Weiss - ISIS

[A] superb piece of journalism, unsparing in its analysis of the folly of the Obama administration.Nick Cohen, The Spectator (UK)

The first book to fully explain what ISIS is seeking and why they are such a threat to the world. An absolute must-read for anyone who wants to understand the risk we all face from radical Islam.Douglas E. Schoen, political analyst, author of The Russia-China Axis: The New Cold War and Americas Crisis of Leadership

A... detailed and nuanced story.James Traub, The Wall Street Journal

Weiss and Hassan have produced a detailed and readable book. Their informants include American and regional military officials and intelligence operatives, defected Syrian spies and diplomats, andmost fascinating of allSyrians who work for Isis (these are divided into categories such as politickers, pragmatists, opportunists and fence-sitters). The authors provide useful insights into Isis governancea combination of divide-and-rule, indoctrination and fearand are well placed for the task. Hassan, an expert on tribal and jihadist dynamics, is from Syrias east. Weiss reported from liberated al-Bab, outside Aleppo, before Isis took it over.Robin Yassin-Kassab, The Guardian

Weiss and Hassan have written the most serious book-length study of the Islamic State so far. New York Times Book Review Editors Choice

Recounted in painstaking detail... the book presents a granular analysis of the ISs organization, ideology, funding and recruitment.Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, In These Times

Gripping... [T]he most comprehensive account to date.Michael Totten, Commentary

ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror , by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, does a first-rate job of describing the Islamic States layers... in Syria and in Iraq.Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism and The Flight of the Intellectuals

Concise, valuable, and a compelling read for anyonegeneral reader or specialistinterested in ISIS.Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, Syria Comment

Incredibly rich and valuable for the specialist and non-specialist alike... it is a rich and nuanced piece touching on all the points that the arrival of ISIS has raised in Syria and Iraq.Tam Hussein, The Huffington Post

Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan provide a comprehensive account of how the Islamic State came to be, who is to blame for its emergence, and why world leaders should be worried about its expansion.Kevin Sullivan, Real Clear World

For Amy and Julia, and Ola, Jacob, and Daniel, who have put up with ISIS (and us) more than any family ever ought to

In late 2011, a sixteen-year-old Bahraini boy named Abdelaziz Kuwan approached his Syrian uncle and asked for an introduction to Riad al-Asaad, a colonel in the Syrian Air Force and one of the first military defectors from the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. Abdelaziz wanted to join the armed rebellion in Syria. His parents had forbidden him from doing so, but he was ready to defy their wishes.

In early 2012, he flew to Istanbul and then, as so many other foreign fighters have done, took a thirteen-hour bus ride to the southern Turkish border town of Reyhanli. From there he crossed into the Syrian province of Aleppo, the northern countryside that by then had fallen to the rebels. Abdelaziz fought for moderate factions for several weeks before deeming them too corrupt and ineffectual. Then he moved between various Islamist brigades, including Jabhat al-Nusra, which later revealed itself to be the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria. Despite having earned a reputation as a fearless and devout fighter, Abdelaziz eventually grew disenchanted with his Islamist comrades. He also faced significant pressure from his family to return to Bahrainpressure to which he caved in at the end of 2012. Upon his arrival, Abdelazizs mother confiscated his passport.

I walk in the streets and I feel imprisoned, Abdelaziz said, still pining for his days as a holy warrior. I feel tied up. Its like someone is always watching me. This world means nothing to me. I want to be free. I want to go back. People are giving their lives. Thats the honorable life.

Abdelazizs family had moved to Bahrain from eastern Syria in the 1980s. His parents provided him with the means to lead a decent life. His father raised him well, one relative recalled. He did not make him need anyone and wanted him to be of a high social status. Abdelaziz, the relative said, had been quiet and refined and had always behaved like a man.

Abdelaziz stayed in Bahrain for three months before managing to persuade his mother to return his passport. (Why she agreed remains a mystery.) He left for Syria three days later. Once he arrived, Abdelaziz joined the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which was then rising in prominence as one of the most disciplined and well-organized jihadist groups in Syria. Abdelaziz later confided in us that during his last few months in Bahrain he made the decision to join ISIS, after speaking with some of the brothers in Syria via Skype. His prior experience with other Islamist factions ideologically similar to ISIS was an advantage, he said, in joining one that was dominated primarily by foreign fighters. Abdelaziz rose through the ranks of ISIS, first becoming a coordinator among local emirs and other rebel groups, then delivering messages and oral agreements on behalf of his leader. When ISIS seized enormous swaths of territory in both Syria and Iraq in the summer of 2014, Abdelaziz was promoted to the role of security official overseeing three towns near the Syrian-Iraqi border town of Albu Kamal, long a portal between the two countries for men like him.

Abdelaziz discovered in ISIS new things about himself. He learned that he was violent, brutal, and determined. He beheaded enemies. He kept a Yazidi girl in his house as a sabiyya , or sex slave. She was his prize for his participation in battles against the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces and other Kurdish militias in Sinjar, Iraq, near the Syrian border. According to ISISs propaganda magazine, Dabiq , one-fifth of the sex slaves taken from Sinjar were distributed to ISISs central leadership to do with as it so chose; the remainder was divided among the rank and file, like Abdelaziz, as the spoils of war.

Abdelaziz showed us a picture of his sabiyya. She was in her late teens. She belonged to him for about a month before being handed off to other ISIS commanders.

One of Abdelazizs fellow warriors said that during news broadcasts Abdelaziz would cover the television screen to avoid seeing the faces of female presenters. Yet being a rapist never seemed to impinge on what Abdelaziz considered his moral obligations as a pious Muslim. He fervently quoted the Quran and hadith, the oral sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, and spoke pompously about al-Dawla, the state, which is the term ISIS uses to refer to its project. Asked what he would do if his father were a member of Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda group to which Abdelaziz had temporarily belonged, and the two met in battle, he replied promptly: I would kill him. Abu Obeida, he explained, referring to one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad, killed his father in battle, and so there was nothing extraordinary about patricide in the name of God: Anyone who extends his hand to harm al-Dawla will have his hand chopped off. Abdelaziz also called his relatives in the Bahraini army or security forces apostates, because his adoptive countrys military was by then involved in a multinational coalition bombing campaign, led by the United States, against ISIS.

Before he went off to join the jihad in Syria, Abdelaziz was a theological novice who had barely finished a year of Islamic studies at a religious academy in Saudi Arabia. He had dropped out of high school in Bahrain and traveled to Medina to study Sharia, or Islamic jurisprudence. In school, according to one of his family members, he avoided nondevout peers and mingled primarily with hard-line students. Soon he was compulsively using jihadi speak, referring constantly to the dismal conditions which persist for Sunni Muslims in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.