ISIS: The State of Terror Part 8

A prominent cleric with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Mamoun Hatem, openly declared his support for ISIS. A number of other AQAP figures on social media have also endorsed it, and it is believed that a significant number of AQAP fighters lean in that direction. In November 2014, AQAP issued a blistering statement condemning ISIS and its declaration of the caliphate, which included a tacit admission that the Yemeni affiliate was fracturing over divided loyalties.13 An important early splinter emerged within the North Africa affiliate, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, from a group identifying itself as the "central division."14 Over time, the appeal of ISIS has broadened in the areas where AQIM operates.

Very few old-school establishment al Qaeda supporters and clerics have come down in favor of ISIS, with the notable exception of Abu Bakar Bas.h.i.+r, an Indonesian cleric and the spiritual leader of the former Jemaah Islamiyah, a now-defunct organization with long-standing ties to the original al Qaeda.15 Bas.h.i.+r pledged allegiance to Baghdadi from a prison cell. But his decision split the successor group to Jemaah Islamiyah, with Bas.h.i.+r's sons denouncing the defection and breaking away with some number of supporters.16 AQAP's Hatem might have been more pragmatically important, but Bas.h.i.+r brought prestige, and he reflected a very large base of enthusiastic Indonesian and Malaysian ISIS supporters, many of whom were very active on social media.

In the Philippines, the leader of the Abu Sayyaf Group, founded with money from al Qaeda decades earlier, pledged to the leader of ISIS in September. The group had devolved into a criminal gang over the decades, and many observers suggested the pledge was simply an opportunistic bid to increase the ransoms they demanded for kidnapped Europeans. But even before the caliphate declaration, ISIS had enjoyed significant support from young people in the island nation.17 A small group of known al Qaeda figures in Afghanistan issued a statement supporting ISIS, and the venerable Afghan militant group Hezb-e-Islami signaled that it was considering the Islamic State's claim to the caliphate.18 In neighboring Pakistan, unruly Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) factions had begun splintering over a number of different fracture lines. One of several points of contention was the rise of ISIS. TTP had to fire its spokesman after he publicly pledged allegiance to Baghdadi. Other commanders soon joined him, and there were signs of interest from other Pakistani radicals.19 Boko Haram, a hard-line jihadi group in Nigeria, declared an "Islamic caliphate" in its own territory after ISIS's announcement, but the rambling statement20 by its notoriously incoherent leader, Abubakar Shekau, was decidedly unclear as to whether he was placing the territory under the umbrella of ISIS, and subsequent announcements only confused the issue.21 In Africa, members of Ansar al-Shariah in Tunisia (AST) displayed significant sympathies for ISIS, and a.n.a.lysis of its social media networks pointed to operational links. But the leaders.h.i.+p remained steadfastly silent. ISIS counts large numbers of Tunisians among its foreign fighters, more than any other single nationality, and authorities claim to have arrested thousands more22 who were trying to join the fight.23 English-speaking radical communities have been particularly critical to ISIS's support base. Two of the most important English-language Muslim radical organizations have aligned with ISIS, including Authentic Tauheed, led by Jamaican national Abdullah Faisal, and the network formerly known as al Muhajiroun, led by British cleric Anjem Choudary.

Faisal is best known in the West as the spiritual leader of the defunct Revolution Muslim, an online collective of al Qaeda supporters, most of whom are now in prison.24 Although he rarely makes headlines, Faisal has been a loud, active voice in radicalization for decades, with a consistent presence online via audio lectures and the Paltalk forum. Years ago, he once condemned American al Qaeda cleric Anwar Awlaki for not being radical enough (albeit this was before Awlaki came out of the terrorist closet).

After the announcement of the caliphate in June, Faisal weighed in strongly in favor of the ISIS's caliphate, b.u.t.tressing it with his "scholars.h.i.+p" and a series of rousing lectures. He later formally pledged his loyalty.25 Choudary led the radical group al Muhajiroun, which was banned in Britain, and a series of successor organizations that were, to a greater or lesser extent, the same group under a different name. Despite this, he remains at large as of this writing and functions as ISIS's primary cheerleader in the Western media.26 The al Muhajiroun network, by any other name, has been one of the most important funnels for hundreds or more British foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, with many of them now fighting under the ISIS banner and maintaining a robust presence on social media.

Other important English-speaking clerics are widely followed by ISIS supporters, including Musa Cerantonio, an Australian, and Ahmad Musa Jibril, an American. Cerantonio is openly affiliated with ISIS,27 whereas the Michigan-based Jibril is broadly popular with English-speaking fighters, despite the fact he does not openly call for violence and has not endorsed ISIS.28 COALITION OF THE WILAYAT.

Support built slowly but steadily in the weeks and months after the declaration of ISIS's so-called caliphate, but these public expressions were not the endgame. On November 13, 2014, an important new plank in ISIS's plan for expansion became clear, another innovation in the jihadist milieu.

The media had been captivated for days by unfounded rumors that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi had been killed in an air strike. When ISIS released a new audio recording of its would-be caliph, observers flocked to a.n.a.lyze it for clues about when it was recorded, trying to discern if Baghdadi still lived. Most pa.s.sed by the real news in the speech.

