There was a duel scene in a British comedy film where a knight has first one and then his other arm cut off and finally his legs. With each loss of a limb he protests it’s only an arm, only a leg. The propaganda of Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) is now remarkably similar in tone. With each defeat, it claims it feels no pain. It described the loss of Mosul as a “temporary setback”.
There is a marked difference in the tone of the terrorists between their glory days when they proudly broadcast appalling footage of the execution of prisoners and the sniveling excuses they are now pumping out to try and explain away the steady destruction of their blasphemous ambitions. Only the dumbest of young dupes could now possibly be attracted to join the terrorists’ ranks from other countries. Indeed those ranks are already thinning as young people desert and tell their captors how much they regret ever making their fateful decision to travel through a then compliant Turkey to sign up with the terrorists. There is no romance in defeat.
Captured terrorists who are found to have been responsible for hateful crimes should be punished but with the others there is an invaluable counter-propaganda opportunity that should not be missed. When Al-Qaeda sought to bring murder and anarchy to Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom did not simply defeat it through resolute action by the intelligence services and security forces. It also introduced a system of rehabilitation for captured terrorists, a process which ended with a pardon and the means to return to life in civilized society. At the time, anti-terrorist organizations in other countries scoffed at the program considering it unrealistic and doomed to failure. In fact the farsighted Saudi program doomed Al-Qaeda to failure in the Kingdom because the subjects of this scheme also gave invaluable information to the security forces about their fellow terrorists.
There have, of course, been some failures but the majority of those who have passed through the Kingdom’s rehabilitation program have begun to lead constructive lives.
A similar plan for captured IS members would surely have the same results. More importantly, the process of re-educating and rehabilitating these mostly young men should be given the highest publicity. This would counter the insidious propaganda that has been pumped out by the terrorist leaders for so long.
It has not yet been widely remarked that within its gross Internet output, IS actually sowed the seeds of its own destruction. Every gloating and revolting image that was published across social media contained evidence, of place, of time and most crucially of who the masked killers actually were. Facial recognition programs are now hugely powerful. Voices can be identified electronically. A terrorist’s height can be gauged accurately by using his surroundings. Myriad pieces of data, including phone calls home and social media posts have been collated to pinpoint who was where, when and what they were doing. Thus with each new sordid piece of murderous propaganda, IS published a new wanted poster for more of its members.
Many of the fools who joined this death cult have had their perverse wish fulfilled. But those who have survived and are in captivity have an important story to tell to others who might be caught up in the phony romance of becoming a terrorist fighter.
