I was held hostage by Isis. They fear our unity more than our airstrikes

[mfcorey1]

As a proud Frenchman I am as distressed as anyone about the events in Paris. But I am not shocked or incredulous. I know Islamic State. I spent 10 months as an Isis hostage, and I know for sure that our pain, our grief, our hopes, our lives do not touch them. Theirs is a world apart.

Most people only know them from their propaganda material, but I have seen behind that. In my time as their captive, I met perhaps a dozen of them, including Mohammed Emwazi: Jihadi John was one of my jailers. He nicknamed me “Baldy”.

Even now I sometimes chat with them on social media, and can tell you that much of what you think of them results from their brand of marketing and public relations. They present themselves to the public as superheroes, but away from the camera are a bit pathetic in many ways: street kids drunk on ideology and power. In France we have a saying – stupid and evil. I found them more stupid than evil. That is not to understate the murderous potential of stupidity.
Terror can only succeed with our cooperation

All of those beheaded last year were my cellmates, and my jailers would play childish games with us – mental torture – saying one day that we would be released and then two weeks later observing blithely, “Tomorrow we will kill one of you.” The first couple of times we believed them but after that we came to realise that for the most part they were bullshitters having fun with us.

They would play mock executions. Once they used chloroform with me. Another time it was a beheading scene. A bunch of French-speaking jihadis were shouting, “We’re going to cut your head off and put it on to your arse and upload it to YouTube.” They had a sword from an antique shop.

They were laughing and I played the game by screaming, but they just wanted fun. As soon as they left I turned to another of the French hostages and just laughed. It was so ridiculous.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/16/isis-bombs-hostage-syria-islamic-state-paris-attacks

[Corey_Baker08]

1. Wow Are You Honestly Serious?

[DirkGently]

2. "They will be heartened by every sign of overreaction, of division, of fear,

of racism, of xenophobia; they will be drawn to any examples of ugliness on social media."

And of course American conservatives will give them what they want. Confirm the childish belief that anyone can fight and win a religious war.

What would happen to a movement dependent on a constant influx of angry, alienated people, if there was no xenophobic rage to point to? If Chris Christie wasn't declaring five-year-old refugees enemies of the United States? If every Facebook a-hole wasn't waxing excitedly on about turning the Middle East into a plate of molten glass?

Conversely, what happens if everyone accepts the blind rage and Biblical mumbo-jumbo embraced by ISIS and Christian Dominonists alike, and decides that the world IS divided into religions which must fight each other to the death and bring about the end of the world?

[CJCRANE]

3. "Everything convinces them that they are on the right path

and, specifically, that there is a kind of apocalyptic process under way that will lead to a confrontation between an army of Muslims from all over the world and others, the crusaders, the Romans. They see everything as moving us down that road."

That's what I said right here on DU about a year ago, that the terrorists and warmongers want the same thing: a huge war between the west and the extremists.

[DirkGently]

6. Yep. Christian crazies want exactly the same thing.

The literal end of the world, via a religious war in the "Holy Land." They just want their iteration of the same religious foundation to win.

Good idea either way?

We're going to have to decide.

[upaloopa]

4. "We need no-fly zones – zones closed to Russians, the regime, the coalition. "

While we are trying to destroy Isis, what of the 500,000 civilians still living and trapped in Raqqa? What of their safety? What of the very real prospect that by failing to think this through, we turn many of them into extremists? The priority must be to protect these people, not to take more bombs to Syria. We need no-fly zones – zones closed to Russians, the regime, the coalition. The Syrian people need security or they themselves will turn to groups such as Isis.

Canada withdrew from the air war after the election of Justin Trudeau. I desperately want France to do the same, and rationality tells me it could happen. But pragmatism tells me it won’t. The fact is we are trapped: Isis has trapped us. They came to Paris with Kalashnikovs, claiming that they wanted to stop the bombing, but knowing all too well that the attack would force us to keep bombing or even to intensify these counterproductive attacks. That is what is happening.

[karynnj]

19. Where do you want the no fly zones?

Who maintains the no fly zone if it keeps out the Russians, the regime (Syria's Assad) and the coalition (the 65 countries with the US)? To me, the only ones not mentioned involved in the conflict is Iran, but I doubt that is what you mean.

Incidentally, Raqqa is the headquarters of ISIS in Syria.

I think the priority is to get working on getting Assad and others in the regime and the non terrorist rebels at a table to work on forming an interim government and declaring a ceasefire. This IS incidentally the Obama and international plan that came out of Vienna.

[frazzled]

5. Yeah, just a bunch of kids having fun

Ridiculous, inept bumblers who just want to create a caliphate ... and have gone a long way to capturing entire swaths of land, beheading plenty of people in their wake.

[DirkGently]

7. Ridiculous people do most of the killing in war.

Some of the ideologically stupidest people on the planet convinced the U.S. and its allies to attack Iraq.

Stupidity and effective violence are not only not mutually exclusive -- they go together like peanut butter and jelly.