"Glad tidings, O Muslims, for we give you good news by announcing the expansion of the Islamic State to new lands, to the lands of [Saudi Arabia] and Yemen, to Egypt, Libya and Algeria," Baghdadi said. "We announce the acceptance of bayah of those who gave us bayah in those lands, the nullification of the groups therein, the announcement of new wilayat (provinces) for the Islamic State, and the appointment of [leaders] for them."

ISIS's organizational structure in Iraq and Syria was based on the wilayat, essentially provincial subdivisions each with its own governor. With the acceptance of bayah and the naming of governors outside of Iraq and Syria, Baghdadi was signaling that these new pledges were more than just business as usual.

The pledges had been announced on November 10, but their importance wasn't clear until the speech placed them in context. Although many had offered their bayah to Baghdadi, this marked the first time he had definitively accepted any in public.29 Highlighting the substantiality of these new wilayat, a number of additional groups that had pledged to ISIS were omitted from the announcement, including prominent organizations in Southeast Asia. Their bayah had been accepted, but they had not consolidated their leaders.h.i.+p and infrastructure enough to be granted formal standing.30 The Egyptian terrorist group Ansar Bayt al Maqdis announced its alignment with ISIS, concurrent with the designation of the group as a wilayat in Egypt. The merger had been rumored for weeks.31 ABM was an active jihadist group that had emerged after the Arab Spring. Most of its attacks were carried out in the Sinai Peninsula, but the group also had ties to Gaza.

Within days, the rechristened Sinai Wilayat of the Islamic State had issued a new video under the ISIS flag, a significant upgrade to the group's previous offerings, and displaying ISIS's distinctive mix of high production values and graphic violence.32 More important, the video was distributed by known members of the ISIS media team, the same channels that had released Baghdadi's announcement.33 This was marked contrast to al Qaeda, which had never visibly coordinated with its affiliates so closely.

This was not business as usual.

Each new wilayat penned a statement, distributed by ISIS, outlining its reasons for pledging. In Libya, three wilayat were specified-in the regions of Barqah, Fazzan, and Tripoli. Barqah included the town of Derna, which had supplied many foreign fighters to al Qaeda in Iraq during the U.S. occupation. More recently, large numbers of Derna residents had made very public pledges to ISIS.34 In Algeria, the pledge emanated from Jund-al-Khalifa, an AQIM brigade based in the Tizi Ouzou region that had splintered from the group in March 2014 and formally offered its allegiance to ISIS in September, when it had offered a concrete token of its loyalty, beheading a French hostage on video, just days after ISIS spokesman al Adnani had issued a blanket call for such actions in response to U.S. air strikes in Iraq.35 The other wilayat were less clearly defined, with the pledges from Saudi Arabia and Yemen signed simply as from the muhjahideen of each country. Neither specified where the wilayat were located, nor did they indicate that they represented existing groups. But evidence of ISIS's presence in the Arabian Peninsula soon emerged from an unlikely source-al Qaeda.

In a statement issued November 21, 2014, AQAP's top religious official, Harith bin Ghazi al Nazari, issued a statement sharply condemning ISIS for its declaration of the caliphate and its announced expansion into Yemen. In the statement, al Nazari accused ISIS of "dividing the mujahideen" around the world and in the Arabian Peninsula. He also called on Baghdadi to recant its claim on Yemen and other regions, a step that would not be necessary unless Baghdadi's call to join ISIS had been heeded by a significant number within the al Qaeda affiliate's ranks.36 In some ways, the announcement was the debut of the first ISIS affiliates, but more accurately, it appeared to be an expansion of the proto-state itself beyond contiguous borders. Where al Qaeda's affiliate system had emerged in fits and starts over time, with little evidence of a clear agenda, ISIS was making a definitive statement about both expansion and control. Al Qaeda was not well structured to support and control the affiliate system, and as a result, the affiliates had nearly undone it.

ISIS would not make the same mistakes. It was creating an "archipelago of provinces," in the words of jihadism scholar Aaron Zelin, who was early to a.s.sess the implications of ISIS's plan. The wilayat abroad would share connective tissue of control and governance, but would exist in noncontiguous s.p.a.ces.37 Precisely how ISIS intended to control these remote territories was unclear at the time of this writing, but subsequent statements indicated that the wilayat designations were only extended to those groups that had demonstrated they had implemented the infrastructure of control.

Given the large number of smaller groups that had pledged ISIS without being designated wilayat, the selective designations strongly suggested that a formal architecture existed for the new concept of governance.38 It was dawn of the era of distributed warfare, in which affiliated insurgent armies could arise in geographically distant regions but still answer to a single authority.

The full ramifications of the new paradigm were still nebulous at the time of this writing, but the unlikely coalition that had arisen to fight ISIS was able to function largely on the basis of an extremely limited engagement.

The new wilayat held territory and conducted operations on the sovereign soil of coalition members. Direct military confrontation between the West and ISIS in nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt would be virtually impossible, and efforts to conduct such a war would further destabilize the region.

THE OLD GUARD.

As of the writing of this book, ISIS had still not managed to score an outright win over al Qaeda in its core network-the official affiliates and the most prominent jihadi scholars-despite its considerable gains and the weakness signaled by AQAP in its November 21 statement.

