ISIS: The State of Terror Part 9

He further wrote, in partial answer to his own questions, Because man has within him a l.u.s.t for hatred and destruction. In normal times this pa.s.sion exists in a latent state, it emerges only in unusual circ.u.mstances; but it is a comparatively easy task to call it into play and raise it to the power of a collective psychosis.

Freud responded: When a nation is summoned to engage in war, a whole gamut of human motives may respond to this appeal-high and low motives, some openly avowed, others slurred over. The l.u.s.t for aggression and destruction is certainly included; the innumerable cruelties of history and man's daily life confirm its prevalence and strength. . . . [T]he ideal motive has often served as a camouflage for the dust of destruction; sometimes, as with the cruelties of the Inquisition, it seems that, while the ideal motives occupied the foreground of consciousness, they drew their strength from the destructive instinct submerged in the unconscious. Both interpretations are feasible.

What "unusual circ.u.mstances" are most likely to bring forward this "l.u.s.t for aggression and destruction"? Possible answers include political disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt (Chapter 2) and collective trauma (discussed at the end of this chapter).28 As we have noted, ISIS's psychological warfare is directed at its potential victims. But it is also directed at those it aims to control. It is deliberately attempting to blunt its followers' empathy by forcing them to partic.i.p.ate in or observe acts of brutality. Over time, this can lead to secondary psychopathy, or a desire to harm others, and contagion of violence. Beheadings are one such tool for blunting empathy.

BEHEADING.

In a detailed a.s.sessment of capital punishment, Rudolph J. Rummel estimates that nineteen million people were executed for trivial offenses between the time of Jesus and the twentieth century.29 Offenses that were once punished by execution included stealing bread and criticizing royal gardens.30 Public executions were common and often took on a celebratory atmosphere until their prominence diminished in the mid-nineteenth century with a growing awareness of their inhumane nature.31 Today, many countries consider capital punishment of any kind as a violation of human rights, although it is still practiced in the United States, as well as some non-Western countries.32 Until fairly recently, beheading was a common form of execution throughout the world, because it was once viewed as more humane than other forms of execution. But decapitation is not easy. To ensure that the victim quickly loses consciousness and does not feel multiple swipes at his neck, a skilled headsman is required. Beheading devices, precursors to the guillotine, were used for criminals of n.o.ble birth.33 The guillotine, considered more humane but also more efficient than decapitation by hand, was used on an industrial scale to execute thousands of people during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, and more than 16,000 people in n.a.z.i Germany. The very word terrorism comes from Reign of Terror, and thus beheading is intimately a.s.sociated with terrorism.34 The guillotine continued to be used in France until capital punishment was banned in that country in 1977,35 and in Germany until 1966.36 China and j.a.pan also employed beheading-as a dishonorable death-until the twentieth century.37 Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that still practices public beheadings.38 Beheadings are performed on Fridays, outside of mosques in major cities. The punishment derives from the Wahhabi interpretation of the Islamic religious laws of Shariah.39 The crimes of rape, murder, apostasy, blasphemy, armed robbery, drug trafficking, witchcraft and sorcery, and repeated drug use are punishable by beheading.40 Muhammad Saad al Bes.h.i.+, one of Saudi Arabia's lead executioners, explained that it takes a great deal of skill to sever a head with a single stroke of the sword, to minimize pain. It is not something that can be done with a knife or a dagger, he said, and requires training.41 To use unskilled headsmen is s.a.d.i.s.tic.

ISIS's style of execution-hacking away at the victim's neck-is not designed to minimize pain, but rather to maximize it. In an interview with captured ISIS fighters, Israeli journalist Itai Anghel said one ISIS executioner intentionally used a dull knife because he wanted the beheading to last longer and cause more pain.42 CHILD SOLDIERS.

ISIS actively recruits children43 to send them to training camps and then to use them in combat, including suicide missions. ISIS has used children as human s.h.i.+elds, suicide bombers, snipers, and blood donors.44 The U.N. Secretary General's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict reports that "ISIL has tasked boys as young as 13 to carry weapons, guard strategic locations or arrest civilians."45 Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that hundreds of "non-civilian" male children had died in the fighting.46 ISIS strictly controls the education of children in the territory it controls. According to a teacher from Raqqa, ISIS considers philosophy, science, history, art, and sports to be incompatible with Islam.47 "Those under fifteen go to Shariah camp to learn about their creed and religion," an ISIS press officer in Raqqa told Vice News. "Those over sixteen, they can attend the military camp. . . . Those over sixteen and were previously enrolled in the camps can partic.i.p.ate in military operations."48 But in ISIS propaganda videos (discussed in more detail in Chapter 5), even younger children are shown being trained in the use of firearms.

This is a hallmark of a "total organization," which sociologist Erving Goffman defined as one that "has more or less monopoly control of its members' everyday life."49 Pol Pot experimented with creating a utopia in Kampuchea (the name used for Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge controlled it) in the 1970s, using methods not that different from those employed by ISIS. The idea was to create an entirely new society, uncontaminated by the values the Khmer Rouge aimed to stamp out. Children were seen as the least corrupted by bourgeois values and would be educated "according to the precepts of the revolution," which did not include traditional subjects.50 The children were both victims and perpetrators of terror.

