SUMMARY: Fourteen are dead, including one American, after Thursday's attack on Barcelona and another in a Spanish coastal town, where a car drove into a crowd and five men jumped out with knives; all were shot dead by police. Special correspondent Jack Parrock reports from Barcelona.
The battle was over in Hamam al-Alil, Iraq, an old spa resort town that the country's security forces had wrested from the Islamic State a few days ago, but one Iraqi soldier was still on a very personal mission.
The soldier, Zaman Mijwal, was looking for his older brother, Munther, a former policeman he described as “a quiet man, a poor man,” who lived in a nearby village but hadn't been heard from in weeks.
Mr. Mijwal's circuit had taken him to a stretch of road flanked by two dirt fields. He pointed to one side, where decaying, headless corpses were lying in heaps of trash on a barren plot of land that had once been a shooting range for the Iraqi Army.
“He may be there,” he said.
He pointed to the other side of the road, just an expanse of earth that looked freshly moved.
“Or he may be there.”
With every mile of territory the Iraqi security forces retake from the Islamic State, it seems another mass grave is uncovered. It has become nearly ritual, and despairingly regular.
The legacy of the mass grave in Iraq is long, stretching back further than the Islamic State to the times of Saddam Hussein's industrial-scale killings. It is the horrible symbol of what has been for decades a gut-wrenching constant of Iraqi life, the disappearance of loved ones into the machinery of despotism.
For Iraqis, the Islamic State, for which the mass grave is as much a part of the group's infrastructure as makeshift prisons and slave-holding houses, is just a new form of tyranny with direct links to Mr. Hussein's regime. Many former Baathist officers from Mr. Hussein's security forces populate the top ranks of the Islamic State, mimicking the former dictator's tactics.
Lately, with the Islamic State under pressure from Iraqi security forces, the group's cruelty has gone into overdrive: Many of the mass graves recently uncovered, the biggest of which was in Hamam al-Alil, contain the bodies of local men. Most of the buried were former members of the security forces who were executed only in recent weeks, after the campaign for Mosul began.
There are those, like Jamal Abul Younis, who count themselves as lucky. Mr. Younis is a former policeman from Hamam al-Alil who was also marked for execution, but survived by hiding in a hole in the ground, obscured by an air cooler, in his dirt-floor house. Of his time hiding out, he said, “Each one hour was like one year.”
He is now one of just a few surviving witnesses to the Islamic State's killings in Hamam al-Alil. One evening around 8 p.m. several weeks ago, he said, he watched from his rooftop as eight minibuses drove toward the area where the mass grave was discovered, and he heard gunshot after gunshot.
“I saw DAESH bury 200 bodies over here,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL. (The official government estimate is that roughly 100 people were killed in Hamam al-Alil. But Human Rights Watch, after carrying out its own investigation, believes that at least 300 were killed there.)
In the days before the killings, he said, Islamic State militants herded hundreds of people — perhaps thousands — from nearby villages and took them to Hamam al-Alil, using them as human shields against the possibility of American airstrikes.
In the city, he said, the militants gathered the people, reciting verses of the Quran and praying to God to protect them from Iraq's Shiite militias and army. Then they separated out the former policemen, many of whom, after the Islamic State conquered their lands more than two years ago, repented for their service and made peace with their new rulers.
Now, as government forces waged an offensive to reclaim these territories, the Islamic State saw them as potential spies, or a fifth column preparing to rise up and join the security forces, and ordered them killed.
“I cannot believe I am still alive,” Mr. Younis said.
For Iraqis, the pain of not knowing can be the worst of all. The International Commission on Missing Persons, a Netherlands-based organization, has estimated that up to a million Iraqis have gone missing in recent history. That encompasses the war between Iran and Iraq, the mass killings ordered by Mr. Hussein after a Shiite uprising in 1991, the Iraqi government's Anfal chemical-weapon strikes against the Kurds in the late 1980s, and the more recent sectarian civil war of the last decade.
The commission noted on its website that there are “millions of relatives of the missing in Iraq who struggle with the uncertainty surrounding the fate of a loved one.”
Go anywhere in Iraq, especially in the south where Shiites dominate, and knock on almost any door, and you will hear a story of a lost loved one and, improbably, of a remaining shard of hope.
Nihad Jawad, a teacher from the southern city of Hilla, said that one night in 1991, her brother left home and was never heard from again. She has heard all sorts of rumors — that he was seen being apprehended by the military, that he was shot. “We searched everywhere for him, and we have found nothing,” she said. “We still have hope that he is still held in one of the secret prisons.”
The Islamic State's brutality has written a new chapter in that dark history. The number of bodies has overwhelmed the capacity of the Iraqi government, and very few of them are ever identified by DNA testing.
In Diyala Province, where the Islamic State was once strong, a father who lost his son about two years ago said he scours jihadist websites for videos that might show his missing child. He rushes to the scene of every mass grave uncovered in the province.
“The most difficult thing is when my grandson asks me about his father,” said the man, who gave his name as Abu Marwan. “I answer, ‘He is on a trip and will return one day.'”
Mr. Mijwal, the soldier, like millions of others here who have endured the same painful ritual, has found no answers about what happened to his brother.
“We have no information about him,” he said. “So I came here. It's very difficult for me. I don't know his destiny, his fate. At the very least, I need to find his body. This is the important thing for us. So we can have a funeral.”
He added, “Thousands of people don't know the fate of their loved ones.”
There is a well-known Iraqi novel called “Saddam City,” by Mahmoud Saeed, in which the protagonist disappears into one of the old Hussein regime's many prisons, leaving his loved ones scrambling for information.
In the novel, pondering his own fate as a prisoner, he recalls “the futility of trying to help a neighbor find her husband, who had disappeared.” They visited a hospital, where “we were no more than the latest link in a long chain of people who visited hospitals inquiring about missing loved ones.”
A few pages later, Mr. Saeed wrote, “Events like this happened routinely.”