All the top leaders of al Qaeda's affiliates had sworn bayah to Zawahiri, and for as long as he lived, they were religiously obligated to maintain that loyalty.

Some ISIS supporters advanced arguments about when such an oath could be rendered void, but this was a slippery slope. If the leaders disrespected their oaths to Zawahiri, their own followers might feel free to disrespect them.

There was legitimate cause for concern about opening that door. The increasingly spectacular fragmentation of the Pakistani Taliban in 2014, along several different lines of dispute over tactics and leaders.h.i.+p, demonstrated both the fragility of many established jihadist organizations and the opportunities they afforded ISIS.

"Our groups were in crisis; now [ISIS] has provided them with a powerful framework that is transforming their narrative," Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pak Inst.i.tute for Peace Studies, told the New York Times in November.39 Within the al Qaeda affiliates, as well, ISIS had sown deep divisions, or highlighted dissent that already existed.

In Syria, where literal shots had been fired and animus toward ISIS was arguably greatest, the al Nusra Front struggled with a loss of enthusiasm from the broader global jihadist support network and a string of defections from the lower ranks. (The calculus of defection was complicated, as moderate rebels deserted or defected to and from both al Nusra and ISIS, and concrete numbers were impossible to determine.)40 Al Nusra was plagued by a steady stream of rumors and disinformation about a possible merger with ISIS, which were greeted with a credulousness that spoke volumes about al Nusra's weakness. While most of the rumors were sourced to Syrian rebel factions with well-known axes to grind, there were some contacts between the groups, which appeared to end unceremoniously when ISIS demanded al Nusra simply submit and swear loyalty.41 Further afield, each of the affiliates issued statements after the declaration of the caliphate that split the difference, affirming allegiance to Zawahiri, with stronger or weaker language, while noting and sometimes praising the successes of the Islamic State, reflecting fears that too strong a stance opposing ISIS would split their own organizations down the middle. Pleas for reconciliation among the factions appeared with clockwork regularity from al Qaeda's partisans and were just as regularly ignored by ISIS.42 The razor's edge walked in these statements was sharpened when it became clear that the United States was preparing to take military action against ISIS, making it even more difficult to criticize the would-be caliphate.43 The pressure built throughout 2014, finally cresting in the November 2014 AQAP statement, the first time an affiliate unequivocally condemned ISIS's actions.

Despite pressures from every side, Zawahiri received apparently unsolicited declarations of loyalty from Mokhtar Belmokhtar, leader of a terrorist faction separated from AQIM in Africa, and the Caucasus Emirate, a Chechen insurgent group. These were unqualified wins for the al Qaeda leader but did not represent great strength, especially in regards to the Caucasus Emirate, many of whose former members had joined ISIS as fighters in Syria. (The group began visibly splintering over ISIS in December 2014 as this book went to press.)44 Zawahiri had not acknowledged either group as a formal part of the al Qaeda network by the end of December.

In fact, Zawahiri had remained almost entirely silent on the subject of ISIS and its presumptive caliphate as weeks stretched into months, to the considerable frustration of his supporters.45 His public silence did little to offset the growing perception that the core al Qaeda had been weakened and thrown off balance by ISIS's dramatic military advances and its audacious demand for the allegiance of the world's jihadists.

In September, al Qaeda finally released the first new message from Zawahiri since the caliphate announcement. It was strangely tangential, announcing the formation of a new al Qaeda branch in the Indian subcontinent. Although the region, which included Pakistan and India, was flush with preexisting jihadist organizations, none were named as partic.i.p.ants in the new venture.

Some observers rushed to portray the move as an attempt to counter the perception that ISIS had rendered al Qaeda irrelevant.46 While the rise of ISIS may have been a factor in the timing and the framing of the announcement, Zawahiri claimed the affiliate had been in development for two years. And as a.n.a.lyst Arif Rafiq noted, there was perhaps a more likely explanation: The new branch a.s.sured a continuing presence for al Qaeda in the region if Zawahiri was killed and al Qaeda Central relocated to another part of the world.47 Nevertheless, ISIS was the elephant in the room. Throughout the fifty-five minutes of Zawahiri's typically dry and long-winded rhetoric, he made no explicit reference to ISIS or the challenge it presented, furthering the impression that Zawahiri was out of touch or simply too weak to deal with the crisis. The response from al Qaeda supporters online was muted, and Zawahiri fell silent once more.48 Zawahiri's absenteeism was driven in part by operational security concerns. Despite the rise of ISIS, he remained the world's most wanted terrorist. Zawahiri may believe that ISIS will self-destruct due to its own excesses and that his best play is to minimize any infighting or splintering of al Qaeda until that happens. And he is not necessarily wrong about that.

But the weakness of this position leaves room for ISIS to exploit one of the fundamental risks that terrorist organizations face-decapitation.

As previously noted, bayah extends from leader to leader, not organization to organization. When one of the leaders of an affiliate is killed, the new leader of the affiliate is required to make a new oath to Zawahiri and have that oath acknowledged in order to stay in the network.