According to the research of Mia Bloom and John Horgan, ISIS follows a trend of training ever-younger operatives. By doing so they hope to ensure a new generation of fighters. Leaders.h.i.+p decapitation is significantly less likely to be effective against organizations that prepare children to step into their fathers' shoes.51 Residents of Raqqa reported to Syria Deeply that children are taught how to behead another human being, and are given blond dolls on which to practice.52 One child told HRW interviewers, "When ISIS came to my town . . . I liked what they are wearing, they were like one herd. They had a lot of weapons. So I spoke to them, and decided to go to their training camp in Kafr Hamra in Aleppo."53 He attended the camp when he was sixteen years old, but the leader told him he preferred younger trainees. Pol Pot, too, preferred younger trainees.54 Like other "total organizations" (discussed in Chapter 10), ISIS aims to create a new form of man. Young children are easier to mold into ISIS's vision of this new man. As psychiatrist Otto Kernberg explains, "Individuals born into a totalitarian system and educated by it from early childhood have very little choice to escape from total identification with that system. . . . Totalitarian educational systems permit a systematic indoctrination of children and youth into the dominant ideology," especially when they are young.55 Another child, Amr, told the HRW interviewers that he had partic.i.p.ated in a "sleeper cell" for ISIS at age fifteen, to collect information on the Syrian government's operation in Idlib. When he started working for ISIS full time, he was given a Kalashnikov rifle, a military uniform, and a bulletproof vest. He and the others in his unit, including other children, were encouraged to volunteer as suicide-bombers, and several hundreds of fighters did so. Amr said that he didn't want to be a suicide-bomber, so he delayed signing up, hoping his name would come up last. He told HRW that he felt social pressure to "volunteer" to die.56 Some of the children come with their parents from abroad, to grow up in what their parents see as a pure Islamic state. They learn to say that they are citizens of the Islamic State rather than from their country of origin.57 The poorer neighborhoods of Ankara, Turkey, are reportedly a source of child recruits. One such neighborhood, Hacibayram, has become a recruitment hub for ISIS.58 HRW discovered that child soldiers are paid the equivalent of $100 per month, around half as much as adult fighters.59 In Raqqa, ISIS pays parents and bribes children to attend the camps.60 But the recruits are not always volunteers. Children of ethnic minorities, particularly the Kurds and Yazidis, have been kidnapped and forced to join ISIS. According to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in one case, more than six hundred Kurdish students were kidnapped on their way home from taking exams in Aleppo. Their captors gave the boys an Islamic "education," encouraging the children to join the jihad, showing them videos of beheadings and suicide attacks.61 A doctor told the HRW interviewers that he had treated a wounded boy between the ages of ten and twelve. The boy's job was to whip prisoners.62 Army Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster is Deputy Commanding General for the Future of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. His job is to a.s.sess threats of the future for the U.S. Army. He describes ISIS as "engaging in child abuse on an industrial scale. They brutalize and systematically dehumanize the young populations. This is going to be a multigenerational problem."63 Using children under the age of eighteen as soldiers is a war crime.64 LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF VIOLENCE.

What can we expect the long-term effect on these children to be?

At any one time, an estimated 300,000 children around the world are used as soldiers.65 A "child soldier" is defined as a person under eighteen who is a.s.sociated with an armed group or armed force. The definition of child soldier includes not only those who partic.i.p.ate in combat, but also cooks, porters, spies, and s.e.x slaves.66 Researchers have been studying the reintegration of child soldiers for a number of years now, princ.i.p.ally in Sierra Leone and Uganda. Individuals exposed to a single traumatic event may develop PTSD. Those exposed to repeated or prolonged trauma, as is the case for child soldiers, are at risk of developing complex PTSD,67 or developmental trauma disorder,68 wounds that are more difficult to treat.

A team led by Fiona Klasen that studied three hundred former Ugandan child soldiers found that the most common experiences were exposure to shootings, beatings, starvation, and witnessing of killing. More than half the children had killed someone. Three-quarters of the children also had at least one experience of domestic or community violence.69 Approximately one-third of them were diagnosed with PTSD. Two-thirds were suffering behavioral and emotional problems, mostly anxiety and depression, not violence.70 Another team, led by Theresa Betancourt, evaluated child soldiers from Sierra Leone. There, too, approximately one-third showed PTSD symptoms.71 A follow-up study showed improvement in PTSD symptoms four years later, with half as many reporting PTSD symptoms. Psychological adjustment was greatly improved when children received family and community support; while post-conflict stigma increased symptoms.72 Longitudinal data on aggressive behavior in former child soldiers is not yet available.73 Psychologists who study the impact of trauma and violence refer to "moral injury" as a risk factor for further violence, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and major depression.74 The term "moral injury" refers to pain or damage to the conscience caused by an individual's witnessing, failing to prevent, or perpetrating acts that violate deeply held ethical norms.75 But what kinds of transgressions cause moral injury? There is a large amount of literature demonstrating that ethical norms are often culturally or situationally specific. However, some acts are considered wrong by nearly all cultures and religions. One of these is murder. Another is the act of deliberately targeting civilians in war, which is banned by all major religions.76 Thus, those who perpetrate acts of terrorism, as we have defined it, are susceptible to moral injury, and to acquired callousness, which is sometimes called secondary psychopathy. Thus, inducing followers to commit atrocities is part of the technology for reducing empathy.

It is more difficult to treat the aftermath of war for those who experience moral injury. PTSD, in turn, is a risk factor for further violence, especially among men.77 Perhaps surprisingly, among military personnel, combat exposure and life threat are not the most significant risk factors for PTSD. When military personnel know that they have hit their target and killed someone-as is the case for close combat (such as ISIS's beheadings), they are at greater risk to develop posttraumatic stress disorder.78 We usually think of moral injury and PTSD as a problem for legitimate military personnel, not terrorists, and one might ask why it should matter to anyone other than the terrorists themselves that their actions put them at risk of PTSD. The reason we should care, in our view, is that widespread commission of atrocities could lead to a form of societal PTSD-both for victims of atrocities and for perpetrators. One of the results of continuously witnessing morally injurious actions, or of perpetrating them, is the blunting of feeling, and loss of empathy. Ironically, some child soldiers may avoid adverse mental health outcomes by developing an appet.i.te for aggression; those who learn to take pleasure from killing appear to be less susceptible to PTSD symptoms, according to work in Northern Uganda and Colombia by Roland Weierstall and colleagues.79 Is ISIS deliberately trying to create a society with an appet.i.te for violent aggression? It is impossible to know ISIS's conscious intentions in this regard, but either way, the end result of its rule in Syria and Iraq will no doubt be a deeply traumatized generation and a host of new challenges from within.

SLAVERY.

Slavery was abolished in most countries by the end of the nineteenth century, although it is still practiced illegally in some countries.80 In a report issued in early October, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN a.s.sistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) reported that hundreds of women and girls were abducted from Yazidi and Christian villages in August 2014. By the end of August, UN officials reported that some 2,500 civilians from these villages had been abducted and held in a prison. Teenage children, both males and females, were s.e.xually a.s.saulted, according to villagers who managed to speak with the UN officials. Groups of children were taken away. Women and children who refused to convert were sold as s.e.x slaves or given to fighters. Married women who agreed to convert were told that Islamic law did not recognize their previous marriages. They were thus given to ISIS fighters to marry, as were the single women who agreed to convert.81 The Yazidis are a mostly Kurdish-speaking population whose syncretic religion pulls from both Islam and Christianity. ISIS views the Yazidis as devil wors.h.i.+ppers.82 The Yazidis and other religious-minority groups are not "people of the book," and are therefore required to convert or die, according to ISIS' interpretation of Shariah law.

