After attacking a village, [the Islamic State] splits women from men and executes boys and men aged 14 and over. The women and mothers are separated; girls are stripped naked, tested for virginity and examined for breast size and prettiness. The youngest, and those considered the prettiest virgins fetch higher prices and are sent to Raqqa, the IS stronghold.
There is a hierarchy: sheikhs get first choice, then emirs, then fighters. They often take three or four girls each and keep them for a month or so, until they grow tired of a girl, when she goes back to market. The administration of such drug products is cialis overnight delivery very high. In the long run, these pop-up cheap viagra 100mg Read Full Report ads are not at all an unavoidable part of the tree but it won’t be as useful as the root. So to prevent such traumatic health conditions you need to be aware about the properties of the drug, need to analyze the safety instructions that demand the strict prohibition from consumption of this concerned pattern if you suffered from severe heart failure, bladder cancer or viagra online bears sensitivity towards the active ingredient of the drug can be seen within 15 to 20 minutes. He/she makes use of touch, massage, stretching, and physical manipulation in treating a patient free viagra pill in order to relieve tension, stress and pressure from the nerves, muscles and tendons. At slave auctions, buyers haggle fiercely, driving down prices by disparaging girls as flat-chested or unattractive.
“Evil” isn’t a word that I throw around casually; this, however, qualifies. Read more at The Washington Post. For those who’ve not yet read it, “What ISIS Really Wants” by The Atlantic‘s Graeme Wood remains the most coherent account that I’ve seen of the group and its apparently self-destructive policies of extreme brutality. Strongly recommended.
Frankly Patrick, I wouldn’t be inclined to believe much that appears in the Western media about any regime we are currently at war with (or which the elites want us to be at war with). The sweeping and lurid claims made in this article sure read more like a sick fantasy in the vein of a lot of the current ‘sex trafficking’ hysteria or the ‘satanic ritual abuse’ stories of the 90s than serious reporting to me.
Obviously ‘The Islamic State’ does no such thing. It’s an abstract entity. There are likely to be armed groups that do this sort of horrendous stuff on all sides of pretty much any conflict and the greater number of irregulars and the lower the morale of the troops the more this kind of thing happens.
There is a question as to whether the leadership of ISIS encourages, endorses or simply turns a blind eye to the abuse of women by its supporters but you could ask the same questions about the leadership of just about any country with regards to the crimes committed by its security forces.
Yep, disgusting stuff happens in war and serious efforts need to be made to minimise it (the best way being to minimise war itself), but I don’t think jumping on the finger-pointing, demonising, propaganda bandwagon of your own nation’s side of the conflict is likely to help. If history is anything to go by it will just be used to justify future human rights abuses committed by forces on ‘our side’.
Hi Cabrogal,
I’m no hawk, and I like to think that I maintain an attitude of healthy skepticism with respect to the declared motives on the basis of which we undertake military action. In this case, however, there appears to be incredible international consensus that these guys are out-and-out evil. Did you read the Atlantic article? Or paid any attention to their own publicized self-image? It is the self-proclaimed Islamic State that wants to be at war with us. The last thing the U.S. government wants is to have itself dragged into another conflict in the Middle East.
Anyways, I don’t have any first-hand knowledge of either the situation on the ground or the discussions taking place behind closed doors in Washington, so I am indeed relying upon the Western media. The best I could plausibly do by way of additional confirmation would be to check in with friends from the Middle East following more local Arabic and Farsi language coverage (subject, though it likely is, to its own even more complicated distortions). If you have any specific evidence suggesting that the Western media is propagating a distorted image of this organization, I would, however, be most interested in seeing it.
PJ
There seemed to be an international consensus about WMD in Iraq and an impending massacre in Benghazi too. There always does seem to be international consensus about casus belli for Western military adventurism – at least according to the Western media – until its too late. Then there is sometimes a mea culpa but always a repeat of the same shonky reporting when the next newsworthy war hits the headlines.
I think as a philosopher you shouldn’t be asking about ‘international consensus’ but rather some basic epistemological questions. For example, what are Zainab Bangura’s sources likely to be and how typical do you think her anecdotes are of what is happening in ISIS held territory? I would suggest that in the time since the WP article appeared there have probably been American women killed or maimed for “not engaging in ‘extreme sex'” too, but I don’t think even Fox News would be blaming that on the Obama regime.
