“What draws these young men — and, to a lesser extent, women — to fight are what they regard as the indiscriminate killings of Muslim children, women and men in Syria. The use by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime of industrial-scale torture, barrel bombs and chemical attacks evokes a strong desire to defend fellow Muslims.”
Chams Eddine Zaougui and Pieter Van Ostaeyen,
‘Overblown Fears of Foreign Fighters,’ New York Times, 29th July 2014
ISIS is the acronym you get if you don’t translate it as ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ and instead put Syria or al-Sham on the end. The name only emerged out of al-Qaeda and other groups last year.
The UK Government outlawed Isis on 16th June, making it illegal to associate with the group or give it financial backing. The US had already designated it a terrorist organization.
On 29th June Isis became ‘The Islamic State’ in name after declaring its captured territories in Syria and Iraq to be a new… Islamic state.
Isis/The Islamic State is all contradictions – a smaller version of the mess of conflicting ideas, pros, cons and dilemmas facing anyone who tries to pick a particular group of combatants to ‘like’ in Syria. It’s never as simple as knowing their stance on Assad. Isis is fighting the brutal Assad regime. But Isis itself is being brutal to its opponents. Isis administers aid, food and healthcare to Syrians. But Isis is threatening Christians who don’t leave Iraq. Isis blows up rival’s mosques and shrines.
And as professor Sam Hardy said: “If we didn’t intervene when they were killing people, it would be kind of grotesque to intervene over a building.”
Isis crops up in the news in two ways: its activities in Iraq and Syria …and the profiles of young Muslims from the UK and the West who come to join the fight.
Call of Duty
In November 2013 23-year-old Ifthekar Jaman from Southsea appeared on Newsnight: “I am ISIS. This is the group I am with. We are trying to establish the law of God, the law of Allah.” Footage of him from a year earlier showed a member of the Portsmouth Dawah Team – a community organization spreading the word about Islam (all leaflets and friendly chats over a little table in the high street). His smartly turned out younger brother displayed a quiet pride in his brother’s subsequent journey to Syria.
There were lots of tremors from MI5 at the time. The number of Britons in Syria was in the low hundreds. They were being greeted by al-Qaeda out there: “they meet British citizens who are willing to engage in terrorism and they task them to do so back at home, where they have higher impact, in this country. We've seen that played out in previous plots here, including 7/7.” In December Jaman’s family reported that he had been killed. He’d already said not to worry about his threat to the UK – he wasn’t coming back.
‘Canadian jihadist’ Andre Poulin made the news in January – he’d been killed in August 2013, during an attack on the government-controlled Mennegh airport in northern Syria. Reports described his life prior to leaving Timmins, Ontario: soon after converting to Islam he’d moved in with a Muslim man, attacked said man for living an un-Islamic lifestyle, had an affair with said man’s spouse, and threatened said man’s life and pulled a knife on him (sucks to be said man; he even wanted to give Poulin – as a young, fragile convert – another chance).
The Islamic State has since released a devastatingly slick video in tribute to Poulin. We don’t seem to like dusty Middle East militants having HD cameras and an eye for editing – it seems to unsettle us more than their killing proficiency (Isis produce bombing infographics, too).
The Daily Mail’s recycling of a New Yorker article there. The NY even got hold of a games and media entertainment expert, who noted that our passive office work and lack of having to fight bears in the food gathering process left us with a hole to fill in our lives – the only thing that hits the spot being rapid decision-making pumped full of adrenaline by a combat situation. They’re not connecting this observation to fighting in terrorist designated organizations for real, no - just putting it right alongside there.
And there have been French and German and American and Finnish and Danish and Australian and… all leaving their homelands to join team Isis. A 19-year-old woman fell in love with an Isis fighter online and decided to quit America (Denver, if that doesn’t downplay the decision) to be with him, providing medical aid to his camp and a little combat. Poor love got arrested at Denver International.
Not all the Western fighters go to Isis, though. In April 18-year-old Abdullah Deghayes from Brighton made the news when he was killed in Syria. Vice filmed with his brother, 20-year-old Amer, also in Syria: “I came to Syria to answer the call of duty, and that is to give victory to the religion of Allah. And the way to do that is to help the oppressed Syrians here.”
His 16-year-old brother Jaffar is there, too. Their father Abubakr wanted, and still wants, them to collect aid (medicine, food, clothing) – helping Syria from the UK. He didn’t know his sons were planning to go to Syria (well, he thought he’d convinced Amer to stick to doing aid work in the country).
“In the situation that we’re in today, parents go to a level of selfishness where they would see the situation in Syria as to do with Syrian people. They’re not willing to allow their sons to go there and do what they have to do. So really parents are the last people you would tell.”
(Amer)
At the time of Abdullah’s death William Hague was all: “I want anybody who is contemplating going to Syria for any reason to hear that advice very clearly from the British Government: do not travel to Syria.” Elaborating, his advice nicely offset “the dangers [in Syria] are extreme” with the observation that people returning from the conflict were an “increasing threat to our own national security.” It was almost presidential in its good and bad cop PR schizophrenia.
The government’s haphazardly-policed stance is that Britons returning to the UK from Syria will be treated as terrorists. There have been deprivation of citizenship orders – 20 new ex-Britons in 2013. There were 16 arrests and warnings of more in January. The Met took a gendered approach in April – asking Muslim mums to have a word with their boys or (in confidence) the police: “This is not about criminalising people. It is about preventing tragedies.”
Meanwhile President Obama wants $500 million to train ‘vetted’ Syrian rebels - helping Syrians defend themselves against the regime’s attacks, as well as stopping the unrest from spreading to Iraq and upsetting the region.
The semantic battle between freedom fighter and terrorist has run on and on regarding Western combatants in Syria. On 30th July Radio 4’s The Long View examined them alongside Britons who went to fight in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s (the Guardian actually beat them to it regarding that comparison).
Some view the whole Britons in Syria thing as a frightening radicalization that warrants passport revocation; others see a perfectly impassioned desire to help an oppressed people – no more radical than being human. As ever, it’s a bit of both, and not very representatively depicted in the news reports taking either angle.
Of course there are posturing kids (“One day the flag of tawheed will fly over 10 Downing Street and the White House”). Of course there are lovely, do-gooder types just trying to make a difference, and of course there will be some of Norman Tebbit’s ‘poor little creatures,’ who are all too easily manipulated into doing or attempting other peoples’ bloody deeds in Britain and elsewhere.
And then there are those who fall into the manipulator’s ‘opposition’ category, who don’t receive the PR, and who get brutally forced into their emotions:
It’s terrifying. Call of Duty? No matter how powerful, in charge or strong you make a person, it’s always just a petty, insecure demand for respect sitting on top of the might.
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