Just up the road from the Hamam al-Alil killing grounds where Mr. Mijwal searched for his brother, others were looking for answers, too.
A former policeman named Muneer Muhammed, 37, said that he hid on the night of the killings, but that his brother, Anmar, another former policeman, was among the hundreds rounded up. “They took the former policemen because they were afraid they would rise up,” he said.
Tears were streaming down his cheeks.
“I'm crying because I was able to save myself, but I couldn't save him,” he said.
SUMMARY: Iran’s Supreme Leader warned on Sunday there would be divine retribution for Saudi Arabia’s rulers after the execution of a renowned Shiite cleric, as Iranian protesters ransacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in outrage. Liz Sly of The Washington Post joins Hari Sreenivasan via Skype from Beirut.
SUMMARY: As U.S. officials worry about attacks inspired by the Islamic State group, a new report says the number of foreign fighters traveling to Iraq and Syria has increased dramatically in the past year. Judy Woodruff learns more from Richard Barrett of the Soufan Group and Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): As law enforcement and intelligence officials worry about attacks inside the United States inspired by the Islamic State group, a new report released today says the number of foreign fighters traveling to Iraq and Syria has dramatically increased over the past year.
This chart shows most of the new fighters are from the Middle East and North Africa, the former Soviet Republics and Western Europe. The average rate of fighters then returning to Western Europe is estimated to be 20 to 30 percent.
We turn now to the lead author of the report, Richard Barrett. He’s senior vice president of the Ali Soufan Group. It’s a security consulting company. He’s also a former British diplomat and intelligence officer. And New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi. She’s written extensively about the Islamic State group and its followers.
Richard Barrett, Rukmini Callimachi, welcome to you both.
Let me start with you, Richard Barrett.
So, the number of foreign fighters going into Syria and Iraq increasing dramatically over the last 18 months. How much has it gone up, who are they, and where are they coming from?
RICHARD BARRETT, The Soufan Group: Well, we reckon it’s about doubled.
It’s gone from 12,000, as we estimated in June of last year, to somewhere between 27,000 and 31,000 now. And most of the recruits are, as you said earlier, from the Middle East and North Africa, but a considerable the number from other countries as well, most notably, of course, Europe, and Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union.
I think one thing that’s interesting perhaps is that, from North America, the number has remained pretty flat. There’s been really rather an unremarkable increase from North America, which is quite an illustration of your discussion earlier in the program.
But there are many reasons why people go to join the Islamic State, and it doesn’t mean that all of them are domestic terrorists in training. A lot of them will go to join the Islamic State. And I think the key question is about the returnees, whether they have some intention to do something like the Paris attacks or whether, in fact, they’re just fed up with the whole thing, completely disillusioned by the Islamic State and want to go home.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And I do want to ask you about the returnees, but back to the origin of their decision to make this move, what is driving most of them?
RICHARD BARRETT: Well, it’s hard to say, of course, and we need to know more.
But I think that the Islamic State does offer some very real attractions. I think it offers, obviously, some sort of adventure. And it’s a new venture as well. You can be in on something which looks really important from the very beginning. And you can be in on something which gives you a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, a sense of direction which may be completely lacking in your life at home.
And I think, also, it sort of forgives the past, so you can shed all your past and you can start afresh as a valued and respected member of society. And I think for many people who go to join the Islamic State, that, they found lacking. That, they found difficult.
SUMMARY: How does one recover from the trauma of being caught in the middle of a terrorist attack? Psychotherapist Mark Colclough, who was in one of the Paris cafés when it was attacked by gunmen two weeks ago, offers some special insight on tools and strategies he has been using to heal. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.
MALCOLM BRABANT (NewsHour): Back home after witnessing four people being murdered, psychotherapist Mark Colclough is deploying all his professional skills to minimize the anguish.
Two weeks on, how traumatized do you think you are?
MARK COLCLOUGH, Psychotherapist: I can’t scale that really on a one-to-10 scale. I still have signs of trauma and shock. And post-traumatic stress is very much still there.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Can you describe the sort of things that are troubling you still?
MARK COLCLOUGH: Sure, flashbacks of the gunmen, very clear.
There's been a dream that’s recurred several times about me being in the hallway of my house and looking down to the sitting room, and I can see shadows on the wall, and I’m with my travel friend who was with me in Paris.
And I turn around to say to him, look, look, like there’s a break-in. There are thieves in the sitting room. I turn around to look at him, so I know he’s behind me. In the dream, I look back and he's not there. And I look forward again to look into the living room, and the gunman is right in front of me shooting at me this time. And that’s where I wake up.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Do you think you are going to be permanently damaged?
MARK COLCLOUGH: Oh, no. No. I don’t think that at all.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Is that because you personally and professionally have the tools that enable you to deal with this?
MARK COLCLOUGH: Yes. I think I have been in and out of therapy since I was 19. It’s been — always been in my interest has been psychotherapy and psychology. So I'm aware that I have tools and I have quite a robust sense of self.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the political and psychological aftermath of the Paris attacks, 2016 candidates speak out on the refugee crisis and fighting the Islamic State, plus reassessing President Obama’s strategy in Syria.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Welcome, gentlemen.
So, this entire week, we have spent looking at what happened in Paris.
My question is, David, has this — what has this done here in the United States? Are we now in some kind of new normal, as we were after 9/11?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times: I think what ISIS has done psychologically is, it’s like a drug, you have to take more of it to get the effect.
And so their malevolence, their viciousness, their violence, they have ratcheted up a level. And they started doing that from the first moment we became conscious of them, with the beheadings, with setting people on fire, and then this killing.
And while they haven’t achieved the super al-Qaida 9/11, they have created a more menacing atmosphere, I think, in this country, certainly in Europe and around the world, in Nigeria, Boko Haram. And so I think there is a sense of living with violence.
