http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/09/savagery-war-2014985519!!459".

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On savagery and war
The Islamic State group and the wholesale violence in Iraq and Syria.
There's something terribly hypocritical or perhaps ignorant about the West's sudden outrage at the actions of the
Islamic State group, which has prompted condemnations, bombings and threats of greater military intervention.
The group's videotaping and dissemination of the killing of American ournalists !ames "oley and Steven Sotloff
is certainly savage# ust as its abuse of the religious minorities of $esopotamia is outrageous.
%ut Western governments, who for long turned their backs on the plight of Ira&is and Syrians, have decided to
act only after the Islamic State group's takeover of $osul and its strategic advance towards the 'urdistan
(egion.
It was the Islamic State group's &uick e)pansion over vast territories of Ira& and Syria * not its countless acts of
savagery * that moved the conversation about its threat from the West's dinning room into its +Situation (oom+.
Where was that horrified indignation when violence touched every community# or when it took the lives of ,,--.
Ira&i civilians in the first si) months of this year alone/
When millions of Ira&is slept hungry, thousands of women kidnapped in daylight, children shot on their way to
school/ When checkpoints, home raids, detentions, militia attacks, and secret terror prison, all multiplied/ 0r
when more than a hundred thousand Syrian civilians were killed/ When more than two thousand 1alestinians
were killed and a hundred thousand displaced/
$ore importantly, where was the outrage when (ussia supported %ashar al*Assad's killing machine, the 2nited
States supported 3ouri al*$aliki's 4and %enamin 3etanyahu's5 tactics and Iran supported both in their terrorising
+wars on terror+/
The gift of Islamic State
The Islamic State is the gift that keeps on giving. 6acking any coherent agenda or governing strategy beyond a
few cliches from a past era, it's been mostly helpful to its enemies. In other words, as one keen Ira& observer put
it to me, +ISIS is at your service+.
There's no better alibi for fear*mongering politicians and generals. Its black*fitted, long bearded, knife wielding,
'alashnikov*holding men have already spooked the Western public into compliance.
The Islamic State group provides the 2S with the ability to wash away its past sins in Ira& and the e)cuse to
intervene once again at the re&uest of its government as the saviour or Ira&'s minorities.
It grants Iran and 7e8bollah the ammunition to ustify their own military interference in Syria and Ira&, ust as the
Islamic State group's Sunni fundamentalism reinforces their sectarian approach to the conflicts from 6ebanon to
Afghanistan through Syria, Ira& and 9emen.
It's empowering authoritarian Arab regimes that dismiss the Arab uprisings of :;<< as no more than a conspiracy
instigated by Islamists of all walks of life from the $uslim %rotherhood to al*=aeda.
It offers ammunition to the warmongers in the >ast and West to continue their military buildups and inciting war.
It empowers the +liberal interventionists+, who seek greater +humanitarian military intervention+ * alas, a
contradiction in terms.
And it's even helping out the likes of the Assad and $aliki regimes to cash in on the fear and indignation even
when it is their policies and actions that have contributed to the rise of the Islamic State in the first place.
If the Islamic State group didn't e)ist, these cynical dictators and their international backers would've had to
invent it. Well, perhaps they did, albeit indirectly.
Tale of two prisons
The rise and proliferation of the Islamic State group and other violent ihadists, can be traced, among others, to
two maor prisons? the infamous Abu @hraib in Ira& and the no*less*infamous Sidnaya prison in Syria that are run
by their notorious security and intelligence services.
These are known as +terror prisons+ where torturing suspects has been the norm for many years, and where the
inhumane treatment was sure to either break them or radicalise prisoners. 7uman (ights organisations and
testimony by former prisoners paint a picture of humiliation and sadism using every imagined and unimaginable
method by interrogators.
Thousands of militants have been radicalised or further radicalised in these and Syrian, Ira&i and other known
and unknown Arab prisons and detention centres consecrated for the repression of terror suspects and political
dissidents. Those who survived the abuse in these prisons were bound to lose part of their humanity.
And so it should not be a surprise that when more than .;; vengeful diehard militants escaped after the Islamic
State group's attack on Abu @hraib prison last !uly, they were willing to do anything and everything for their
cause.
The prison break came against the backdrop of rising violence in Ira&. Almost -;; people were killed in attacks
across Ira& that very same month, according to the violence monitoring group Ira& %ody Aount.
The same thing happened in Syria, albeit with the direct complicity of the regime. Buring the early months of the
Syrian uprising that began in $arch :;<<, as loyal Assad forces were arresting tens of thousands of Syrian
students, liberal activists and human rights advocates, the Assad regime released ihadists from the country's
prisons in order to undermine the revolution.
6ike a self*fulfilled prophesy, $aliki and Assad's fight against dissidents turned into a +war on terror+ as ihadists
mushroomed like never before in Ira& and Syria. The intention being to demonise all the opposition as terrorist
fundamentalists and ustifying all violent means against them.
The Islamic State group and other ihadists have all too pragmatically concentrated most of their attacks on those
whom they called apostates and traitors among the Sunni opposition, leaving the regimes free to use the worst
imaginable violence against their own detractors.
Where was the horrified indignation then/
Retail and wholesale savagery
The Islamic State group has generally refrained from killing their hostages. Its latest criminal beheadings were
the e)ception to the rule. The group preferred instead to trade them for large sums of money, which was then
used to buy weapons and influence to e)pand their power base and eventually carry out more repression.
Their horrifying methods are meant to do ust that? horrify. 2sing the latest information technology and the
Western public's appetite for scandal and outrage, they disseminate images of their medieval or even pre Islamic
acts to intimidate and terrorise their people near and far.
And yet their horrors are miniscule in comparison with the dictators of pro)imity. These dictators C co. might play
tennis, shop online or put on shiny Wall Street ties, but the savagery of their regimes has proven far more
terrifying and bloody. The bombardment of entire communities using the most devastating bombs doesn't e)actly
produce clean or honourable deaths.
The same goes for the presumably indignant elites in the West whose wars# invasions and occupations have led
to millions of casualties in the region and beyond.
The fact that these are carried out by the latest in modern weaponry doesn't make them any less savage than
murdering with knives. The killings and maiming by drones, "*<.s, Tornados, $irages or $igs, to kill is no more
clinical, no less frightening but far more harmful and painful to their victims.
As Washington begins a new wave of bombings against the Islamic State group in Ira&, and asks Arab regimes
for support against the new common enemy, it's worth remembering that the people of the region have been
victimised by more and worse than the Islamic State.
Marwan Bishara is the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.