- INSIDE THE MIND OF ISIS: UNDERSTANDING ITS GOALS AND IDEOLOGY TO BETTER PROTECT THE HOMELAND
- INSIDE THE MIND OF ISIS: UNDERSTANDING ITS GOALS AND IDEOLOGY TO BETTER PROTECT THE HOMELAND [Senate Hearing 114-566] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] S. Hrg. 114-566 INSIDE THE MIND OF ISIS: UNDERSTANDING ITS GOALS AND IDEOLOGY TO BETTER PROTECT THE HOMELAND ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION __________ JANUARY 20, 2016 __________ Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/ Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 22-714 PDF WASHINGTON : 2017 _________________________________________________________________________________________ For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office, http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center, U.S. Government Publishing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or 866-512-1800 (toll-free). E-mail, [email protected]. COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin Chairman JOHN McCAIN, Arizona THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware ROB PORTMAN, Ohio CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri RAND PAUL, Kentucky JON TESTER, Montana JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey JONI ERNST, Iowa GARY C. PETERS, Michigan BEN SASSE, Nebraska Keith B. Ashdown, Staff Director David S. Luckey, Director of Homeland Security Elizabeth McWhorter, Professional Staff Member Shad A. Thomas, U.S. Coast Guard Detailee Gabrielle A. Batkin, Minority Staff Director John P. Kilvington, Minority Deputy Staff Director Harlan C. Geer, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member Stephen R. Vina, Minority Chief Counsel for Homeland Security Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk Benjamin C. Grazda, Hearing Clerk C O N T E N T S ------ Opening statements: Page Senator Johnson.............................................. 1 Senator Carper............................................... 2 Senator Peters............................................... 17 Senator Portman.............................................. 20 Senator Heitkamp............................................. 23 Senator Booker............................................... 25 Senator Ernst................................................ 27 Senator Ayotte............................................... 30 Prepared statements: Senator Johnson.............................................. 41 Senator Carper............................................... 42 WITNESS Wednesday, January 20, 2016 Bernard Haykel, D. Phil., Director, The Institute of Transregional Studies, and Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University........................................... 4 Jessica Stern, Ph.D., Research Professor, Pardee School for Global Studies, Boston University.............................. 6 Lorenzo Vidino, Ph.D., Director, Program on Extremism, Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, George Washington University...... 7 Hedieh Mirahmadi, President, World Organization for Resource Development and Education...................................... 9 Alphabetical List of Witnesses Haykel, Bernard D.Phil.: Testimony.................................................... 4 Prepared statement........................................... 44 Mirahmadi, Hedieh: Testimony.................................................... 9 Prepared statement........................................... 76 Stern, Jessica, Ph.D.: Testimony.................................................... 6 Prepared statement........................................... 50 Vidino, Lorenzo Ph.D.: Testimony.................................................... 7 Prepared statement........................................... 64 APPENDIX Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record from: Mr. Haykel................................................... 81 Ms. Stern.................................................... 83 Mr. Vidino................................................... 85 Ms. Mirahmadi................................................ 87 INSIDE THE MIND OF ISIS: UNDERSTANDING ITS GOALS AND IDEOLOGY TO BETTER PROTECT THE HOMELAND ---------- WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2016 U.S. Senate, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. Present: Senators Johnson, Portman, Lankford, Ayotte, Ernst, Sasse, Carper, McCaskill, Tester, Heitkamp, Booker, and Peters. OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON Chairman Johnson. This hearing will come to order. I want to welcome everybody and say good morning. I certainly want to thank the witnesses for taking the time to appear, for taking the time to really write, I think, some very thoughtful and revealing testimony. I would ask unanimous consent to enter my written opening statement in the record,\1\ and Senator Carper is generally pretty good about not objecting. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix on page 41. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Senator Carper. Oh, I will allow it. Chairman Johnson. But, without objection, so ordered. Let me just explain a little bit. Really, this hearing has been in the works for quite some time, and it was really spawned by somebody who could not be here because of scheduling conflicts of the Committee as well as himself. But Graeme Wood wrote, I thought, a very interesting article published in The Atlantic a number of months ago, ``Inside the Mind of ISIS.'' And I would say that it certainly caught this Senator, and I think an awful lot of people, policymakers in Washington, D.C., here, somewhat by surprise. It was pretty revealing. I have talked to enough people that really did not understand the importance of the territorial gains and holdings to create the caliphate and the chain of events which that set up. So, we started discussions, and although we do not have Mr. Wood here today, we have, I think--he is a reporter. We have the experts that I think he consulted with, in terms of writing his thoughtful article, and so I am really looking forward to the testimony here today. I just want to throw out one little statistic, and this comes from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) from the State Department. The START Report, which they initially published in 2012. The progression and the growth of terrorism is stark, and did we ever get to the bottom of the differences in the numbers from 