Rise of ISIS (5 page)

ISIS violates every single principle of the law of war.

Individuals suspected of violating Sharia law or opposing ISIS, including children as young as eight years old, are abducted and transported to prisons where they are flogged, tortured, and summarily executed.
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Other targets for abduction and imprisonment include: members of the media, local council members, members of rival rebel groups, members of international organizations, and foreign religious figures.
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Reports from former detainees describe various modes of torture common in ISIS prisons: beating detainees with “generator belts, thick pieces of cable, sticks or other implements”
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and forcing detainees to remain in “contorted stress position[s] . . . for long periods, inducing severe pain and possible
long-term muscular or other damage.”
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One detainee reports being “tortured with electric shocks and beaten with a cable while suspended with only one foot touching the floor.”
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Other detainees claimed that ISIS utilizes solitary confinement
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and electric shocks.
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Still other reports indicate that ISIS members flog early-teenage prisoners with anywhere from 30 to 94 lashes at a time.
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(As with all other ISIS tactics, this is nothing new. AQI maintained “torture houses” in territory it controlled, and our soldiers routinely uncovered the most gruesome scenes imaginable. The ones detailed below are only a portion of what can be described.)

ISIS routinely targets civilians and military prisoners (like Syrian or Iraqi soldiers) and executes summary justice against civilians and soldiers in the most brutal, inhumane ways possible. ISIS's most recent wave of violent, public executions began in March 2014 when ISIS accused a shepherd of murder and theft and summarily executed him by shooting him in the head.
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In a grotesque, symbolic display of authority, ISIS fighters tied the lifeless body to a cross and displayed it in the public square.
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Again, in May 2014, ISIS publicly executed seven men in al-Raqqa, Syria, hanging two of the bodies on crosses and leaving them there for more than three days.
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A bystander who witnessed the killings claimed that the other five bodies were not displayed because the victims were all “children under the age of 18, one of them a seventh-grade student.”
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On May 29, 2014, militants from ISIS executed at least fifteen civilians in northern Syria by shooting them in the head or chest.
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Residents said that at least six children were among those killed.
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Since ISIS's surge back into Iraq, the group has escalated its violent shows of force. On June 15, 2014, ISIS released video footage of five unarmed Iraqi soldiers being taunted and forced to praise ISIS before being summarily shot.
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The ISIS soldier responsible for the execution then filmed himself saying, “Praise to Allah, whether he is a believer or not, I killed him. I killed a Shia! I killed a Shia!”
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On that same day, ISIS used social media to spread photographs and videos depicting massacres at seven different sites in Iraq.
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An analysis done by Human Rights Watch concluded that, in two mass graves near Tikrit, Iraq, ISIS left the bodies of between 160 and 190 men it had executed.
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ISIS has increasingly utilized decapitation to carry out its public executions, though it has also carried out executions in private and disseminated the execution videos through social media.
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For instance, on June 13, 2014, ISIS posted a picture of a decapitated head on Twitter, along with the following text: “This is our football, it's made of skin #WorldCup.”
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By using the “WorldCup” hashtag, ISIS managed to expose the gruesome photograph to thousands of unsuspecting Twitter users who were simply following the FIFA World Cup on the social networking site.
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The law of war flatly prohibits the desecration of human remains.
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Throughout mid-June 2014, ISIS carried out numerous executions in Iraq. Witnesses have testified that ISIS shot dozens of soldiers and policemen, concluding their gruesome killings by decapitating their victims and placing rows of decapitated heads along the road in Mosul.
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A refugee woman said that placing decapitated heads in a row has become “a trademark, trophy-style execution favored by ISIS militants.”
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On June 16, 2014, ISIS reportedly captured Judge Raouf Abdul Rahman, the judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death in 2006.
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Although the Iraqi government did not confirm it at the time, it is believed that Judge Rahman was executed by ISIS militants two days after his capture in apparent retaliation for his role in Hussein's death.
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Simply put, ISIS attacks moderate Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and Christians wherever it finds them. For example, when ISIS was asked why it was “not fighting Israel but instead shedding the blood of the sons of Iraq and Syria,”
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it replied as follows:

