ISIS: The State of Terror Part 4

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE FOREIGN FIGHTERS.

In August 2014, ISIS marked Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, with a twenty-minute, high-definition video offering its greetings to the Muslim world.1 Gauzy images of smiling worshippers embracing at a mosque cut to children pa.s.sing out sweets to break the Ramadan fast. Scenes of laughing children on the streets were interspersed with scenes of the muhajireen (Arabic for "emigrants")-British, Finnish, Indonesian, Moroccan, Belgian, American, and South African-each repeating a variation on the same message.

"I'm calling on all the Muslims living in the West, America, Europe, and everywhere else, to come, to make hijra with your families to the land of Khilafah," said a Finnish fighter of Somali descent. "Here, you go for fighting and afterwards you come back to your families. And if you get killed, then . . . you'll enter heaven, G.o.d willing, and Allah will take care of those you've left behind. So here, the caliphate will take care of you."

Hijra is an Arabic word meaning "emigration," evoking the Prophet Muhammad's historic escape from Mecca, where a.s.sa.s.sins were plotting to kill him, to Medina. Abdullah Azzam, the father of the modern jihadist movement, defined hijra as departing from a land of fear to a land of safety, a definition he later amplified to include the act of leaving one's land and family to take up jihad in the name of establishing an Islamic state. For most Islamic extremists today, the concepts of hijra and jihad are intimately linked. (See the appendix for a fuller discussion.)2 As the video continued, an Islamic religious chant known as a nasheed played over and over again, its chanted lyrics emphasizing the video's message.

Our state was established upon Islam, and although it wages jihad against the enemies, it governs the affairs of the people.

It looks after its flock with love and patience.

It does so carefully, and thereby does not receive any censure.

The Shariah of our Lord is light, by it we rise over the stars.

By it, we live without humiliation, a life of peace and security.

As the verse about peace and security played for the first of several times in the video, the camera focused on a child holding a realistic-looking submachine gun.3 A few months later, the Eid video's sidelong references to fighting and jihad were placed in a much starker contrast, in a release that again focused on ISIS's substantial foreign fighter contingent.

In a procession were a long line of foreign fighters, each guiding with his left hand a prisoner identified as a Syrian soldier. They walked up to a bin containing serrated daggers, each fighter taking one with his right hand. There were at least seventeen fighters and as many prisoners. Many of the fighters, emphasized by the camera angles, were white-skinned Europeans. Only one wore a mask, the British fighter known as "Jihadi John," who had executed James Foley and other American and European hostages.

The camera lingered on the knives and the terrified prisoners for long, long seconds before the fighters began to hack through the necks of their victims. The video was intensely graphic, showing parts of the executions in slow motion and lingering over each horrific detail.

After, the camera played over the faces of the executioners, ensuring that the foreign fighters were clearly visible and sparking a rush to identify them. Media reports identified the perpetrators as French, German, British, Danish, and Australian citizens, although some of these claims were tentative.4 The contrast between these two scenes could not be more stark, and it highlights the two most important elements of ISIS's aggressive campaign to recruit fighters and supporters from around the world.

ISIS propaganda and messaging is disproportionately slanted toward foreign fighters, both in its content and its target audience. Important ISIS messages are commonly released simultaneously in English, French, and German, then later translated into other languages, such as Russian, Indonesian, and Urdu.

"Foreign fighters are overrepresented, it seems, among the perpetrators of the Islamic State's worst acts," said Thomas Hegghammer, a leading scholar of jihadist history, in an interview with BillMoyers.com. "So they help kind of radicalize the conflict-make it more brutal. They probably also make the conflict more intractable, because the people who come as foreign fighters are, on average, more ideological than the typical Syrian rebel."5 Of course, Syrian and Iraqi allies of ISIS, often initially motivated by pragmatic local concerns, may be equally vulnerable to radicalization in such a volatile environment, and local partic.i.p.ants are also represented in ISIS's ultraviolent propaganda. But because of ISIS's outsize emphasis on publicizing foreign fighters while restricting the flow of information from independent sources, clear evidence is less abundant.

HOW MANY FIGHTERS?.

One of the most important questions about the threat presented by ISIS, and the conflict in Syria and Iraq in general, is numerical: How many foreign fighters are there, where do they come from, and what will they do after fighting?

Unfortunately, the question is nearly impossible to answer with any kind of specificity, due to the dangers that ISIS presents for journalists and intelligence operatives on the ground. It's difficult enough to accurately a.s.sess the total size of ISIS's fighting force, let alone break it down into demographic components.

