers to recite verses from the Koran to prove they are Muslim.

However, most say they are allowed to pass through Isis territory after paying a levy. The fee they pay ranges from the $300 Radad will pay on his cargo of paint up to $1,000 per truck for pharmaceuticals.

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After paying, truckers are given a form with the stamp of the self-proclaimed Isis "caliphate". Most tear it up or hide it after leaving the group's territory to avoid angering Iraqi soldiers waiting at checkpoints closer to Baghdad.

According to reports from Isis territory, where western journalists cannot operate, Isis is also cutting spending and salaries and squeezing more money out of local business because of a loss of revenue caused by coalition advances in the campaign, including air strikes on the infrastructure needed to produce and sell oil.

"With the loss of territory since the beginning of the year, increasingly Isis are having to be very dependent on their local 'taxation' - essentially extortion," says Jordan Perry, Middle East analyst with Verisk Maplecroft, the security consultancy. "That road is a big source of income for them," he says of the highway between Amman and Baghdad.

Abu Qasem, who is having his truck washed by the roadside at al-Ruwayshid, says: "They take it as taxes - for their salaries, or whatever." Like other truckers interviewed for this article, he declined to give his full name because he lives in Iraq and works in territory controlled by Isis.

In February, after Isis released a video showing the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot captured by the group in Syria, Jordan forbade its truckers from using the road. "The government did not want any more Jordanian hostages in Isis' hands," says Mohammad Dawood, head of the Jordanian truck owners' union.

Instead, some Jordanian drivers take their cargo to the Iraqi border and reload it on to vehicles with Iraqi drivers, who make the rest of the trip. Jordanian exporters have stopped using the road to ship cars for fear Isis might steal them, instead sending them by the far longer sea route to Basra.

The number of trucks crossing from Jordan into Iraq has fallen from about 400 a day in 2012, before Isis seized territory, to 45 when the border was closed to Jordanian vehicles, according to Mr Dawood. He estimates the industry's losses on the route at JD150m ($211m) in 2013 and 2014.

Isis and its fees are by no means the only hazards on the road. Because of clashes between the Iraqi army and the group on the main Amman-Baghdad route, drivers are often diverted on to dirt roads to avoid fighting, in detours that add days to their trips.

The drivers, many of whom are Sunni Muslims from Anbar, say they also fear Shia militia groups active nearer Baghdad. Parts of Anbar have seen increased fighting in recent days as the coalition stepped up its bombing raids in the area.

Abu Omar, who is having his Mercedes 12-wheeler washed in al-Ruwayshid, picks up cargo from Egypt and brings it as far as the Iraqi border, where another driver takes over for the journey into Iraq.

When asked whether he is reluctant to take the route himself, he replies: "Why do you think I don't go?"

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