16 Nov 2014

What the horrific Kassig murder video tells us about IS

Today’s horrendous video serves to prove that the “Islamic State” is less of a state and more of a millennial cult.

Not only does it show the murder of the American hostage Abdul-Rahman Kassig – formerly Peter – but also the beheading of 16 Syrian soldiers, each of whom is ritually marched up and murdered by an IS militant with a knife.

I have carefully not watched the whole video – such images sear the brain and can’t be forgotten – but what I have seen shows that the event is stage-managed for the camera. It’s not just a propaganda technique but the mark of a cult that has developed its own rituals to brutalise its adherents.

The alleged location is significant: the village of Dabiq. The Prophet Mohammed predicted that the Day of Judgment would come after the Muslims defeated Rome at al-Amaq or Dabiq, two places close to the Syrian border with Turkey. The masked man who appears to murder Mr Kassig refers to President Obama as “Dog of Rome”, a reference to the US President as a representative of Christianity. The IS online magazine, in which they set out their philosophy, is called Dabiq.

In other words, IS leaders see themselves less as soldiers or terrorists and more as harbingers of argmageddon.

Extreme brutality

The extreme brutality of the killings is reminiscent of Mexican drug cartels, some of which also use religious iconography – the Knights’ Templar gang, for example, or those who follow the “patron saint of drug cartels” Jesus de Malverde. Extreme violence is an effective weapon in that it terrorises the enemy, but it also binds the perpetrators to the gang or cult, and reinforces the desire to be killed for the cause.

Of course the IS militants are different from drugs gangs in that they have heavy weaponry, including US tanks seized from the Iraqi army. Like any effective army they have both strategy and tactics, which we can see through the progress they have made in Iraq and Syria in the last few months.

But maybe the cult aspect of their identity is a weakness that could be better exploited. Dabiq is not strategically but symbolically significant – are there other similar places they are aiming for where they could be cut off?

The video is horrific, as it is meant to be, as much for the families of the Syrian soldiers as for Mr Kassig’s parents. But it provides intelligence services with clues about how IS leaders think, critically important for those seeking more effective ways to defeat this death cult spreading violence across Syria and Iraq.

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