Beirut: Daesh has started an anti-smoking campaign through billboards of its de facto capital Al Raqqa and in its online propaganda — testimony that the terrorist organisation is alive and well despite non-stop air strikes from Syrian, American and Russian airplanes.
Billboards sprung up on the streets of Al Raqqa saying: “Smoking has killed millions.” Next to the crimson text is the graphic photo of a blood-dripping cigarette perched on the corner of an ashtray. Unlike the case in 2010, when a smoking ban was briefly implemented by the Syrian government and then broken by society, restaurateurs, and coffee-shop owners, these billboards were not signed off by the Ministry of Health but by Daesh.
The anti-smoking ad is trendy and far from amateurish, appearing to be cleverly crafted by graphic designers, much like Daesh’s online magazine Dabiq. The objective, of course, is religious puritanism and not health awareness. Daesh has banned tobacco sale and consumption in Al Raqqa since the summer of 2014. Cigarettes, shishas, cigars, and pipes are all prohibited, labelled “sinful” by the state’s self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi — himself a one-time chain smoker who quit the habit ten years ago, after being released from an American jail in Iraq. Cigarettes corrupt the mind, distract worshipers from prayer, and are unIslamic, say Daesh clerics at Friday sermons.
In Al Bab near Aleppo, Daesh beheaded wrongdoers at the gates of a famous shisha café back in 2014, making the venue forever synonymous with pictures of decapitated corpse and a blood soaked pavement. According to the terror group’s Preaching Office: “Every smoker should be aware that he is disobeying God with every cigarette he smokes in a state of trance and vanity.” Cigarettes are a “slow suicide” it added, ordering the burning of millions of packs in the first quarter of 2015. Breaking the smoking ban is punishable by 40 lashes. Repeat offenders can be imprisoned or even executed. The penalty is stricter for clerics and teenagers below the age of 18. Many residents still smoke in their homes, paying astronomical sums of money to smuggle cigarettes from neighbouring Turkey.
Before the war broke out Syrians used to spend approximately $600 million annually on tobacco consumption, according to government statistics. No less than 20 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men were official smokers and 98 per cent of the overall population was affected by passive smoke, although there are no such figures for the situation since 2011.
At checkpoints in Daesh-held villages and towns, both men and women are body-searched for illegal arms and a wide assortment of prohibited products that in addition to tobacco include iPods, nail polish, mascara, toothbrushes, bottled fragrances, condoms, tampons, and deodorants.
