” I know them: bombing they expect. What they fear is unity.”
If any Frenchman knows the brutality of ISIS first hand, it is Nicolas Hénin, a French journalist who was captured by ISIS and allowed to walk free thereafter.
Hénin was captured by ISIS for ten months, and while he was their captive he had apparently met “dozens” of ISIS leaders- including Mohmmed Emwazi… AKA Jihadi John.
Jihadi John was clearly fond of Hénin; he was given the nickname “Baldy” by this terror-organizational head.
Despite being held in a compromising position, he saw through their lies and propaganda; “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… I found them more stupid than evil“.
What he is saying isn’t that ISIS is a group of friendly fools, however; rather, so great is their stupidity that even their evil nature pales in comparison.
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.
ISIS members see the conflict between Muslims and the West as inevitable, and thus try to validate their own world view by observing the actions of Western countries in response to their atrocities; the more Western societies divide themselves against their Muslim populace, the more heartened they are… and the more recruits they get.
“they will be noting everything that follows their murderous assault on Paris, and my guess is that right now the chant among them will be “We are winning”. 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.
Central to their world view is the belief that communities cannot live together with Muslims, and every day their antennae will be tuned towards finding supporting evidence. The pictures from Germany of people welcoming migrants will have been particularly troubling to them. Cohesion, tolerance – it is not what they want to see.”
Of course, I don’t agree with everything he has to say, and the mainstream media likes to focus on this latter part of his article, while ignoring his calls for solidarity with French Muslims and his advice for a a less “reactive” approach to bombing ISIS.
First, he lumps Russian targeted strikes against ISIS together with coalition strikes. I’ve spoken many times about the difference between bombing an ISIS target while specifically avoiding civilian structures… and bombing Doctors Without Borders hospitals.
He is correct to say that bombing civilians makes for more ISIS recruits, but is wrong to say that bombing ISIS alone would create more ISIS recruits.
Where credible organisations like Doctors Without Borders can ascertain US bombing of civilians, faux organisations like the White Helmets recycle old photos and rely on hoaxes to claim Russian wrongdoing.
Then, he makes this statement: “But after all that happened to me, I still don’t feel Isis is the priority. To my mind, Bashar al-Assad is the priority. The Syrian president is responsible for the rise of Isis in Syria, and so long as his regime is in place, Isis cannot be eradicated.”
To which I would point out that American allies and Americans themselves have, in all manner of ways, nourished the beast that is ISIS, first by destabilizing neighbors like Libya and Iraq for no reason… and then by actively supplying “moderates” who join Al Qaeda/ISIS or “accidentally” supplying ISIS directly.
“Isis will collapse, but politics will make that happen.” No, actually destroying it, while doing everything you can to avoid hurting innocents (rather than saying “oops” every 5 seconds)… while avoiding using them as a political tool to unseat Assad and sow division between Muslims and other citizens, as Hénin stated in his article… will do that.
Sources: The Guardian, Military
This Article (What ISIS Fears Is Unity: Frenchman, Former ISIS Hostage On France Attack) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author(CoNN) and AnonHQ.com.