In the open-source world, there are only estimates, and the situation does not appear to be much better in the world of secret intelligence. While anecdotal information on foreign fighters exists in abundance, no one claims to be able to see the whole picture.

In October 2013, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty published a compilation of data on all foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria, drawn from multiple sources.6 The data broke down according to country of origin, and included both high and low estimates from the various sources. The fighters counted came from all jihadi groups in the region, not just ISIS.

REF/RL found between 17,000 and 19,000 fighters, with about 32 percent originating in Europe (including Turkey). The majority of fighters identified in the data originated in the Middle East and North Africa, with the greatest numbers coming from Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. The remainder came in smaller numbers from other places around the world, including former Soviet republics, the Americas, and Australia.

The nature of the data set provides multiple challenges in creating a clear picture of the foreign fighter phenomenon. Three-quarters of the country estimates came from studies by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, based at King's College London, without reference to when the estimates were compiled. The majority of the remaining country estimates were taken from a mix of journalistic reports and government estimates by source countries, involving different methodologies.

Many of the estimates that were available for the RFE/RL report are likely too low. For instance, the report cited "3,000 plus" for Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, the two largest contributors from the Middle East and North Africa. In an interview with Al Arabiya, a source based in the ISIS foreign-fighter stronghold of Raqqa said fighters from both countries received preferential treatment and leadership positions. Chechen fighters, renowned for their viciousness and military skills, were also highly valued.7 More problematic, numbers were unavailable for several countries known to have provided fighters, including Azerbaijan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Somalia.

In general, foreign fighter estimates from both government sources and news reports are often unclear as to whether fighters were affiliated with ISIS and whether the estimates pertain only to Syria or to Iraq and Syria.

Government-provided estimates are especially problematic, given the closed nature of intelligence reporting and the political considerations accompanying disclosure.

In October 2014, FBI director James Comey told CBS News' 60 Minutes that an estimated "dozen or so" Americans had joined ISIS. In November 2014, a government official speaking off the record told us that more than one hundred Americans had traveled to Syria to fight over the entire course of the conflict, including those who had returned, matching a previous estimate that we believe to be considerably too low.

The day after that interview, Comey told reporters that 150 Americans had traveled to Syria "in recent months." Earlier news reports citing unnamed government sources said there were "several hundred American pa.s.sport holders running around with ISIS."8 In earlier interviews, Comey also suggested that whatever number he provided was likely too low. These wild inconsistencies lead us to question the usefulness of any such official estimates.9 Based on both social network a.n.a.lysis and anecdotal observation of comments by foreign fighters on social media, we believe that as of this writing, a minimum of 30 to 40 Americans are currently affiliated with jihadists in Syria and Iraq, in both fighting and noncombat capacities, and we estimate that well over a dozen are currently affiliated with ISIS. This figure represents what we can confidently a.s.sess from open sources, meaning the real figure is certainly higher, possibly by a wide margin.10 For the United Kingdom, similar disclaimers apply, but the range of estimates is much higher, especially on a per capita basis. In August, the United Kingdom estimated to reporters that 500 British citizens were affiliated with ISIS in Syria and Iraq, with another 250 who may have returned. It is unclear whether the returnees are still affiliated with ISIS, but reports indicate it is difficult to simply leave the organization.11 Dramatically higher estimates began to circulate toward the end of 2014.12 British ISIS members were significantly more numerous and visible than Americans on social media platforms, in our observations.13 French- and German-speaking fighters have also been observed in large numbers on social media, and low-end estimates point to more than 550 fighters from Germany, and more than 1,000 from France. From the West, significant numbers of Canadian fighters also made their presence known on social media, although like Americans, many of them kept a lower profile.14 A typical jihadi foreign fighter is a male between 18 and 29 years old, according to a study by the Soufan Group, although there are many exceptions. Some are well over 30, and it is not uncommon to see fighters between 15 and 17.

Beyond age and gender, there are few consistent patterns and no reliable profile of who is likely to become a foreign fighter, but among Western recruits, a disproportionate number of converts can typically be found. (Converts are often especially vulnerable to fundamentalist ideas, often combining wild enthusiasm with a lack of knowledge about their new religion, making them susceptible to recruiters.) This approximate profile has endured for decades, through multiple jihadist conflicts.15 WHY JOIN?.

Why do individuals travel abroad to take part in somebody else's violent conflict, a markedly different behavior from taking part in a conflict that involves one's home community?