And so I think about Israel, with, whatever you think of Middle East policy, the citizens there live with violence. And you adjust in some ways, you develop rituals in some ways, but it preys on the consciousness in a lot of complicated ways. And I think we’re now more or less in that world.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you feel it has changed things?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist: I don’t think it compares with 9/11; 9/11 was a profound traumatic experience in this nation.
And just in the reaction, I think that there’s — you can see what 14 years of conflict has done, and 14 years of being at war has done, as well as what ISIS has done. Fourteen years ago, when the United States suffered the greatest infliction of loss of life on its own soil in our history, the President of the United States, George W. Bush, visited a mosque. He said, Islam are our friends. These are — the people who do this are traitors to their faith, and we must remind and remember that.
He looked like Abraham Lincoln, compared to the reaction of politicians in this city, and particularly in Lisa Desjardins’ piece tonight, which was small, petty, vengeful, un-American, unserious and irresponsible.
SUMMARY: Experts say that more and more women are making the decision to join the Islamic State. Who are they and what are their motivations? William Brangham finds out from foreign affairs and defense producer P.J. Tobia, the host of NewsHour’s “Shortwave” podcast.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): When the man thought to have planned the Paris attacks was killed during a raid on Wednesday, a woman who was with him also died in the assault. It’s not clear what role she played, if any, in planning the attacks.
But experts say more and more women are joining ISIS, traveling to territory held by the group in Syria and Iraq. Why are they making the trip? And what do they find when they get there?
William Brangham has more.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Here with me now to discuss the motivations of the women who join the Islamic State is NewsHour foreign affairs producer P.J. Tobia. He also hosts our Shortwave podcast, which this week is all about the women of ISIS.
So, P.J., how do we know what we know about these women? And who are they?
P.J. TOBIA (NewsHour): Well, first of all, everything that we know pretty much comes from social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. They’re very active in documenting not only their radicalization in place before they leave their homes in the West or in Asia or really anywhere, their travel to territory controlled by the Islamic State, and then what life is like when they get there.
And as to who they are, it kind of runs the gamut. Of course, there’s the famous Bethnal Green case. It was three young women, high school-age girls from Eastern London who journeyed to the territory controlled by the Islamic State earlier this year.
But there are also older women. There is a story of a 26-year-old woman who is a doctor from Malaysia who relocated to Syria last year. And she chronicled her journey through social media. And she says, along the way, that she saw women in their 60s, much older women who were making this journey.
SUMMARY: New York Times columnist David Brooks and David Corn of Mother Jones join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, why Jeb Bush is calling out the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton for the rise of the Islamic State, including how 2016 candidates are responding to renewed relations with Cuba, whether Hillary Clinton is losing ground in the 2016 race, plus the appeal of Donald Trump.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Well, something else Jeb Bush brought up this week was — as an issue in the race was going after Hillary Clinton, blaming her and the Obama administration for — essentially for helping create ISIS.
And he said that with the Obama administration did under her leadership as secretary of state was to leave an opening, pulling the troops out, he said, too early in 2011. Is this something, David Corn, that he can get some mileage?
DAVID CORN, Mother Jones: I mean, I have to laugh a little bit, because I think he was setting a record for chutzpah.
I mean, it wasn’t until after his brother’s invasion of Iraq that you had something called al-Qaida in Iraq. And that was the group that morphed into ISIS. So ISIS is a direct result of the war in Iraq right there. And so he’s wrong on the history.
But then he said what happened was that Obama and Hillary Clinton orchestrated this quick withdrawal after everything was secure. Nothing was really secure in 2009-2010. You can ask Tom Ricks about that. But it was George W. Bush in December 2008 who created the agreement with Prime Minister Maliki that said that U.S. troops had to be out by 2011.
And then Obama didn’t renegotiate that. And there is a lot of question as to whether he could even have, given the political situation in Baghdad itself. So Bush is totally — Jeb Bush is totally rewriting this. And my question is, why is he even talking about Iraq?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times: Yes. He wants to have an anti-terror foreign policy.
I give him a little more credit, of course. I think the war did help create al-Qaida in Iraq. So, both parties have something to answer for. Ultimately, ISIS created ISIS. It wasn’t us, but allowing the environment — so the Bush administration, the failed war, that had a — some contributory factor.
I do think that we abandoned Iraq too quickly, left too quickly, left a void in the Sunni areas, which ISIS was completely happy to fill. But more important — and this is a bigger indictment of the Obama administration — we did nothing about the Syrian civil war. And that created the biggest void.
And that’s not necessarily Hillary Clinton’s fault because she was arguing for a more aggressive policy. Nonetheless, we did nothing. Even today, our attacks on ISIS are paltry, and we have continue to do nothing. And there are strategic issues. There are just moral issues.
Today, my newspaper had a front-page story on just rape academies, this institutionalized rape. And the fact that we can stand by and do nothing while this is happening, to me, that’s an indictment of the sitting administration.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Extraordinary story. We interview the reporter, Rukmini Callimachi, last night. It is just such a disturbing story.
But does he have a point, though, David?
DAVID CORN: I think you can have a policy dispute or debate, a discussion about what should be done, what has been done in the last three, four years regarding ISIS and Iraq.
You can’t blame Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for giving us ISIS, which is what Jeb Bush did. And if he wants to get to brass tacks and talk about what he’s willing to do in terms of putting in troops and taking on targeting that hasn’t been done already — I mean, Barack Obama has mounted thousands of airstrikes.
And the real question is, at the end of the day, can the U.S. go in and make a difference? We have learned with the invasion of Iraq that military might doesn’t always give us what we want in this region.
In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Koran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.
He bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.
When it was over, he knelt to pray again, book-ending the rape with acts of religious devotion. “I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” said the girl. “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God,” she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity.
The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution. Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group’s official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group’s core tenets.
The trade in Yazidi women and girls has created a persistent infrastructure, with a network of warehouses where the victims are held, viewing rooms where they are inspected and marketed, and a dedicated fleet of buses used to transport them.
