By: ANNE SPECKHARD*, ARDIAN
SHAJKOVCI*
The final victory
over the so-called Islamic State won’t be won until its ideas have been
dismantled and discredited.
BAGHDAD—We
arrived here this month just as Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the territorial defeat of the
so-called Islamic State. We had come here as researchers from the International
Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) to interview imprisoned ISIS
cadres, but suddenly found our plans disrupted: Everyone took the day off as
the prime minister declared Dec. 10 a national holiday.
Downtown
Baghdad was busy with organized parades on the ground and fighter jets roaring
overhead. The streets were alive with improvised celebrations. At one point we
watched as a group of young Iraqi men stood atop a moving minivan, somehow
keeping their balance while shouting joyfully and waving Iraqi flags.
Taking
a brief foray to Baghdad’s 52nd Street
to have a snack and dessert, we sat with Iraqis in a restaurant—living life as
normal. It seemed as if a nightmare had ended.
At
its peak between 2014 and 2016, ISIS held nearly one-third of Iraq’s territory.
Its propaganda poisoned the minds of thousands, and Iraqis suffered greatly in
ways that are still difficult for many of them to talk about—the horrors are
too hard to bear.
An
estimated 300,000 children and teens lived under ISIS rule. Their universities
were destroyed. The curricula of elementary and high schools were replaced with
ISIS ideology and training, including lessons on how to make IEDs, engage in
combat, or wage suicide attacks.
Some
young people were recruited, others were forced into camps, while still others
attended ISIS-run schools to learn, among other things, how to behead a human
being. Those whose parents managed to keep them at home were still exposed to
ISIS brutality: Whenever they went out they could watch ISIS propaganda on
television screens that were placed all over the ISIS-controlled cities,
running nonstop. Worse still, they saw ISIS beheadings and other atrocities in
front of their eyes.
Iraqi parliamentarian Maysoon al-Damluji bemoans the complete lack of
treatment programs aimed at these children and asks that such programs be
quickly and efficiently organized.
When it
comes to disputing ISIS propaganda, which is one of the specialties of our
organization, everyone agrees that ISIS was skilled in the way it used the
media, particularly social media, while the national and international actors
who opposed it needed to play catch up.
Saad
Maan, spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, says the Iraqi government
learned to fight back using media to quickly confront the lies of ISIS,
including showing the testimony of ISIS survivors who were arrested rather than
“martyred” in Islamic State operations. His ministry also showed that some
attacks that ISIS claimed as glorious events never happened in fact. On several
occasions, the U.S. military used aerial video footage from its warplanes and
drones to dispel the claims made about its own operations.
In
Baghdad, we were told that there is hardly a family that has not lost a loved
one to the fight against ISIS. Civilians and soldiers alike were killed.
To
the north, the fight against ISIS led to the near-total destruction of the recently
reclaimed city of Mosul, once a vibrant metropolis and the second largest city
in Iraq. Now it looks like a moonscape.
At
Prime Minister al-Abadi’s “Conference on Countering Daesh Propaganda and
Ideology” (Daesh being an Arab acronym for ISIS), one of the Iraqi speakers
addressed the question of foreign fighters from Europe and elsewhere who
traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight for the “caliphate.”
His
remarks about Scandinavians, Britons, and French citizens, among others, coming
to his country to try to overthrow its government underscored how strange,
unconventional, and uncommon it was to have upwards of 40,000 foreign fighters
stream into one’s country (and nearby Syria) to join an organization hell-bent
on destroying one’s own existing form of governance.
The
fight against ISIS has been a hard one. It has been a team effort, with the
U.S.-led coalition of over 30 countries offering technical support and air
power while the Iraqi militias and military finally bravely defeated one of the
world’s most horrific enemies.
Yet,
as we see the territorial defeat of ISIS in Iraq, we also hear from all the Iraqi experts gathered here, as we
have heard in months past, great concern over the
huge flow of messages that came out of ISIS, which flooded
social media, and which still exist.
Here
at the conference, the commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation
Inherent Resolve, Lt. Gen. Paul Funk, reported that ISIS’ media capability has
been degraded by 85 percent.
Yet
the Iraqi military, police, and government experts gathered here all worry that
the ISIS ideology that seeped deeply into the minds of many, particularly the
young people who lived under them, may still be potent. They fear its virulence
and its continued resonance. If its ideology endures we could see a reemergence
here of violent extremism, perhaps under a new name.
Indeed,
we see the resonance of ISIS far beyond the borders of Iraq. It was echoed
recently in New York City, where first an Uzbek and then a Bengali immigrant
heeded the call to mount attacks in downtown Manhattan. We have seen the same
in Europe. The group has lost its territory, but not its brand.
“How
can we convince our youth that they can be part of the decision-making, that
they can have economic opportunities and futures far from the extremist
groups?” one of the Iraqi speakers asked participants at the conference. “Who
among the activists and government can help come up with solutions?”
Later
in the week, we interviewed an ISIS defector, the 66th defector, prisoner, or
returnee we have talked to for our project. This time we were in a Baghdad
prison as we listened to young Abu Jihad, as we called him to hide his true
name. He wasn’t far from home—the 23-year-old was from the Dora neighborhood in
Baghdad—but it will be a long time before he sees it again.
Abu Jihad
was recruited as a minor into ISIS during a short stint in prison. Released
from jail, he came out completely transformed: his mind poisoned by an ISIS
recruiter. On his release, he immediately telephoned members of ISIS that his
recruiter had told him to contact, and they lost no time training and equipping
him for bomb attacks against police and so-called collaborators of the Iraqi
state, usually placing explosives outside their doors and detonating them from
a distance.
After
his fifth attack, Abu Jihad learned he had killed not the policeman who was his
target, but a baby boy.
“I
can’t close my eyes without seeing that baby,” Abu Jihad told us. “I am haunted
by what I did and beg Allah to forgive me.”
When
we ask him to talk about whether or not joining ISIS worked out for him, he
proclaims, “ISIS lies. They lied to me about making a Sunni state. I wanted to
believe it because I wanted a Sunni state to gain my rights. But because I
believed them I got prison, constant nightmares. I ruined my life.” And much or
all of it will be spent behind bars.
Abu
Jihad was only spared the death penalty because he was a minor when he joined
the “caliphate’s” ranks.
After
interviewing him, we walked past a seemingly endless display of headshots of
other prisoners. All bore notes saying they had already been executed for their
crimes on behalf of ISIS.
Killing the men may solve some of the problems created
by the ISIS “caliphate.” But the final victory in this war won’t be achieved
until their ideas have been dismantled and destroyed as well.