ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (18 page)

For what might be called “extra-mile extremists,” the conversion experience is hardly as sweeping or comprehensive as it was for men like Abdulsatter. They have tended to trickle into ISIS from the rank and file of the Islamic Front and Islamist-leaning groups in Iraq and Syria as a result of leadership disputes, or the abortive Syrian Sahwa that erupted in late December 2013.

The trend of defections to ISIS was most conspicuous in September 2014. It was that month that a dozen Islamist factions, including al-Nusra, issued a joint statement disavowing the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, the political arm of the opposition, and called for unity under “an Islamic framework.” In October seven Islamist groups then formed the Islamic Front and issued a statement rejecting democracy in favor of an Islamic shura-based system.

Over that period, ISIS made significant gains at the ideological level. Many Islamists struggled to reconcile warring against a fellow Salafist group—a position shared by many ordinary Syrians, who believed that any diversion from the main conflict against the al-Assad regime and its Iranian proxies amounted to treason. Younger members of the Islamic Front in particular held more religiously reactionary beliefs and subscribed more ardently to the jihadist discourse of establishing an Islamic state. Some Islamic Front commanders, in fact, provided protection to ISIS convoys or simply refused to turn their guns on them. The disunity only benefited ISIS.

Liwa Dawud, once the most powerful subfaction within the
Islamic Front brigade known as Suqour al-Sham (Falcons of the Levant), saw around one thousand of its own jump ship to ISIS in July 2014.

Increasingly, fighters from the Islamic Front and al-Nusra have migrated to ISIS as the franchise has expanded farther into both Syria and Iraq.

ISIS benefits from the absence of a “Syrian” jihadist discourse to keep pace with the intensifying violence in a war-ravaged nation, which, by August 2014, had seen close to two hundred thousand killed. Established Syrian Islamists, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, have steered away from adopting such a discourse and have instead presented themselves as part of the mainstream pro-democracy movement, even though they financially and politically backed rebel Islamist factions. Even al-Nusra, to some extent, positioned itself as a “nationalist” outcropping without international ambitions. This hypocrisy meant that ISIS more or less had a monopoly on the global Salafist-Jihadist narrative, and its intoxicating vision of world conquest.

THE POLITICKERS

As it happens, the closer ISIS came to realizing its territorial ambitions, the less religion played a part in driving people to join the organization. Those who say they are adherents of ISIS as a strictly
political
project make up a weighty percentage of its lower cadres and support base.

For people in this category, ISIS is the only option on offer for Sunni Muslims who have been dealt a dismal hand in the past decade—first losing control of Iraq and now suffering nationwide atrocities, which many equate to genocide, in Syria. They view the struggle in the Middle East as one between Sunnis and an Iranian-led coalition, and they justify ultraviolence as a necessary tool
to counterbalance or deter Shia hegemony. This category often includes the highly educated.

One example is Saleh al-Awad, a secular lawyer from Jarablous, Hasaka, who was a staunch critic of ISIS before deciding that it was the only bulwark against Kurdish expansionism in his region. Saleh took part in the peaceful protest movement against al-Assad and was an advocate of democratic change in Syria. “We’re tired, every day they [ISIS] cut off four or five heads in our town,” he told us before his conversion experience took place. A few months following that exchange—around the time that ISIS started besieging Kobane—Saleh said he joined the head-loppers.

A large number of Arabs in Hasaka share views similar to his own. One influential resident of the province said that “thousands” would join ISIS tomorrow if it invaded the city and provincial capital of Hasaka because of fears of what might happen to them under Kurdish domination.

A similar dynamic exists in mixed communities near Baghdad, such as Baqubah, and in Homs and Hama, where sectarian tensions shape people’s political orientations.

A dozen ISIS-affiliated Arabs who conform to this political category might even be described as secular or agnostic (many said they don’t pray or attend mosque) and expressed deep objections to us about the atrocities being committed by ISIS. Nevertheless, they see it as the only armed group capable of striking against the “anti-Sunni” regimes and militias in Syria, Iraq, and beyond. By way of justification, Salim told us that violence has always been part of Islamic history and always precedes the establishment of strong Islamic empires, including the Ummayads, Abbasids, and the second Ummayad kingdom in modern Spain.