Matthew Barber, a scholar of Yazidi history at the University of Chicago, estimates that as many as 7,000 women were taken captive in August 2014.83 According to ISIS, the practice of forcing the Yazidis and other religious minorities into s.e.xual slavery is a way to prevent the sin of premarital s.e.x or adultery, as well as a sign that the Final Battle will soon occur. In the fourth issue of Dabiq, an article t.i.tled "The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour" explains that polytheist and pagan women can and should be enslaved. Indeed, their enslavement is one of the "signs of the hour as well as one of the causes of al Malhalah al Kubra," the Final Battle that will take place in Dabiq.84 Further, they wrote, "a number of contemporary scholars have mentioned that the desertion of slavery had led to an increase in fhishah (s.e.xual sins such as adultery or fornication), because the shar'a alternative to marriage is not available, so a man who cannot afford marriage to a free woman finds himself surrounded by temptation towards sin. . . . May Allah bless this Islamic State with the revival of further aspects of the religion occurring at its hands."85 Below are some of ISIS's answers about its theological justifications for s.e.xual slaves and how to keep them: "There is no dispute among the scholars that it is permissible to capture unbelieving women [who are characterized by] original unbelief [kufr asli], such as the kitabiyat [women from among the People of the Book, i.e., Jews and Christians] and polytheists. However, [the scholars] are disputed over [the issue of] capturing apostate women. The consensus leans towards forbidding it, though some people of knowledge think it permissible. We [ISIS] lean towards accepting the consensus. . . ."86 "It is permissible to have s.e.xual intercourse with the female captive. Allah the almighty said: '[Successful are the believers] who guard their chast.i.ty, except from their wives or (the captives and slaves) that their right hands possess, for then they are free from blame [Koran 23:56].' . . ."87 "If she is a virgin, he [her master] can have intercourse with her immediately after taking possession of her. However, if she isn't, her uterus must be purified [first]. . . ."88 "It is permissible to buy, sell, or give as a gift female captives and slaves, for they are merely property, which can be disposed of as long as that doesn't cause [the Muslim ummah] any harm or damage."89 "It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn't reached p.u.b.erty if she is fit for intercourse; however if she is not fit for intercourse, then it is enough to enjoy her without intercourse."90 ACCORDING TO ESTEEMED political psychologist Vamik Volkan, collective historical trauma can predispose a society toward violence, ident.i.ty politics (in the form of hatred of an out-group), and the rise of paranoid leaders.h.i.+p and ideologies. The memories of this collective trauma become part of a shared myth, and what Volkan calls a "chosen trauma."91 Volkan also sees a role for societal humiliation and cultural group psychology in the Middle East as contributors to paths of ma.s.s radicalization.92 Within Iraq and Syria, ISIS has a rich vein of collective historical traumas on which to draw in consolidating its position and certainly the outcomes Volkan describes (violence, paranoia, and ident.i.ty politics) correspond closely to the reality of ISIS today. Such traumas can lead to the selection of values, sacred or otherwise, that justify "purification" of the world. Once such paranoid leaders arise, they can neutralize "individual moral constraints against personal perpetration of suffering, torturing and murder," psychiatrist Otto Kernberg explains.93 In addition to whatever benefits ISIS can extract from the traumas suffered by Iraqis and Syrians (some of which were instigated by ISIS and its predecessors), it is also inflicting an ongoing collective trauma of nearly apocalyptic proportions on those same populations. The longer that ISIS rules its domain, the deeper and more catastrophic those traumas will become.

While ISIS may not articulate its reasons in this manner, we believe it is deliberately engaged in a process of blunting empathy, attracting individuals already inclined toward violence, frightening victims into compliance, and projecting this activity out to the wider world. The long-term effects of its calculated brutality are likely to be severe, with higher rates of various forms of PTSD, increased rates of secondary psychopathy, and, sadly, still more violence.

CHAPTER TEN.

THE COMING FINAL BATTLE?.

Many Muslims antic.i.p.ate that the end of days is here, or will be here soon. In a 2012 Pew poll, in most of the countries surveyed in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, half or more Muslims believe that they will personally witness the appearance of the Mahdi. In Islamic eschatology, the messianic figure known as the Mahdi (the Guided One) will appear before the Day of Judgment. This expectation is most common in Afghanistan (83 percent), followed by Iraq (72), Tunisia (67), and Malaysia (62).1 Historically, narratives of the apocalypse have occupied a relatively marginal role in Sunni Islam, as distinct from s.h.i.+'ism. For Sunnis, the Mahdi is not yet here. For most s.h.i.+'ites, the Mahdi has already been born, but is now hidden, and when he reveals himself, justice will prevail.2 The 1979 Iranian Revolution is considered by some s.h.i.+'ites to be an early sign of the Mahdi's appearance. For both Sunnis and s.h.i.+'ites, the Mahdi's role is, in part, to end the disunity of the Muslim community and to prepare for the second coming of Jesus Christ, who is understood to be a prophet in Islam.

Jean-Pierre Filiu, an expert on Islamic eschatology, observes that popular pamphlets and tracts "colored with superst.i.tion" have always circulated, but "until recently [their] impact on political and theological thinking was practically nil" among Sunnis.3 A conscious effort to connect these narratives to current events can be traced, however, to at least the early 1980s, when Abdullah Azzam, an architect of modern jihad, argued that Muslims should join the jihad in Afghanistan, which he considered to be a sign that the end times were imminent.4 For years, al Qaeda invoked apocalyptic predictions in both its internal and external messaging, by using the name Khorasan, a region that includes part of Iran, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, and from which, it is prophesied, the Mahdi will emerge alongside an army bearing black flags. Internal al Qaeda doc.u.ments and communiques from Osama bin Laden often listed his location as Khorasan, and more recently, an al Qaeda cell in Syria adopted the name.5 These claims were, however, mostly symbolic.

ISIS has begun to evoke the apocalyptic tradition much more explicitly, through actions as well as words. Thus ISIS has captured Dabiq, a town understood in some versions of the narrative to be a possible location for the final apocalyptic battle, and declared its intent to conquer Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), in keeping with prophecy.6 For ISIS, and AQI before it, an important feature of the narrative is the expectation of sectarian war. Will McCants, a historian of early Islam, explains: "The early Islamic apocalyptic prophecies are intrinsically sectarian because they arose from similar sectarian conflicts in early Islam waged in Iraq and the Levant. As such, they resonate powerfully in today's sectarian civil wars."7 Ha.s.san Abbas, an expert on jihadi movements, observes, "ISIS is trying deliberately to instigate a war between Sunnis and s.h.i.+'a, in the belief that a sectarian war would be a sign that the final times have arrived. In the eschatological literature, there is reference to crisis in Syria and ma.s.sacre of Kurds-this is why Kobane is important. ISIS is exploiting these apocalyptic expectations to the fullest," he said. It is also why it was so important for ISIS to establish a caliphate, he explains. That too is a sign in their worldview.8 WHILE MUSLIM APOCALYPTIC thought is diverse and complex, most narratives contain some elements that would be easily recognized by Christians and Jews: at an undetermined time in the future the world will end, a messianic figure will return to the earth, and G.o.d will pa.s.s judgment on all people, justly relegating some to heaven and some to h.e.l.l.

