It was on 4 October last year that Isis captured the small city of Hit, seizing complete control in the space of just a few hours. For the city’s 100,000 mostly Sunni residents the takeover by the self-proclaimed Islamic State has brought changes that some support, but others deeply resent.

Among those living in Hit when Isis rolled in was Faisal, a 35-year-old government employee who is married with two children, and a keen observer of all that has befallen the agricultural centre and former transport hub over the past five months.

He recently fled to the Kurdish capital, Erbil, where he described to The Independent the rule of Isis and its impact on Hit, starting with the day the city was captured. “First let me tell you how Isis entered the city,” he says. “At 4am we heard an explosion; Isis had exploded a bomb at the main checkpoint. Then they started fighting inside and outside the city. This was because some of their fighters were attacking from outside but others were locals, who belonged to sleeper cells and attacked the Iraqi security forces from behind. They captured all the police stations, aside from two that resisted until 5pm, after which Isis had total control.”

Faisal, not his real name, says he had no problems with Isis checkpoints even during the first days after the jihadist group captured Hit, because they were often manned by his neighbours who knew who he was. They had lists of wanted people and they sometimes checked ID cards.

Timeline: The emergence of Isis Show all 40 1 /40 Timeline: The emergence of Isis Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qa’eda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a “real war” with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assad’s regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a “conspiracy”. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Laden’s successor) concerned about Isis’ expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis’ along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloff’s murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Obama tells us that America “will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country” EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis’ media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist group’s al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis’ stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis’s deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic city’s ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyra’s residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamist’s positions. AFP

Faisal explains: “When Isis took Hit, they stopped food being sold to people in Haditha because it was still held by the government. In response, Haditha cut off the supply of electricity to Hit and many other cities which had come under Isis control.”

This stopped all projects in Hit dependent on electricity, including the water-treatment stations, so there was a water shortage. People had to obtain their water from the heavily polluted Euphrates.

Because Hit is at the centre of an agricultural area there continues to be plentiful food available at cheap prices. The problem is that, although food is inexpensive, many cannot afford to buy it because all paid work has stopped and nobody is earning any money. Paradoxically, the only people still paid are Iraqi government employees, because even though it has lost control of the city, Baghdad wants to retain their loyalty – Isis does not want to prevent earnings that it can tax.

Isis provides some services itself by taking domestic gas cylinders, almost invariably used in Iraq for cooking, to be refilled in the group’s Syrian capital Raqqa.

Islamic State fighters parading through Raqqa (AP)

Faisal particularly resents Isis’s vigorous intervention in every aspect of daily life in Hit. “They poke their noses into education, mosques, women’s clothes, taxes on shops (zakat), and many other aspects of life,” he said. “My parents and brothers told me yesterday via satellite internet call that there are about 2,000 men appointed to check the shops in the city and collect the taxes under the name of Zakat, not just from the shops, but from employees’ salaries.

“In education they changed the courses taught before and brought in new ones, that are being taught now in Raqqa and Fallujah. Some courses are modified or cancelled, like philosophy and chemistry. They cancelled classes in art, music, geography, philosophy, sociology, psychology and Christian religion, and asked mathematics teachers to remove any questions that refer to democracy and elections.

“Biology teachers can’t refer to evolution. Arabic classes are not allowed to teach any ‘pagan’ poems.” (Isis refers to anything outside the boundaries of its self-declared Caliphate, established on 29 June last year, as the Pagan World.)

Faisal says petrol and oil products are available in Hit, but they are expensive and of poor quality. “This is because the crude oil available in Raqqa [Isis captured most of the Syrian oilfields] is refined in a rough-and-ready way and then exported to Iraqi regions under Isis control. These poor-quality oil products ruin car engines, machinery and generators.”

Isis is paranoid about mobile phones and the internet being used to communicate information about it, giving away the location of its leaders and military units which could then be destroyed by US air strikes. Until February, mobile phones were working in Hit, but then there was heavy fighting in the nearby town of al-Baghdadi and Isis, fearing spies, blew up the mobile telephone masts.

The internet has not worked in Anbar Province for the last eight months, compelling people to use satellite internet connections that are monitored by Isis. More recently the group offered a limited internet service, though this is only available in internet offices and other locations monitored by the jihadist group. There is no internet access from private homes, while in the public locations, Faisal says, “Isis can spy on computers so they can see what you are surfing and to whom you are talking”.

