In August 2014 Patrick Cockburn wrote in the London Review of Books:
‘The birth of the new state is the most radical change to the political geography of the Middle East since the Sykes-Picot Agreement was implemented in the aftermath of the First World War.’
As the militants continued to enlarge their territory and consolidate their control of an ever-expanding population across the two countries, the Obama administration renewed consideration of direct US military intervention against ISIS. By late summer 2014 at least 3,000 US troops were heading back into Iraq. And with the very real humanitarian crisis of Yazidi Syrians trapped on Mount Sinjar as a pretext, the US launched airstrikes against Syria.
America was officially at war with ISIS. As Peter Baker of the New York Times described it: ‘In sending warplanes back into the skies over Iraq, President Obama… found himself exactly where he did not want to be. Hoping to end the war in Iraq, Mr Obama became the fourth president in a row to order military action in that graveyard of American ambition.’
Is there any precedent for the barbaric violence perpetrated by ISIS?
Much of what ISIS does is clear from massive international media coverage: kidnapping for ransom, whipping and other physical punishments, large-scale killing of civilians, and seizure of women and girls for rape and forced ‘marriage’ to fighters have all been well documented. Reports of ISIS destruction of irreplaceable, centuries-old works of art have devastated historians and archaeologists around the world. Some of the most shocking reported actions are used against those ISIS deems non-believers, including crucifixion and stoning to death. Some of those actions hark back to punishments used in ancient times. As is true of the eras in which the holy texts of other influential religions were written, the years of the Prophet Muhammad’s life were also years of wars and constant battles for survival; that harsh wartime reality, including its punishments and its brutality, is reflected in the Qur’an as much as it is in the Torah, the Bible and other texts.
And yet some of these acts are also all too modern. Beheadings, for example, are currently used by governments, including the government of Saudi Arabia, as part of contemporary penal systems. Other actions, such as burning to death, also have contemporary forebears in the vigilante justice of mob actions, including the torture and burning to death of Christians in Pakistan or the ‘necklacing’ with burning tyres during the most difficult period of the South African liberation struggles. Perhaps no image is as powerful as these highly publicized killings – beheadings, particularly of Western journalists and aid workers, and the torture-death of Muath al-Kaseasbeh, a captured Jordanian bomber pilot, who was burned alive in a cage.
Those gruesome killings have come to symbolize the cruelty and violence at the core of ISIS, although it should be noted that these actions are hardly particular to the extremist organization. ISIS didn’t invent the modern version of burning someone alive for revenge: Israeli extremists kidnapped a young Palestinian boy and burned him to death in June 2014, following the unrelated killing of three Israeli teenagers. Not too long ago, hundreds of mainly African-American men were burned to death – often after other horrifying tortures – in lynchings across the American South. That’s aside from the even more common and more recent realities of burning people to death – civilians, children – with weapons of war designed to do just that, such as the napalm and white phosphorous used by the US in Vietnam and Iraq and by Israel in Gaza. There is also a long history of beheadings in world history; during the French Revolution the Jacobins are thought to have beheaded 17,000 people. Much more recently, in September 2014, the US-backed Free Syrian Army beheaded six ISIS captives, just days after ISIS beheaded two US journalists. And there is a longstanding legacy much closer to home, and much closer to ISIS: Saudi Arabia itself. In the first two weeks of 2015 alone, the government of Saudi Arabia beheaded 10 people for ‘crimes’ including apostasy, sorcery and witchcraft.
There are differences, of course. The Saudis arrested the journalist who leaked video of a recent beheading to the world; ISIS posts its carefully constructed videos on YouTube and other social media platforms to trumpet its crimes. The reason has much to do with ISIS’s assumption that showing that level of violence, up close and personal, will also somehow demonstrate strength and commitment – and crucially, that it will show ISIS as winning. For some, there is also the attraction of violence itself. There are reports that some ISIS combatants and wannabe fighters, in particular international supporters, do not hold strong Islamic beliefs at all, but are actually attracted to the organization by the violence itself. Understanding that frightening reality is crucial to understanding how an organization so identified with violence can still gain support.
What are the motives and root causes underlying the ISIS tactic of public execution?
Each time ISIS kills a Western journalist or a Jordanian bomber pilot, the US, Jordan, Japan, or others, escalate their own direct military engagement. It was only after ISIS beheaded American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff in summer 2014 that the Obama administration finally announced it would send troops back to Iraq. It then returned to bombing Iraq and launched the first attacks in Syria. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe responded to the killing of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto with efforts to undermine Japan’s longstanding pacifist constitution and promises to increase its engagement with the anti-ISIS war. Following the horrific killing of pilot Muath al-Kaseasbeh, the king of Jordan announced plans to increase its direct bombing raids against Syria and Iraq within the US ‘coalition’.
As Stephen Kinzer wrote in the Boston Globe even before the killing of al-Kaseasbeh: ‘By cleverly using grotesque theatrics, the Islamic State seems to be achieving its goal of luring the US back into war. It knows that the presence of American soldiers in the Middle East will attract more radicals and misguided idealists to its cause. For many of these young men and women, fighting Kurds or Shiite militias may not seem especially glorious. To face the mighty US on Middle Eastern soil, and if possible to kill an American or die at American hands, is their dream. We are giving them a chance to realize it. Through its impressive mastery of social media, the Islamic State is already using our escalation as a recruiting tool.’
It is not possible to generalize with any accuracy what individual ISIS fighters, supporters, or allies – reluctant or otherwise – think or believe. Many of those who support or even join ISIS appear to be motivated as much by diverse combinations of political, personal, or economic reasons as they are by adherence to any specific theological framework. For some, the humiliation of foreign occupation, the indignity of repressive rulers and the sense of disenfranchisement from one’s own country play key motivating roles. We may never know exactly what each of those supporters believes. But the views of the leadership and the official positions of the organization are important for understanding who they are and why they act as they do – not to justify or apologize for its actions but precisely to figure out strategies that could actually work to stop its brutality, undermine its influence, and win its supporters away.
One way of defining what ISIS believes is to examine what distinguishes the group from its closest spiritual cousin and forebear, al-Qaeda, and the jihadi organizations still tied to al-Qaeda. Those distinctions include the nature of the ‘caliphate’ that al-Qaeda supports and ISIS has declared, the role and legitimacy of government, and – crucial to understand given the horrific brutality that characterizes ISIS – the role and purpose of violence.
When ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself the caliph, or leader, of his just-announced Islamic state, or caliphate, in June 2014, he was claiming a direct linkage to a much older religious/political position of power. The last caliphate was dissolved by the newly secular Turkish Republic in 1924 following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Like earlier Islamist organizations, including al-Qaeda, ISIS had already been