Considerable diversity exists, however, in writings about what will precede this final judgment. David Cook is a leading authority on Muslim eschatology. Because the Qur'an "is not an apocalyptic book," he explains, writers have been forced to turn to supplementary materials-including the words attributed to Muhammad, the Bible, global conspiracy theories about Judaism, stories of UFO abductions, and theories about the Bermuda Triangle-when discussing "the confused period" that comes before these final events.9 Cook explains that the events in this period are typically described as Lesser Signs of the Hour and Greater Signs of the Hour. The Lesser Signs are "moral, cultural, political, religious, and natural events designed to warn humanity that the end is near and to bring people into a state of repentance."10 These signs tend to be so general that it is possible to find indicators of them in any modern society (for example, crime, natural disaster, etc.).

The Greater Signs, by contrast, offer a more detailed account of the final days, and while there is considerable variation among these stories, a few elements are consistent: Constantinople will be conquered by Muslims; the Antichrist will appear and travel to Jerusalem; a messianic figure (in some instances Jesus, and in some instances the Mahdi) will come to earth, kill the Antichrist, and convert the ma.s.ses to Islam. The world's non-Muslim territories will be conquered.11 Many contemporary writers concerned with the apocalypse resent the suggestion that they are somehow affiliated with or partic.i.p.ating in terrorist violence, Cook observes. But it would be naive to deny the increasing role that this literature has played in contemporary jihad. Since September 11, he says, these writers have come to focus increasingly on Iraq-thus relegating Afghanistan and Israel to positions of lesser importance-and have implied that the American invasion was a sign of the coming apocalypse.12 This isn't to suggest that Israel has become insignificant in these narratives; much of this writing is virulently anti-Semitic and a.s.sumes a worldwide Jewish conspiracy against Muslims. In the new formulation, however, America is understood to be "the more or less willing instrument of Israel."13 ISIS is using apocalyptic expectation as a key part of its appeal. "If you think all these mujahideen came from across the world to fight a.s.sad, you're mistaken. They are all here as promised by the Prophet. This is the war he promised-it is the Grand Battle," a Sunni Muslim told Reuters.

Another purported sign is the movement into Syria of the pro-a.s.sad Hezbollah militia, whose flag is yellow. "As Imam Sadeq has stated, when the (forces) with yellow flags fight anti-s.h.i.+'ites in Damascus and Iranian forces join them, this is a prelude and a sign of the coming of his holiness," Rohollah Hosseinian, an Iranian cleric and member of Parliament, explained.14 The New York Times interviewed dozens of Tunisian youth, who are disproportionately represented among foreign fighters with ISIS, and found that messianic expectation was part of the appeal. "There are lots of signs that the end will be soon, according to the Quran," a twenty-four year-old said.15 Almost none of the interviewees believed that ISIS was involved in ma.s.s killings or beheadings. "All of this is manufactured in the West," a twenty-eight-year-old taxi driver said.16 All of the youth viewed the existing Arab governments as autocratic and corrupt. They complained that there were no pure scholars of Islam whose views were untainted by politics or allegiance to some form of earthly power; but at the same time noted that the absence of uncorrupted Islamic scholars could be yet another sign of the coming apocalypse. Another sign for these youth was ISIS's declaration of the caliphate.17 ABU MUSAB AL SURI, one of the most important strategists of jihad, whom we have discussed throughout this book, incorporated apocalyptic narratives in his writings. His famous book, A Call to a Global Islamic Resistance, is not only the template for "individual jihad," but contains many pages of apocalyptic predictions. Filiu observes that the book, advertised as "Your Path to Jihad," was meant to attract a very wide readers.h.i.+p of ordinary Muslims, not just committed Salafis.

"As against al-Qaida's adventurism and centralized elitism, which in [al Suri's] view renders it vulnerable at its very core, Abu Musab al-Suri proposes a distributed network model of decentralized resistance that reflects and responds to the aspirations of ordinary Muslims."18 To that end, according to Filiu, al Suri included a discourse on the apocalypse, which, as he shows, has become increasingly popular, especially after 9/11 and the allied invasion of Iraq.19 "There is nothing in the least theoretical about this exercise in apocalyptic exegesis," Filiu observes in regard to al Suri's apocalyptic writings. "It is meant as a guide for action: 'I have no doubt that we have entered into the age of tribulations. The reality of this moment enlightens us to the significance of such events. . . . We will be alive then, when Allah's order comes. And we shall obey what Allah has commanded.'"20 Zarqawi set about fulfilling al Suri's prophecies, even going so far as to publish communiques detailing the fulfillment of specific predictions.21 He used apocalyptic imagery more than any other contemporary jihadist, Cook explains, much more so than bin Laden or Zawahiri.22 Baghdadi, the successor to Zarqawi, is taking the fulfillment of apocalyptic portents even more seriously than his predecessor.

In the summer of 2014, ISIS fought to capture Dabiq, a Syrian town close to the Turkish border, and released the first issue of its English-language magazine, called Dabiq, in July. Its editors explained that they antic.i.p.ate that Dabiq will play a historical role in the period leading to the Final Day, but first it was necessary to purify the town and to raise the black flags of the caliphate there.23 Now that allied forces have entered the battle, the jihadists antic.i.p.ate that the final battle in Dabiq is drawing near, McCants explains, and both s.h.i.+'a and Sunni groups hope to achieve the privilege of destroying the infidels.24 In ISIS's November 2014 video announcing the death of Abdul-Rahman (Peter) Ka.s.sig, a twenty-six-year-old former U.S. Army ranger, a British executioner claimed that Ka.s.sig had been killed at Dabiq. He also said, "Here we are burying the first American crusader in Dabiq, eagerly waiting for the remainder of your armies to arrive."25 Why is ISIS's obsession with the end of the world so important for us to understand? For one thing, violent apocalyptic groups tend to see themselves as partic.i.p.ating in a cosmic war between good and evil, in which ordinary moral rules do not apply.26 Most terrorist groups worry about offending their human audience with acts of violence that are too extreme. This was true even for bin Laden and al Qaeda Central, who withdrew their support for the Algerian terrorist group GIA and admonished AQI for their violence against Muslims, as we have seen.

But violent apocalyptic groups are not inhibited by the possibility of offending their political const.i.tuents because they see themselves as partic.i.p.ating in the ultimate battle. Apocalyptic groups are the most likely terrorist groups to engage in acts of barbarism, and to attempt to use rudimentary weapons of ma.s.s destruction. Their actions are also significantly harder to predict than the actions of politically motivated groups. The logic of ISIS is heavily influenced by its understanding of prophecy. The military strategic value of Dabiq has little to do with ISIS's desire for a confrontation there.

