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Late Edition

By AZADEH MOAVENI

SOUTHERN TURKEY — Duahad only been working for twomonths with the Khansaa Bri-gade, the all-female morality po-lice of the Islamic State, when herfriends were brought to the sta-tion to be whipped.

The police had hauled in twowomen she had known sincechildhood, a mother and her teen-age daughter, both distraught.Their abayas, flowing blackrobes, had been deemed tooform-fitting.

When the mother saw Dua, sherushed over and begged her to in-tercede. The room felt stuffy asDua weighed what to do.

“Their abayas really were very

tight. I told her it was their ownfault; they had come out wearingthe wrong thing,” she said. “Theywere unhappy with that.”

Dua sat back down andwatched as the other officerstook the women into a back roomto be whipped. When they re-moved their face-concealingniqabs, her friends were alsofound to be wearing makeup. Itwas 20 lashes for the abaya of-fense, five for the makeup, andanother five for not being meekenough when detained.

Their cries began ringing out,and Dua stared hard at the ceil-ing, a lump building in her throat.

In the short time since she hadjoined the Khansaa Brigade inher hometown, Raqqa, in north-ern Syria, the morality force hadgrown more harsh. Mandatoryabayas and niqabs were still newfor many women in the weeks af-ter the jihadists of the IslamicState had purged the city of com-peting militants and taken over.At first, the brigade was told togive the community a chance toadapt, and clothing offensesbrought small fines.

After too many young womenbecame repeat offenders, howev-er, paying the fines withoutchanging their behavior, the softapproach was out. Now it waswhipping — and now it was herfriends being punished.

The mother and daughtercame to Dua’s parents’ house af-terward, furious with her andventing their anger at the IslamicState.

“They said they hated it andwished it had never come to Raq-qa,” Dua said. She pleaded withthem, explaining that as a youngand new member of the KhansaaBrigade, there was nothing shecould have done.

TARA TODRAS-WHITEHILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Aws, 25, was a member of the Islamic State’s morality police in Raqqa, Syria. She and two other women fled to Turkey this year.

For ISIS Women, Fraught Choices

Risky Path to Enforcing Morality Laws in Syria Ends in Exile

STATE OF TERROR

The All-Female Force

Continued on Page 20

This article is by Matt Apuzzo,Mark Mazzetti and Michael S.Schmidt.

WASHINGTON — When Is-lamic State fighters overran astring of Iraqi cities last year, an-alysts at United States CentralCommand wrote classified as-sessments for military intelli-gence officials and policy makersthat documented the humiliatingretreat of the Iraqi Army. But be-fore the assessments were final,former intelligence officials said,the analysts’ superiors made sig-nificant changes.

In the revised documents, theIraqi Army had not retreated atall. The soldiers had simply “re-deployed.”

Such changes are at the heartof an expanding internal Penta-gon investigation of Centcom, asCentral Command is known,where analysts say that supervi-sors revised conclusions to masksome of the American military’sfailures in training Iraqi troopsand beating back the IslamicState. The analysts say supervi-sors were particularly eager topaint a more optimistic picture ofAmerica’s role in the conflict than

Inquiry GrowsInto Intelligence

On ISIS Surge

Continued on Page 14

By MICHAEL PAULSON

Here’s a recipe for a terribleplay: Characters are rarely in thesame room as one another; con-versations are typed rather thanspoken; one side of a disputecan’t be heard by the audience.

Not great drama but, in 2015America, the stuff of real life,where the rapid spread of mobiletechnology has redefined the waypeople talk, the way they shop,the way they walk down thestreet.

As a result, it is redefining howthey interact onstage and, in theprocess, challenging playwrights,directors and set designers whoare trying to figure out mattersas technical as how to let theateraudiences know what is beingsaid on screens they cannot see,and as cosmic as what techno-logical change means for humaninterconnectedness.

“My most important and con-sequential arguments and fightsand interactions happen on myphone every day,” said the play-wright Kevin Armento, whose re-cent Off Broadway work, “PleaseExcuse My Dear Aunt Sally,” told

the story of a sexual relationshipbetween a high school mathteacher and her student entirelyfrom the point of view of theboy’s smartphone.

“How would you even tell thisstory if it weren’t through their

text messages?” Mr. Armentoasked. “It wouldn’t be believablein 2015.”

Even as some playwrights em-brace the integration of digitalcommunication into stage scenes

Turn Off Phones? Not Onstage, as Plays Adapt

SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Jerry Dixon, left, and Malcolm Gets in “Steve” in New York.

Continued on Page 4

By PATRICK HEALY

John Wittneben simmered ashe listened to Hillary RodhamClinton defend her ties to WallStreet during last weekend’sDemocratic debate. He lost 40percent of his savings in individ-ual retirement accounts duringthe Great Recession, while Mrs.Clinton has received millions ofdollars from the kinds of execu-tives he believes should be in jail.

“People knew what they weredoing back then, because of

greed, and it caused me harm,”said Mr. Wittneben, the Demo-cratic chairman in Emmet Coun-ty, Iowa. “We were raised a cer-tain way here. Fairness is a bigdeal.”

The next day he endorsed Sen-ator Bernie Sanders in the presi-dential race.

Mrs. Clinton’s windfalls fromWall Street banks and other fi-nancial services firms — $3 mil-lion in paid speeches and $17 mil-lion in campaign contributionsover the years — have become amajor vulnerability in states with

early nomination contests. Someparty officials who remain unde-cided in the 2016 presidential racesee her as overly cozy with bigbanks and other special interests.At a time when liberals are as-cendant in the party, many Dem-ocrats believe her merely having“represented Wall Street as asenator from New York,” as Mrs.Clinton reminded viewers in anOctober debate, is bad enough.