[frazzled]

10. But ISIL is a sophisticated organization

They're running local governments in many places they've captured. We're not talking just about the recruits and grunts on the ground. We're talking about a fairly vast organization with a specific ideology and aim in the "Levant." It's not just the foot soldiers and guards.

The 9/11 attackers may have been stupid oafs, but Al Qaeda and bin Laden were not. It's like confusing the average GI Joe with the US government.

[DirkGently]

11. Sophisticated up top, dumb kids in the ranks.

The article isn't confused about anything. It's not an account of ISIS leadership; it's about the run-of-the mill nimrods carrying out the grunt work. Young thrill-killers who are dangerous, but deluded.

My takeaway is that the recruits are driven in part by a childish fascination with shock tactics and getting a rise out of people to further stir up the conflict. We can use that.

We ought to be ridiculing these guys, not building them up into some terrifying demonic force. The Great Caliphate is about the size of Arkansas, and currently shrinking.

They are not capable of bringing on the end of the world or the collapse of secular power, unless the nuts on our end of the conversation take up the invitation.

[frazzled]

12. Yeah, that's always the case. So what's the point of this

OP? It tells us nothing of import, really.

[DirkGently]

17. First-hand impression of the "real" ISIS?

I think it's helpful to see the mindset of the "Jihhadi Johns" out there. Angry kids, drunk on a sense of power derived from horrifying people. It's not about an evil religion, or a terrifying terrorist mastermind.

I think ISIS is largely a business model at this point. Drawn from the wreckage of Iraq and Syria. No jobs, no infrastructure, no government. So you get warlords. Warlords with YouTube accounts and marketing sense.

Suggests to me it's important not to further empower them by confirming their hype that they are Muslims' best defense against a hostile West that wants to crush their culture and seize their resources, waging an important holy war that will change the face of the world.

We ought to take in every single refugee who doesn't buy that vision, give them a job and a bed and a secular world that works. The less it appears we're actually engaged in a worldwide holy war, the less ISIS has to sell.

[yodermon]

8. the quote "All of those beheaded last year were my cellmates" alongside:

"As soon as they left I turned to another of the French hostages and just laughed. It was so ridiculous."
seems somehow incongruous. Or maybe not; I've never been held hostage by terrorists before

[DirkGently]

9. Strikes me as both incongruous and credible.

Who else is going to be beheading people on YouTube but childish assholes? The entire notion of a worldwide religious kingdom -- one shared by religious extremists everywhere, by the way -- is inane.

I remember before the Middle East and Islam were formally "the enemy" in American popular culture, and right-wingers would not shut up about how cool and effective it was to cut someone's hand off for stealing. "That'll teach 'em."

This is the mentality we are dealing with, over there, and to one extent or another, over here as well. Doesn't make the people intent on carrying it out less dangerous or less culpable.

But they are ridiculous idiots. I think treating them as such would actually be a good first step in undermining all of it.

[cali]

13. So explain what treating them as ridiculous idiots means. What does it entail?

And btw, I don't buy that beheading people, raping girls and women, mass executions, etc, is merely childish behavior.

[DirkGently]

14. Don't buy into the notion of a worldwide religious war?

Or give any weight whatsoever to the notion that ISIS is some kind of threat to bring about the end of the world.

Or that our best defense is to be really scared of Syrian refugees, or start another all-out invasion of the region, or really anything Republicans are predictably putting forward.

Without a xenophobic, panicked response from the West, there is no selling point for recruitment.

I don't know what you mean by ISIS' deliberately hyped atrocities being "merely childish behavior." I said nothing of the sort. But ISIS is far from the first, or the worst, or most effective destructive force we've seen. They are not special.

What is childish here is being so easily manipulated into thinking that the entirely predictable destabilization of the Middle East wrought in large part by the fact the U.S. decided to annihilate Iraq on false pretenses is actually the beginning of some Biblical battle to decide which of the three Abrahamic religions gets the "Holy Land" or whatever.

The only way that nonsense gets any traction is if we allow our predictable idiots to realize their dream of everyone killing each other over religion because ISIS has been clever about tweaking xenophobic fears and putting their atrocities on YouTube.

[cali]

16. Ok. I absolutely don't support a worldwide war

And I haven't a clue as to how IS should be dealt with, but they're clearly a danger to a great many people. And you are the one that characterized IS as childish and ridiculous idiots.

Yes, much of the instability in the ME was created by the U.S. and western colonialization and we certainly have a moral obligation to take in refugees, but you are minimising the havoc being wrought by IS. As I said, I don't support U.S. military involvement, but I don't agree that what you're suggesting will halt them.

[haele]

15. Black Humor - prisoners have to survive somehow.

Read some POW accounts from WWII - especially from those who survived Japanese internment camps. Laughter in the face of terror and death is a common coping strategy - the other option is to just sit frozen in terror and give up.

That doesn't sound off to me.

Haele

[jtuck004]

18. This. n/t