A total of 5,270 Yazidis were abducted last year, and at least 3,144 are still being held, according to community leaders. To handle them, the Islamic State has developed a detailed bureaucracy of sex slavery, including sales contracts notarized by the Islamic State-run Islamic courts. And the practice has become an established recruiting tool to lure men from deeply conservative Muslim societies, where casual sex is taboo and dating is forbidden.
A growing body of internal policy memos and theological discussions has established guidelines for slavery, including a lengthy how-to manual issued by the Islamic State Research and Fatwa Department just last month. Repeatedly, the Islamic State leadership has emphasized a narrow and selective reading of the Koran and other religious rulings to not only justify violence, but also to elevate and celebrate each sexual assault as spiritually beneficial, even virtuous.
“Every time that he came to rape me, he would pray,” said F, a 15-year-old girl who was captured on the shoulder of Mount Sinjar one year ago and was sold to an Iraqi fighter in his 20s. Like some others interviewed by The New York Times, she wanted to be identified only by her first initial because of the shame associated with rape.
“He kept telling me this is ibadah,” she said, using a term from Islamic scripture meaning worship.
“He said that raping me is his prayer to God. I said to him, ‘What you’re doing to me is wrong, and it will not bring you closer to God.’ And he said, ‘No, it’s allowed. It’s halal,’ ” said the teenager, who escaped in April with the help of smugglers after being enslaved for nearly nine months.
Calculated conquest
The Islamic State’s formal introduction of systematic sexual slavery dates to Aug. 3, 2014, when its fighters invaded the villages on the southern flank of Mount Sinjar, a craggy massif of dun-colored rock in northern Iraq.
Its valleys and ravines are home to the Yazidis, a tiny religious minority who represent less than 1.5 percent of Iraq’s estimated population of 34 million.
The offensive on the mountain came just two months after the fall of Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq. At first, it appeared that the subsequent advance on the mountain was just another attempt to extend the territory controlled by Islamic State fighters.
Almost immediately, there were signs that their aim this time was different.
Survivors say that men and women were separated within the first hour of their capture. In village after village, the men and older boys were driven or marched to nearby fields, where they were forced to lie down in the dirt and sprayed with automatic weapons fire.
The women, girls and children, however, were hauled off in open-bed trucks.
“The offensive on the mountain was as much a sexual conquest as it was for territorial gain,” said Matthew Barber, a University of Chicago expert on the Yazidi minority. He was in Dohuk, near Mount Sinjar, when the onslaught began last summer and helped create a foundation that provides psychological support for the escapees, who number more than 2,000, according to community activists.
Tried to escape
Fifteen-year-old F says her family of nine was trying to escape, speeding up mountain switchbacks, when their aging Opel overheated. She, her mother, and her sisters — 14, 7, and 4 years old — were helplessly standing by their stalled car when a convoy of heavily armed Islamic State fighters encircled them. “Right away, the fighters separated the men from the women,” she said. She, her mother and sisters were first taken in trucks to the nearest town on Mount Sinjar. “There, they separated me from my mom. The young, unmarried girls were forced to get into buses.”
F’s account is echoed by a dozen other female victims interviewed for this article. They described a similar set of circumstances even though they were kidnapped on different days and in locations miles apart.
F says she was driven to Mosul, about six hours away, where they herded them into the Galaxy Wedding Hall. And in addition to Mosul, women were herded into elementary schools and municipal buildings in the Iraqi towns of Tal Afar, Solah, Ba’aj and Sinjar City.
They would be held in confinement, some for days, some for months. Then, inevitably, they were sent in smaller groups to Syria or to other locations inside Iraq, where they were bought and sold for sex.
“It was 100 percent preplanned,” said Khider Domle, a Yazidi community activist who maintains a detailed database of the victims. “I spoke by telephone to the first family who arrived at the Directory of Youth in Mosul, and the hall was already prepared for them. They had mattresses, plates and utensils, food and water for hundreds of people.”
Detailed reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reach the same conclusion about the organized nature of the sex trade.
The girls described how three Islamic State fighters walked in, holding a register. They told the girls to stand. Each one was instructed to state her first, middle and last name, her age, her hometown, whether she was married, and if she had children.
For two months, F was held inside the Galaxy hall. “They laughed and jeered at us, saying ‘You are our sabaya.’ I didn’t know what that word meant,” she said. Later on, the local Islamic State leader explained it meant slave.
Religious tradition
In much the same way as specific Bible passages were used centuries later to support the slave trade in the United States, the Islamic State cites specific verses or stories in the Koran or else in the Sunna, the traditions based on the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, to justify their human trafficking, experts say.
Scholars of Islamic theology disagree, however, on the proper interpretation of these verses, and on the divisive question of whether Islam actually sanctions slavery.
“In the milieu in which the Koran arose, there was a widespread practice of men having sexual relationships with unfree women,” said Kecia Ali, an associate professor of religion at Boston University and the author of a book on slavery in early Islam. “It wasn’t a particular religious institution. It was just how people did things.”
Cole Bunzel, a scholar of Islamic theology at Princeton University, disagrees, pointing to the numerous references to the phrase “Those your right hand possesses” in the Koran, which for centuries has been interpreted to mean female slaves. He also points to the corpus of Islamic jurisprudence, which continues into the modern era and which he says includes highly detailed rules for the treatment of slaves.
“There is a great deal of scripture that sanctions slavery,” said Bunzel, the author of a research paper published by the Brookings Institution on the ideology of the Islamic State. “You can argue that it is no longer relevant and has fallen into abeyance. ISIS would argue that these institutions need to be revived, because that is what the Prophet and his companions did.”
One 34-year-old Yazidi woman, who was bought and repeatedly raped by a Saudi fighter in the Syrian city of Shadadi, described how she fared better than the second slave in the household — a 12-year-old girl who was raped for days on end despite heavy bleeding.
“He destroyed her body. She was badly infected. The fighter kept coming and asking me, ‘Why does she smell so bad?’ And I said, she has an infection on the inside, you need to take care of her,” the woman said.