It is an image problem that shecannot seem to shake.

Though she criticizes the

Clinton Battles Image of Being Soft on Wall St.

Continued on Page 26

This article is by Dionne Sear-cey, Adam Nossiter, CarlottaGall and Somini Sengupta.

BAMAKO, Mali — The terror-ists chose carefully: There arenearly always French, Russianand even a few American visitorsto be found in the hotel restau-rant, around the pool, in thehealth club or on the thin black-leather sofas of the glass-frontedlobby, now shattered by gunfire.

With its marble floors, openatrium and lipstick-red lounge,the Radisson Blu Hotel served asa lifeline to the world, a gatheringplace where diplomats, contrac-tors and others doing business inMali, one of the poorest countrieson earth, could all be found.

Now, bullet holes pockmarkthe walls and blood is pooled onstairs. The hotel, once a symbolof the international presence in acountry trying to emerge fromyears of upheaval, is the site of amassacre in which terroristskilled 19 people, storming in atbreakfast on Friday as terrifieddiners sprinted into an elevatorwhose doors did not close in timeto save them.

“For those people who did this,they have no sense of the value oflife,” President Ibrahim Bouba-car Keïta said at the foot of theransacked hotel on Saturday af-ternoon.

The brutal attacks in Paris thismonth were a strike againstFrance’s joie de vivre. The siegeof Kenya’s gleaming Westgatemall two years ago was an as-sault on that country’s risingprosperity, modernity and stabil-ity. The terrifying attack on theRadisson Blu here in Mali’s cap-ital was a strike on this nation’sfragile efforts to restore peace af-

ASSAULT IN MALIREVERSES GAINS

ON EXTREMISM

BLOW TO TENUOUS PEACE

Siege Targeted a Fragile

Nation’s Lifeline to

the World

Continued on Page 10

JEROME DELAY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Soldiers stood guard outsidethe Radisson Blu Hotel in Ba-mako, Mali, on Saturday.

By KATE ZERNIKE

BOSTON — It has been one ofthe most stubborn problems ineducation: With 50 states, 50standards and 50 tests, how couldanyone really know what Ameri-can students were learning, orhow well?

At a dinner with colleagues in2009, Mitchell Chester, Massa-chusetts’s commissioner of edu-cation, hatched what seemed likean obvious answer — a nationaltest based on the Common Corestandards that almost every statehad recently adopted.

Now Dr. Chester finds himselfin the awkward position of walk-ing away from the very test hehelped create.

On his recommendation, theState Board of Education decidedlast week that Massachusettswould go it alone and abandonthe multistate test in favor of oneto be developed for just this state.The move will cost an extra yearand unknown millions of dollars.

Across the country, what wasonce bipartisan consensusaround national standards hascollapsed into acrimony aboutthe Common Core, with statesdropping out of the two nationaltests tied to it that had been thecenterpiece of the Obama admin-istration’s education strategy.

But no about-face has resonat-ed more than the one in Mas-sachusetts, for years a leader ineducation reform. This state em-braced uniform standards andtests with consequences morethan two decades before theCommon Core, and by 2005, itschildren led all states in the Na-tional Assessment of EducationalProgress, often called the na-tion’s report card, and rose aboveall other countries, save Singa-pore, in science.

The state’s participation wasseen as validation of the CommonCore and the multistate test; Dr.Chester became the chairman of

Rejecting Test,MassachusettsShifts Its Model

About-Face by Leader

of Education Reform

Continued on Page 23

In their efforts to communicate withplayers in noisy environments, coachesare increasingly shouting, which canleave lasting damage. PAGE 1

SPORTSSUNDAY

Straining to Be Heard

Times video journalists used virtual re-ality to cover vigils in the Paris neigh-borhoods that were attacked. The filmcan be viewed with our new NYT VR

app. Home de-livery sub-scribers re-ceived a Goo-gle Cardboardviewer earlierthis month.

NYTIMES.COM

Finding Hope in Paris

U(D547FD)v+[!_!/!#!,Roger Cohen PAGE 1

SUNDAY REVIEW

LivingSocial was once valued at $4.5 bil-lion. Its collapse offers a cautionary talefor a booming crop of start-ups. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

The Fall of an Investor Darling

China wants to build dozens of atomicreactors, but residents in villages nearthe sites worry about the risks. PAGE 6

INTERNATIONAL 6-21

China’s Atomic Energy Vision

Michael Skolnik, political director forthe media mogul Russell Simmons, iswaging a new civil rights fight with thehelp of stellar iPhone contacts. PAGE 1

METROPOLITAN

Using the Power of Celebrity

Women are ready to run studios and di-rect hits. What will it take to dismantlethe sexism that holds them back?

THE MAGAZINE

The Women of Hollywood

VOL. CLXV . . . No. 57,058 © 2015 The New York Times NEW YORK, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2015

While Californians in Apple Valley havebeen fined for water use even after cut-ting back, some heavy consumers inwealthier areas go unpunished. PAGE 22

Divide Over Conserving Water

A previously little-known Democrat,State Representative John Bel Edwards,above, defeated United States SenatorDavid Vitter in a runoff to become thenext governor of Louisiana. PAGE 29

NATIONAL 22-30

Democrat Wins in Louisiana

C M Y K Nxxx,2015-11-22,A,001,Bs-4C,E2