This sense of dejection, or injustice, felt by many Sunnis who now identify as a persecuted and embattled community is known in Arabic as
madhloumiya
, a concept historically associated with
the Shia, for whom suffering is integral to their religious discourse. Equally paradoxical is that even where Sunnis are in the majority, they have taken to behaving as an insecure minority. The Shia in these areas, by contrast, appear more decisive, confident, and well organized, no doubt thanks to Iranian patronage and the militia-ization of their communities by Qassem Suleimani’s Quds Force. Shia militants, as we’ve seen, are crossing national boundaries as much as their Sunni counterparts to participate in a holy war.

Sunnis feel under assault—from al-Assad, Khamenei, and, up until recently, al-Maliki—and devoid of any committed or credible political stewards. Their religious and political powerhouses, meanwhile, are perceived as complicit, politically emasculated, discredited, or silent: the Gulf Arab states, which either have Sunni majorities or Sunni-led governments, have been reduced to begging the United States for intervention.

ISIS has exploited this sense of sectarian grievance and vulnerability with devious aplomb. As al-Zarqawi could point to the Badr Corps in 2004, al-Baghdadi can now point to anti-Sunni atrocities being committed by the National Defense Force, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Lebanese Hezbollah, Kata’ib Hezbollah or, indeed, the Badr Corps in Syria and/or Iraq, and offer them up as proof that Sunnis have no hope but the caliphate.

PRAGMATISTS

In areas fully controlled by ISIS, pragmatists support the group because it is effective in terms of governance and delivery of basic services such as sanitation and food delivery (although this may be coming to an end). ISIS has established a semblance of order in these “governed” territories, and people view the alternatives—al-Assad, the Iraqi government, or other militias—as far worse. For
those weary of years of civil war, the ability to live without crime and lawlessness trumps whatever draconian rules ISIS has put into place. Members of this category sometimes keep their distance from ISIS, to avoid trouble, while others actually seek out areas where ISIS is said not to be committing atrocities.

Abu Jasim, a cleric who joined ISIS after it overran his home in eastern Syria in the summer of 2014, said that he would deliberately avoid details of what ISIS did or didn’t do. “I see them leaving people alone if nobody messes with them,” Abu Jasim told us. “All I do is to teach people their religion, and I hope to get rewarded by God for what I do.”

THE OPPORTUNISTS

There are also those who were drawn to ISIS largely because of personal ambition. The opportunists tend to serve in the group’s rank and file as well as its low-level command structures. They join to undermine a rival group, to move up the chain of a dominant military and political force, or simply to preempt ISIS’s brutal justice for some past offense or crime they might have committed against the group.

Saddam al-Jamal, for example, was one of the most powerful FSA commanders in eastern Syria. After his prior rebel outfit, the Allahu Akbar Brigade, lost out to al-Nusra, which killed two of his brothers, al-Jamal pledged allegiance to ISIS. It apparently didn’t matter that he had a reputation as a drug dealer.

Aamer al-Rafdan joined ISIS after it broke from al-Nusra, owing mainly to a dispute he had with the latter over oil revenues—also, a continuing rivalry between his tribe and the tribe that had been dominated by al-Nusra in Deir Ezzor. Al-Rafdan was later accused by al-Jolani’s organization of stealing $5 million worth of cotton.

THE FOREIGN FIGHTERS

Outside Iraq and Syria, of course, the motivations for joining ISIS alter drastically and are almost always fed by serious misapprehensions of what is taking place in either country.

The radicalization expert Shiraz Maher has explained how digital apps or social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and, in the ex-Soviet context, VKontakte (Russia’s answer to Facebook) have revolutionized jihadist agitprop. Much of the online chatter among Western-born ISIS recruits sounds more like a satire of the group than an earnest commitment to it: “Does the Islamic State sell hair gel and Nutella in Raqqa?” “Should I bring an iPad to let Mom and Dad know that I arrived safely in caliphate?” “I was told there’d be
Grand Theft Auto V
.”

