Podcast: Texting with ISIS

TRANSCRIPT: Texting with ISIS

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. As you may know, I'm host of the weekly GZERO World show on Facebook Watch. In this podcast, we share extended versions of the big interviews from that show. This week I sit down with New York Times foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi. Rukmini is one of the foremost experts on ISIS. She's in daily contact with ISIS fighters, has reported extensively from Iraq and Syria. Recently she was one of the first Western journalists to report from freshly liberated Mosul and Tal Afar, Iraq. She is a fearless reporter with unique insight into one of the most important and misunderstood terrorist organizations in the world. Let's get to it.

Announcer:

GZERO World is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, understands the value of service, trust, and stability in today's uncertain world. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.

Ian Bremmer:

I'm here today at the New York Times boardroom with Rukmini Callimachi. She's the foreign correspondent at the New York Times and go-to journalist on all things ISIS. Rukmini, very good to be with you. Let me start with right now, which is this horrifying act of depravity in Vegas which ISIS appears, at least from my perspective, to have absolutely nothing to do with, but they claimed that it was them.

Rukmini Callimachi:

They did. Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

First of all, I mean, did that come from a real ISIS source or was this sort of fake news?

Rukmini Callimachi:

It absolutely came from a real ISIS source. ISIS now has a chain of custody when they put out their claims of responsibility, and typically the first media outlet within ISIS that puts it out is something called the Amaq News Agency. I call it the Associated Press of ISIS. It's basically their wire service and they put out all of these claims. It was indeed Amaq in their encrypted channels on the app Telegram that put it out. It was then picked up by something called-

Ian Bremmer:

How soon between the-

Rukmini Callimachi:

The attack was around 10:00 PM Sunday night, I believe.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. Right.

Rukmini Callimachi:

It was morning Monday, so less than a day, which is typical. They tend to take 12 to 24 hours to claim things. It was then picked up by Nashir, which is another official ISIS outlet, and from there it was propagated on YouTube, on their channels, in their chat rooms, et cetera. We're all puzzled by this claim. The reason we're puzzled is contrary to I think what people think of ISIS. This is not a group that typically makes inaccurate claims regarding their responsibility in attacks. They do typically exaggerate the death toll, they'll make it out that they had a larger role than they sometimes have, but in terms of claiming credit for things that they or their sympathizers have done, they have generally been correct. I can give you a number of examples where both officials, the FBI, European intelligence, poo-pooed the claim, only for us-

Ian Bremmer:

It turned out that it really was them.

Rukmini Callimachi:

Yeah. Probably the most obvious one is soon after the Paris attacks in November of 2015, you might recall that ISIS claimed that they had downed the Metrojet flight that was flying from a resort in Egypt back to Russia, killing several hundred people. Everybody I talked to said that that was not possible, and very soon after ISIS claimed it.

Ian Bremmer:

It was from Sharm El Sheikh or something like that.

Rukmini Callimachi:

Yes, exactly. It left from Sharm El Sheikh and I think the debris was found over the Sinai Desert. ISIS claimed it first by one of their regional affiliates. Everybody thought that they were lying, and then not long after in their magazine they published images of the type of bomb that they had used. They said that it had been hidden inside of a soft drink inside the plane. I think it was weeks or months later the investigation found explosive residue and concluded that it was indeed ISIS.

Ian Bremmer:

Look, this only happened a day ago, I understand, but do you have a pet theory at this point as to why they've decided that they want to be responsible for a Vegas attack they had nothing to do with?

Rukmini Callimachi:

I don't. I don't. Of course, we don't yet know what this guy's motivations were. What we do know is he was a 64-year-old retiree. That is not the demographic of most ISIS recruits. If you think of an ISIS recruit, it's really somebody like Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, young, disaffected, had a problematic personal life, and was deeply into their ideology online. Now, why would they do this? I don't know, but what is of interest is they're really bearing down on it. They're not just making the claim once, they're making it repeatedly, they're having discussions with their own members because their own members are now facing or are asking questions.

Ian Bremmer:

That sounds to me like you think maybe there's actually really something there.

Rukmini Callimachi:

Everything says it's not ISIS, the age of the perpetrator-

Ian Bremmer:

I understand.