There is no single pathway, no common socioeconomic background, not even a common religious upbringing among individuals attracted to foreign fighting in general or jihadist fighting in particular.

"Four decades of psychological research on who becomes a terrorist and why hasn't yet produced any profile," according to John Horgan, director of the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at the University of Ma.s.sachusetts Lowell, who has studied the subject intensively. While efforts to generalize the problem have failed, he says, it is possible to understand some pathways for individuals.16 A variety of studies, using different frameworks and concepts, have approached the question of why people join violent extremist groups. Many of these boil down to a distinction between external and internal motives.

External motives have to do with an individual's perception of large-scale events in the world. While many a.n.a.lysts and policy makers have pointed to factors such as weak states, education, and social and economic disadvantage as external motivating factors, among those who study extremism in depth there is little consensus and much dispute on the importance of these factors.

More often than not, the external factors cited by extremists themselves point toward the importance of much more specific situations, for instance, a military conflict or genocidal campaign, usually but not always involving victims from a potential recruit's ident.i.ty group.

Jihadist propaganda has often relied on exactly these flashpoints, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan or the genocide in Bosnia, using them as a point of entry to leverage narratives about the event, characterizing partic.i.p.ation as not only a reasonable choice, but an obvious moral obligation. Indeed, jihadi ideologues often focus on the obligation of individual jihad when some or all of the ummah, or the Muslim nation, is under threat.17 But these flashpoints do not necessarily provide adequate motivation on their own merits. They offer outlets, either for social pressures in a fighter's native land or for his own internal struggles and dilemmas.

Internal motives stem from what an individual wants or needs for himself, in terms of the perceived benefits of membership in an extremist group, such as a feeling of belonging, escape into a new ident.i.ty, adventure, or money. Foreign fighters have personal needs that are met by joining an organization, and those personal needs may become more important over time.

"They want to find something meaningful for their life," in the words of John Horgan. "Some are thrill-seeking, some are seeking redemption."18 According to Scott Atran, Western volunteers are often in transitional stages in their lives. They are often "immigrants, students, between jobs or girlfriends . . . looking for new families of friends and fellow travelers. For the most part they have no traditional religious education and are 'born again' into a radical religious vocation through the appeal of militant jihad."19 Social acceptance and reinforcement is also an important factor. Atran's research found that three out of four foreign fighters in Syria traveled together with others, a figure consistent with previous studies on the subject.20 Traditionally, jihadist fighters have found internal motivation in the promise of perceived religious rewards such as entry into heaven and the benefits that promise includes, such as the much-discussed seventy-two virgins (the role of religion is emphasized in Atran's research).

But for many, perhaps most, jihadists, religious motivations are necessary but not sufficient to explain the leap to violent action. Some mix of political sentiment, religious belief, and personal circ.u.mstance is required. Parsimonious explanations, which focus only on single external factors, whether religious or political, cannot explain why one sibling becomes a jihadist and another a doctor. Clearly, something happens that makes an individual willing to risk his or her life for a cause.

During the course of the civil war in Syria, the balance of internal and external factors has shifted over time. At the start of the conflict, a diverse coalition of imported religious fighters and secular Syrian rebels united loosely around the goal of overthrowing the oppressive a.s.sad regime. For the jihadists, a longer-term goal was the establishment of a state governed by Islamic law, but the initial focus for most combatants was on fighting the regime. In the wake of ISIS's rise, according to research by Peter Neumann, Scott Atran, and others, that goal has shifted noticeably to establishing Shariah law and supporting the inst.i.tution of the caliphate, regardless of the wishes of the local Syrian population.21 With the emergence of large numbers of foreign fighters on social media, providing a conversational and continual commentary on the conflict, internal motivations soon came to the fore, and they went beyond the promise of heaven. While few would dispute the importance of religious allure in attracting fighters to the field, the conversation online frequently turned to the theme of fun and adventure.

British fighters, for instance, often posted pictures and stories about their day-to-day experiences. One of them, twenty-three-year-old Ifthekar Jaman, coined the phrase "five-star jihad" to describe the fun he was having fighting in Syria, which caught on as a rallying cry to his countrymen, who showed up in ever-increasing numbers. (Jaman was killed in December 2013.)22 A number of "celebrity" fighters upped the ante. One of the most popular was a former Dutch soldier named Yilmaz, who helped train mujahideen fighters with various factions in Syria. He doc.u.mented his Syrian experience with a wealth of photographs, posted on Instagram under the name "chechclear," a reference to a gruesome video of Chechen insurgents beheading a Russian soldier in the 1990s.