2014? OK. Which should I use? OK, those are even worse. So from 2012, the number of attacks reported by the State Department in this report was 6,771. In 2014, the number of attacks had grown to 16,800 worldwide. That is 2.5 times the number of attacks just 2 years earlier. In terms of deaths, in 2012 there were 11,000 individuals killed in terrorist attacks. In 2014, there were 43,500. That is almost a fourfold increase in terrorist attacks. So the fact of the matter is, the risk, the threat of Islamic terror, from my standpoint, it is real. It is growing, and statistics prove it. And there is no way that we are going to be able to adequately address this unless we fully understand what motivates Islamic terrorists. This hearing is specifically about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)-- but I think that we can talk about Islamic terrorists, in general, and explore that--and what is their ultimate goal. And I think that we will hear testimony that we have some contradictory goals as well, which makes it even more confusing in terms of how we deal with the issue. But, again, I just want to thank my witnesses, and with that I will turn it over to Senator Carper. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER Senator Carper. Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. It is great to see all of you today. Thanks for your preparation, thanks for joining us, and for your willingness to testify and to respond to our questions. And I thank the Chairman for calling the hearing. One of the most important jobs of our government--in fact, State and Federal and local as well--is to make sure that our people are safe. That is what this Committee focuses on. As the Paris and San Bernardino terror attacks showed us, ISIS and ISIS-inspired attacks remain a major threat in this country. In fact, just last week, ISIS carried out attacks against our allies in Turkey and I believe in Indonesia. Today, we are going to look at ISIS's ideology and how it hopes to achieve its goals. One of ISIS's key strengths is the large number of recruits that they are able to pull in. And despite the heavy losses inflicted on ISIS by coalition forces in recent months, the number of ISIS fighters on the ground in Iraq and Syria remains pretty much the same thanks to a stream of new recruits flowing into the region on a regular basis. ISIS also appears to have a significant online army that grows daily, and these ``virtual'' soldiers may never set foot in the territory that ISIS controls, but they are waging an aggressive social media campaign that calls on people to do the group's bidding from thousands of miles away. These battlefield recruits and online supporters are attracted not only to ISIS's ideology, but to its image as well. And what is that image? Well, the image that ISIS would like to project is that of a winner. And even as it suffers serious defeats on the battlefield--I think the amount of land they control in Syria and Iraq is down by about 30 percent in recent months and continues to diminish. But even as they suffer serious defeats on the battlefield and lose key leaders, ISIS still attempts to project an image of indestructibility. And they do this through fictitious claims and propaganda on social media, and also by ignoring the truth about the progress that coalition forces are making. This winner message appeals to many young men who crave fame, fortune, love, and increased social standing. Just as troubling is the fact that ISIS has successfully advanced a twisted narrative that the United States is at war with Islam and that it is the duty of young Muslims to defend their religion by attacking the United States and our allies. Nothing could be further from the truth. That is not what we are about. We know that, and it is important that we convey that consistently throughout the world. This battle is not against a religion. This battle is against ISIS, plain and simple. ISIS is a cowardly group of murderers who kill Muslims, kill Jews, and kill Christians alike. They have no regard for human life. The estimated 30,000 ISIS fighters have nothing to do with the 1.5 billion Muslim men and women who peacefully practice their religion around the world and in our communities. At the end of the day, this battle against ISIS is a war of words and ideas as much as it is a war of military power and action. That is why it is so important that we not only continue to crush ISIS on the battlefield, but also counter their hateful message. To this end, last month I introduced legislation that would create and authorize an office at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to counter the violent messages of ISIS and other terror groups. I welcome all of my colleagues to join me on this important piece of legislation. We will be talking about it during the course of this hearing further. This fight against ISIS, however, is not solely the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security or any single Federal agency. All of us have a role to play, and we have an obligation to say something if we see something suspicious. And we all, especially those of us in public office, have a responsibility to be mindful of the words we use when we talk about Islam and the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world who practice their religion peacefully. They live in our States. They live in our neighborhoods, and they believe as fervently as we do in the Golden Rule: to treat other people the way that we want to be treated. We need to work to ensure that the rhetoric that we use does not play into the hands of ISIS to be used against us as a weapon. When we make careless comments about the nature of Islam or the need to keep Muslims out of the United States for political purposes, we feed ISIS's narrative that the United States is at war with Muslims. We have to be smarter than that. I think we are. Our country is better than that. We do not need to engage in demagoguery or run from our moral obligations in order to keep Americans safe. Let me close by just saying I look forward to learning more today about ISIS's ideology and tactics as well as what more we can do to address the root causes of this difficult challenge. With that, welcome and thank you. Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Carper. It is the tradition of this Committee to swear in witnesses, so if you will all rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this Committee today will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God? Mr. Haykel. I do. Ms. Stern. I do. Ms. Mirahmadi. I do. Mr. Vidino. I do. Chairman Johnson. Please be seated. Our first witness is Dr. Bernard Haykel. Dr. Haykel is the professor of Near Eastern Studies and the Director of the Institute for Transregional Studies of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia at Princeton University. He is a historian of the Arabian Peninsula and a scholar of Islamic law and Islamic political movements. His research is concerned with political and social tensions that arise from questions about religious identity and authority, and he has been described as ``the foremost secular authority on the Islamic State's ideology.'' Dr. Haykel. TESTIMONY OF BERNARD HAYKEL, D.PHIL.,\1\ DIRECTOR, THE INSTITUTE OF TRANSREGIONAL STUDIES, AND PROFESSOR OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Mr. Haykel. Thank you very much. It is a privilege and an honor to be here today. I have 5 minutes, so I will be quite telegraphic, and I really have three or four points to make. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Haykel appears in the Appendix on page 44. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first is that ISIS is a religious movement with set political goals. The principal goal is the empowerment of Sunni Muslims against a long list of enemies. The origins of ISIS lie in a complex set of factors, a very complex context in the Middle East. It involves a religious revival that started in the 1970s. You have a situation where the governments of this region are uniformly authoritarian, brutal, and have each eviscerated the social fabric as well as the civic societies that they dominate. You have relative economic deprivation. You have a massive youth bulge, with 60 percent of the population under the age of 25. You have bad governance, as I have already mentioned. And you also have several wars. The most proximate war for ISIS's development is the war in Iraq and the U.S. invasion in 2003. And then some have even attributed climate change as a cause for this kind of radicalization. Now, this movement is extremely adept, as you have noted, at using social media to propagate its culture of victimization as well as the sanctification of violence. And they argue that violence is the only means to address the weaknesses of Muslims. They target a long list of enemies, principally Shiites, as well as other Sunnis who disagree with them, secular people, anyone who believes in democracy, or any of the modern ideologies of our age. They also have developed a culture, which is a fantasy, of what early Islam was like, which they are trying to reproduce. This is a culture that is extremely rich and taps into a very deep vein in the history of Islamic civilization and in the text of Islamic civilization. Now, I believe that there is no silver-bullet solution to ISIS. It is a symptom of deep structural problems in the region. Military defeat, while very welcome, would not address the problem of ISIS. And, moreover, the United States does not have the tools nor does the United States have the religious standing to speak authoritatively on what is or is not Islamic. I believe that ISIS today is, in fact, being defeated militarily. As you noted, they have lost 30 to 40 percent of their territory. But addressing the root causes that produce a phenomenon like ISIS is what is necessary, and this will take a generation to do. And most of the effort actually has to be done by people in the region of the Middle East and by Muslims throughout the world. I expect that as ISIS loses more and more territory and is defeated by groups like the Kurds or the Iraqi army, which is principally a Shiite-ruled and Shiite-dominated army, ISIS will become more desperate. And with desperation, we will see more lone-wolf and ISIS-directed attacks in the West. It is very important not to overreact to these attacks because it will play into ISIS's narrative. And I also think that lone-wolf attacks are extremely difficult to stop. We must definitely mobilize our own Muslim community against ISIS's ideology. They are the first and best line of defense against this movement. I also would like to underscore that ISIS should not be seen as an existential threat. If we speak of it as an existential threat, we also play into its narrative. So the solution, I think, is one that would require patience, but also hard-nosed realism and a strategy of not overreacting to its attacks on us and on others. Thank you very much. Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Dr. Haykel. Our next witness is Dr. Jessica Stern. Dr. Stern is a research professor at Boston University's Pardee School of Global Studies and an Advanced Academic Candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis. She was a member of Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. She is a Fulbright Scholar and earned a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work on trauma and violence. And, finally, she is an expert on terrorism and co-authored the book ``ISIS: The State of Terror,'' and authored the book ``Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill,'' among other works. Dr. Stern. TESTIMONY OF JESSICA STERN, PH.D.,\1\ RESEARCH PROFESSOR, PARDEE SCHOOL FOR GLOBAL STUDIES, BOSTON UNIVERSITY Ms. Stern. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Carper, and distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you so much for inviting me here. It is an honor to be here to speak to you about a topic I have been working on since the 1980s. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Stern appears in the Appendix on page 50. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- My dissertation adviser was Ash Carter, and he thought back then that it was weird that I was obsessed with terrorism, Iraq, and chemical weapons. He has admitted in public that he maybe was wrong at the time. When we think about what ISIS wants, I think there are two different aspects. One is: What does it want collectively? What does the group want? And here we see two contradictory goals. On the one hand, the group wants to run and spread its caliphate, not just in Iraq and Syria but in its so-called wil ayat, or provinces. One of the most important of these provinces is in Libya. At the same time, ISIS wants to polarize Muslim against Muslim, Muslim against non-Muslim, and goad us into sending g… truncated (107,107 more characters in archive)