Unmoved, he ignored the girl’s agony, continuing the ritual of praying before and after raping the child.
“I said to him, ‘She’s just a little girl,’” the older woman recalled. “And he answered: ‘No. She’s not a little girl. She’s a slave. And she knows exactly how to have sex.’ ” “And having sex with her pleases God,” he said.
SUMMARY: The Islamic State militants have imposed a brutal, ritualistic sex slave trade on thousands of women and girls who belong to the Yazidi sect, a persecuted religious minority. Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times joins Judy Woodruff from Northern Iraq to discuss her reporting on the human toll of the Islamic State’s rule.
SUMMARY: Was the Islamic State group behind an attack on a drawing contest in Texas as it claims? Judy Woodruff talks to former Deputy National Security Advisor Juan Zarate about how terror groups like IS try to inspire others into homegrown attacks and the challenge facing American authorities to prevent them.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Separately, there is heightened security in New York City tonight, as the French satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” receives an award from a writers group for courage and freedom of expression. Twelve people were killed in January when gunmen attacked the magazine for printing cartoons with the image of Mohammed.
To take a close look at threats here at home, we turn to Juan Zarate, former deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism under President George W. Bush.
Juan Zarate, welcome back to the program.
JUAN ZARATE, Former Deputy National Security Advisor: Thank you, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Islamic State claiming responsibility. Do you believe they are responsible?
JUAN ZARATE: Well, it depends on how you define responsibility, because it’s clear that the Islamic State is inspiring actors around the world to fly their banner and to attack, including in Western capitals.
The real question for counterterrorism authorities though is, are they actually directing these kinds of attacks, and is there evidence that they actually deployed these two individuals to attack? I think the working theory now is that this is more about inspiration than direction, but I think we will have to see how the facts play out and what the investigation brings.
SUMMARY: Despite being ousted recently from Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, Iraq, the Islamic State made important new gains this weekend in Syria, taking control of an area near Damascus. Part of what is driving the extremist group's success is the growing role of former officials from Saddam Hussein's military who are now playing a key role within ISIS. Liz Sly, the Beirut bureau chief for The Washington Post, joins Hari Sreenivasan via Skype from Beirut, Lebanon, to discuss.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Iran, of course, is working alongside the United States in the fight against ISIS. Despite being ousted recently from Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, the extremist group made important new gains this weekend in Syria, taking control of an area near Damascus.
Part of what is driving ISIS’ success is the growing role of former officials from Saddam Hussein’s military, members of the once dominant Baathist Party. They are now playing a key role within ISIS.
Liz Sly of The Washington Post wrote about this, joins us now via Skype from Beirut, Lebanon.
So, first of all, how are they involved? Where are they involved? And what roles do they play?
LIZ SLY, The Washington Post: Well, really, they’re involved at every level of the senior leadership. Most of the senior leadership are former Baathists. They are officers in the army.
The senior leaders of ISIS served in Saddam Hussein’s army. They lost their jobs after the de-Baathification law in 2003. They went through various permutations of insurgency. Maybe they left the insurgency. Maybe they went back. But, in the past few years, we have seen an aggressive attempt by the current leader of ISIS to recruit them into the ranks of ISIS. And, really, the organization is run and controlled by Iraqis.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the latest acts of terror by Islamic State, a speech by President Obama on the way religion, including Christianity, has been used to justify violence, and why some Republican politicians spoke against mandating vaccination in the wake of a measles outbreak.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): I want to ask quickly both of you about what the president said at this prayer breakfast yesterday, got a lot of attention. He was attempting to talk about — saying that terrible things have been done in the name of Christianity, in the name of all religions, including Christianity, David.
And he talked about the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, slavery. Republicans jumped on this and said false equivalency, you should be focusing on what extreme Muslims are doing today, and not talking about Christianity.
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times columnist: I think, if the President had come as an atheist to attack religion and to attack Christianity, the Republicans would have a point. That’s not what a president should be doing.
But that’s not how he came. He has used that prayer breakfast year after year to talk about his own faith, his own faith journey, his own struggles. He’s used it — he has come as a Christian. And the things he said were things — I have never met a Christian who disagreed with what he issued, that the religion has been perverted, that we have to walk humbly before the face of the lord, that God’s purposes are mysterious to us.
This is not like some tangential, weird belief. This is at the core of every Christian’s faith and every Jew’s faith. And so what he said was utterly normal and admirable and a recognition of historical fact and an urge towards some humility. And so I thought the protests were manufactured and falsely manufactured.
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: The Bible says, slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling. That was used by slaveholders and by the defenders of slavery in this country. They quoted the Bible, and that terrible things have been done in the name of Christianity.
The Crusades are hardly one of the proudest chapters of Christianity. But I think what the President said is accurate. I do think that he’s been somewhat reluctant to acknowledge and admit and confront that this is an Islamic terrorist, that it is a perversion and to address that.
But I thought the response — I mean, these are the same people who are constantly criticizing the Islamic State people for not joining in the coalition, and saying you have got to condemn them. I just thought that it was over the top and undeserved.
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MARK SHIELDS: Judy, there’s a rhetoric in this country. It’s been on the ascent for almost a generation or more. And that is individual freedom, government interference, stay out of our lives, leave us alone, anything from Washington, you have to oppose, a federal mandate.
And, you know, that has become the rhetoric. And that was their response. The reality is quite simple. Americans do feel that the government is a pain in the neck and too much red tape and keep them out of their lives. But a trace of botulism found in one can of tuna fish outside of Pocatello, Idaho, and the universal American reaction is, where the hell is the federal government? I want a report in my office in 24 hours, or heads will roll.
We want a small, effective, efficient federal government on our side 24 hours a day, cheap. In 1988, there were 350,000 cases of polio in this world. In 2012, there were 213. That’s because of vaccination. That’s because of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin and the federal government and the public — public effort in health.