Rukmini Callimachi:

... all of that, the information that the FBI is giving us, but at the same time I don't understand why ISIS would go so strongly-

Ian Bremmer:

Well, the other thing I guess I would ask is has ISIS as an organization since effectively losing their caliphate, have they changed? Have you noticed in their leadership, in the way they've acted, in their ideology, are they different today in a meaningful way from the way they were, let's say, at the height of their territorial expansion?

Rukmini Callimachi:

Sure. I mean, I think there's certainly qualitative differences. I would not say that they've lost their caliphate, so I just want to clarify that one point. I was just in in Mosul. I was there for two months this summer. I was there on the day that-

Ian Bremmer:

When it was taken.

Rukmini Callimachi:

When the city was declared liberated. Even after Mosul fell, there was still the city of Tal Afar that has since fallen. Now, just in Iraq there is still the city of Hawija, the city of Al-Qa'im, the Anbar desert, which is where they came from. When I left Mosul a couple of weeks ago, I sent an email to CENTCOM to ask for their assessment of how many fighters were left following the fall of Mosul, and keep in mind that's just the Iraqi caliphate. We also have Syria.

Ian Bremmer:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Not Syria. Right.

Rukmini Callimachi:

Right. They estimated that after the fall of Mosul, there were ten to fifteen thousand ISIS fighters left. If you go back through congressional testimony, you'll find out that at the moment when American troops pulled out of Iraq several years ago, they estimated the strength of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is the group that becomes ISIS, to be around 700 fighters. We're even now, after the fall of Mosul, we're 15 times the strength that they emerged from. Another comparison, Ali Soufan, FBI special agent is fond of pointing out that on the eve of 9/11 there were an estimated two to three hundred al-Qaeda members worldwide. What we're seeing with this group is even obviously taking the territory, incredibly important, but even as you take the territory, even as they face devastating losses of leadership, of property, of their riches, of their base, they're still there. I think that we have not yet figured out exactly how to really handicap this group.

Ian Bremmer:

To go back to the question of how have they changed, and then I want to ask you what motivates them, but what do you see? Because, again, it has to be clear. You know, anyone that looks at ISIS inside the organization that they're not where they were, even if they're a lot stronger than we still presume they are. What has that done to them?

Rukmini Callimachi:

Right, right, right. Yeah. Obviously their infrastructure is increasingly in disarray. Their media operation is less slick than it used to be. One possible theory for what's happened in Vegas is that they've become sloppy. They've made two other errors at least in the past six months. They claimed an attack in Paris that never happened, they claimed one in the Philippines that also was not ISIS related. So possibly as they're losing territory and personnel, perhaps their capacity to project their power and to provide the services that they've always provided as a media outlet, as an organization that holds territory, is also being eroded.

Rukmini Callimachi:

But the thing about ISIS is in the end, this is an idea. I don't think we have found a way yet to shoot our way out of an idea. And because it's an idea, it's malleable. Even though they claim that the territorial caliphate was really their end-all, they have... In the wake of losing Mosul, they have very craftily basically moved the goalpost. They're now talking about the caliphate in our hearts. The caliphate remains the territory. It's no longer a territory that's just on the ground. It's etched in our hearts. Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, who was their charismatic spokesman who was killed last year, in one of his final speeches he talked about, "When will we declare defeat?" He said, "Will we declare defeat when you grab the territory from us? Will you declare defeat when every last one of our leaders will be dead?" He said, "You will only declare defeat over us when you have ripped the Quran out of the hearts of Muslims." Again, they believe that they're fighting for Muslims. They're very protean, and even as they lose ground they manage to regenerate themselves.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, when al-Qaeda was at its height we talked about them as more of an nihilist organization, ultimately, that wanted to sort of destroy everything that didn't necessarily really stand for the same committed theology. With ISIS, that's not in what we've discussed.

Rukmini Callimachi:

Yeah. I somewhat disagree with that.

Ian Bremmer:

How so? Tell me.

Rukmini Callimachi:

There's a sort of trope in the way that experts talk about ISIS and al-Qaeda where al-Qaeda is this and ISIS is somehow different. For example, one of the things that gets repeated, erroneously in my opinion, about al-Qaeda is that al-Qaeda did not want to hold ground, that al-Qaeda did not want a state. That's not true. The only difference is al-Qaeda, strategically speaking and probably from a place of wisdom, understood that if they declared a caliphate, that they declared basically a country, that that would bring enemy fire. For example, when I used to be based in Mali, I was in West Africa for almost eight years, and I covered al-Qaeda's takeover of Northern Mali, which was an area that was the size of Afghanistan. That's an enormous-

Ian Bremmer:

That's when you picked up all those documents.