In an article for the
New Statesman
, Maher observed that, “During the Iraq War, sympathisers of al-Qaeda needed access to password-protected forums, where they could learn about events on the ground. These forums were not easy to find and access was harder to gain. Crucially, most of the conversations were in Arabic, a language alien to most British Muslims.” Now every British Muslim who goes off to fight in Syria or Iraq becomes a virtual wrangler or recruitment officer for more of his own kind. One example was Mehdi Hassan, a twenty-year-old from Portsmouth who went off to join ISIS and died fighting in the battle of Kobane in November 2014. Hasan had actually enlisted along with several friends from Portsmouth, all of whom were drawn to the dazzling images of ISIS’s martial triumphs and its whitewashed depiction of life under takfiri
rule. They were known as the “Pompey lads,” and, as Maher wrote, “Of the men he travelled with, only one is still fighting: three are dead and another is in prison in the UK.”

In December 2013 Maher’s ICSR calculated that the number of foreign fighters enjoined with the Syrian opposition was “up to
11,000 . . .from 74 nations.” Most of them signed up with ISIS or other jihadist groups, with few going to join mainstream FSA factions. Western Europe, the study found, accounted for 18 percent of the total, with France leading among nations as the number one donor country for jihadists, followed closely by Britain. That number only grew, particularly in light of the US coalition war against ISIS; by September 2014 the CIA calculated fifteen thousand foreign fighters in Syria, two thousand of whom were Westerners. However, the predominant emigration trend has always been from the Middle East and North Africa, with Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Tunisia being the highest feeder countries of foreign Sunni militants.

Missionary jihadists who were driven by civilian suffering, according to Maher, constituted a plurality of Britons who joined ISIS. They saw jihad as an obligation to defend women and children as the war dragged on in Syria, Maher told us.

Inside Syria, a similar trend—of fighters drifting to extremist groups—existed since mid-2012, when reports of civilians being slaughtered by pro-Assad militias became international news.

The impact of those massacres on the psyche of anti-regime Syrians was also immense. Those conscious of their own radicalization typically point to the Houla and al-Bayda and similar massacres as the reason for their turn to Islamist and jihadist rebel factions closer to the end of 2012. However, native Syrians tended to enlist with homegrown extremist factions rather than the more foreigner-friendly ISIS. Even still, ISIS benefited from the Assadist massacres in another respect: for one, the gruesome manner in which they were carried out helped create some level of tolerance for beheadings, which was accepted by many Syrians as retribution against the regime and its Iranian-built militias.

The most notorious regime massacres typically occurred in areas where Alawite, Sunni, and Ismaili (another Shia offshoot)
villages and hamlets adjoined one another, the better to encourage sectarian reprisal bloodlettings. They also followed a pattern of assault: a village would be shelled overnight by the Syrian Arab Army, and the next morning, militiamen from nearby would storm it. Armed with knives and light weapons, they would go on killing sprees, slaughtering men, women, and children. The killing was portrayed as systematic and driven by sectarian vigilantism. Videos of torture also showed shabiha or popular committees, the precursors to the National Defense Force, taunting Sunni symbols and forcing victims to affirm al-Assad’s divinity and make other sacrilegious statements.

Maher notes a second category of foreign fighters: martyrdom-seekers, who want nothing more than to carry out a suicide operation and thus be lionized in the annals of jihadism. For many foreign fighters from the Gulf states, the glorification of suicide bombers has been a constant on jihadist chat forums and websites since AQI got started. Saudi nationals often point to the fact that many Saudis carry out these self-immolations to argue that ISIS leaders discriminate against their compatriots by sending them to their deaths, whereas Iraqis hoard all the leadership positions in the organization for themselves.

The final factor leading foreign fighters to ISIS, according to Maher, is pure adventurism. Adrenaline junkies tend to be nonpracticing Muslims and are often drug users or addicts, or involved in criminality and gang violence back home—much as al-Zarqawi himself was in Jordan before discovering the mosque. Going off to fight in Syria represents just another rush for these types.

AFTER MOSUL

Many interviewees from other Arab countries admitted they had not been following developments in Iraq and Syria closely before
they started supporting ISIS. That changed after the fall of Mosul. One Egyptian Islamist, for instance, told us that he was not sure which factions in Syria or Iraq were good or bad, but after ISIS stormed through Ninewah, he began conducting “research” and found that the establishment of the caliphate was “consistent with” stories foretold by Prophet Muhammad. Scott Atran, the anthropologist at the University of Michigan, relayed a similar anecdote. “I remember talking with an imam in Spain who said, ‘We always rejected violence, but Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi put us on the map. The caliphate doesn’t have to be violent. It can be just like the European Union!’ ”