Predictably, Isis focuses on religion and spreading its variant of Islam. Faisal says: “Many preachers (imams) were replaced by foreign preachers from the Arab world, mostly Saudis, Tunisians and Libyans, as well as Afghans. Some new imams are appointed temporarily just for Friday speech and prayer, while others are permanent appointments. Isis removed some of the old preachers who have left for Baghdad or KRG (the Kurdish-controlled region). These are often Sufis, whose beliefs are rejected by Isis.”

There are many other signs of Isis imposing its cultural agenda in Hit. Faisal says that “at the entrance to every main street and bazaar, there are Isis groups holding black dresses that cover the whole body including the face and head. If a woman does not have one, she must buy one [for about £8] and the money goes to the Isis treasury.”

Are people joining Isis in Hit? Faisal says they do, often for economic reasons. “I know many people in my neighbourhood in Hit who joined Isis,” he says. “They are paid little money, about 175,000 dinars (£80), but they say that the salary is enough because they also enjoy many privileges, including free fuel, cooking gas, sugar, tea, bread, and many other foodstuffs and services.

“Isis still has a strong financial basis. It confiscates the houses of the people who were previously employed in the police, courts, and security forces. These houses, and any furniture in them, are confiscated by the Sharia (legal or religious) court, where the judges are Libyan and Tunisian, though the other staff are locals. The ruling authority in Hit is headed by the military governor, the religious (legal) governor, the security governor and finally the administrative governor.”

Faisal’s account of life in Hit is confirmed by eyewitnesses from other parts of the Islamic State. Isis at first benefited from widespread popular relief that the Iraqi Army was gone, but there is deepening resentment against the enforcement of outlandish rules on personal behaviour that is contrary to local religious and social traditions. These include women being forced to wear the niqab (covering their faces), obligatory attendance at prayers and the destruction of mosques, such as the Younis mosque in Mosul, deemed by Isis to be un-Islamic shrines.

Isis has imposed sweeping restrictions on personal freedoms in the northern province of Raqqa. Among the restrictions, women must wear the niqab, or face unspecified punishments (Reuters) (REUTERS/Stringer)

There is also the fear of conscription of young men to fight for the Islamic State, an obligation that is increasingly difficult to avoid and is leading many families to try to leave Isis-controlled territory, which is not easy to do.

But despite resentment by many at its takeover of mosques and schools, Isis is able to use these to propagate its views and to make converts – something that may strengthen the forces of the Islamic State. Conscription does not seem to have diluted the fanaticism of Isis fighters, or their willingness to take heavy casualties, according to Kurdish commanders who have come under attack by Isis units in recent months.

Local eyewitnesses confirm that the unpopularity of Isis is not universal. Sameer, a Kurdish shopkeeper in Mosul, told The Independent last November that “in spite of the coalition air strikes every night and every morning, Isis increases in terms of the number of its men and the territory they occupy”.

Since then, Isis has retreated from much of the Sinjar area west of Mosul, but Ali Hussein Mustafa, a 21-year-old university student who left Mosul last month, says that “many Isis men were much better than the fighters of the Iraqi Army in dealing with people and helping them”.

He says this better behaviour was not invariable and criticised Isis fighters at some checkpoints who harassed or swore at women whose face was not hidden. He added, however, that many people had now concluded that “Isis rule is no better, and maybe worse, than what they endured before [when the US or Iraqi government was in charge of Mosul from 2003 to 2014]”.

When discussing the origins and motivations of Isis as a movement, Faisal, hitherto factual and down-to-earth, falls back on conspiracy theories. Because he believes that the actions of Isis will be very damaging to the Sunni in the long term, he is convinced that it must be under the control of the Sunni’s traditional enemies. “To me, Isis is an Iranian-American project and, when its mission ends, Isis may leave the region,” he says. “Most of the Sunni people who experience the rule of Isis do not believe it is establishing a state, but intends to destroy Sunni areas.”

More realistically, Faisal detects a lack of seriousness in Baghdad’s efforts to drive out Isis, saying that “so long as corruption prevails, any solution to the problems of the country, including the recapture of cities taken by Isis, will not work”. As for the impact of US air strikes, “they are limiting the movement of Isis a little bit and weakening it, but not more”.