In the event of a death at the leaders.h.i.+p level, an al Qaeda affiliate could choose to drop its official affiliation with al Qaeda and realign with ISIS, or even opt for independence from both. And in the event of the death of Zawahiri himself, all bets are off. All of the al Qaeda affiliates would have the option to switch allegiances.

It is by no means certain this would happen. Al Qaeda survived its first major test in the post-ISIS era in September 2014, when a U.S. air strike killed Ahmed G.o.dane, the leader of the Somali al Qaeda affiliate al Shabab.

Al Shabab moved swiftly to replace G.o.dane, and its new leader immediately pledged continued allegiance to Zawahiri. However, the insurgent group remained under heavy pressure in Somalia, and the long history of infighting among Somali jihadist groups left the question only temporarily settled.49 It is decidedly unclear whether other affiliates would stay in line in the event that their own leaders or Zawahiri is killed. The current U.S. strategy against terrorism, which is heavily focused on decapitation, could eventually prove to be ISIS's greatest a.s.set. If a drone strike kills the leader of AQAP or AQIM, the uncertainties of succession could result in powerful new allies for ISIS.

TERROR RECRUITS AND LONE WOLVES.

In the eyes of many Westerners, the compet.i.tion between al Qaeda and ISIS is a battle for survival and relevance. During the Arab Spring and after the death of Osama bin Laden, pundits as well as some serious students of terrorism were happy enough to write al Qaeda's obituary, if prematurely.

As ISIS commanded a greater and greater share of the headlines, many observers decamped into opposing factions, arguing either that ISIS had made al Qaeda mostly or completely irrelevant, or on the other side, that ISIS was an unsustainable flash in the pan, and al Qaeda remained the chief global terrorist threat.

In the heat of this debate, many glossed over the fundamental reality of terrorism. Asymmetrical warfare is defined by asymmetry. Any terrorist ideology that can attract five recruits and the contents of their checking accounts can make headlines for months. A terrorist group with twenty willing recruits and half a million dollars can make headlines for years. Although ISIS was dominating the headlines and attracting more recruits, al Qaeda was still quite capable of carrying out terrorist attacks.

Extremist and terrorist groups do fade, but it can take an extraordinarily long time for them to fade completely away. Consider the Ku Klux Klan, which was supplanted in the 1980s and 1990s by the more violent and extreme racist neo-n.a.z.i movement. The Klan did not cease to exist, nor did it cease to carry out plots and violence. But the center of gravity for the white supremacist movement s.h.i.+fted away from the KKK, and it has not returned.

At this stage, either al Qaeda or ISIS could entirely collapse or be subsumed into the other as a result of the conflict, but neither of those outcomes is necessarily likely. The risk of total collapse is likely greater for ISIS, which is younger and less risk-averse than al Qaeda, but at this stage, there is a good chance both will continue in some form.

The battle is not simply between the organizations but between the visions they represent for the future of the jihadist movement.

Al Qaeda represents the intellectual side of the jihadist movement. While its ideology runs counter to hundreds of years of Islamic scholars.h.i.+p, it is nevertheless carefully constructed and has been articulated over the years in considerable detail.

Al Qaeda's vision for the restoration of the Islamic caliphate is framed squarely in the long term. Its most frequently cited theme is a cla.s.sic extremist trope-the defense of one's own ident.i.ty group against aggression. Its most charismatic leaders are dead. Those who remain are p.r.o.ne to deliver long hectoring speeches while sitting barely animate in a chair.

The net result of all these elements is most visible in recruiting. Despite its distorted worldview and its willingness to kill civilians, al Qaeda's recruitment message is ultimately intended to appear "reasonable" and to resonate with a wide audience of thinking people.

Al Qaeda and other old-school jihadists often exploited tragic and evocative situations to attract fighters. In Bosnia, for instance, mainstream Western media paid close attention to the unfolding genocide, with a steady drumbeat asking, "Why aren't we doing more?" Al Qaeda asked the same question. The decision to go to Bosnia and try to help did not seem especially radical in a mainstream context. But when volunteers arrived in the country, they were exposed to and allied with jihadists with a much more extreme agenda. For many, violent radicalization was not the reason for fighting in Bosnia, it was the outcome.

In Syria, the same dynamic unfolded, at first. a.n.a.lyst Aaron Weisburd noted in November 2013 that the desire to partic.i.p.ate in the Syrian conflict was not especially "extreme" for either s.h.i.+'a or Sunni foreign recruits. The statement was striking coming from someone known for his hard-nosed and unyielding pursuit of violent extremists online. Radicalization, he wrote, would depend on where the fighter landed, and with whom he surrounded himself.50 Al Qaeda's broad foreign fighter model-the 2013 model-was to attract people to relatable causes, then radicalize them later. This approach is more likely to result in foreign fighters who are relatively discriminating and possess some manner of moral compa.s.s; people who are more likely to set limits on their actions.

These are the foreign fighters studied by Hegghammer (Chapter 4)-those who were certainly more likely than the average person to engage in terrorism, but still not all that likely to engage in terrorism.

Al Qaeda's focus on that wider and more legitimate audience also worked against its efforts to attract individual jihadists, the so-called lone wolves. Over the last decade, al Qaedainspired lone wolves have frequently focused on military or government targets, although not without exception.