As chechclear, he doc.u.mented the war itself, posting pictures of battles and fighters, but also images of the people of Syria, including children, and seemingly incongruous snapshots of jihadists cuddling with cats, all of the photos enhanced by the photographic filters that helped make Instagram so popular.23 Yilmaz and other fighters also took to sites such as Ask.fm, a social media platform oriented around answering questions from other users. Questioners often asked how to donate to fighting groups or how they could get to Syria themselves, which fighters answered with greater or lesser amounts of specificity.

"I will personally a.s.sist you insha'Allah," Ifthekar Jaman told one questioner on Ask.fm. "But know this, if you are a spy, when you are caught, your punishment will be with little or no mercy."24 Others asked what to expect if they joined, querying everything from food choices to bathroom facilities to what sort of gear they should pack.

"Cargo pants (combat trousers), 511 brand is good," wrote Abu Turab, a twenty-five-year-old American who had drifted among fighting groups. "I have Old Navy, lol, but water-resistant stuff is the best. Don't hesitate to buy expensive stuff, for you're spending as [an act of worship]. Jackets and boots, try to buy GORE-TEX."25 The rise of violent infighting among jihadist factions in early 2013 and the subsequent disavowal of ISIS by al Qaeda put a significant damper on the five-star jihad. On social media, an explosion of discontent emerged as the focus of the conflict irrevocably shifted from fighting the a.s.sad regime to a battle for supremacy among the mujahideen. Although combat with the regime continued, the infighting among the rebels racked the conscience of many partic.i.p.ants.

"Have you forgotten your enemies who have destroyed a part of the Ummah?" one fund-raiser tweeted. "They are the people [you're] fighting, the KAFIRS [unbelievers], not MUSLIMS."

Others were alarmed at the effect this would have on potential recruits.

"Many will avoid hijra because of what just happened," one tweeted mournfully.

An Indonesian fighter was at a loss to answer a potential recruit who privately messaged him to say he feared he would be killed by his fellow Muslims.

"I don't know how to answer this Muslim brother from Morocco who planned to join ISIS with me," he tweeted plaintively.26 But ISIS was already moving to provide a new answer to the question: "Why join?" With the rollout of its plans for a caliphate in mid-2014, the focus shifted to promoting a sense of inclusion, belonging, and purpose in its demented utopia.

FOREIGNERS IN ISIS.

With the declaration of its "caliphate" in July 2014, ISIS began to enhance and amplify themes relating to the society it wanted to create.

While these ideas had already been present in its propaganda, the declaration of the caliphate had a dimension that went beyond simply showing ISIS in its best light. The new focus reflected a mandate given by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in his first speech as putative caliph: "O Muslims everywhere, whoever is capable of performing hijrah (emigration) to the Islamic State, then let him do so, because hijrah to the land of Islam is obligatory," Baghdadi said. "We make a special call to the scholars, [Islamic legal experts] and callers, especially the judges, as well as people with military, administrative, and service expertise, and medical doctors and engineers of all different specializations and fields." For these professionals, as well as for fighters, emigration was a religious obligation, he said.

In July 2014, ISIS's Al Hayat Media Center released an eleven-minute video that drove this point home. t.i.tled "The Chosen Few of Different Lands," the video showed a Canadian fighter named Andre Poulin, a white convert known to his comrades as Abu Muslim. It was a masterpiece of extremist propaganda.27 The video opened with stunning high-definition stock footage of Canada (or a reasonable facsimile) as Poulin described his life back home.

"I was like your everyday regular Canadian before Islam," he said. "I had money, I had family. I had good friends."

The barbaric nature of ISIS can lead observers to conclude its adherents are simplistic, violent, and stupid. "The Chosen Few" displayed a keen self-awareness of this perception and actively argued against it, with Poulin as its telegenic exemplar.

"It wasn't like I was some social outcast," Poulin said. "It wasn't like I was some anarchist, or somebody who just wants to destroy the world and kill everybody. No, I was a very good person, and you know, mujahideen are regular people too. . . . We have lives, just like any other soldier in any other army. We have lives outside of our job."

Life had been good in Canada, Poulin said, but he realized he could not live in an infidel state, paying taxes that were used "to wage war on Islam."

In reality, Poulin was not quite the model of social integration that he portrayed on film. He developed an interest in explosives early and had dabbled in Communism and anarchism before settling on radical Islam as an outlet for his interests. He had been arrested at least twice for threatening violence against the husband of a man whose wife he was sleeping with. These facts were conveniently omitted from his hagiography.28 In the video, Poulin said ISIS needed more than just fighters.