Rukmini Callimachi:

That's when I picked up... That was the beginning, really, of this journey for me. When they took the northern half of Mali, they did almost exactly the same thing that we're seeing in Raqqa and Mosul in the way that their-

Ian Bremmer:

For ISIS. Right.

Rukmini Callimachi:

... caliphate, they declared a court, they set up institutions, they began providing public services, taxation. The only difference is, and I saw this in the letters that I recovered, they were very specific in not announcing their presence to the point where they were using a local Tuareg group and claiming that the Tuareg group was holding the territory. When I was covering it from outside, until I reached there I too was confused. I didn't understand, "Is al-Qaeda really holding Timbuktu or is Ansar Dine, which this other group that we know very little about? Are they holding Timbuktu?" The letters then said-

Ian Bremmer:

It turned out it was.

Rukmini Callimachi:

... that they were actively telling them, "Use Ansar Dine as a fig leaf. Hide behind a local group because otherwise the enemy [inaudible 00:11:54]."

Ian Bremmer:

Now, do you think that ISIS wanted and wants the United States to be leading a military attack against them? Do you think that's useful for them?

Rukmini Callimachi:

They certainly have said that. If you look at their pronouncements, they're always trying to bait not just the United States, but what they call the crusaders, which is all of us, into an end of times battle with the Islamic State. When US hostage Kassig was killed, he was killed in a little town in Syria called Dabiq. Dabiq is a nothing town. If you look it up... I can't remember the population, but really a speck of a town on the map of Syria. But it was a place that had an outsized significance for ISIS because Dabiq is mentioned in Islamic scripture as one of the places where the end of time's battle begins.

Rukmini Callimachi:

When they killed him, they made a speech to the effect where they said, I'm paraphrasing here, "The crusaders' boots have now arrived in Dabiq. We have now shed the first of their blood here. Let this battle begin." Now, at the same time a lot of the rhetoric has to do with ending airstrikes. You think that if they're baiting us then they should be quite happy about the airstrikes. They're not happy about the airstrikes. They want us to be there with boots on the ground so that they're fighting us man to man and I guess woman to man, but the airstrikes they see as an unfair show of force.

Ian Bremmer:

Let me change a little bit to what you know of these guys. I mean, I understand when you say that we can't shoot our way into destroying an idea, destroying ideology, destroying the hearts of men. What is motivating, I mean, the fact that there are so many more of them than there were of al-Qaeda? You've met with many, some active, in ISIS and many more that have been surrendered or have been arrested. Are you finding sort of similar stories in how we are motivating and creating this extraordinarily disaffected group?

Rukmini Callimachi:

Yes. Right. I think the common thread that I'm seeing in the young men, and they're almost always young men that I'm speaking to, the common thread is contrary to popular perception they really do mean what they're doing. They're not joining ISIS because they were dumped by their girlfriend and it's a way to get back at the world or because they was some sort of school dropout and had no place in this society. They're joining it because it means something to be part of what they think is going to be this Muslim renaissance.

Rukmini Callimachi:

Once they enter sort of this echo chamber of ISIS acolytes, they very quickly learn to shut themselves off from any external media. They call people like me and you, I guess, the kafir media, the infidel media, the crusader media, so everything we put out is wrong. Everything. We are agents of our governments, so anything that we put out is obviously untrue. Then inside this echo chamber, they're led to believe that ISIS is bringing back a Muslim golden age, a place where Muslims are going to be honored and powerful and lead an empire like they did hundreds of years ago. Because the killings are only aimed at the other... The killings are of non-Sunni Muslims in their eyes. Of course Sunni Muslims are also being killed, but this is what they're led to believe. It somehow makes it okay. It's Christians that are being killed, it's Jews that are being killed, they're spies, they're out to get Muslims. The ones that I'm speaking to, of course, are somewhat self-selected because their ability or willingness to speak to somebody like me means that at some level, they've pulled out of the ideology. I'm seeing them at the point where they have been somewhat disenchanted with the group.