Many nonnetworked terrorists who were inspired by al Qaeda openly discussed their discomfort targeting civilians, even though al Qaeda was famous for the tactic and frequently encouraged it. These self-radicalized recruits experienced cognitive dissonance and made a choice they believed was morally defensible, even if it meant the target would be more difficult to strike.51 The same trend can be seen at the organizational level. While al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been the most active affiliate in pursuing traditional civilian-focused terrorism against Western targets, it has devoted remarkably few resources to this goal, spending only a handful of men and a tiny fraction of its war chest. It has to date focused the vast majority of its resources on fighting the Yemeni government and s.h.i.+'a movements.52 Of course, al Qaeda has seen more than its share of bottom feeders over the years. Terrorist groups naturally attract a certain number of thugs and violence junkies. But there is now a more natural home for members of that demographic-the Islamic State.

ISIS too has an articulated ideology with texts and an underlying high-level a.n.a.lysis.53 Its so-called caliph holds a doctorate in Islamic studies-considerably more religious education than Osama bin Laden. When it is expedient, ISIS indulges in religious argument, for example, to justify its capture and sale of s.e.xual slaves.

But its messaging betrays a different kind of sophistication. Where al Qaeda framed its pitch to potential recruits in more relatable terms as "doing the right thing," ISIS seeks to stimulate more than to convince. Its propaganda and recruiting materials are overwhelmingly visceral, from scenes of graphic violence to pastoral visions of a utopian society that seems to thrive, somehow, in the midst of a war zone.

Its calls to religious authority turned heavily toward the apocalyptic. For instance, an article in Dabiq that justified the enslavement of Iraq's Yazidi minority by ISIS cites a prophecy saying that slavery will return before the end times begin. Such themes are surely not unique in the modern jihadist movement, but they are now being deployed loudly and effectively (see Chapters 5 and 7).

As discussed in previous chapters, ISIS also distinguishes itself with a projection of strength and an appeal to populism-the gates are open for anyone who wants to join. All of these elements have coalesced into a unique offering in the world of extremism.

Ident.i.ty-based extremism is frequently concerned with themes of purification, and the message of ISIS was extremism itself, purified. No more rationalizations about self-defense; instead, talk of revenge. No more subtle and embedded a.s.sumptions of weakness. Instead, aggression, shocking violence and strength. No more talk of a generational war to restore the caliphate. It was here, now.

After the Arab Spring, the Muslim Brotherhood had taken power in Egypt and was almost immediately confronted by political failure. Mark Lynch, director of the Inst.i.tute for Middle East Studies at George Was.h.i.+ngton University, wrote that the Brotherhood "was profoundly shaped at every level-organization, ideology, ident.i.ty, strategy-by its clear understanding that taking power was not an option. Removing that constraint proved more radically destabilizing than might have been rationally expected."54 Al Qaeda's organization, ideology, ident.i.ty, strategy, and messaging were also predicated on the expectation that it would not take power. It stood for an idealized future that its leaders did not expect to see realized in their lifetimes.

ISIS rejected this fundamentally defeatist model and saw an opportunity to implement the future now. The result was profoundly destabilizing to its progenitor. What message could al Qaeda craft to compete with ISIS's continual declarations of victory? Zawahiri's months of silence spoke volumes.

ISIS's model had a potent attraction, and foreign fighters flocked in record numbers to join the movement. But its gravity also drew debris into its...o...b..t. In the West, individual jihadists-the lone wolves-began to act out. But its messaging also resonated with people at risk of committing violence, whether or not those people were truly engaged with its goals and ideology.

Some resembled spree killers more than terrorists, such as Alton Nolen, a Muslim convert in Oklahoma who beheaded one coworker and stabbed a second at the food store from which he had recently been fired. Nolen's social media accounts pointed to a confusing mix of s.e.xual repression and radical Islam. The attack came soon after a spree of ISIS beheading videos; the connection to Nolen's attack was unclear but fueled intense speculation both in the media and among jihadis.55 In November 2014, a man walked into a California mall and asked to have a hat embroidered with "We Love ISIS." Store employees alerted police, who found a.s.sault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition at his home. He was detained on a psychiatric hold after telling police he was a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.56 Others showed signs of being more deeply engaged with the ideas of ISIS, such as Zale Thompson, who attacked New York City police with an ax after spending months reading jihadist content online.57 In the province of Quebec, Martin Couture-Roleau drove his car into two soldiers before being killed by police. His social media accounts showed close a.s.sociations with French-speaking ISIS supporters.58 While the spike in violence by individual actors was cause for concern, ISIS's predilection for violence had also irrevocably changed the nature of the Syrian civil war, s.h.i.+fting the calculus of risk from foreign fighters.

In November 2013, the impulse to travel to Syria and get involved in the conflict was not necessarily extreme.

By November 2014, the landscape had changed radically. Jihadist groups were fighting each other and the moderate Syrian rebels. After being targeted by U.S. air strikes, Jabhat al Nusra went on the offensive against U.S.-backed rebel factions, driving them out of key strongholds.59 In the portions of Iraq and Syria where ISIS reigned, a charnel-house atmosphere mixed bizarrely with antiseptic images of nation building, weighted almost equally. Who would be attracted to this disturbing contradiction?

