Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.12.2015, Síða 8

I C E L A N D 4 D U M M I E S
8
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2015
Politics | Bright?TERROR | Ice-Sis
When did you start following the
activities and communications of
Daesh?
I was working full-time when they
emerged, and I was immediately fas-
cinated, because they were active in
my region, and I was very interested in
political Islam. The news made it look
like Daesh was an unstoppable army,
marching across the desert. The truth
of the matter is actually much differ-
ent [more on this later].
The Interior Minister recently
stated that there is no doubt that
the terror threat in Iceland has
increased. Meanwhile the police,
which is overseen by that very
minister, says that the threat has
not really increased at all. Who's
got it right here?
I think the police's interpretation is
closer to the truth. Iceland, frankly, is
a pretty shitty target. There's a reason
why Daesh didn't attack Bretagne or
Normandy. They attacked Paris, be-
cause it's symbolic. It's the heart of the
French empire.
The thing about Daesh is that
they're not primarily focused on over-
seas missions. I mean, one of the rea-
sons why I communicated with them
is because I was trying to find out if
rumors that were circulating last year
were true, that there was an Icelander
involved in making their videos. So one
of them went on a mission for me to
find out. He was actually kind of nice
about it. He reported back and said he
had been to the camp where they keep
the foreign parties, and none of them
had met any Icelanders. They'd met
Norwegians, Swedes and Danes, but
no Muslim Icelanders. So at least ac-
cording to that guy, no, Daesh has no
interest in Iceland.
How did you come to
communicate with Daesh?
I started by going on the Dark Web, but
my biggest success was when I broke
through on Twitter. I follow like 200
of these guys on Twitter. And they're
always changing their accounts. I
talked to them using PGP encryption.
They have that, and they have their
own encryption software, so they can
talk to each other without being spied
on—everything is instantly deleted, so
there's nothing left on their comput-
ers. But most of my communications
were done through private messaging
on Twitter. I'd see someone posting a
photo of themselves with a gun, and I'd
message them saying, "Would you add
me so we can PM?" And a lot of them
did.
Did you tell them you were a
reporter?
I didn't specifically mention it, but it
was in my profile bio, so anyone who
looked at it could know. I made sure
to address them very formally, using
all the traditional greetings. I never
expressed any opposition, you know,
"How could you do this?" That's a
dead end. So I basically just tried to
ask them what life was like, where
they came from, things like that. I de-
veloped quite a rapport with a few of
them. Mostly the Westerners, the Eng-
lish ones especially. They were mostly
very young men, in their twenties and
late teens.
I could understand if you're
a Sunni in the region, being
oppressed by Shia forces, and
then these guys roll in and liberate
you. But why would someone in,
say, Birmingham, want to join up
with Daesh?
I believe it's a mixture of things. A
lot of these guys grew up in a culture
where they're alienated. They have
much, much worse chances of getting
a job than anyone else. In rare cases,
they're well-educated, but have grown
embittered with life. Imagine living in
a tenement flat somewhere. You don't
have a job, your parents are drinking,
you want to have some kind of identity.
You start reading the Koran, you start
watching online lectures about jihad.
And then this opportunity arises: you
can go to Syria, you
can carry a gun,
you can lead a bri-
gade of men, victo-
riously holding up
your enemy's head
like you're in some
kind of video game.
You get women,
you get a free
house, everything
you need. All of
the sudden, you're
somebody. And af-
ter you die, you go
to Heaven. If you
take a good look at
Daesh, you'll see
very few of them
are older than 30.
And you don't really develop an appre-
ciation for your own mortality until
after the age of 30.
But a lot of us have had rebellious
phases. Maybe even most of
us. Very few of us will decide to
engage in jihad. What do you think
of the religious angle to this?
One of the things that struck me most
about them was their use of Arabic
slang. They all use the same Islamic
slang for certain concepts and they
were really—I'm going to get beheaded
for this—but they really sounded like
poseurs. They didn't really know much
about Islam. They didn't read Arabic.
They hadn't gone to mosque as chil-
dren. There's no depth to it.
One of the things I keep seeing
popping up is that no one hates
Daesh more than other Muslims,
and the best thing we can do to
help Daesh is slam the door shut
in the face of Syrian refugees.
Absolutely—the thing that would help
Daesh the most is if we were to shut
the door on refugees.
You're feeding the
problem, and creating
a lot of disenchant-
ment and anger. If you
let in the refugees,
you're not risking that
much, because there
are much stronger
checks on refugees
than there are on
people coming into
Europe on a normal
visa. Getting a visa is
not that difficult, com-
pared to getting refu-
gee status.
So exactly how
powerful are Daesh,
anyway?
I think their military capacity is vastly
overrated. For example, when they
took Mosul in Iraq, and captured
most of the military equipment that
the Americans had left behind, there
were like ten or twenty thousand Iraqi
regulars in Mosul, and maybe five or
six hundred fighters from Daesh. But
what Daesh did was, in the days before
they assault, they started sending mes-
sages to the soldiers stationed in Mo-
sul, with all these pictures of people
being decapitated and castrated, say-
ing: "This is coming for you next week."
And they knew this annual sandstorm
was imminent, which blankets every-
thing. You can't see anything. They
launched their strike in the middle of
a sandstorm, firing off missiles indis-
criminately, blowing everything up.
The Iraqis thought they were facing
thousands of people, so they put down
their guns and left, and Daesh just ba-
sically took over without a fight. They
operate like this. They're not actually
really competent fighters.
What kind of endgame do you see
here?
I don't think we can end this until we
get to who's funding this, but there's
just so many connections. So it's go-
ing to take that, as well as infantry on
the ground backed up by low-flying
aircraft. But nobody's willing to do
that, because Daesh have these TOWs
[shoulder-launched missiles] that are
American-made and probably Saudi-
supplied. They're not sufficient to
shoot down an airliner at 30,000 feet,
but then can take down a low-flying
plane. So what we need is an infantry
with close air cover from someone
who's not afraid to take some casual-
ties. And in the western world, there is
no army that's willing to take casual-
ties. Supplying arms to the people al-
ready fighting isn't going to work, be-
cause the lines are moving so quickly,
and Daesh end up stealing arms caches
intended for others. Maybe I'm mak-
ing this unnecessarily complicated,
but what we have here is a proxy war
that serves the puppet-masters quite
well, and no one's willing to go in there
and do what needs to be done. It's a
relatively simple proposition, but what
comes after that, God only knows. Com-
plete chaos. I think it's going to be a clus-
terfuck for a number of years to come.
“I’m Going
To Get
Beheaded
For This”
Journalist Gunnar Hrafn Jónsson is a reporter for the na-
tional broadcasting service, RÚV, where he specializes in
international news. Gunnar has a particular interest in the
Middle East. He is also the only journalist in Iceland who
has actively communicated with actual members of Daesh,
also known as the Islamic State. As prominent Icelandic
politicians, including the nation’s president, increasingly re-
sort to referencing Daesh in their rhetoric, we thought we
should learn more about the group and its possible plans for
Iceland. Rather than relying on speculation from armchair
generals, we went to the one known person in Iceland who’s
actually spoken to Daesh.
by PAUL FONTAINE
Photo by ANNA DOMNICK
“They didn't
really know
much about
Islam.
They didn't
read Arabic.
They hadn't
gone to mosque
as children.
There's no
depth to it.”