"We need engineers, we need doctors, we need professionals," he said. "We need volunteers, we need fund-raisers." They needed people who could build houses and work with technology. "There is a role for everybody."

A narrator gave a brief account of Poulin's life, with pictures, which concluded with an action sequence showing him taking part in an attack on a Syrian military air base in Minnigh. Shot in high definition, the footage was remarkable, depicting Poulin rushing toward the enemy, highlighted among his fellow combatants using sophisticated digital techniques. Poulin was clearly visible in action, running out in front of his comrades until he was struck down in a ma.s.sive explosion. After, his dead body was shown sprawled on the ground and later being prepared for burial.

"He answered the call of his Lord and surrendered his soul without hesitation, leaving the world behind him," said a narrator in perfect, unaccented English. "Not out of despair and hopelessness, but rather with certainty of Allah's promise."

At the end, Poulin spoke again, his visage filtered in a gauzy light.

"Put Allah before everything," he said.

The "whole society" pitch had been presaged for some months. ISIS supporters on social media tweeted Photoshopped images of an "Islamic State" pa.s.sport, for instance. Their enthusiasm for these tokens of future legitimacy was, at times, reminiscent of a child trying on his father's shoes, pretending to be grown up.

But as ISIS cemented its control of territory in Iraq and Syria, such images took on an increasingly material reality, albeit presented through carefully filtered glimpses. Each of ISIS's provinces issued a steady stream of images showing the infrastructure of government taking form-police cars and uniforms emblazoned with the black flag, markets overflowing with food.

ISIS selectively amplified its nation-building efforts, but it did not entirely fabricate them. While some of its outreach involved active image management, some parts were pragmatic, such as its offer of handsome salaries for engineers able to maintain the oil fields on which ISIS relies for black-market income.29 In November 2014, ISIS announced it would mint its own currency in keeping with the "prophetic method," posting images of the new coins to Twitter. ISIS military uniforms in Mosul sported black patches with white writing in Arabic citing its adherence to the "prophetic method." As Will McCants of the Brookings Inst.i.tution wrote, this "nightmarish bureaucracy" was intended to invoke echoes of Islamic prophecies related to the end times (see Chapter 10).30 But all of this also provided important markers of stability and substance. The stark black flag, which had come to be emblematic of ISIS's fighting force, was not just a symbol of war, the images argued wordlessly. It was the symbol of a society; no distant dream, but a living, breathing inst.i.tution waiting to be populated by the believers.

In an intelligence environment where credible estimates were unavailable on critical issues such as the size of ISIS's fighting force, or even just that force's foreign component, information on noncombatant emigration was spa.r.s.er still. But one element of that campaign was sensational enough to grab the headlines-ISIS's recruitment of women.

THE WOMEN'S BRIGADES Many of ISIS's most vocal and visible supporters online are women. a.n.a.lysis of social networks linked to ISIS on Twitter found hundreds of users identifying themselves as women and actively spreading the organization's message.31 The leader of this online recruiting effort was a veteran of online agitation using variations on the online username "al Khansa'a." The name corresponded to a female poet who was among the earliest converts to Islam in the days of the Prophet, known for ordering her sons into battle on behalf of Islam. All four died. "I feel proud to be the mother of martyrs," she is famously reputed to have said.32 Al Khansa'a had been active on al Qaedalinked forums well before ISIS's rise. Among members of the forum community, she was an early adopter of social media, opening a Twitter account under the handle @al_khansaa2 in September 2012, as well as establishing a presence on Facebook and other channels.

She was not only an influential figure; she was also well-connected to other al Qaeda users, actively partic.i.p.ating in networks connected to AQAP and al Shabab, with a special interest in connecting other female jihadist supporters to each other and to the broader al Qaeda network.33 Al Khansa'a was also ahead of the curve with her allegiances, defecting to ISIS at the outbreak of the fitna (infighting) with al Qaeda. At first, she was heavily engaged in the heated battles that fired up between top jihadist forum members, but as the weeks pa.s.sed, she transitioned into a new role-leading an online "brigade" that shared her name and was devoted to recruiting women to join ISIS.34 Aqsa Mahmood is another of the many women now tirelessly working to recruit foreigners to join ISIS. As a teenager growing up in Glasgow, Scotland, she turned away from a typical, seemingly happy life spent consuming young adult novels and rock music and toward an increasingly militant outlook on the world and on her Muslim heritage, a sharp break from her family's views.