ISIS's media push has moved the radicalization window far afield, eschewing the al Qaeda model of attracting fighters first and radicalizing them later. With its heady media mix of graphic violence and utopian idylls, ISIS sought recruits and supporters who are further down the path toward ideological radicalization or more inclined by personal disposition toward violence.

Once these pre-radicalized fighters and their families arrive in Iraq and Syria, they are exposed to an environment seething with traumatic stress, s.e.xual violence, slavery, genocide, and death and dismemberment as public spectacles.

Among returning foreign fighters of previous generations, perhaps one in nine would eventually take up terrorism on returning to their homelands.60 The fighters of ISIS are a new and untested breed. If they and their families someday attempt to return to their home countries, they will be unimaginably different from their predecessors.

ISIS didn't invent ultraviolent jihad. There have been many examples in the past, but they have led to consequences. In the horrific 1997 Luxor ma.s.sacre in Egypt, sixty-two tourists (including women and children) were literally cut to pieces by dissident members of the Egyptian Islamic Group. The backlash led the group to moderate its overall approach.

The Abu Sayyaf Group has long beheaded hostages, sometimes on video, but its brutality and indiscriminate targeting have increasingly led to the perception that it is a criminal enterprise with expedient jihadist trappings.

But ISIS has crafted a novel formula for mixing brutal violence with the illusion of stability and dignity, and it has moved the bar for recruits.

Its combination of successful ground strategy, aggressive messaging, and an appeal to strength over weakness has proven uniquely powerful and energized at least tens of thousands of ardent supporters.

The challenge that lies ahead for the group is whether it can sustain all three elements over time and whether its extraordinary capacity for violence will eventually alienate even its core supporters.

And if it survives the first two challenges, it will be faced with a third-whether its deliberate cultivation of ultraviolence as a core element of its society will lead it ever further into darkness, into a pit of horror that cannot be escaped.

CHAPTER NINE.

ISIS'S PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE Terrorism is psychological warfare. Its most immediate goals are to bolster the morale of its supporters and demoralize and frighten its victims and their sympathizers. For the audience, the radius of fear dwarfs that of injury and death. Terrorists also aim to make us overreact in fear. While they don't always get what they want, terrorists often succeed at these two vital goals: spreading fear and provoking reactive policies.

Terror can make us strike back at the wrong enemy, for the wrong reasons, or both (as was the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq). We want to wage war, not just on terrorism, but also on terror, to banish the feeling of being unjustly attacked or unable to protect the blameless. We want to wage war on evil. Sometimes the effect of our reaction is precisely that which we aimed to thwart-more terrorists and more attacks, spread more broadly around the world. While some politicians wanted to see Iraq during the allied invasion as a roach motel, we see it more like a hornet's nest-with allied bombs and bullets spreading the hornets ever further, throughout the region and beyond.

People often ask, how afraid should we be? Our answer is that it depends on who you are, where you live, and your role in society. If you are a national leader, ISIS should scare you a lot. This applies, firstly, to the leaders of Iraq and Syria as well as to the leaders of nearby countries. ISIS is already spreading ethnic and/or sectarian conflict into the Arabian Gulf as well as in Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, Turkey, and beyond. Unrest in Yemen will likely make it vulnerable to exploitation by ISIS, especially since the organization already enjoys wide support inside the ranks of the local al Qaeda branch.

As we have seen, an estimated 17,000 foreign fighters have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join jihadi groups.1 Jihadist organizations in the Gulf, North Africa, the Caucasus, and Southeast Asia which once looked to al Qaeda for leaders.h.i.+p have officially declared their allegiance to ISIS. Individual supporters of ISIS are spread around the world, including the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.2 ISIS established new wilayat (provinces) in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, Libya, and Algeria, noting that "while the eyes of the world were all blinded and spellbound by the sorcerous media 'covering' the battle for [Kobane], the eyes of the Islamic State were scanning East and West, preparing for the expansion that-by Allah's permission-would put an end to the Jewish State, [the Saudi monarchy], and the rest of the apostate [tyrants], the allies of the cross."3 And ISIS and its sympathizers will continue to strike out at the West.

There are three broad categories of likely perpetrators outside of Syria and Iraq (not only in the West, but around the world): recruits who return from the battlefields to bring their holy war back home; homegrown or self-recruited actors, inspired by ISIS and its ideology, perhaps over social networks, or commissioned by its money; and an ISIS-led attack, perpetrated by hardened terrorists emanating from its strongholds. So far, we have seen successful examples of the first two and aspirational examples of the third. Among them: A French national returned from Syria and killed four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels.4 A young teen claimed to have been paid by ISIS to commit an attack in Vienna.5 A lone actor in Ottawa, Canada, left a video recording of his ideological and political grievances before an attack on Parliament Hill, which left one soldier dead.6 Western returnees have been horrified by what they saw in the Islamic State and appear to have little interest in attacking their home countries, at least for now.7 (The infighting among jihadi groups sparked by ISIS also alienated and ultimately drove out some fighters on all sides.) But even if only a tiny percentage take up violence in their native lands, it will have a large effect on how people perceive their safety.