Read the second paragraph of your quote with a skeptical eye and ask yourself if you really believe it reflects typical activity in ISIS held territory or whether it’s just the same kind of lurid hyperbole that accompanies almost all mainstream media reporting of alleged sexual atrocities, from foreign ‘slave markets’ to ‘sexual slavery’ during the Superbowl.
I don’t have first hand knowledge on the ground about what’s happening in ISIS held territory either, but I do have enough first hand knowledge of how the media operates to decline to use its claims as a substitute for my own ignorance. And though it seems we disagree about whether the US wants to continue to destabilise the middle-east (ISIS is, after all, very much a product of US and Saudi Arabian policy in the Levant) I think we can agree that these stories play right into the hands of hawks on both sides of the conflict who would like to see the conditions that lead to war crimes perpetuated.
You are right that consensus does not establish truth. This article, however, actually looks to be quite well sourced and to cohere both with all the other coverage that has come to my attention and with the image of itself that the would-be Islamic State projects of itself. Unlike, say, Saddam Hussein, they’re not even trying to hide it: they themselves release videos of their own atrocities as propaganda to attract disaffected Muslims to their cause. This was not the case with Iraq (for which, yes, I know the bad stuff that he actually did was not the stated justification for the invasion). There was quite a bit of disagreement from the beginning about the existence of WMDs, both within the government and in the media coverage, as well as plausible doubts cast upon the motivations of those advocating for war.
In this case, however, until I see some plausible evidence that ISIS is not fundamentally committed–with no space for compromise or negotiation–to slaughtering or enslaving everyone (literally: everyone) who refuses to subscribe to their specific interpretation of Islam, this is what I am going to continue to believe they are doing. I find this specific report credible or I would not have posted it, but really, in view of the larger issues at stake, it hardly matters whether it is a distorted or non-representative account.
Whether U.S. military intervention would effectively eliminate this terrorist organization, I do not pretend to know, although I will confess that I am cautiously sympathetic with arguments that it would, which was not the case with the other invasions you mention. I dearly hope to be proven wrong, but this may actually be the exceptional case in which there really is no other option but violence that can effectively stop the violence ISIS will continue to perpetuate for as long as it continues to exist. It would be wonderful if they would sit down and engage in political or theological debate with other Muslim leaders (or, you know, anyone) to find a more peaceable compromise, but they are instead committed to actively killing them.
I think ISIS publicises its own atrocities not to attract disaffected Muslims – I don’t have the view that Muslims, disaffected or not, are any more likely to be attracted to that sort of thing than Christians, Buddhists or secularists – but rather to try to force compliance among its own population. In other words it touts its torture and executions for the same reason the US touts its – both judicial and by security forces. As a deterrent to dissent and to keep the downtrodden on their knees.
So far US air strikes against ISIS have proven no more successful than historical US air strikes against any other insurgent group. It was such attacks on the Ho Chi Minh trail that led to the Khmer Rouge remember. Whether or not ISIS can or should be brought down with Western intervention I think its a pretty safe bet that the resultant blowback will produce something just as bad or worse. Just as ISIS itself is an even worse product of the intervention against Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad.
If ISIS is going to be stopped it needs to be done locally. It’s pretty clear that US trained and equipped forces in Iraq are simply not up to the job any more than their equivalents in South Vietnam or Afghanistan were effective against US enemies in those countries. The US backed forces in Libya were somewhat more effective against an entrenched regime (as opposed to a guerrilla army) and now look to be considerably worse than Gaddafi was. If the US really wants to support resistance to ISIS it should probably begin by putting pressure on its regional allies such as Saudi Arabia to stop supporting it and give serious consideration to working closely with the Iranian and perhaps even Syrian regime.
As Che Guevara pointed out, insurgent groups just can’t operate without considerable support from the populace and I strongly suspect the support ISIS garners is primarily a reaction against the heavy handed intervention by the US and its proxies in the Middle East. Doubling down on that sort of thing is hardly likely to help.
Oh, and if you really believe any state ever intervenes militarily anywhere for humanitarian reasons or to fight ‘evil’ I’ve got an R2P bridge you might like to buy.
Oh, and another US intervention that might actually be constructive would be to do as Bangura suggests and redirect some of the millions being used to fund airstrikes and militias into supporting and resettling refugees.