While most new religious movements that emphasize apocalyptic prophecy are not violent, the deliberate inculcation of apocalyptic fears often precedes violence. Two types of violence can occur: violence perpetrated by members against the members.h.i.+p, such as ma.s.s suicide; and violence against the outside world.

The American apocalyptic group Heaven's Gate is an example of a suicidal cult.27 In 1997, 39 members committed ma.s.s suicide in an effort to join a group of aliens on their s.p.a.cecraft, which cult members believed was following the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet. In 1993, more than 80 followers of David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidian cult, died in a fire they set themselves after a fifty-one-day standoff with federal agents.28 Koresh had predicted, based on his reading of the book of Revelation, that his followers would achieve salvation as a result of violence at his compound.29 The breakaway Catholic organization known as the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of G.o.d antic.i.p.ated the end of the world in the year 2000. Soon after adherents arrived at church on the antic.i.p.ated end of the world, the church burned down. Ugandan authorities suspected ma.s.s suicide, but when they found signs that some adherents had been poisoned or strangled, they concluded that the cause of death was murder.30 It is not easy to determine which apocalyptic groups will turn violent, or which violent groups will turn even more so. Michael Barkun, a leading scholar on violent apocalyptic groups, explains: Predictions of violence on the basis of beliefs alone are notoriously unreliable. Inflammatory rhetoric can come from otherwise peaceable individuals. It does appear, however, that apocalypticists are more likely to engage in violence if they believe themselves to be trapped or under attack. Both conditions are as much a product of their own perception as of outside forces."31 The group responsible for the 1979 Meccan Rebellion, a small sect led by Juhayman al 'Utaybi, is an example of a Muslim apocalyptic cult. Its leader, Juhayman, was a member of the Bedouin tribe that had partic.i.p.ated in the Ikhwan Revolt in the 1920s, the aim of which was to return Saudi Arabia to its pure, Wahhabist roots. In November 1979, Juhayman's followers laid siege to the Grand Mosque compound in Mecca, a sacred site in Islam, which they held for two full weeks. Hundreds of people died during the siege. Most of the perpetrators were summarily executed or imprisoned, and the Saudi government kept the details regarding the perpetrators' motivations secret.

Some twenty-five years later, Thomas Hegghammer, a Norwegian scholar of Islam, was able to piece together what occurred. The cult was inspired by the teachings of Nasir al-Din al Albani, a quietist Salafi who advocated a return to the pure Islam of the Quran and the Hadith. In his view, most of the Saudi Salafis, who considered themselves to be followers of the "pious predecessors," were actually influenced by later interpretations rather than the original texts. Al Albani eschewed politics and violence, and the cult began with the same quietist tendencies.

Two years before the siege, the leader of the cult had escaped into the desert, having received a tip that the police were closing in on his group. While in the desert, he had a dream that his companion, Muhammad al Qahtani, was the Mahdi. Some of the members left the cult in response to the leader's messianic obsessions. But the rest of the group was determined to consecrate Qahtani as the Mahdi in Mecca, in the belief that this would precipitate the end of the world and the series of related events described in Muslim apocalyptic writings. Three hundred rebels attacked the Grand Mosque, taking thousands of wors.h.i.+ppers hostage. Most of the civilians trapped inside were allowed to leave, but an unknown number were retained as hostages.32 Then they awaited the arrival of the hostile army from the north, as promised by the eschatological tradition. The timing of the attack was propitious-the end of the hijri century, "the last pilgrimage of the 14th century according to the Islamic calendar."33 ISIS reportedly circulates Juhayman's dissident writings.34 But the Meccan Rebellion is instructive in another way, which seems to have gone unnoticed by scholars. On the third day of the siege, al Qahtani, the supposed Mahdi, was killed. Juhayman solved this problem by ordering his followers not to acknowledge the death of the purported Mahdi. Years afterward, Hegghammer explains, some followers continued to believe that the Mahdi was still alive.35 In other words, despite the failure of their leader's prophecy, at least some of Juhayman's followers refused to believe the truth of what had happened to the supposed Mahdi, and vowed to continue with their fight. This may prove instructive as it's conceivable that we could see ISIS follow this model if and when their own prophecies fail.

In a study that is widely seen as among the most important contributions to social psychology, a team of observers joined a prophetic, apocalyptic cult to determine what would happen to the group if the predicted events failed to materialize. Marian Keech (a pseudonym for Dorothy Martin), the leader of the cult, predicted the destruction of much of the United States in a great flood, scheduled for December 21, 1955. She told her followers that they would be rescued from the floodwaters by a team of outer-s.p.a.ce men in flying saucers with whom she was able to communicate, she said, through telepathy. When the apocalyptic flood did not materialize, instead of walking away from the cult and its leader, most members continued as loyal followers, and commenced efforts to recruit new followers.

Out of this observation, the researchers, Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, developed the theory of cognitive dissonance, which states that when individuals are confronted with empirical evidence that would seem to prove their beliefs wrong, instead of rejecting their beliefs, they will often hew to them more strongly still, rationalizing away the disconfirming evidence. All of us have experiences with cognitive dissonance in our ordinary lives: When we hear or see something we don't want to believe because it threatens our view of ourselves or our world, rather than changing our views, we may be tempted to persuade ourselves that there has been a mistake-the disconfirming evidence is wrong, we need new gla.s.ses, we misheard. When this happens in cults, members may try to recruit others to join them in their views.36 Since then, a number of similar cults have been studied, many but not all of which followed this pattern. The vast majority survived the failed prophecy, but some employed other stratagems to cope with cognitive dissonance, such as "spiritualizing" the prophecy by claiming that life did not end, but changed significantly, on the day the world as we know it was predicted to end.37, 38 AMONG PROTESTANT APOCALYPTIC cults, there is an important distinction between pre-tribulation and post-tribulation fundamentalists. Pre-tribulation believers expect that Jesus will save them from experiencing the apocalypse through a divine rapture, the simultaneous ascension to heaven of all good Christians.39 Post-tribulation believers expect to be present during the apocalypse. Christian militants who subscribe to post-tribulation beliefs consider it their duty to attack the forces of the Antichrist, who will become leader of the world during the end times.