And that to me is — this is the reality. It’s beyond ideology. They were slaves to ideology. And Christie hasn’t — just doesn’t have his footing. With Paul, it’s sort of an excess of where he comes from and where he treads and what he believes. But I think Christie comes off even worse than Paul or anybody else.
SUMMARY: Nearly a third of the 15,000 foreign fighters for Islamic State are Muslims from Western Europe, seeking an alternative to the alienation some feel here at home. Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner reports from London on how cultural isolation and discrimination can help drive young Western recruits to embrace radicalism.
JUDY WOODRUFF (News Hour): The Paris attacks a few weeks ago brought Europe’s growing Islamic extremist threat into sharp focus.
Our chief foreign affairs correspondent, Margaret Warner visited another European country, the United Kingdom, to see what’s driving young Muslims there to extremism and what’s being done about it.
Tonight, we bring you the first of her two reports.
MARGARET WARNER (News Hour): It’s a gruesome scene become too familiar since august.
Kneeling hostages, NewsHour policy is not to show these videos, and a masked killer from the Islamic State — speaking in English.
The British voices shocked people here — awakening them to the fact that close to one third of the estimated 15,000 foreign fighters for Islamic state or ISIS. Are Muslims from Western Europe seeking an alternative to their sense of alienation at home?
PETER NEUMANN: The solution to this is that Muslims unite, rediscover their Muslim identity, completely divorce themselves from any form of western identity and start defending their identity if necessary by violent means.
Peter Neumann whose center for the study of radicalization at King’s College, London monitors nearly 700 foreign fighters through social media says Islamic State has crafted a powerful appeal.
SUMMARY: British authorities say that hundreds of Muslims have left the United Kingdom to join jihadist groups in Syria. As counterterrorism officials try to track the flow of potential fighters in and out of the country, some in the British Muslim community are working to help young people resist the call of radicalization. Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner reports from London.
SUMMARY: In Paris, three men stormed satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo with assault rifles, killing the editor, prominent political cartoonists, a guard and others before firing at a police car and gunning down another officer. The gunmen -- identified as two French brothers and a teenager -- escaped, prompting a manhunt as France raised its terror alert to the highest level. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The nation of France is reeling tonight. Heavily armed gunmen shouting Islamist slogans stormed the office of a Paris publication today. They left a dozen dead and 11 wounded, four of them critically. Police later identified the gunmen, who vanished into a stunned French capital.
Hari Sreenivasan begins our coverage.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Shock and disbelief gripped Parisians moments after the military-style attack. Three hooded men with assault rifles forced their way into the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper.
Within minutes, they killed the editor, nine others, including two prominent political cartoonists, and a police guard. Back outside, they riddled a police car with bullets and gunned down another officer.
WOMAN (through interpreter): I was on my balcony, and I heard a loud noise and then I saw an injured policeman.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Amateur video captured a gunman who approached the wounded officer, and killed him with a shot to the head. Before driving away, the attackers shouted in Arabic “Allahu akbar,” “God is great,” and in French, “We avenged the Prophet Mohammed. We killed Charlie Hebdo.”
The left-leaning newspaper had repeatedly been threatened over satirical commentary and cartoons on Islam and other religions. In 2011, a firebombing gutted its headquarters after editors used an image of the Prophet Mohammed on the cover. No one was hurt in that attack.
SUMMARY: Mark Austin of Independent Television News talks to Judy Woodruff from Paris about the French security response to the mass killing at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and how Parisians see the attack as an affront to cherished freedoms.
SUMMARY: Charlie Hebdo, the publication whose staff was attacked by three gunmen in Paris, has been threatened and firebombed in the past over provocative commentary and cartoons on Islam. Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and Bertrand Vannier of Radio France join Judy Woodruff to discuss the newspaper’s reputation and who might be behind the violence.
SUMMARY: Pens -- weapon of choice of the murdered cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo -- were raised in their honor at vigils around the world. Jeffrey Brown talks to two editorial cartoonists, Tom Toles of the Washington Post and Ted Rall of the Los Angeles Times, about the role of satirical cartoonists in society and their declining number in the U.S.
MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour): Talabani’s visit comes as Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Iraqi government forces and Shiite militias battle to roll back Islamic State gains.
The militants moved into Northern and Western Iraq in June, sending Iraqi troops fleeing. In August, U.S. warplanes joined the fray, targeting Islamic State units. Yesterday, on a visit by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Iraq’s new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, asked for more U.S. airpower and weapons.
But Hagel warned that U.S. firepower is not the solution.
CHUCK HAGEL, Secretary of Defense: As Iraqi leaders and the people of Iraq know, only they can bring lasting peace to their country.
MARGARET WARNER: Baghdad did take a step to reconcile with the alienated Kurds last week with a deal to share the country’s oil revenues between them.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is deploying 3,000 trainers and advisers to Iraqi forces and may join them in the field if and when they try to recapture the large northern city of Mosul.
I spoke today with Deputy Prime Minister Talabani in Washington, where he’s urging U.S. leaders to remain engaged in Iraq.
Deputy Prime Minister Talabani, thank you for joining us.
ISIS Hostages Endured Torture and Dashed Hopes, Freed Cellmates Say
The hostages were taken out of their cell one by one.
In a private room, their captors asked each of them three intimate questions, a standard technique used to obtain proof that a prisoner is still alive in a kidnapping negotiation.
James Foley returned to the cell he shared with nearly two dozen other Western hostages and collapsed in tears of joy. The questions his kidnappers had asked were so personal (“Who cried at your brother’s wedding?” “Who was the captain of your high school soccer team?”) that he knew they were finally in touch with his family.
It was December 2013, and more than a year had passed since Mr. Foley vanished on a road in northern Syria. Finally, his worried parents would know he was alive, he told his fellow captives. His government, he believed, would soon negotiate his release.