Mahmood doc.u.mented her transformation with all the enthusiasm a teenager can bring to bear on her Tumblr blog, describing a swift transition from a mainly secular lifestyle into radicalism, noting her family's disapproval along the way and sometimes laughing it off.

"My parents genuinely think I'm extremist," she wrote.

Instead, she wrote in March 2013, her online friends-steeped in Salafist interpretations of Islam and the horror of the emerging Syrian civil war-were "the new family."35 She immersed herself in ever-more radical content from YouTube, Tumblr, and other online sources, citing al Qaedalinked clerics such as Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi and Abu Yahya al Libi as "my men of haqq (truth)."36 "I just want to make hijrah ok," she typed.37 Throughout 2013, her content turned more and more to openly jihadist ruminations and the growing obligation she felt to be involved in the struggle in Syria. In November, now nineteen, she abruptly bid her horrified family farewell.

"I will see you on the day of judgment. I will take you to heaven, I will hold your hand," her father recounted her saying. "I want to become a martyr."

She traveled to Turkey and from there to Syria, where she joined ISIS and married a Tunisian fighter.38 From Aleppo, she kept up her online activities, using Twitter and Tumblr to encourage others to follow her example.

"And to those who are able and can still make your way, please [fear Allah] and don't delay anymore, hasten hasten hasten to our lands and live in [honor]," she tweeted.39 Uncounted other young women like Mahmood were lured to join ISIS in Syria and Iraq, including hundreds of Westerners and many more from Arabic-speaking countries.

"Most foreign girls will be married off to foreign fighters upon their arrival," wrote Mia Bloom, a leading expert in the role of women in jihadist movements. "In fact, many are offered up as a form of compensation to the men fighting for al Baghdadi."40 Two teenage girls from Vienna, Austria, ages fifteen and sixteen, discovered this reality immediately after they left home to travel to Raqqa, Syria, where they were promptly married off to Chechen fighters. They reportedly became pregnant almost immediately and wrote to their families to say they wanted to come home, but there was no escape for them. Austrian police sources quoted in a British tabloid said the girls' social media accounts were taken over by other ISIS members, who sent a stream of happy messages encouraging others like them to make hijra.41 For some, on their arrival in Syria, the virtual al Khansa'a Brigade transformed into a physical reality. The bricks-and-mortar al Khansa'a Brigade was a grim counterpoint to the illusion that its namesake sold online, according to one Syrian woman who defected from ISIS. In an interview with CNN, she described joining the brigade in Raqqa, Syria, where many ISIS foreign fighters were concentrated.

The defector, referred to as Khadija to protect her ident.i.ty, told a jarring story of a women's squad of morality police, who whipped women seen on the streets wearing anything that did not measure up to ISIS's rigid ideal of female modesty.

The punishments were meted out by a woman Khadija knew as Umm Hamza (umm is Arabic for "mother of," and is used as a kunya, a form of alias, by female jihadists in a manner similar to how abu, Arabic for "father of," is used by males).

"She's not a normal female. She's huge, she has an AK, a pistol, a whip, a dagger and she wears the niqab," Khadija told CNN.42 Khadija was initially seduced by the power of her position, but over time the grinding horror of life under ISIS's rule began to take a toll. She witnessed crucifixions and brutal beheadings. As the commander of her brigade tried to push her toward marriage, she was increasingly alarmed by the domestic and s.e.xual violence she saw ISIS wives endure.

"I started to get scared, scared of my situation," she said. "I even started to be afraid of myself." She was smuggled to Turkey before she could be given to a husband.

ISIS's bid to build a society didn't stop at the recruitment of women, however. Foreigners were encouraged to bring their whole families to Iraq and Syria to "live under the shade of the caliphate."

In November 2014, ISIS released a video introducing "some of our newest brothers from Kazakhstan," who had "responded to the crusader aggression with their hijra and raced to prepare themselves and their children." The video showed dozens of smiling boys, the sons of a unit of Kazakh fighters, clambering into a bus and going to a schoolroom described as "the ultimate base for raising tomorrow's mujahideen."43 "We spent our childhood far away from this blessing," their Kazakh teacher explained. "We were raised on the methodology of atheism. . . . The kuffar (unbelievers) poisoned our minds. . . . Our children are happy. They're living in the shade of the Quran and Sunnah."

Another teacher was shown supervising a cla.s.s of pre-teenage boys in uniforms.