Ian Bremmer:

What's disenchanting? Just the horrible conditions, or...

Rukmini Callimachi:

The stories that I gather from them over and over again involve a disillusionment that comes at the moment when they realize that Sunni Muslims are also-

Ian Bremmer:

Getting targeted.

Rukmini Callimachi:

... being mistreated. For example, one member of ISIS who I spoke to who was involved in executions talked about how... He saw the crucifixions, he saw the beheadings, and he somehow justified them as being the other, the bad guys. Then one day he was pulled on execution duty and the men that they brought in front of him were older men. They were protesting and saying to him, "We're Sunnis, we're Sunnis. Don't kill us, we're Sunnis. We're just like you." The gun was in his hand and he had to go ahead and do it. That really worked him over. Suddenly he's like, "Oh, wait a second. If I'm also killing Sunni Muslims then what are we doing? We're killing everybody."

Ian Bremmer:

Even the enslavement of women-

Rukmini Callimachi:

It's again-

Ian Bremmer:

... the multiple rapes, again that level of atrocity doesn't matter as long as against the enemy. It's okay. They've swallowed that all.

Rukmini Callimachi:

It's always against somebody other than their group. It's only-

Ian Bremmer:

So it's only when they see hypocrisy on a part of their own leadership.

Rukmini Callimachi:

I mean, it's not only, but that seems to be the pulling out story that I find, at least the most convincing one, the ones that have really turned their backs on the group. I've also spoken to ISIS emirs, deputy emirs, who are in prison now in Iraq and Syria and who remain really quite deep in the ideology and quite arrogant in their assessment that no, these things are not happening, there are no abuses under ISIS.

Rukmini Callimachi:

I actually spoke to one ISIS emir just before coming back here. He was the police chief of a small town outside of Mosul. He looked very down when I was talking to him. I said to him, "You look kind of distressed. What's wrong?" He said, "I really believed them when they said that because we believe in God, Muslims are going to be victorious. I never thought that I'd be sitting here in handcuffs. I mean, it's really a shock to me." "Okay. Do you think that ISIS should have done anything differently?" He said, "Yes. I think we should have tried to find more job opportunities for people under our rule." "Crucifixions, that was okay. Beheadings, that was okay. Enslavement of Yazidi women, all fine. We should have just had a few more job opportunities, right?"

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah.

Rukmini Callimachi:

This is how deeply this guy is in this particular world.

Ian Bremmer:

When you saw the Bin Laden capture, again sort of this incredible figure for many followers and suddenly sort of killed and then of course the stories about his pornography stash, dah, dah, dah, how much of that... If you're a typical ISIS member, is that-

Rukmini Callimachi:

The pornography-

Ian Bremmer:

Do you think that that's all just nonsense? Is it fake news?

Rukmini Callimachi:

The pornography stuff is totally fake news.

Ian Bremmer:

Fake news. Yeah.

Rukmini Callimachi:

They believe that it's been planted there to denigrate one of their heroes. His death is an interesting case study because of course the message that came out of Washington at that point in time is, "Al-Qaeda has been decapitated, the group is on the run. All of these other smaller groups all over the world are really not in any sort of meaningful connection with al-Qaeda, it's more just this piecemeal organization." Of course, that wasn't true. Al-Qaeda now is considered to have a stronger force than ever. The Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda is bigger than the mothership ever was. Thousands of fighters, foreigners, recruits from all over the world. I've spent most of the last couple of years looking at ISIS and my focus is not as much on al-Qaeda anymore, but what experts who I trust say is they fear that al-Qaeda is stronger than ever and that what they're doing is they're just gleefully watching as their enemy, ISIS, is being cannibalized by all of the... The entire world is fighting ISIS. They, on the other hand, have been able to just shore up their support.

Ian Bremmer:

In Yemen, for example.

Rukmini Callimachi:

In Yemen, in Syria. Senior leaders have been released from custody, and that they're poised for a real resurgence.

Ian Bremmer:

It sounds like from your view we're losing the war on terror.

Rukmini Callimachi:

Yeah. I mean, from my view we're doing all sorts of things that seem to make sense. We're going after the leadership, we're pulling back their territory, we're trying to cut down on their presence online, and yet the group just keeps on burgeoning. Both of them. I don't actually have an answer. I don't know. I don't know what needs to happen in order to fix this problem. All I know is that despite these various efforts, we're kind of just treading water.