People willingly engage in dangerous activities, imagining, often wrongly, that they are in control of their fate. But they expect their government to protect them from organized violence. Thus governments may feel compelled to act in response even to low-level attacks. While there is no evidence in open sources that ISIS could mount an attack of the scale and complexity seen on September 11, it currently commands many times more money and men than al Qaeda did in 2000, and a large-scale attack cannot be ruled out. ISIS has demonstrated clearly that it has both the inclination and the practical capacity for bold, aggressive action. But spectacular terrorist attacks are rare. They require coordination and communication among operatives, rendering them vulnerable to penetration and interception by law-enforcement personnel. As such, the risk is difficult to predict.

More reliably predictable are small-scale attacks in the West (such as those discussed in Chapter 4), which have noticeably increased in tempo since ISIS began to advocate for them. This is likely to continue and may very well get worse. We may see random beheadings, or shoot-outs at shopping malls, or subway attacks. The prospect can be frightening, especially for law enforcement, intelligence agencies and political leaders, all of whom share a mission to protect citizens from violence.

But the likelihood that any given individual will be caught in such an attack is vanis.h.i.+ngly small. You are significantly more likely to die in a car accident, especially if you fail to wear a seat belt, than to be attacked by ISIS. Wear your seat belt.

IT HAS LONG been observed that the things that frighten us most are often quite different from those most likely to harm us. Consider the risks you're exposed to on an ordinary day. When you got up this morning, you exposed yourself to risks at nearly every stage of your progression from your bed to the office. Even lying in bed exposed you to hazards. One in four hundred people are injured doing nothing but lying in bed or sitting in a chair. The odds of dying by falling off a bed or other furniture are one in 4,283.8 Most people are far more frightened by a terrorist attack than by a swimming pool or the drive to work, even though the latter are far more likely to kill us.

Perception of risk is highly correlated with levels of news coverage.9 Inevitably and often inadvertently, the media tends to facilitate terrorists' theatrical performances. Terrorists know this. As noted previously, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al Qaeda, once wrote that more than half the battle against the West and for "the hearts and minds of our Umma" is "taking place in the battlefield of the media."10 In their technical a.s.sessments, experts focus on probabilities and outcomes, but the perception of risk depends on other variables. There is little correlation between objective risk and perception of danger.11 People tend to exaggerate the likelihood of "available" events that are easy to imagine or recall, when a visual or aural image seems taped to the brain.12 Terrorism is often "available" in the sense that risk a.n.a.lysts' use the term, in large part because of media coverage.

Images matter. Most of us can't get the images of September 11 out of our heads: the crash of the planes into the steel and gla.s.s tower, followed by the sight of tiny figures leaping, as if in a dream of flight, to murderously concrete ground. And now ISIS is taking the imagery one step further by using social media to broadcast images of deliberately brutal beheadings into our homes and minds.

Surveys conducted by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that people evaluate choices with respect to the status quo. These findings have been repeatedly replicated: We overvalue losses relative to gains; we will pay more to avoid the loss of something we already have than we would to acquire it.

We also overestimate the likelihood of rare events, and underestimate the likelihood of more common ones.13 We are at risk of overreacting to relatively minor incidents because they represent a loss relative to the status quo and because of our tendency not to distinguish adequately between ten deaths and ten thousand.14 Risk a.n.a.lysis involves attempting to generate statistical, rather than emotional judgments. What is missing from risk a.n.a.lysts' a.s.sessment is that terrorists' determination to harm us, their malice and forethought, coupled with our lack of agency, strongly influence our perception of risk. The chair that breaks beneath us has no agency and harbors no malice, therefore we a.s.sess the importance of that risk differently.

Kahneman, who won a n.o.bel Prize for two extraordinarily elegant and influential papers he wrote with Tversky in the 1970s, revisited his earlier work in 2011, applying it directly to our topic, this time describing his emotional reaction and his struggle to maintain a "rational" approach.

He writes: I visited Israel several times during a period in which suicide bombings in buses were relatively common-though of course quite rare in absolute terms. There were altogether 23 bombings between December 2001 and September 2004, which had caused 236 fatalities. The number of daily bus riders in Israel was approximately 1.3 million at that time. For any traveler, the risks were tiny, but that was not how the public felt about it. People avoided buses as much as they could, and many travelers spent their time on the bus anxiously scanning their neighbors for packages or bulky clothes that might hide a bomb.

I did not have much occasion to travel by bus, as I was driving a rented car, but I was chagrined to discover that my behavior was also affected. I found that I did not like to stop next to a bus at a red light, and I drove away more quickly than usual when the light changed. I was ashamed of myself, because of course I knew better. I knew that the risk was truly negligible, and that any effect at all on my actions would a.s.sign an inordinately high "decision weight" to a minuscule probability. In fact, I was more likely to be injured in a driving accident than by stopping near a bus. But my avoidance of buses was not motivated by a rational concern for survival. What drove me was the experience of the moment: being next to a bus made me think of bombs, and these thoughts were unpleasant. I avoided buses because I wanted to think of something else.