The greater answer is in the noble Koran, when Allah Almighty speaks about the near enemy. In the majority of verses in the noble Koran, these are the hypocrites, for they pose a greater danger than the original infidels [born non-Muslims, e.g., Jews and Christians]. And the answer is found in Abu Bakr al-Sadiq, when he preferred fighting apostates over the conquest of Jerusalem [
fath al-Quds
], which was conquered by his successor, Omar al-Khattab.
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ISIS also cited the example of Saladin, who dealt with Shias before the Crusaders:

The answer is found in Salah ad-Din al-Ayubi [Saladin] and Nur ad-Din Zanki when they fought the Shia in Egypt and Syria before [addressing] Jerusalem. Salah ad-Din fought more than 50 battles before he reached Jerusalem. And
it was said to Salah ad-Din al-Ayubi: “You fight the Shia and the Fatimids in Egypt and allow the Latin Crusaders to occupy Jerusalem?” And he responded: “I will not fight the Crusaders while my back is exposed to the Shia.”
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As ISIS has moved into areas with larger Christian populations, it has continued and even escalated its brutal tactics. “Islamist insurgents have issued an ultimatum to northern Iraq's dwindling Christian population to convert to Islam, pay a religious levy, or face death.”
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ISIS set Saturday, July 19, 2014, as the deadline for Christians to decide.
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Nearly fifty thousand Christians have also been displaced from Qaraqosh, a town twelve miles east of Mosul.
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The Christians were displaced because their water and electricity were cut off from neighboring ISIS-controlled Mosul.
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Christians were not the only ones affected by the attack: Yazidis, Shias, and liberal Muslims were also displaced from the region.
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ISIS views all four of these groups as “infidels without human rights.”
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Christians were not the only ones affected by the attack: Yazidis, Shias, and liberal Muslims were also displaced from the region.
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ISIS views all four of these groups as “infidels without human rights.”
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As Christians and Yazidis fled, ISIS pursued, trapping tens of thousands of Yazidis on a mountaintop and threatening horrific mass murder until the siege was lifted by emergency American air strikes. ISIS pursued Christians to the outskirts of the Kurdish capital, Erbil, where thousands had fled for
refuge. The Peshmerga, brave but hopelessly outgunned by ISIS forces equipped with captured American-made weapons, were forced to retreat. Kurdistan faced a disaster until, once again, American air strikes temporarily halted ISIS advances.

But ISIS is not content with spreading jihad in Iraq and Syria. It has set its sights on much larger targets. For example, ISIS has threatened to destroy the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
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A tweet reportedly posted by an ISIS fighter stated: “If Allah wills, we will kill those who worship stones in Mecca and destroy the Kaaba. People go to Mecca to touch the stones, not for Allah.”
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This is consistent with ISIS's practice of destroying shrines, tombs, mosques, and other religious sites in territory controlled by ISIS.
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ISIS believes that giving veneration to tombs or religious relics violates Islamic teachings.
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ISIS routinely threatens other Muslims who disagree with them, most notably Shia Muslims.
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On June 25, 2014, ISIS began a campaign to threaten America by using social media to post warnings and pictures of executed victims, using the hashtag “#CalamityWillBefallUS.”
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ISIS circulated a picture of “a dozen armed masked-men standing around a body” while one ISIS fighter held the decapitated head of a Shia fighter.
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Tweets accompanied by the #CalamityWillBefallUS stated: “We will kill your people and transform America to a river of blood :)!”; “EACH and EVERY #American is targeted, whether he lives in or outside the #US!”; “THIS SCENE WILL BE SEEN BY #AMERICANS BUT WHERE? UNEXPECTED PLACE” (accompanied with a picture of the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attack); and “Every American doctor working in any country will be slaughtered if America attack [
sic
] Iraq” on a picture.
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ISIS's hatred of America is long-standing. After all, American forces not only brought ISIS to the brink of extinction in 2008 and 2009, but we captured and held its current leader, al-Baghdadi. Upon his release from American custody, he ominously told his former captors, “I'll see you guys in New York.”

