ISIS

by Jessica Stern

  58.Daniel LeBlanc and Steven Chase, “Two Soldiers Struck in Quebec Hit-And-Run,” Globe and Mail, October 20, 2014, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/two-soldiers-injured-in-quebec-hit-and-run/article21177035/. Data collected from Twitter, October 2014.

  59.Dan Wilkofsky and Osama Abu Zeid, “US-Backed SRF ‘No Longer’ in South Idlib After Nusra Victory,” Syria: Direct, November 4, 2014, http://syriadirect.org/main/30-reports/1653-us-backed-srf-no-longer-in-south-idlib-after-nusra-victory.

  60.Michael Noonan, “15,000-Plus for Fighting: The Return of the Foreign Fighters,” War on the Rocks, October 8, 2014, http://warontherocks.com/2014/10/15000-plus-for-fighting-the-return-of-the-foreign-fighters/.

  CHAPTER 9: ISIS’S PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

  1.Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, “Foreign Fighter in Iraq and Syria: Where Do They Come From?” infograph, http://www.rferl.org/contentinfographics/infographics/26584940.html, accessed December 11, 2014.

  2.Alessandria Masi, “Where to Find ISIS Supporters: A Map of Militant Groups Aligned with the Islamic State Group,” International Business Times, October 9, 2014, http://www.ibtimes.com/where-find-isis-supporters-map-militant-groups-aligned-islamic-state-group-1701878.

  3.“Remaining and Expanding,” Dabiq no. 5 (November 2014): 30.

  4.“Brussels Jewish Museum Killings: Suspect ‘Admitted Attack,’” BBC News (2014), June 1, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27654505.

  5.Justin Huggler, “ISIL Jihadists ‘Offered Teenager $25,000 to Carry out Bombings in Vienna,’” The Telegraph, October 30, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11199628/Boy-14-who-planned-Vienna-bombings-was-recruited-on-internet-by-Isil.html.

  6.“Gunman in Ottawa Attack Prepared Video of Himself,” The Telegraph, October 26, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/canada/11189257/Gunman-in-Ottawa-attack-prepared-video-of-himself.html.

  7.Thomas Hegghammer, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” American Political Science Review 107, no. 1 (February 2013); Daniel Byman and Jeremy Shapiro, “Homeward Bound? Don’t Hype the Threat of Returning Jihadists,” Foreign Affairs (November/December 2014); Arwa Damon and Gul Tuysuz, “How She Went from a Schoolteacher to an ISIS Member,” CNN, October 6, 2014.

  8.These statistics are based on figures from the United States: Chris Jagger, “The 25 Most Common Causes of Death,” MedHelp, http://www.medhelp.org/general-health/articles/The-25-Most-Common-Causes-of-Death/193.

  9.Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischoff and Sarah Lichtenstein, “Facts and Fears: Understanding Perceived Risk,” in Richard Schwing and Walter Albers, eds., Societal Risk Assessment: How Safe is Safe Enough? (New York: Plenum Press, 1980), 181–216.

  10.Ayman al-Zawahiri, Letter to Abu Musa al-Zarqawi, October 11, 2005.

  11.We use the term “risk” to denote the possibility of an adverse outcome whose probability is between zero and one. It is important to point out at the outset that one school of thought, more prevalent in Europe, rejects many of the assumptions appealed to here. The alternative school questions the following assertions: that risk (other than actuarial risk) exists and can be quantified or that risk trade-off analysis can be accomplished; that experts and laypeople are different from one another; that “dread” is a property of risks; and that publics are anxious and irrational and that policy should compensate for these qualities. Sheila Jasanoff, email communication, August 18, 2002. We do not enter into this debate here, except to highlight that Daniel Kahneman, one of the foremost experts, is describing his reaction as a layperson in the text.

  12.Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,” Science 185 (1974): 1124–31; Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischoff, and Sarah Lichtenstein, “Facts and Fears: Understanding Perceived Risk,” in Richard Schwing and Walter Albers, eds., Societal Risk Assessment: How Safe Is Safe Enough? (New York: Plenum Press, 1980), 181–216. Other biases include that people tend to be overconfident in the accuracy of their assessments, even when those assessments are based on nothing more than guessing. And people seem to desire certainty: they respond to the anxiety of uncertainty by blithely ignoring uncertain risks; and a belief that while others may be vulnerable (for example to driving accidents), they themselves are not.

