The world is no stranger to depravity. Nazism has
only been dead for 70 years and it was a mere 35 years ago that the Khmer Rouge
murdered about 25 percent of Cambodia’s people. Now the leaders of Daesh (aka
Islamic State, IS, ISIS, and ISIL) are guaranteeing that they will be
remembered, long after their extinction, as members of the World’s Gallery of Scoundrels.
I’m settling on the name Daesh here partly to honor
our friends in France who suffered so grievously in yesterday’s massacre. About a year ago Laurent Fabius, the French Foreign Minister, said that
we would do well not to use the term “Islamic State” since “it blurs the lines
between Islam, Muslims and Islamists.” The “Daesh cutthroats,” Mr. Fabius argued,
are, in any case, a terrorist group rather than a state.
I don’t intend to quibble over such niceties as what constitutes a state, but I believe knowing something about how Daesh
operates is worthwhile. An insightful analysis about its inner workings can be
found in a recent article in Der Spiegel
that my friend Rachel shared with me. I think that the most important points
that this article reveals are (1) that Daesh was established not by religious
fanatics, but by an angry Iraqi who had worked, until 2003, as an intelligence officer for
Saddam Hussein, and (2) that Daesh has conquered extensive territories by first
infiltrating them and then using Gestapo-like techniques to subordinate their
populations.
The man behind these very carefully designed
techniques was killed in January 2014, but not before he set the apparatus in
motion that has led to Daesh’s successes in Syria and Iraq. He went by numerous
aliases, including Haji Bakr, and he had been, before the US invasion,
a high-ranking intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein’s air defense force. Der Spiegel was able to describe the
inner workings of Daesh because the death of Haji Bakr resulted in his detailed
plans for conquest and control falling into his enemies’ (and Der Spiegel’s) hands.
These plans revealed that many of the most
fanatic fighters in Daesh are foreigners. Of course it’s common knowledge that
thousands of young men from around the world have traveled to the Middle East
to join Daesh, but Der Spiegel notes
that the fanaticism of these foreigners often surpasses that of the Syrian and Iraqi fighters
because the foreigners have no emotional investment in any local populations
and little contact with the people of Syria and Iraq except through their acts
of violence.
Those who have paid attention to Daesh’s expansion
are familiar with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi who, like Haji Bakr was
radicalized by the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Al-Baghdadi was held at
Camp Bucca, a U.S. facility, for four years because of his ties to al Qaeda in
Iraq (AQI). When he was released, he became a leader in AQI, but later joined
Daesh and eventually assumed the position of Daesh's Caliph, or supreme leader. Der Spiegel leads me to
believe that al-Baghdadi is useful to Daesh mainly because his genuine
religious fanaticism gives the organization a public image that helps obscure
its secular ruthlessness. This ruthlessness owes more to the Saddam
Hussein School of Terrorism and Thought Control than it does to anything in
Islam.
In fact, the non-Islamic features of Daesh help
explain its conflict with al Qaeda. The latter organization is clearly
motivated by a fanatic version of Islam, and a number of its leaders have
pointed accusing fingers at Daesh, not just for its brutality (which al Qaeda can all but match), but for its lack of authentic religiosity.
Almost everyone in the world, Muslim and
non-Muslim alike, agrees that Daesh must be destroyed. Not only France, but Turkey
and Lebanon have suffered horribly at its hands. And so, apparently, have the
people of Russia who lost 224 compatriots to what appears to be a
Daesh-inspired bomb on board an Airbus over the Sinai.
The only question is, how should we go about
killing this foul beast? Cooperation between NATO, Russia, Iran and Middle
Eastern Arabs (including those Syrians whose behavior has not made it
impossible for us to work with them) is essential. A full scale invasion by
foreign armies strikes me as a very bad idea for a number of reasons. For one thing, let’s not
forget that the leaders of Daesh, both al-Baghdadi and the late
Haji Bakr, emerged in response to just such an invasion. President Obama’s argument that Daesh can
first be systematically degraded and then destroyed makes sense. And this
process cannot be a strictly American or foreign-driven one, but must involve
local people as its most prominent participants in order for it to be
successful.
Showing great promise and impressive courage in
this regard are the Kurds who both saved Kobani from a Daesh attack, and who
now are in the process of retaking the city of Sinjar. Reports from Sinjar indicate that a
number of Daesh fighters fled in the face of the attacking Kurds and their Yazidi
allies. This is good news in that it means, first, that these fleeing fighters
are not inspired by a fanatic sense that martyrdom is a reward to be
enthusiastically sought, and, second, it aligns with current reports that Daesh
is running short of voluntary manpower and is having to draft locals to fill
its ranks.
I believe we are seeing the beginning of the end
of Daesh, but the elimination of this blot on humanity is bound to be a bloody
affair. In the meantime, how sad it is that good and blameless people, like those who died
in Paris yesterday, have to suffer so tragically while this monster still
manages to hold on to its loathsome life.