William McCants explains that there is no a.n.a.logous post-tribulation eschatology in Islam. "The Islamic Day of Judgment is preceded by a series of 'signs,' some of which occurred in Muhammad's own life time. The signs are mentioned in words attributed to Muhammad and usually have the formula, 'The Hour won't come until . . .' As you get closer to the Day, the signs become more intense. ISIS can't hasten the Day with violence but it can claim to fulfill some of the major signs heralding its approach, which might be tantamount to the same thing."40 Many new religious movements employ a set of practices for enhancing commitment. These include sharing property and/or signing it over to the group upon admission; limiting interactions with the outside world; employing special terms for the outside world; ignoring outside news sources; speaking a special jargon; unusual s.e.xual practices such as requiring free love, polygamy, or celibacy; communal owners.h.i.+p of property; uncompensated labor and communal work efforts; daily meetings; mortification procedures such as confession, mutual surveillance, and denunciation; inst.i.tutionalization of awe for the group and its leaders through the attribution of magical powers; the legitimization of group demands through appeals to ultimate values (such as religion); and the use of special forms of address.41 Most terrorist groups employ at least some of these mechanisms. Violent cults develop a story about imminent danger to an "in-group," foster group ident.i.ty, dehumanize the group's purported enemies, and encourage the creation of a "killer self" capable of murdering large numbers of innocent people. As we have seen, ISIS members engage in a number of these practices. Many Western recruits burn their pa.s.sports as a rite of pa.s.sage. ISIS flaunts its s.e.xual enslavement of "polytheists" as a sign of its strict conformance with Shariah, and of the coming end times. The strict dress code is enforced in part by public shaming of women who don't comply.

Like other apocalyptic groups in history, ISIS's stated goal is to purify the world and create a new era, in which a more perfect version of Islam is accepted worldwide. This is a typical millenarian project, which always involves transforming the world into something more pure, either politically (as with the communists' "New Man") or religiously. Dr. Robert J. Lifton is a psychiatrist who has studied "totalistic"42 groups since the 1950s, and he continues to write about them. "Increasingly widespread among ordinary people is the feeling of things going so wrong that only extreme measures can restore virtues and righteousness to society."43 None of us is entirely free of such inner struggles; there is much that is confusing about contemporary life, in which many people are no longer tethered to traditional societies. But apocalyptic groups act on these feelings, "destroying a world in order to save it," in Lifton's words.44 Lifton was referring to another violent millenarian cult, Aum s.h.i.+nrikyo, which in the 1990s had attempted to acquire nuclear weapons and had succeeded in poisoning some five thousand people on the Tokyo subway, twelve of whom died.45 But his words apply as well to ISIS. "Having studied some of the most destructive events of this era, I found much of what Aum did familiar, echoing the totalistic belief systems and end-of the-world aspirations I had encountered in other versions of the fundamentalist self. I came to see these, in turn, as uneasy reactions to the openness and potential confusions of the 'protean' self that history has bequeathed us."46 ISIS is similarly apocalyptic in its views, and similarly unpredictable.

As we have seen, ISIS emerged out of an especially barbaric strain of al Qaeda, which was initiated by Abu Musab al Zarqawi rather than Osama bin Laden. One of the reasons for both Zarqawi's and ISIS's anti-s.h.i.+'ite savagery is their apparent belief in end-times prophecies. It is impossible to know whether Baghdadi and other ISIS leaders truly believe that the end times are near, or are using these prophecies instrumentally and cynically to attract a broader array of recruits. Either way, appealing to apocalyptic expectation is an important part of ISIS's modus operandi. And goading the West into a final battle in Syria is a critical component of the scenario.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE STATE OF TERROR.

ISIS traces its lineage back to the founding of al Qaeda in 1988, but the heirs to Abu Musab al Zarqawi have wrought a creation that feels both old and new. It is a millenarian group whose goal is to "return Islam to an imaginary ideal of original purity,"1 while creating a worldwide caliphate. Like all fundamentalist movements, it is an inherently modern movement. While they see themselves as turning back time to practice a truer, purer version of their religion, ISIS is reinterpreting its religion in an "innovative and radical way," to use Karen Armstrong's description of fundamentalism,2 and exploiting every opening it can find. ISIS aims to cleanse the world of all who disagree with its ideology.

But ideology is not all of its appeal. "Some are flocking to ISIS not because of its ideology, but also because it represents to them a rallying force against establishments that have failed them, or against the west," Marwan Muasher explains.3 There have been many millenarian groups like ISIS throughout history, although ISIS trumps most for wealth and violence in the world today. While its military has had successes in Iraq and Syria, it is quite small compared to the world's real powers. No nation in the world has recognized it as a state.

ISIS flaunts its cruelty, and that literally shameless practice is perhaps its most important innovation. Its public display of barbarism lends a sense of urgency to the challenge it presents and allows it to consume a disproportionate amount of the world's attention.

President Obama has laid out a mission for an international coalition to "degrade and ultimately destroy" ISIS. "We can't erase every trace of evil from the world," Obama said, emphasizing that the effort would "not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil."4 The coalition's policy, for now, is limited to air strikes paired with a train-and-equip mission for Iraqi forces and the increasingly ephemeral "moderate Syrian rebels." In our view, the mission described by the president cannot be accomplished with the limitations he has set out. Less than a week after President Obama spoke, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted that he might feel the need to recommend ground forces.5 Even ground forces would likely not be enough to completely destroy ISIS. Absent a military invasion that would somehow-improbably, magically-transform both Iraq and Syria into truly viable, pluralistic states in which Sunnis and s.h.i.+'a both feel secure, ISIS would likely remain, at least as a terrorist group, for many years to come.

Beyond the necessity to oversee political change in both Iraq and Syria, a tall order indeed, the international impact of ISIS must also be considered, as it inspires oaths of loyalty and acts of violence in nearly every corner of the globe. As with its military might, ISIS's potential to wreak terrorism has been limited until now, although the alignment of regional terror groups such as Jund al Khalifah in Algeria and Ansar Bayt al Maqdis in Egypt raise serious concerns going forward.

The broader problem is that jihadism has become a millenarian movement6 with ma.s.s appeal, in some ways similar to the revolutionary movements of the 1960s and '70s, although its goals and the values it represents are far different.

Today's radicals are expressing their dissatisfaction with the status quo by making war, not love. They are seduced by Thanatos rather than Eros. They "love death as much as you [in the West] love life," in Osama bin Laden's famous and often-paraphrased words. In this dark new world, children are seen to reenact beheadings with their toys, seduced by a familiar drama of the good guys killing the bad guys in order to save the world. Twitter users adopt the black flag by the tens of thousands. And people who barely know anything about Islam or Iraq are inspired to emulate ISIS's brutal beheadings.

ISIS has established itself as a new paradigm, one that is more brutal, more sectarian, and more apocalyptic in its thinking than the groups that preceded it. ISIS is the crack cocaine of violent extremism, all of the elements that make it so alluring and addictive purified into a crystallized form.

