The production values are the same, the same camera tricks are used, but the form the latest Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) hostage video takes is very different from the previous ones. What is impossible to say is whether the new online propaganda piece by Isil, showing the British journalist and hostage, John Cantlie, marks a new direction for Isil; a turn away from the violence of its predecessors.
There is no clue to that. It may be another way of communicating the same message as before, appealing to a different type of audience. Up to now, Isil videos have gloried in their brutality. Even before the productions aimed at and starring westerners that have appeared over the past month, jihadists had posted hundreds of videos and photographs showing beheadings and other horrors, of Syrians and Iraqis captured in the group’s 17-month-long advance across the Middle East. The standard view was that they were intended as a form of “shock and awe”, reducing the will of those facing them to resist, and of those already under their sway to rebel.
Earlier this year, they killed up to 700 members of a tribe in eastern Syria that tried to break free from their rule. The killings of James Foley, Steven Sotloff and David Haines were not necessarily part of that trend: British and American troops are not likely to be in the line of fire, nor tempted to run away. But the overall intention was the same: “Don’t mess with us, as we are scarier than you can imagine.” There is some argument as to whether the purpose was to frighten off the “special relationship allies”, or draw them further into the fray. It is possibly not necessary to choose.
Ideally, Isil would like the West to stay clear, since the American and British air forces are a formidable adversary. But if not, drawing them further in, to make this all part of a war between Islam and the West, as it was for Osama bin Laden, is a good second best. John Cantlie’s appearance in front of the camera is very different in style. The British journalist, kidnapped almost two years ago and who many until recently was thought dead, wears the same orange jump suit, and his speech is dramatic and compelling. As with the other videos, there is a token “cutaway” shot, to mimic a real-life television documentary interview. But his calm diction and his neat, almost good-humoured delivery mark at least a change of pace. Gone is the dramatic landscape, the butchery, the horror-film effects.
This is stark, there is no backdrop, but it is conversational. And what Cantlie says would not be out of place in mainstream Western politics. The language is that of the anti-war movement: the media is trying “to drag the public back to the abyss of another war”. Like many complaints raised in recent years, he, or his Isil scriptwriter, says the “western media” can “twist and manipulate that truth”. “There are two sides to every story,” he says. “Think you’re getting the whole picture?” It is reminiscent of new, English-language media that promise a “counter-narrative” to the West, such as the Moscow-backed Russia Today, whose advertising claims that it is offering a “second opinion” to that of western, mainstream media.
From the very beginning, militant Islamists have been good at dividing their enemies into factions. Islamist militants in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s knew that they could balance their violent tactics, aimed at the royal family, against rhetoric that would touch a religious chord even in the pro-monarchical establishment, which won them concessions later on. When Osama Bin Laden ordered the September 11 attacks, he knew it would divide western societies, both against its Muslim minorities, and between those urging a hard response and those promoting the idea that terrorism has political causes that must be addressed. This video is for those who want the West to “think again” before embroiling itself in war, even as the beheading films effectively put out a mocking “come and get us” message. It hopes to lead to further bitter political division in the face of what everyone agrees is a threat to the western values of democracy and liberalism.
Cantlie goes on to discuss the different ways that Britain and the US on the one hand, and the rest of Europe on the other, have handled hostage crises. This is pointed, topical, and an attempt to sow the same seeds of discord. Two weeks ago, David Cameron bitterly criticised European countries for negotiating with terrorists and paying ransoms. But earlier last week, James Foley’s parents gave anguished interviews asking whether really anything more could have been tried to save their son. It goes without saying that there are many cruelties here, leaving aside the principle of forcing captives to make statements with which they may or may not agree in order to try to save their lives. “Maybe I will live and maybe I will die,” he says.
Cantlie, as a journalist, is a far more obvious candidate for last Saturday’s murderous performance than either David Haines, an aid worker, or Alan Henning, a volunteer for an Islamic charity. But as a journalist, and an articulate one, he is also able to make a more compelling, cinematic on-screen case. His life is spared for the time being as a result. Some observers of jihadi movements have already speculated that this video’s new approach is a response to the uproar that has spread across the world, including the Muslim world, to the recent beheading videos. Henning had been driving for an Islamic charity, delivering aid to Muslims; his Muslim friends pleaded personally with Isil to let him go. Have they relented? There is, sadly, little reason to suppose so yet.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2014