What appeared to be a turning point was in fact the start of a downward spiral for Mr. Foley, a 40-year-old journalist, that ended in August when he was forced to his knees somewhere in the bald hills of Syria and beheaded as a camera rolled.
His videotaped death was a very public end to a hidden ordeal.
The story of what happened in the Islamic State’s underground network of prisons in Syria is one of excruciating suffering. Mr. Foley and his fellow hostages were routinely beaten and subjected to waterboarding. For months, they were starved and threatened with execution by one group of fighters, only to be handed off to another group that brought them sweets and contemplated freeing them. The prisoners banded together, playing games to pass the endless hours, but as conditions grew more desperate, they turned on one another. Some, including Mr. Foley, sought comfort in the faith of their captors, embracing Islam and taking Muslim names.
Their captivity coincided with the rise of the group that came to be known as the Islamic State out of the chaos of the Syrian civil war. It did not exist on the day Mr. Foley was abducted, but it slowly grew to become the most powerful and feared rebel movement in the region. By the second year of Mr. Foley’s imprisonment, the group had amassed close to two dozen hostages and devised a strategy to trade them for cash.
It was at that point that the hostages’ journeys, which had been largely similar up to then, diverged based on actions taken thousands of miles away; in Washington and Paris, in Madrid, Rome and beyond. Mr. Foley was one of at least 23 Western hostages from 12 countries, a majority of them citizens of European nations whose governments have a history of paying ransoms.
Their struggle for survival, which is being told now for the first time, was pieced together through interviews with five former hostages, locals who witnessed their treatment, relatives and colleagues of the captives, and a tight circle of advisers who made trips to the region to try to win their release. Crucial details were confirmed by a former member of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, who was initially stationed in the prison where Mr. Foley was held, and who provided previously unknown details of his captivity.
The ordeal has remained largely secret because the militants warned the hostages’ families not to go to the news media, threatening to kill their loved ones if they did. The New York Times is naming only those already identified publicly by the Islamic State, which began naming them in August.
Officials in the United States say they did everything in their power to save Mr. Foley and the others, including carrying out a failed rescue operation. They argue that the United States’ policy of not paying ransoms saves Americans’ lives in the long run by making them less attractive targets.
Inside their concrete box, the hostages did not know what their families or governments were doing on their behalf. They slowly pieced it together using the only information they had, their interactions with their guards and with one another. Mostly they suffered, waiting for any sign that they might escape with their lives.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Late yesterday, word came that three teenage girls from the Denver area were detained over the weekend in Germany by American authorities. Their disappearance raised fears they were on their way to Syria to join the Islamic State group.
That’s because the militants have been luring recruits from around the world with a sophisticated Web-based media operation, a program the U.S. government is now targeting.
Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner has the story.
And a warning: It contains some graphic images.
MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour): The Islamic State group’s sweeping land grabs across Syria and Iraq this year have been matched by an online onslaught as well. The group posts videos documenting its brutality, the killings of soldiers, journalists, aid workers and citizens, and touting its military victories.
This one yesterday showed U.S. military equipment airdropped Sunday to Kurds fighting I.S. in the Syrian town of Kobani, but captured by the jihadis. Other postings offer idyllic visions of the so-called Islamic caliphate that the group aims to build across the Middle East.
MAN: You have to be here to understand what I’m saying.
MARGARET WARNER: Many are in English aimed at potential recruits well beyond the war zone. The U.S. government views this campaign as a major threat, as the then-chief of the National Counterterrorism Center Matthew Olsen, recently made clear.
MATTHEW OLSEN, Former Director, National Counterterrorism Center: ISIL disseminates timely and high-quality media content on multiple platforms, including on social media, all designed to secure a widespread following for the group.
Nearly four years after the Arab Spring revolt, Tunisia remains its lone success as chaos engulfs much of the region. But that is not its only distinction: Tunisia has sent more foreign fighters than any other country to Iraq and Syria to join the extremist group that calls itself the Islamic State.
And throughout the working-class suburbs of the capital, young men are eager to talk about why.
“Don’t you see it as a source of pride?” challenged Sufian Abbas, 31, a student sitting at a street cafe in the densely packed Ettadhamen district with a half-dozen like-minded friends.
Tunisians have approved a new Constitution by a broad consensus, and a second free election is to take place this month. The country has the advantage of one of the Arab world’s most educated and cosmopolitan populations, numbering just 11 million, and it has some of the most alluring Mediterranean beaches.
But instead of sapping the appeal of militant extremism, the new freedom that came with the Arab Spring revolt has allowed militants to preach and recruit more openly than ever before. At the same time, many young Tunisians say that the new freedoms and elections have done little to improve their daily lives, create jobs or rein in a brutal police force that many here still refer to as “the ruler,” or, among ultraconservative Islamists, “the tyrant.”
Although Tunisia’s steps toward democracy have enabled young people to express their dissident views, impatience and skepticism have evidently led a disgruntled minority to embrace the Islamic State’s radically theocratic alternative. Tunisian officials say that at least 2,400 Tunisians have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the group — other studies say as many as 3,000 — while thousands more have been blocked in the attempt.
“The Islamic State is a true caliphate, a system that is fair and just, where you don’t have to follow somebody’s orders because he is rich or powerful,” said Ahmed, a young supporter of the Islamic State who, like others interviewed, did not want to give his family name for fear of the police. “It is action, not theory, and it will topple the whole game.”
While only a minority of Tunisians have expressed support for the militants, it seemed that everyone under 30 knew someone who had traveled to fight in Syria or Iraq, or someone who had died there. In interviews at cafes in and around Ettadhamen, dozens of young unemployed or working-class men expressed support for the extremists or saw the appeal of joining their ranks — convinced that it could offer a higher standard of living, a chance to erase arbitrary borders that have divided the Arab world for a century, or perhaps even the fulfillment of Quranic prophecies that Armageddon will begin with a battle in Syria.
“There are lots of signs that the end will be soon, according to the Quran,” said Aymen, 24, who was relaxing with friends at another cafe.