My experience ill.u.s.trates how terrorism works and why it is so effective: it induces an availability cascade. An extremely vivid image of death and damage, constantly reinforced by media attention and frequent conversation, becomes highly accessible, especially if it's a.s.sociated with a specific situation such as the sight of a bus. The emotional arousal is a.s.sociative, automatic, and uncontrolled, and it produces an impulse for protective action. We may "know" that the probability is low, but this knowledge does not eliminate the self-generated discomfort and the wish to avoid it.15 DREAD OF EVIL.

Another factor, not yet studied by risk a.n.a.lysts such as Kahneman, is the impact of evil on our perception of dangers. Theologians, psychologists, and moral and political philosophers, among others, have various perspectives on what const.i.tutes evil, its causes, and how to fight it. Philosophers traditionally identify three kinds of evil: *Moral evil: Suffering caused by the deliberate imposition of pain on sentient beings.

*Natural evil: Suffering caused by natural processes such as disease or natural disaster.

*Metaphysical evil: Suffering caused by imperfections in the cosmos or by chance, such as a murderer going unpunished as a result of random imperfections in the court system.

The use of the word evil to describe such disparate phenomena is a remnant of pre-Enlightenment thinking, which viewed suffering (natural and metaphysical evil) as punishment for sin (moral evil). Drowning is more likely to be the result of "natural evil," than "moral evil," while terrorism is an example of the latter. It is moral evil that most frightens us.

Before September 11, philosopher Susan Nieman wrote, we had grown used to complex villains, whose evil was less immediately apparent than bin Laden's. We were in the habit of thinking about evil in Hannah Arendt's terms-ordinary people contributing, like cogs in a wheel, to evil outcomes.16 And now we are faced with an enemy that seems psychopathic in its theatrical acts of violence, but extraordinarily clever in knowing what will most horrify and disgust us. Horror, William Miller tells us, is "fear-imbued" disgust for which "no distancing or evasive strategies exist that are not themselves utterly contaminating."17 The horror we feel at the image of beheadings is hard to escape.

We have grown unused to visible displays of cruelty. In his monumental study of the decline of violence, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker demonstrates that inst.i.tutionalized cruelty began to decline in the West by the end of the eighteenth century. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, after the Thirty Years War and the Treaty of Westphalia, Europeans gradually stopped killing people on the basis of their holding the "wrong" supernatural or religious belief.18 In the eighteenth century, the Humanitarian Revolution led to a growing respect for human lives. Pinker attributes this revolution to the growth of writing and literacy rates. When a person reads, she learns to empathize with individuals beyond her family or tribe or nation. It is a "technology for perspective-taking," Pinker argues.19 Empathy is the antidote to human cruelty. In The Science of Evil, Simon Baron-Cohen defines empathy as consisting of two stages. The first involves the ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling; the second involves responding to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion.20 Some people are born with less empathy than others. Absence of empathy can be a trait (as in biologically based psychopathy) or a state.21 Empathy can be temporarily and sometimes necessarily shut off, as when a surgeon needs to cut into flesh to save a life.

But empathy can also become attenuated, such as when a person is too often severely frightened, too often victimized, or too often involved in perpetrating violence. Frequent exposure to savagery is one way to reduce a person's capacity to feel. When a person is trained, or trains himself, to feel less empathy and its absence becomes a trait, he becomes capable of dehumanizing others, putting him at risk of acts of extreme cruelty. In our view, ISIS is using frequent exposure to violence as a technology to erode empathy among its followers.

But empathy alone is not enough to explain the decline in violence, Pinker argues. The Enlightenment added another variable: the recognition that there is a universal human nature, and that like everything else, this too can be studied.22 Reason allows us to move beyond our personal experiences, and to frame our ideas and experiences in universal terms. This leads us to recognize the ways our actions might harm others. The interchangeability of perspectives is the principle behind the Golden Rule and its equivalents, which have been discovered and rediscovered in so many moral traditions.23 ISIS rejects this universal moral principle, in a way that repulses and disgusts not only "children of the Enlightenment" but most observers,24 including jihadi ideologues.25 That said, Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges urge us to remember that ISIS is appealing to sacred values, not reason. Although "logically and empirically inscrutable," such beliefs can strongly influence behaviors, they argue. They find that "seemingly contrary evidence seldom undermines religious belief, especially among groups welded by costly commitment in the face of outside threats [see discussion of millenarian movements in Chapter 10]. Belief in G.o.ds and miracles also intensifies when people are primed with awareness of death or when facing danger, as in wartime." They also find that "cross-national a.n.a.lyses show that a country's devotion to a world religion correlates positively with existential insecurity."26 But appealing to sacred values could (and often does, at least in modern times) lead to peace, not terrorism and war. Sacred texts are filled with contradictions. Terrorists across religions find justification in religious texts to do what they want to do, in ISIS's case, rape, pillage, and plunder.27 While an appeal to sacred values may make conflicts more intractable, why is ISIS drawn to the parts of the text that would seem to justify slavery, rape, and murder?

During the early 1930s, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud exchanged letters that were later published (although they were subsequently suppressed by Hitler). Einstein asked: How is it possible for this small clique to bend the will of the majority, who stand to lose and suffer by a state of war, to the service of their ambitions?