ISIS's goals are impossible, ludicrous, but that does not mean it can be easily destroyed. Our policies must look to the possible, which means containing and hopefully eliminating its military threat and choking off its export of ideas.

Circ.u.mstances will almost certainly have changed in between the writing of these words and their publication.

But certainly the history of ISIS and al Qaeda before it show that overwhelming military force is not a solution to hybrid organizations that straddle the line between terrorism and insurgency. Our hammer strikes on al Qaeda spread its splinters around the world. Whatever approach we take in Iraq and Syria must be focused on containment and constriction, rather than simply smas.h.i.+ng ISIS into ever more virulent bits.

We can speak more authoritatively about efforts to counter ISIS as an extremist group and ideology. Here we have specific suggestions that are likely to remain relevant despite whatever happens on the military front.

ISIS's military successes are formidable. But the international community has dealt with far worse. ISIS does not represent an existential threat to any Western country. Perhaps the most important way to counter ISIS's efforts to terrify us is to govern our reactions, making sure our policies and political responses are proportionate to the threat ISIS represents.

We asked Steven Pinker, who has written extensively on violence in society, to compare the atrocities of ISIS to those of the past. He wrote in an email: In terms of the sheer number of victims, they are nowhere near the n.a.z.is (six million Jews alone, to say nothing of the exterminated gypsies, h.o.m.os.e.xuals, Poles and other Slavs, plus the tens of millions of deaths caused by their invasions and bombings). Mao and Stalin have also been credited with tens of millions of deaths. In the 20th century alone, we also have Pol Pot, Imperial j.a.pan, the Turks in Armenia, the Pakistanis in Bangladesh, and the Indonesians during the Year of Living Dangerously.7 None of this minimizes the impact of ISIS. They kill their enemies and minorities who offend them with deliberate and brazen cruelty. They sell women and children into slavery and subject them to abominable s.e.xual abuse. They kill anyone who opposes them and anyone who refuses to accept their bizarre system of belief, which has been rejected as morally wrong by jihadist clerics we once considered the worst of the worst.

Neither its leaders nor its bloodthirsty adherents see the slightest problem in publicizing and celebrating their atrocities. Some of this is calculated, at least at the leaders.h.i.+p level, to frighten potential victims and to attract new psychopathic recruits. But this violence is now pervasively ingrained in the society ISIS is trying to build, with disturbing ramifications for the innocent children growing up in its charnel-house "caliphate."

Our horror and revulsion are appropriate responses to this regime of atrocities, and we can and should do what is in our power to help ISIS's victims, but we should measure our actions to avoid spreading its ideology and influence.

ISIS evokes disproportionate dread. As we have shown, the "availability" of ISIS's crimes, together with its evil, makes us p.r.o.ne to exaggerate the risk, and p.r.o.ne to react rather than strategize.

Political leaders and policy makers are particularly susceptible to ad hoc policy making with little regard to competing interests, in large measure because ISIS is so good at manipulating our perceptions.8 Decision makers are pressured by a bias toward action, the understandable desire to respond swiftly and visibly to threats. Our political system and security bureaucracies incentivize theatrical action over caution and consideration of unintended consequences and the long term.9 "Action is consolatory," Joseph Conrad tells us in Nostromo. "It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions."

Any effort to make the world a better place can have the perverse effect of creating new risks-just as an aspirin can aggravate a stomach ulcer.10 We need not look as far back as the 2003 invasion of Iraq for a lesson in perverse effects. The 2011 intervention in Libya provides a more recent example. There were profoundly compelling humanitarian reasons to support the popular rebellion against Moammar Gadhafi. But it is nearly impossible to argue that either Iraqis or Libyans are better off than they were before our interventions. These military actions, which seemed imperative at the time, introduced a new risk, and an explosion of jihadism has engulfed both countries. In both places, ISIS has staked its claim to territories and mounted fighting forces.

The only thing worse than a brutal dictator is no state at all.

The rise of ISIS is, to some extent, the unintended consequence of Western intervention in Iraq. Coalition forces removed a brutal dictator from power, but they also broke the Iraqi state. The West lacked the patience, the will, and the wisdom to build a new, inclusive one. What remained were ruins.

If there is a final nail in the coffin of a full-scale military intervention to defeat ISIS, it is the incongruity of targeting the jihadists while Bashar al a.s.sad remains in power. a.s.sad's regime has tortured thousands of political prisoners to death. He has bombed hospitals and schools. An average of 5,000 Syrian refugees are fleeing every day, totaling more than 3 million registered refugees, most of them in neighboring countries. Jordan is overwhelmed by the refugee burden, and it is clearly inc.u.mbent on other nations to shoulder more of the burden. An additional 6.5 million people are displaced inside Syria.11 Arguably, the Western-led intervention against ISIS has already aided a.s.sad. With the rebels fully engaged in infighting, a.s.sad's forces have hit the same targets bombed by the coalition.12 U.S. strikes against Jabhat al Nusra and Ahrar al Sham have resulted in more infighting among rebel factions and further marginalization of the secular groups.13 As Charles Lister of the Brookings Inst.i.tution wrote in December 2014 after interviewing dozens of rebel faction leaders: For the Syrian opposition, the a.s.sad regime and ISIS are two sides of the same coin, but with a.s.sad being "the head of the snake" and ISIS merely "the tail." The U.S.-led coalition's failure to target the regime is therefore perceived as tantamount to a hostile act against the revolution. Moreover, while surprising to outsiders, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra is still to this day perceived by many as an invaluable actor in the fight against Damascus and as such, the strikes on its positions are seen by many as evidence of U.S. interests being contrary to the revolution. Although this perception may be subtly changing, with one Syrian Salafist commander admitting that "Nusra is going down the wrong path," the strike on a headquarters of Syrian group Ahrar al-Sham late on November 5-confirmed to me by multiple Syrian and international sources-consolidated this impression that U.S. interests have diverged from those of Syria's revolution.14 Even if Western voters could be convinced to support a full-scale invasion to remove a.s.sad, what would happen in the ensuing vacuum? The cautionary tales of Iraq and Libya loom large. In the words of Lieutenant General Daniel P. Bolger (ret.), who served as a senior commander in Iraq: The surge in Iraq did not "win" anything. It bought time. It allowed us to kill some more bad guys and feel better about ourselves. But in the end, shackled to a corrupt, sectarian government in Baghdad and hobbled by our fellow Americans' unwillingness to commit to a fight lasting decades, the surge just forestalled today's stalemate. Like a handful of aspirin gobbled by a fevered patient, the surge cooled the symptoms. But the underlying disease didn't go away. The remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgents we battled for more than eight years simply re-emerged this year as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. . . .