Bilal, an office worker who was at another cafe, applauded the Islamic State as the divine vehicle that would finally undo the Arab borders drawn by Britain and France at the end of World War I. “The division of the countries is European,” said Bilal, 27. “We want to make the region a proper Islamic state, and Syria is where it will start.”
Mourad, 28, who said he held a master’s degree in technology but could find work only in construction, called the Islamic State the only hope for “social justice,” because he said it would absorb the oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies and redistribute their wealth. “It is the only way to give the people back their true rights, by giving the natural resources back to the people,” he said. “It is an obligation for every Muslim.”
Many insisted that friends who had joined the Islamic State had sent back reports over the Internet of their homes, salaries and even wives. “They live better than us!” said Walid, 24.
Wissam, 22, said a friend who left four months ago had told him that he was “leading a truly nice, comfortable life” under the Islamic State.
“I said: ‘Are there some pretty girls? Maybe I will go there and settle down,’ ” he recalled.
Leaders of Ennahda, the mainstream Islamist party that leads the Tunisian Parliament, said they had overestimated the power of democracy alone to tame violent extremism. Said Ferjani, an Ennahda leader who has often cited his own evolution from youthful militancy to peaceful politics, said in an interview that he now believed economic development would be just as important. “Without social development, I don’t think the democracy could survive,” he said.
He also acknowledged that in the afterglow of the revolution, Ennahda had put too much hope in winning over young extremists and too little emphasis on security measures to control them. The Ennahda government “did not get the mix right,” Mr. Ferjani said. “But since then, from our end, it is zero tolerance.”
Imen Triki, a lawyer at a nonprofit that has represented more than 70 returning Tunisians, described the thinking of many young ultraconservative Islamists, known as Salafis: “If I am going to get arrested and beaten here anyway, I might as well go where I can have an impact.”
Tunisian officials say that as many as 400 Tunisians have returned from Syria or Iraq and that many have been arrested. Lawyers who represent them say many testify that they were tricked into going.
Ms. Triki estimated that as many as 60 percent of those who come back profess disappointment at the strife between the Islamic State and its former partner, the Nusra Front, the Qaeda-affiliated Syrian rebel group. “They never thought there would a fight between Muslims,” she said. “They find that they have been deceived and sold like mercenaries.”
Charfeddine Hasni, 30, an information technology worker who said he backed the Islamic State, acknowledged that friends had returned dismayed. “They thought it would be like joining the side of the Prophet Muhammad, but they found it was divided into these small groups with a lot of transgressions they did not expect, like forcing people to fight,” he said, recalling one friend killed by his own fellows in the Nusra Front. “But they are not a real army, so they are hard to control, and these are personal mistakes,” he added.
Unemployed college graduates — a large group in Tunisia, where education is inexpensive but jobs remain scarce — are prime candidates for jihad, their friends and Tunisian analysts say. But there are also accounts of affluent M.B.A. students or peasants going as well. Almost all have now gravitated from other factions to join the Islamic State, according to their friends and the statements of Tunisian officials.
Some families approve. Chiheb Eddine Chaouachi, 24, a medical student, said that both he and his family supported the decision of his brother Bilal, 29, a Salafi theologian, to move with his wife to the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, even though the brothers’ personal lifestyles differed widely.
“Sometimes I pray, and sometimes I don’t,” Chiheb Eddine said. “I am very social.” But, like many Tunisians whose practices sometimes seem to contradict their piety, he nonetheless said he hoped that the Islamic State would “win.”
“Maybe when the war is over, we will all be in an Islamic state, for all practicing Muslims, under Shariah,” he said with a shrug, adding that he had asked his brother directly about the Islamic State’s beheadings and other atrocities. “He said, ‘Don’t believe it,’ and I trust my brother.”
Indeed, in dozens of conversations with young Tunisians, almost no one, whether sympathizers or critics, believed the news reports of the Islamic State’s mass killings or beheadings. “It is made up,” echoed Amar Msalmi, 28, a taxi driver. “All of this is manufactured in the West.”
All dismissed the existing Arab governments as corrupt and dictatorial, and all held a dim view of Ennahda. Most struggled to name a credible Muslim institute or scholar uncorrupted by service to some earthly power.
But some noted that a dearth of scholars could also be another sign of the coming apocalypse, along with the declaration of a new caliphate.
“We have been told in the sayings of the Prophet that this is going to happen soon,” said Ahmed, one of the young men at a cafe.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): We return now to the Islamic State group and its brutal tactics.
Much is known now about the group, also known as ISIL, and its high-profile beheadings of Westerners, mass executions of civilians and forced conversions. Less well-known is the extremist group’s horrific treatment of women and girls.
Last week, the United Nations reported thousands of women had been abducted by the group, some handed over to fighters as a reward or sold as sex slaves.
The NewsHour sent a crew to meet a 15-year-old girl, a member of the Yazidi sect, who was captured and held by the Islamic State before managing to escape. She now lives at a camp with others who’ve been displaced.
We withheld her identity for her and her family’s safety.
GIRL (through interpreter): They kept us in a house, the girls and the women. And then they killed all the men, including my brother.
GWEN IFILL: She and the abducted women were taken by truck east to a house in Mosul. There, they were ordered to convert to Islam. More kidnapped girls joined them.
GIRL (through interpreter): They separated the women and the girls. Some of the girls were taken by ISIL. They gave some of us to the guards and they sold some of us, too. And some were given as a gift.
If we didn’t do what they asked, they would have hit us. We did everything because we were threatened. We had to. They were very bad to the girls. They were doing bad things to the women, illegal things.
GWEN IFILL: That’s only one story.
To help us understand the depth and scale of the Islamic State’s treatment of women and girls, we turn to Manal Omar, acting vice president for the Middle East and Africa Center at the United States Institute of Peace, and David Jacobson, professor of sociology and founding director of the Citizenship Initiative on Civil Society and Conflict at the University of South Florida.