Ian Bremmer:

I don't want to end it with that. That's just too depressing. But it's a good end. Right now you are talking with an active member of ISIS. What's that like? What's going through your head when you're actually... This isn't someone who's been captured, it's someone who's actually right now is trying to kill the infidel. What do you think about that?

Rukmini Callimachi:

Right. In order to do this job, I've had to compartmentalize many aspects of my life. For example, if I stopped to think about what he thinks of women and that I am a woman, there's very little that we could talk about. When I stop to think about what his idea is of how Yazidi girls, some as young as eight or nine, have been treated, there's nothing to talk about because I would just feel angry. I sort of have to just put these things aside and really just be a reporter and go to him for information. He's been useful to me in terms of reading statements that are being put out by ISIS. For example, right now he's telling me there's...

Rukmini Callimachi:

Last week he messaged me to say that ISIS has captured two Russian soldiers and that they're preparing to burn them like the Jordanian pilot. This is stuff... These are conversations that don't end up in my reporting because what would I... What's the point of putting out something so horrific like that? Just today ISIS put out an official statement showing a proof of life of these two soldiers and he is telling me that they've actually been burned alive. I mean, it's information I take in and I try to use it to get my bearings in this group and understand what's what and what's coming. Also on things like Vegas, I go to him for guidance, "Do you believe this? Is this real?" And try to suss out what they're saying.

Ian Bremmer:

It's easy. There are so many different political angles that you have when you're outside of the region in saying you understand why people would be upset and disenchanted or you understand why these people should all be killed because they've done such horrifying things. You've spent your life getting much closer to them than anyone that's watching the show will have done. How has that changed your view of them?

Rukmini Callimachi:

Sure. Mm-hmm. The major change came to me in 2013, which was the year that I was able to get to Timbuktu right after al-Qaeda had left the city. Before I was there and before I collected their documents and began actually studying them up close, my impression of them was that they were just a bunch of guys in a cave, just these kind of Neanderthal people, backward-minded, monolithic in their thinking. The documents I had in front of me showed me, for example, that they were required to turn in monthly expense reports. I had the disciplinary letter that was sent to a very famous member of al-Qaeda in Africa where he was being reprimanded for not having turned in his monthly expense report. He was always late turning in his expenses.

Rukmini Callimachi:

I suddenly saw that they're acting a little bit like a corporation, that they have financial rules. I recovered the documents that showed the internal debate and the struggle they had over the destruction of Timbuktu's mausoleums. It was a UNESCO World Heritage Site, much like Palmyra. I had assumed... When they put out these videos, they showed themselves with pickaxes and shovels destroying these hundreds of year old artifacts in Timbuktu. I had imagined that they all agreed. In fact, they hadn't. In fact, there were disputes among them with some people saying, "Theologically, you're right. The Quran says that having a tomb that-"

Ian Bremmer:

Depicts a face or a body.

Rukmini Callimachi:

"... depicts a face or that is a certain number of centimeters above the ground invites idolatry. The idea is to get rid of it because we're only praying to God. Theologically you are right, but you need to remember that our jihad is like a seedling. We are still trying to prepare the ground for it to take hold. By doing this, you anger the population and we need the population to be on our side." You see them thinking it through and having-

Ian Bremmer:

It's like the revolutionary versus the pragmatic wing in any government.

Rukmini Callimachi:

Exactly. In any government. Exactly. In any government. That was sort of the moment when I realized, "Okay, there's more to this than that." ISIS is many revolutions beyond that. Their caliphate ran I think 14 ministries, the Ministry of Taxation, the Ministry of the Treasury, the Ministry of Agriculture. These actually ran. I have interviewed people who were employed in these ministries where they had stamps and acted like bureaucrats. In many ways, it really did act like a state, a state that nobody recognized. I guess my big takeaway is I don't underestimate them anymore. I don't make fun of them anymore. I see them as far more complicated and textured and, I hate to say it, but sophisticated than we typically give them credit for.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, a state that nobody recognizes. There's not much more GZERO than that. Rukmini, thank you very much.

Rukmini Callimachi:

Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you for coming here.

Announcer:

GZERO World is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, understands the value of service, trust, and stability in today's uncertain world. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.

Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.