  13.Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions,” in David E. Bell, Howard Raiffa, and Amos Tversky, eds., Decision Making (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 167–92. Originally published in Journal of Business 59, no. 4 (1986): 5251–78.

  14.For problems in the applicability of prospect theory to group decision making, see Jack S. Levy, “Prospect Theory, Rational Choice, and International Relations,” International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 1 (1997): 87–112.

  15.Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011): 322–23.

  16.This paragraph summarizes Susan Nieman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 2002). For an updated understanding of Eichmann, see Bettina Stangneth, Eichmann Before Jerusalem (New York: Random House, 2014).

  17.William Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 26, citing Susan Miller, “Disgust: Conceptualization, Development and Dynamics,” International Review of Psychoanalysis, 13 (1986): 295–307.

  18.Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011): 143.

  19.Ibid., 175.

  20.Simon Baron-Cohen, The Science of Evil (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 18.

  21.Ronald Shouten and James Silver, Almost a Psychopath: Do I (or Does Someone I Know) Have a Problem with Manipulation and Lack of Empathy? (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2012).

  22.Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, 182.

  23.Ibid., 695.

  24.“From the factual knowledge that there is a universal human nature and the moral principle that no person has grounds for privileging his or her interests over others, we can deduce a great deal about how we ought to run our affairs,” Pinker argues. “People are better off abjuring violence, if everyone else agrees to do so, and vesting authority in a disinterested third party. But since that third party will consist of human beings, not angels, their power must be checked by the power of other people, to force them to govern with the consent of the governed. They may not use violence against their citizens beyond the minimum necessary to prevent violence.” Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, 1183.

  25.In 2005 Sheikh Al-Azhar, Ayatollah Sistani, and Sheikh Qaradawi, three prominent Islamic scholars (representing both Shia and Sunni perspectives), provided religious fatwas for the Amman Message. Signed by more than five hundred signatories from eighty-four countries, the message officially recognized thirteen Muslim sects, forbade takfir, and set forth preconditions for issuing fatwas. “The Amman Message,” http://www.ammanmessage.com/, accessed November 29, 2014.

  26.Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges, “Religious and Sacred Imperatives in Human Conflict,” Science 336 (2012): 885. Atran and his team are studying the impact of identify fusion (which occurs when individuals merge so strongly with the identity of a group that they begin to feel psychologically and viscerally at one with it, so much so that their personal identity collapses into a collective one), together with sacred values, which, according to their research, can generate a collective sense of invincibility and special destiny, as well as “devoted actors” willing to kill and die for a cause. Scott Atran, Hammad Sheikh, and Angel Gomez, “Devoted Actors Sacrifice for Close Commrade and Sacred Cause,” PNAS 111, no. 50 (2014): 17702–3. While we agree that sacred values may make conflicts more intractable, we have two issues with attributing ISIS’s rise to sacred values. It is not only “belief in gods and miracles” that are intensified when we are reminded of death, but any value. Human beings are the only living beings forced to live with the knowledge of their own demise, as f
ar as we know; and that knowledge creates existential anxiety. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997). Thomas Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, and Jeff Greenberg developed terror management theory, which posits that all human behavior is motivated by unconscious terror of death and the need to manage its attendant anxiety. We do this through symbolic creations that make us feel that we will live on, through our work (including terrorist acts), religious or political affiliations, or culture. See Jeff Greenberg, et al., “Evidence for Terror Management Theory II: The Effects of Mortality Salience on Reactions to Those Who Threaten or Bolster the Cultural Worldview,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 58, no. 2 (February 1990): 308–18; Brian Burke et al., “Two Decades of Terror Management Theory: A Meta-Analysis of Mortality Salience Research,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 14, no. 2 (2010): 155–95.

  27.We can’t help but wonder why ISIS is focusing on those “sacred” values that justify killing Shi’a, enslaving “polytheists,” and pushing homosexuals off tall buildings (although homosexual sex appears to be tolerated among ISIS’s own fighters). Tim Arango, “A Boy in ISIS. A Suicide Vest. A Hope to Live,” New York Times, December 28, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/world/middleeast/syria-isis-recruits-teenagers-as-suicide-bombers.html.

