War on terror
Inside Isis: The
first Western journalist ever given access to the 'Islamic State' has just
returned – and this is what he discovered
Jürgen Todenhöfer, 74,
spent 10 days in Isis-controlled territory. He says the reality on the ground
is different from what anyone in the West realises
Sunday 21
December 2014
The first Western
journalist in the world to be allowed extensive access to Isis territories in
Syria and Iraq has returned from the region with a warning: the group is “much
stronger and much more dangerous” than anyone in the West realises.
Jürgen
Todenhöfer, 74, is a renowned German journalist and publicist who travelled
through Turkey to Mosul, the largest city occupied by Isis, after months of
negotiations with the group’s leaders.
He plans to publish a
summary of his “10 days in the Islamic State” on Monday, but in interviews with
German-language media outlets has revealed his first impressions of what life
is like under Isis.
Speaking to the
website Der tz, Todenhöfer revealed
that he actually stayed in the same hotel in Benghazi as James Foley, the US
journalist who was beheaded on camera by Isis in August.
“Of course, I’ve seen
the terrible, brutal video and it was one of my main concerns during the negotiations
as to how I can avoid [the same fate],” he said.
Once within Isis
territory, Todenhöfer said his strongest impression was “that Isis is much
stronger than we think here”. He said it now has “dimensions larger than the
UK”, and is supported by “an almost ecstatic enthusiasm that I have never
encountered in any other warzone”.
“Each day, hundreds of
willing fighters arrive from all over the world,” he told tz. “For me it is
incomprehensible.”
Todenhöfer claims to
have been able to move among Isis fighters, observing their living conditions
and equipment. On hisFacebook page, he has posted images
which he said show German Heckler & Koch MG3 machine guns in the hands of
Isis. “Someday this German MG could be directed to us,” he said.
Isis’s fighters
themselves sleep, he said, in barracks formed from “the shells of bombed-out
houses”. They number around 5,000 in Mosul, and are spread so widely that were
the US to bomb them all “they would have to reduce the whole of Mosul to
ruins”, he said.
Todenhöfer says that
this ultimately means Isis cannot be beaten by Western intervention or air
strikes – despite US claims last week that they have proven effective. “With
every bomb that is dropped and hits a civilian, the number of terrorists
increases,” he said.
Speaking in a TV
interview with RTL’s Nachtjournal programme two days after his
return to Germany last week, Todenhöfer said Isis has worked hard to establish
itself as a functioning state. He said it has “social welfare”, a “school
system”, and that he was even surprised to see it has plans to provide
education to girls.
Most concerning of
all, he said, was Isis fighters’ belief that “all religions who agree with
democracy have to die”.
He said the view that
kept being repeated was that Isis want to “conquer the world” and all who do
not believe in the group’s interpretation of the Koran will be killed. The only
other religions to be spared, Todenhöfer said, were the “people of the book” –
Jews and Christians.
“This is the largest
religious cleansing strategy that has ever been planned in human history”, he
told RTL.
Isis-affiliated social
media accounts have already started responding to Todenhöfer's reports, hailing
his comments about the group's territories being made into functioning
societies.
The tweet below quotes
“German journalist Jürgen” as saying: “The Caliphate state is working to create
life in the style of the Rightly Guided Caliphs who lived after the Prophet
(PBUH) and it can move mountains.”
Charlie Winter, a
researcher for the anti-extremism thinktank Quilliam, said such comments about
Isis being "a group that is formidable militarily and politically"
were quoted by pro-Isis accounts because it is "a bitter pill for
policymakers to swallow".
"That said,
Todenhöfer's comments on the massacre of the Yazidis and displacement of
hundreds of thousands in Mosul have been routinely ignored by Isis
supporters," Mr Winter said.
"The facts are being cherry-picked to
give a very narrow view of the situation that Todenhöfer was met with in Syria and
Iraq."
Todenhöfer plans to
use his first-hand experience of Isis in a book he is writing about the group.
He says on Facebook that he has always “spoken to both sides” in his 50 years
reporting from war zones, including interviews with Syria's President Bashar
al-Assad and al-Qaeda, with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and with
leaders of the Taliban.
In his view, Isis will
soon come to the West to negotiate a level of co-existence. “The only ones who
could stop this now are the moderate Iraqi Sunnis,” he said, adding: “If you
want to defeat an opponent, you must know him.”
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