A former Islamic State hostage and veteran Middle East journalist explores misperceptions of Islamic State and their consequences.For more than a decade, French journalist Nicolas Henin has reported from the front lines of conflict in the Middle East, much of his time spent in Iraq and Syria. He witnessed the events leading to the rise of Islamic State, and in June 2013, he was himself captured by IS and spent ten months in captivity with James Foley and others who were beheaded soon after Henin was released. Those ...
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A former Islamic State hostage and veteran Middle East journalist explores misperceptions of Islamic State and their consequences.For more than a decade, French journalist Nicolas Henin has reported from the front lines of conflict in the Middle East, much of his time spent in Iraq and Syria. He witnessed the events leading to the rise of Islamic State, and in June 2013, he was himself captured by IS and spent ten months in captivity with James Foley and others who were beheaded soon after Henin was released. Those barbarities and the first strikes against Islamic State prompted Henin to present in Jihad Academy what he knows IS to be, in contrast to the misperceptions he sees perpetuated on an ongoing basis.Henin sees Islamic State as a political entity, having arisen out of a sense of injustice and lack of hope and as the natural result of the Western inability to support Syrian democracy activists. The West, however, sees IS only as a terrorist organization, ignoring its political message and goals; by doing so, we act as a recruitment agent for Islamic State and largely overlook the greatest victims of IS violence: civilians on the ground. IS will only be ultimately defeated, he argues, by the people of the region, just as others have overthrown groups that practiced political violence on their people.Jihad Academy is a fresh and powerful assessment by a writer with the perspective of a historian, the passion of a journalist long committed to the region, and the credibility of someone who has witnessed terrorism firsthand. Henin's is an important new voice in the ongoing debate about our role in the Middle East.
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Although French journalist and author Nicolas Henin declines to discuss his captivity by ISIS, that experience surely supplemented his understanding of current Middle East chaos. Refreshingly, he cites French sources, thereby giving U.S. readers a broader context than is presented in our infotainment 'news.' While the book is dense with unfamiliar names and event references, the force of his informed argument creates a narrative momentum that constitutes a page-turner for those of us seeking to understand what the hell is going on over there.
Henin specifically discusses the current Syria war and the continuing conflict in Iraq as conflicts between Shia and Sunni Muslims. In Syria Shia President Bashir al-Assad's only objective is to retain personal power over his majority Sunni population, even at the cost of destroying Syrians (both Sunni and Shia), cities and towns, and even Syria's very culture. He is the worst possible head of state: one who values retaining personal power over the welfare and survival of his country. U.S. policy makers must discard the fantasy that Assad would voluntarily relinquish his position under any circumstances; are you listening Secretary of State John Kerry? I often wondered why the U.S. didn't just aim a drone at Assad and take him out. Perhaps that was considered, but it won't stop the chaos because Bashir al-Assad has moved all government power into the hands of his Alawi family members.
What is strikingly new is Henin's assertion that Bashir al-Assad welcomes the conflict with ISIS: it legitimizes his regime's brutality (against all foes) and casts him in the role of opposing an even greater evil. That ISIS is equally ruthless discourages other nations from entrusting them with running the country should Assad be miraculously ousted. The Shia Iranian government is Assad's biggest supporter, but even they would be hard put to govern a post-Assad Syria with ISIS continuing its opposition. The result of all this mayhem? The thousands of innocent Syrian families fleeing to Greece and Europe with their lives.
In Iraq, the U.S. invasion replaced a Sunni government with sequential Shia heads of state whose sectarianism precluded understanding - much less implementing - an "inclusive" government comprised of both Sunnis and Shias. Rather, each Shia head of state has refused to incorporate Sunnis into positions of real power. That Paul Bremer (may he rot in Hell) disbanded the Iraq military and established the precedent of excluding all Ba'ath party members from government service, set up the initial framework for the sectarian nightmare that continues to this day. The only U.S. official who seemed to understand the situation, General David Patraeus, was in fact wrong in setting up a Mosul council with ethnic representatives. Henin writes, "He did nothing more than to inject a little more sectarian poison into the bloodstream of Iraqi society. Faced with a choice between the hopelessness of a repressive Shia government and the alternative ISIS promises, ordinary Iraqis suffer while bloodshed surrounds them and their families.
In Henin's conclusion, "A New State of Barbarity" he writes that "Islamic State's success stems from a number of our mistakes. It is the result of the improbably cross-fertilisation between two groups the scholar Francois Burgat has rightly called 'jihadists without borders' and 'angry Sunnis'." On the mechanics of radicalization he writes, "At the individual level, they are set in motion as a result of failed integration and identity-based narratives that produce social exclusion. At the diplomatic level, by the West's prioritization of autocrats over their people." The reality is that "Dictatorships provide breeding ground and fuel for extremism." Dear Western democracies, when, if ever, will you learn this lesson?