ISIS fighters have also declared their intention to destroy Israel and to make Jerusalem the capital of the new Caliphate.
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ISIS militants and ISIS media have threatened Israel on multiple occasions. A July 9, 2014, tweet by an ISIS media wing posted a picture of the Dome of the Rock superimposed in front of a picture of ISIS fighters with the words, “Patience, Jews, our appointment is at al-Quds [Jerusalem] tomorrow.”
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Another ISIS Twitter feed stated: “All our military operations till now are just [a] message for Israel.”
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Even before its recent territorial gains, ISIS maps regularly included Israel as a part of the eventual Caliphate.
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A recent video posted by ISIS states, “[w]herever our war goes, Jewish rabbis are humiliated,” and “[b]reak the crosses and destroy the lineage of the grandsons of monkeys,” undoubtedly references to Christians and Jews.
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ISIS threats against Israel are not new. In 2008, al-Baghdadi proposed to use Iraq as a launching pad for missile attacks against Israel.
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In a video posted in early July 2014, two Spanish-speaking men stated that Spain is the land of their forefathers and that they are willing to die for the newly established Islamic State.
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One of the men stated, “We are going to die for it until we liberate all the occupied lands, from Jakarta to Andalusia.”
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Further, in an audio recording posted online, al-Baghdadi states:

So to arms, to arms, soldiers of Islam, fight, fight. Rush O Muslims to your state. It is your state. Syria is not for Syrians and Iraq is not for Iraqis. The land is for the Muslims, all Muslims. This is my advice to you. If you hold to it you will conquer Rome and own the world, if Allah wills.
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This statement is a direct threat to the historical center of the Catholic Church.
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Grandiose threats are nothing new in the jihadist world, but what makes ISIS
especially
dangerous is its possession of both the means and will to carry out its threats. It's the best-equipped, richest terrorist force in the world.

Grandiose threats are nothing new in the jihadist world, but what makes ISIS
especially
dangerous is its possession of both the means and will to carry out its threats. It's the best-equipped, richest terrorist force in the world.

ISIS has a huge war chest of money, military equipment, and materials available to carry out its threats. ISIS has captured significant amounts of high-tech U.S. military equipment abandoned by the Iraqi armed forces. Fifty-two 155 mm M198 howitzers have been captured by ISIS.
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These American-made howitzers have a range of up to twenty miles and can incorporate GPS targeting systems.
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In addition to the howitzers, ISIS has captured 1,500 Humvees and 4,000 PKC machine guns that can fire close to 800 rounds per minute.
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These weapons make ISIS a formidable foe in the region. There are even reports that ISIS has captured main battle tanks, including potentially sev
eral M1 Abrams tanks, the American-made tank that is the most lethal armored vehicle in world history.
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Ominously, ISIS also possesses radiological material that could make dirty bombs. Dirty bombs are created by combining conventional explosives with low-level radioactive material.
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If a dirty bomb is detonated, in addition to the raw blast effect of the bomb, it can spread radiation in a wide area, potentially causing radiation sickness to those exposed and rendering the area uninhabitable for an extended time.

ISIS has stolen eighty-eight pounds of uranium compounds from Mosul University and has the capacity to gain even more radioactive material.
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Waste recovered from universities and hospitals across northern Iraq has the potential to contribute radioactive material for a dirty bomb.
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Further, it is not beyond imagination that ISIS could also obtain chemical weapons from Syrian depots for its arsenal. In fact, it has already captured old stocks of Iraqi chemical weapons.
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Were ISIS to obtain increasing amounts of weapons of mass destruction, the global danger of this group would increase exponentially.