  28.There is enormous literature that attempts to address this question, both at the level of individuals and mass movements. A good summary is provided in James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Stern argues in Terror in the Name of God that historical trauma and collective humiliation are important explanatory factors; in the case of ISIS’s rise, both colonial rule and sectarian policies play a role. See also the works of Vamik Volkan, discussed at the end of this chapter.

  29.Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction, 1994), 66, as cited in Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 149.

  30.Rummel, Death by Government, 66.

  31.In England, public executions, often in the form of hangings, attracted enormous, unruly, often drunken crowds; and corpses were displayed on gibbets. Henry Fielding, writing in the mid-eighteenth century, complained that public execution lacked dignity and that hangings were staged more like carnivals than as solemn and edifying occasions. A member of Parliament named John Scott complained in 1773 that hangings carried out in public “degrade the man to the brute,” “extinguish all compassion in the bosom of the punisher,” and “harden the human heart.” By the late eighteenth century, a movement arose to ban public executions. The last public execution occurred in England in 1868. Randall McGowen, “Civilizing Punishment: The End of the Public Execution in England,” Journal of British Studies 33, no. 3 (July 1994): 257.

  32.This is partly due to the United Nations General Assembly vote in 2007 in favor of a resolution for a non-binding moratorium on the death penalty, a measure that had failed in 1994 and 1999; Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, 150.

  As of 2013, two-thirds of countries had either outlawed capital punishment or did not employ it in practice. For details, see “Death Sentences and Executions 2013,” Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ACT50/001/2014/en/652ac5b3-3979-43e2-b1a1-6c4919e7a518/act500012014en.pdf.

  33.“Guillotine,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, online academic edition, 2014.

  34.“Terrorism, n,” OED Online, September 2014, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/199608?redirectedFrom=terrorism, accessed September 11, 2014.

  35.“Guillotine,” Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  36.“Horst Fisher Biography,” Wollheim Memorial, accessed November 29, 2014.

  37.Max Fisher, “Capital Punishment in China,” The Atlantic, September 22, 2011.

  38.“Death Sentences and Executions 2013,” Amnesty International.

  39.Ester van Eijk, “Sharia and National Law in Saudi Arabia,” in Jan Michiel Otto, ed., Sharia Incorporated: A Comparative Overview of the Legal Systems of Twelve Muslim Countries in Past and Present, edited by Jan Michiel Otto (Amsterdam: Leiden University Press, 2010).

  40.“Saudi Arabia: Scheduled beheading reflects authorities’ callous disregard to human rights,” Amnesty International, August 22, 2014, accessed September 9, 2014.

  41.Mahmoud Ahmed, “The Work of God,” Guardian, June 5, 2003.

  42.Video: “Israeli journalist Itai Anghel found himself face to face with captured ISIS fighters,” TLV1, December 23, 2014, http://tlv1.fm/so-much-to-say/2014/12/23/israeli-journalist-itai-anghel-found-himself-face-to-face-with-captured-isis-fighters/.

  43.In 2000, the UN adopted the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which established eighteen as the minimum age for any conscription or forced recruitment or direct participation in hostilities. Article 4 bans any recruitment or use of children under eighteen by nonstate actors, “Maybe We Live and Maybe We Die,” Human Rights Watch, June 23, 2014.

  44.Gail Sullivan, “Report: The Islamic State Puts Price Tags on Women, Literally, and Sells Them,” Washington Post, October 3, 2014.

  45.Leila Zerrougui, Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council, A/68/878–S/2014/339, issued May 15, 2014.

  46.“Maybe We Live and Maybe We Die,” Human Rights Watch.

  47.Al-Fares, “Frontline ISIS: How the Islamic State Is Brainwashing Children with Stone Age School Curriculum,” September 1, 2014, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/frontline-isis-how-islamic-state-brainwashing-children-stone-age-school-curriculum-1463474.

  48.“The Islamic State: Grooming Children for Jihad,” Vice News video, August 15, 2014.

  49.Stewart Clegg, “Why Is Organization Theory So Ignorant? The Neglect of Total Institutions,” Journal of Management Inquiry 15, no. 4 (2006): 427; Erving Goffman, Asylums (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1961) as cited in ibid.