"They've completed lessons in Quran, [proper recitation of the Quran], and the Arabic language," he said. "They will move on to do physical and military training."

The scene shifted to show a Kazakh boy of perhaps nine combat-stripping an a.s.sault rifle, then training with others in its use. The physical training included hand-to-hand combat and calisthenics. At the end of the day, a member of ISIS's media team questioned one of the students.

"What will you be in the future, if G.o.d wills it?" the interviewer asked.

"I will be the one who slaughters you, oh kuffar," the boy responded with a grin pointed at the camera. "I will be a mujahid, if G.o.d wills it." One ten-year-old boy from the video was depicted in a subsequent release as executing two prisoners.

Such videos and images are far from rare. ISIS members on social media routinely post images on social media of children holding severed heads and playing on streets where dismembered bodies are splayed carelessly on the sidewalk. One image posted to Twitter showed a child playacting the beheading of American hostage James Foley using a doll.44 A UN report on war crimes in Syria pointed to the indoctrination of children as a "vehicle for ensuring long-term loyalty" and creating a "cadre of fighters that will see violence as a way of life." While children have often been victims of such manipulation in war zones, ISIS approached their "education" as it did almost everything else-systematically.

"This is not a marginal phenomenon. This is something that is being observed and seems to be part of the strategy of the group," Leila Zerrougui, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, told the a.s.sociated Press.45 For many families, of course, the reality of life under the Islamic State does not match the idyllic picture painted in ISIS propaganda. Some of the uncounted families who have moved to ISIS territory in Syria reported conditions deteriorating throughout 2014 as the organization came under increasing external pressure. In the most important cities under ISIS control, Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, electricity is reportedly limited, with garbage lying in the streets for days. In Mosul, a shortage of chlorine has rendered the water dangerously undrinkable, and ISIS has cut off most communications to the outside world in its effort to suppress news about the reality on the ground.46 LEFT BEHIND.

The potent projection of ISIS's "caliphate" exerted a gravitational pull on vulnerable people around the world, but not all of these individuals entered its...o...b..t. Some were unable to travel to the Middle East, thwarted by personal circ.u.mstance, external obstacles, or lack of imagination. Denied partic.i.p.ation in the ISIS project abroad, some chose to partic.i.p.ate at home, through acts of violence.

ISIS had been born out of al Qaeda, a traditional terrorist group, transforming itself into a formidable insurgency with substantial territory under its control. But its apocalyptic plan had always included a confrontation with the West, and it had stretched its influence out both virtually and physically in preparation for a new phase of war.

The threat took a variety of forms. In some cases, individuals living in the West acted on their own initiative. In others, ISIS operatives guided their actions, either remotely over social media or in person, using returned foreign fighters and other operatives abroad.

By March 2014, when few in the West were even contemplating an intervention in Iraq or Syria, ISIS already had operatives working on mayhem. In Switzerland, authorities disrupted a terrorist cell, led by three ISIS recruiters, which was in the midst of plotting a terrorist attack using explosives and poison gas. The arrests were kept quiet for months as Swiss authorities searched for additional conspirators.47 In May, a French citizen of Algerian descent named Mehdi Nemmouche shot and killed four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium before fleeing the scene. When he was arrested, in a railway station in France days later, police found in his luggage a video featuring the ISIS flag and claiming responsibility for the attack. Further investigation revealed that Nemmouche was a returned foreign fighter. A French hostage who had been imprisoned with James Foley and Steven Sotloff subsequently identified Nemmouche as one of his jailers.48 In Malaysia, nineteen alleged ISIS supporters were arrested between April and June 2014, accused of planning to bomb places where alcohol was served or brewed.49 In June 2014, President Obama announced the United States would increase its troop presence in Iraq to protect U.S. personnel, and on August 7 he informed the world that he had ordered air strikes against ISIS targets to slow its military advances and protect the beleaguered Yazidi minority in Iraq, which faced an imminent genocide. The pace of ISIS's "external operations"-terrorist plots and attacks-picked up significantly.

The incidents took a number of forms. In mid-August, a nineteen-year-old British citizen was arrested on a London street carrying a knife, a hammer, and the flag of ISIS. He was charged with preparing a terrorist act.50 In France, two teenage girls-ages fifteen and seventeen-were arrested for planning to bomb a synagogue in Lyon, part of a network of Islamic radicals online, although reports did not specify ISIS.51 In September, Australian police arrested fifteen people in a series of police raids to prevent a plot to randomly behead Australian citizens and wrap their bodies in the ISIS flag for public display. The plan was directed over the phone by an Australian ISIS recruiter based in Syria.52 On September 21, ISIS's chief spokesman, Abu Muhammad al Adnani, called for supporters around the world to rise up and respond to Western-led air strikes by carrying out attacks against any citizen of a country that belonged to the coalition against ISIS.