We did not understand the enemy, a guerrilla network embedded in a quarrelsome, suspicious civilian population. We didn't understand our own forces, which are built for rapid, decisive conventional operations, not lingering, ill-defined counterinsurgencies. We're made for Desert Storm, not Vietnam. As a general, I got it wrong. . . .

Today we are hearing some, including those in uniform, argue for a robust ground offensive against the Islamic State in Iraq. Air attacks aren't enough, we're told. Our Kurdish and Iraqi Army allies are weak and incompetent. Only another surge can win the fight against this dire threat. Really? If insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I think we're there.15 General Bolger argues that we would have needed to occupy Iraq for three decades to create a viable state, echoing similar arguments made at the time by both Jim Webb and then Secretary of State Powell.16 The problem is that if we're not prepared for a thirty-year occupation, we cannot create a viable state in Syria, and even that level of commitment comes with no guarantee of success. And if there is anything we ought to have learned from our mistakes in both Iraq and Libya, a failed state is the worst of all possible outcomes.

On August 14, 2014, Haider al Abadi took over from Nouri al Maliki as prime minister of Iraq. He faces a daunting task in stemming the chaos and healing a society profoundly riven by ethnic and religious strife, a fire that rekindled under Maliki and has been stoked continually since by ISIS.

We wish him well, but we do not-and should not-necessarily expect that the postWorld War II boundaries of the Middle East will remain intact. The devolution of powers to the regions, with a limited central government, may be, as Leslie Gelb has long argued, the only policy glue that will prevent the outright breakup of Iraq.17 Gelb has proposed that Sunni, Kurdish, and s.h.i.+'ite regions each be responsible for their own domestic laws and internal security. To some extent, this is a fait accompli for the Kurds.

"The Middle East is clearly in one of those pivotal moments," said General David Petraeus in July. "We're in a period of history where the organizing principles, the lines on the map drawn by British and French diplomats early last century, are being erased."18 How can we stop this carnage, without inadvertently a.s.sisting ISIS, a.s.sad, or both? If a military operation only serves to create more insurgents than it takes out, it is not a useful operation. If we cannot practically impose a political and military solution on the region, we can at least learn from our past mistakes.

Instead of smas.h.i.+ng ISIS in the same way we approached al Qaeda, Clint Watts of the Foreign Policy Research Inst.i.tute proposes, we should consider "letting them rot," in some ways the modern equivalent of a medieval siege.19 The rot may already be setting in. Reports in December indicated that ISIS's capitals in Iraq and Syria, Mosul and Raqqa respectively, are suffering under dramatically deteriorated living conditions.20 Rather than trying to displace ISIS with an external force, we should consider efforts to cut off its ability to move fighters, propaganda, and money in and out of the regions it controls, weakening its ability to use brute force and extreme violence to keep the local population in check. It would also force ISIS to fail based on its own actions instead of being displaced by outsiders, which would do much over the long run to discredit future efforts at jihadist nation building. Such a strategy would have to be probed for its own pitfalls and weighed against the moral conundrums it presents, especially as it pertains to the human costs that ISIS could impose on the population in the areas it controls. Targeted military action may be able to inhibit ISIS's ability to carry out genocide with impunity, but it will not entirely remove that ability. Our military approach will unavoidably need to evolve along with the situation on the ground.

THE EXTREMIST MIND.

Fundamentalists see religious texts as inerrant guides to life. But even for those who see scripture as the literal word of G.o.d, the people who read it and interpret it are human and fallible, a concept fundamentalists are often unable to conceptualize as it applies to themselves, although they happily apply it to others.

This is not particular to ISIS or to jihadists; it applies to many violent fundamentalists across a range of ideologies, whom we have spoken with and studied. Readers bring their prejudices and pain to religious texts.

Salafism, like all fundamentalisms, is a response to the pain of modernity. Karen Armstrong, a former nun, has studied fundamentalism across different religions. She observes: Fundamentalist movements in all faiths . . . reveal a deep disappointment and disenchantment with the modern experiment, which has not fulfilled all that it promised. They also express real fear. Every single fundamentalist movement that I have studied is convinced that the secular establishment is determined to wipe religion out.21 What seems to be most appealing about violent fundamentalist groups-whatever combination of reasons an individual may cite for joining-is the simplification of life and thought. Good and evil are brought out in stark relief. Life is transformed through action. Martyrdom-the supreme act of heroism and wors.h.i.+p-provides the ultimate relief from life's dilemmas, especially for individuals who feel deeply alienated and confused, humiliated, or desperate.

Although ISIS, like many fundamentalist groups, claims to be practicing the religion in its purest, most original form, this represents a longing, not a reality.

Peter Suedfeld, a psychologist and researcher, has studied the role of complexity in conflict, including how it plays into extremist narratives. His work and that of others supports our own observation that violent extremist messaging and narratives are less complex than similar messages from nonviolent movements, stripping narratives down to their bare essentials with little qualification or elaboration. (His research compared al Qaeda and AQAP messaging to that of nonviolent Islamists.)22 Integrative complexity, defined by Suedfeld as being able to examine problems from different perspectives and make cognitive connections drawing on those different perspectives, is not the same thing as intelligence. Extremists are sometimes exceptionally intelligent. Rather, it applies to flexibility of thought and the ability to see things from someone else's point of view. Studies have found that integrative complexity and empathy are closely correlated, with empathy being the emotional equivalent of the cognitive process.23 Research by Jose Liht and Sara Savage of the University of Cambridge suggests that it is possible to promote integrative complexity among people vulnerable to extremist radicalization.24 This suggests two possible avenues for countering the appeal of ISIS and groups like it. First, we can attempt to continually reinforce messages that flesh out the nuance and complexity of the situations and conditions that extremists use to recruit, undermining the incorrect thesis that the problems faced by communities vulnerable to radicalization are easily reduced to absolutes.

In practice, this means refusing to characterize our conflict with ISIS in stark, ideological terms, an uphill battle in the current media and political climate, which tends to incentivize simple explanations. It is further complicated when ISIS theatricalizes dreaded risks such as beheadings to evoke a stripped-down primal response. In many ways, The Management of Savagery outlines a specific psychological campaign designed to provoke enemies into the same simplistic thinking that dominates jihadist thought-al Naji refers to the process as "polarization," and that is why those who argue that ISIS's public displays of brutality will backfire are wrong (up to a point). The object of ISIS's extreme displays of violence is to polarize viewers into sharply divided camps of good and evil, not to rally the general public around its actions.

The second prescription follows from the first. Our policies must not lend credence and support to ISIS's simplistic and apocalyptic worldview. When ISIS began beheading Westerners on video in September 2014, it did so with the intention of prodding the United States into an ever-deeper engagement in Iraq, consistent with the blueprint in The Management of Savagery. ISIS