  50.Miguel Pina e Cunha, Arménio Rego, and Stewart Clegg, “Obedience and Evil: From Milgram and Kampuchea to Normal Organizations,” Journal of Business Ethics 97, no. 2 (2010): 291.

  51.Mia Bloom and John G. Horgan, Small Arms: Children and Terrorism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming).

  52.Omar Abdullah, “ISIS Teaches Children How to Behead in Training Camps,” Syria Deeply, September 6, 2014.

  53.“Maybe We Live and Maybe We Die,” Human Rights Watch, 21.

  54.Pina e Cunha, Rego, and Clegg, “Obedience and Evil,” 291.

  55.Kernberg, “Sanctioned Social Violence,” 690.

  56.“Maybe We Live and Maybe We Die,” Human Rights Watch, 23.

  57.“The Islamic State: Grooming Children for Jihad,” Vice News video.

  58.Ceylan Yeginsu, “ISIS Draws a Steady Stream of Recruits from Turkey,” September 15, 2014.

  59.“Maybe We Live and Maybe We Die,” Human Rights Watch, 2014.

  60.Kate Brannen, “Children of the Caliphate,” Foreign Policy, October 27, 2014, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/24/children_of_the_caliphate_iraq_syria_child_soldiers.

  61.Olivia Becker, “ISIS Is Radicalizing Kidnapped Kurdish Students,” June 23, 2014; Salma Abdelaziz, “Syrian Radicals ‘Brainwash’ Kidnapped Kurdish School Children,” CNNWorld, June 26, 2014.

  62.“Maybe We Live and Maybe We Die,” Human Rights Watch, June 23, 2014, 24.

  63.Brannen, “Children of the Caliphate,” 2.

  64.The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, ratified in 2002, made the conscription or enlistment of children younger than fifteen into armed forces a war crime. “Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” International Criminal Court, A/CONF.183/9, July 1, 2002, 8, http://www.icc-cpi.int/nr/rdonlyres/ea9aeff7-5752-4f84-be94-0a655eb30e16/0/rome_statute_english.pdf. That same year the United Nations adopted the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which increased the age to eighteen in accordance with their definition of child.r />
  65.R. Brett, “Contribution for Children and Political Violence,” WHO Global Report on Violence, Child Soldiering: Questions and Challenges for Health Professionals (2001), 1, as cited in Patricia K. Kerig, Diana C. Bennett, Mamie Thompson, and Stephen P. Becker, “ ‘Nothing Really Matters’: Emotional Numbing as a Link between Trauma Exposure and Callousness in Delinquent Youth,” Journal of Traumatic Stress 25, no. 3 (2012): 272.

  66.“Child Recruitment,” Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/effects-of-conflict/six-grave-violations/child-soldiers/, accessed November 28, 2014.

  67.Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992).

  68.Bessel van der Kolk, “Developmental Trauma Disorder: Towards a Rational Diagnosis for Chronically Traumatized Children,” Psychiatric Annals 35 (2005): 401–8, as cited in F. Klasen et al., “Posttraumatic Resilience in Former Ugandan Child Soldiers,” Child Development 4 (2010): 1097.

  69.Fionna Klasen, Gabriele Oettingen, Judith Daniels, and Hubertus Adam, “Multiple Trauma and Mental Health in Former Ugandan Child Soldiers,” Journal of Traumatic Stress 23, no. 5 (2010): 573.

  70.However, the study team points out that the finding of minimal violence may be an artifact of the sample; the group was living in a special-needs boarding school to help them readjust. Ibid., 578.

  71.Theresa S. Betancourt, Ivelina I. Borisova, Marie de la Soudiére, and John Williamson, “Sierra Leone’s Child Soldiers: War Exposures and Mental Health Problems by Gender,” Journal of Adolescent Health no. 49, (2011): 21–28.

  72.Theresa S. Betancourt, Elizabeth A. Newnham, Ryan McBain, and Robert T. Brennan, “Post-traumatic stress symptoms among former child soldiers in Sierra Leone: Follow-Up Study,” The British Journal of Psychiatry 203, no. 3 (2013): 196–202.