Father Patrick Desbois - The terrorist factory: ISIS, the Yazidi genocide, and exporting terror

Also by Father Patrick Desbois

In Broad Daylight:
The Secret Procedures behind the Holocaust by Bullets

Copyright 2016 by Librairie Arthme Fayard

English-language translation copyright 2018 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

Foreword copyright 2018 by Lara Logan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

First English-language Edition

Originally published in French under the title La Fabrique des terroristes by Librairie Arthme Fayard

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Desbois, Patrick, author. | Nastasie, Costel, author. | Temchin, Shelley, translator.

Title: The terrorist factory: ISIS, the Yazidi genocide, and exporting terror / Father Patrick Desbois and Costel Nastasie ; translated from the French by Shelley Temchin ; foreword by Lara Logan.

Other titles: Fabrique des terroristes. English

Description: New York, NY: Arcade Publishing, 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018008917 (print) | LCCN 2018013254 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628729481 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628729467 | ISBN 9781628729467(hardcover:alk. paper) | ISBN 9781628729481(ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: IS (Organization) | YezidisIraqHistory21st century. | GenocideIraqHistory21st century.

Classification: LCC HV6433.I722 (ebook) | LCC HV6433.I722 D4713 2018 (print) | DDC 363.32509567dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008917

Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

Cover photograph: Yahad-In Unum

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

T his book was not built on anonymous sources, or on second-hand accounts or political narratives. It is the simple, honest product of thousands of hours of hard work, precise investigative techniques, and a pure commitment to understanding and knowing the truth. I cannot think of anyone more qualified than Father Patrick Desbois to take us inside the machinery of genocide and terror that has defined ISIS since they first struck fear in our hearts.

He brings to this task not only his knowledge and experience, but his understanding of the innate capacity to kill that informs us all. He did not come by this knowledge easily. Father Desbois has spent much of his life studying this particular aspect of the human conditionnot from a distance, but always in person.

Year after year, he has walked in the footsteps of terrorists and murderers, from the remote villages of Eastern Europe to dusty villages in Guatemala to ancient towns across northern Iraq. And he does not go alone. Together with his chief investigator, Costel Nastasie, at his side, they are a formidable pair. I know of no equal.

They never forget a detail, or a face, always coming back to question, to learn, to discover, to confirm or reject. Perhaps most importantly, they come without ego and without agenda. Over countless hours of recorded interviews and many more informal meetings and conversations, they ask the most simple, straightforward questions. They do not judge, they do not lead. And that is what makes this book so powerful. There is only one truth, and truth is their only master.

They are not seeking to serve the interests of any one of us, just the interests of us all. For if we cannot understand and know what we face, how can we possibly overcome?

It is a mystery to me that they stand alone in the work they have done. I have not encountered anywhere else the details, the insight, and the evidence they report in these pages. How can something of such significance rest in such a profound way on the shoulders of a Catholic priest and a Roma? Who ask for nothing but our attention and our conscience? Whose only motivation is to document, for all of us, exactly what we face today, so that we cannot claim falsely years lateras others have done before usthat we did not know.

What makes this book so memorable is not just the details, it is the humanity with which they were gathered and with which they are told. No matter how difficult the terrain, no matter how weary or frustrated or defeated they may have been along the way, the authors never abandoned their humanity or their integrity. And they never stopped or doubtednot even for a moment.

The insight Father Patrick Desbois and Costel Nastasie have given us is terrifying.

And it should not end here.

L ARA L OGAN

60 M INUTES

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EDITION

T his book was written more than a year ago. ISIS was the absolute ruler over large swaths of Syria and Iraq, with Raqqa and Mosul as its capitals. At the time, we were interviewing Yazidis who had recently escaped the clutches of the Islamic State, which viewed this Mesopotamian people as kuffar , infidels, and therefore fair game for all manner of crimes. In their captors murderous ideology, the wholesale rape, torture, and murder that the Yazidis endured was justified.

We thought then that the defeat of ISIS would mean freedom for all of its slaves. It hasnt turned out that way.

Today, in 2018, the war appears to be over. The international press and world leaders have declared ISIS to be dead or dying: Iraq and Syria seem to have emerged from the shadow of its dark flag. Some say its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been killed by Russian bombs; others claim that he is alive but injured, and under medical care in Libya. Little by little, public opinion in democratic countries has forgotten the shootings, bombings, beheadings, crucifixions, and black flags of an empire that seems to have crumbled. Arent mass amnesia and individual forgetfulness the necessary price of a comfortable life and untroubled sleep?

What I find most surprising in Iraq in this month of March 2018 is the freed Yazidi children, young girls and boys, who are returning, little by little every day, every week, to displaced-persons camps to be reunited with their families. But what are they returning from? ISIS has been declared dead, but its members are still alive, and its slaves are still in their grip. Are they hidden in refugee camps, or have they melted away, unnoticed, into the crowds of people? Have they left for Libya, the Sahel, the Sinai, or Afghanistan? Or Europe?

Yet, if ISIS surely lost many battles, there is one war it seems to have won: with its child-terrorist factories.

Indeed, a number of recently-freed Yazidi boys and girls continue to tell us not only about beatings and training camps but also about their own participation in the fighting and the murder of civilians. These children were transformed into actual or potential killers in the name of the ISIS caliphate. They may have been rescued from hell, but often they have forgotten their native language and sometimes even the faces of their parents. Today, they speak the language of the people who bought them, Arabic or Turkish but also English. This morning, here in Iraq, not far from Dohuk, a nine-year-old boy was telling us in perfect English that he is American, not Yazidi. Indeed, his uncle, sitting next to him, says the child was bought by an American ISIS family in Syria. He no longer understands a word of Kurdish. In his mind and memory, he is a member of ISISan American member of ISIS.