Do not let this battle pa.s.s you by wherever you may be. You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the [unbelievers]. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European-especially the spiteful and filthy French-or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Do not ask for anyone's advice and do not seek anyone's verdict. Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling. Both of them are disbelievers. . . .

If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him. . . . If you are unable to do so, then burn his home, car, or business. Or destroy his crops. If you are unable to do so, then spit in his face.53 The same day that the speech was released, Algerian terror group Jund al Khilafah, which had split from AQIM and thrown its support behind ISIS months earlier, kidnapped a French hiker and immediately issued a video threatening to behead him if the French government continued to support Western air strikes against ISIS. On September 24, it issued a second video, fulfilling its threat on camera.54 Short days later, an eighteen-year-old stabbed two Australian police officers he was scheduled to meet with after his pa.s.sport had been suspended. The officers survived. The teen's Facebook page was filled with ISIS material.55 On October 20, twenty-five-year-old Martin Couture-Rouleau drove a car into two Canadian soldiers in a parking lot in St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, then jumped out of the vehicle with a large knife. Police killed him before any more mayhem could occur. Couture-Rouleau had tried to leave Canada to go to Syria, but his pa.s.sport was suspended because he had come to the attention of authorities. The Quebecois's social network on Twitter was filled with French-speaking ISIS members and supporters.56 Two days later, thirty-two-year-old Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot and killed a soldier at a war memorial in Ottawa, Ontario, adjacent to the Canadian Parliament, then stormed the legislature, making his way into the building before being shot and killed by police. He had made a video condemning Canada's foreign policy. He had applied for a pa.s.sport to travel to Syria, but his application was under investigation at the time of the attack. ISIS supporters online obtained a distributed image of the killer and celebrated the attack.57 And just one day after that, a thirty-two-year old American, Zale Thompson, attacked two New York City policemen on patrol with a hatchet. Thompson, who was killed by police, reportedly consumed jihadist content online, although other reports suggested a scattered fixation on a wider range of issues.58 It was a remarkable string of so-called lone wolf attacks.59 For years, al Qaeda had been encouraging such attacks with only rare successes, spread out over months and years. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was especially persistent in promoting such attacks in its English-language magazine, Inspire, widely distributed online, but it had racked up only a handful of debatable successes over its four years of publication, along with a somewhat larger number of failed attempts.60 In contrast, ISIS had inspired three successful attacks within a span of days. In November, ISIS later took credit for all three, as well as the earlier incident in Australia.

"All these attacks were the direct result of [Adnani's] call to action, and they highlight what a deadly tinderbox is fizzing just beneath the surface of every western country, waiting to explode into violent action at any moment given the right conditions," stated an article published under the name of a British prisoner of ISIS who had been co-opted into the role of spokesman (see Chapter 5).61 More attacks in the name of ISIS soon followed in December, including a hostage situation in Sydney, Australia.62 In addition to the "lone wolf" threat, the question of returning fighters loomed large in the minds of Western security services. Returning fighters, like Nemmouche, were arrested in countries from Norway to Luxembourg to Indonesia, with many being detected in Europe, and certainly more still who escaped detection.63 In 2015, the terror threat in Europe began to heat up. A series of lone-wolf attacks inspired by ISIS in France in December and January (including stabbings and hit-and-runs) had been capped by an al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula a.s.sault on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. An ISIS supporter a.s.sociated with the attackers also jumped in to attack police while they searched for the first team. More than a dozen people were killed, and European governments began a ma.s.sive crackdown, rolling up returned ISIS fighters and other jihadists in a sweep that was ongoing as this book went to press.64 These cases broke down into two distinct challenges. First, there were unrepentant fighters who returned either of their own accord or at the direction of ISIS, presenting a very high risk that they would carry out terrorist attacks on behalf of the group. For intelligence and law enforcement agencies, it was imperative to detect and interdict such active operatives.

The second challenge was more confounding. As the conflict wore on, reports began to grow about foreign fighters who had become disenchanted with the conflict and wanted to return home.65 It was in the interest of Western governments to see radicals disengage with their extremist causes, but it was impossible to know for certain who was sincere and who presented a risk of future terrorism.