ISIS Tactics Questioned as Hostages Dwindle
By ROD NORDLAND

AMMAN, Jordan — The extremists of the Islamic State managed to parlay their Japanese and Jordanian hostages into 12 days of worldwide publicity. But other than depleting their supply of foreign hostages, did they really accomplish anything?

Analysts who study terrorist groups were skeptical, and many said the militants’ tactics had backfired badly, particularly in Jordan. The extremists apparently killed two Japanese men, but failed to achieve either of their professed goals: $200 million in ransom, and the release of a female Iraqi suicide bomber from death row in Jordan.

Their threat to kill a captive Jordanian air force pilot (and their failure to produce evidence that he was alive) did not achieve the intended effect of undermining support for Jordan’s role in the international coalition bombing the Islamic State. Now even skeptical Jordanians have begun rallying around their government’s position and denouncing the extremists.

That shift comes as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has nearly run out of Western or other foreign hostages, as fewer aid workers and journalists dare to enter Syrian territory. Last August, when the American-led bombing campaign began, the group held at least 23 Western hostages; now they are believed to have four hostages viewed as prominent internationally, including two Westerners. The extremists continue to hold an untold number of Syrians.

Over the weekend, the group released a video showing the apparent beheading of the journalist Kenji Goto, who was captured when he went to Syria last October in a bid to find Haruna Yukawa, a Japanese adventurer who disappeared there in August. A video showing a still image of Mr. Yukawa beheaded was released by the group on Jan. 24.

Beginning on Jan. 20, Mr. Goto was forced by his captors to plead for his life, directing those entreaties at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Similarly heart-rending messages were sent from his wife and mother in his final days.

In Mr. Goto’s apparent last moments, the Islamic State’s executioner, known as Jihadi John for his British-accented English, who appears in many of the beheading videos, taunted Mr. Abe: “This knife will not only slaughter Kenji, but will also carry on and cause carnage wherever your people are found.”

Mr. Abe responded that Japan “will cooperate with the international community and make the terrorists pay the price.” He added, “I’m outraged by the despicable terrorist act, and I will never forgive the terrorists.”

Jordanian officials were more circumspect, as their pilot remains at the extremists’ whim. Jordan’s offer to trade him for the suicide bomber, Sajida al-Rishawi, remains on the table.

But Jordanian society underwent a sea change in its attitude toward the coalition last week, as the fate of the pilot, First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, transfixed the country and its powerful tribes. Even many Jordanians who at the beginning of the week said the hostage crisis showed they were involved in someone else’s war seemed to change their minds, especially after the horrible images of Mr. Goto’s killing emerged.

“From Day 1 of Jordan joining the coalition against ISIS, part of our people believed it’s not our war,” said Oraib al-Rantawi, director of the Al-Quds Center for Political Studies here. “Another part felt that sooner or later it will be, so it’s better to fight them in the backyard of another country than in our own bedrooms.”

“Moaz is in every bedroom in Jordan now,” said Naif al-Amoun, a member of Jordan’s Parliament who is from Lieutenant Kasasbeh’s hometown, Karak. “We are not going to let anyone exploit this issue to turn us against the government.”

Mr. Amoun added, “In the last couple of days, the treatment of the pilot backfired against ISIS. Instead of dividing Jordan, Jordanians are more united behind their government.”

Ora Szekely, a political scientist at Clark University in Massachusetts who studies extremist groups like ISIS, said that nonstate actors like the Islamic State “are much less coherent and cohesive than they want us to think they are.”

Since the extremists seemed to have no coherent strategy in how they handled the Japanese and Jordanian hostages, their most likely goal was public relations — and it was a flop, she said. “There is a certain amount of making this up as they go along.”

“Killing the second Japanese was a big mistake and they got nothing for it,” said Clark McCauley, a psychology professor at Bryn Mawr College who studies political radicalization. “These people are in many ways their own worst enemies. You just have to give them time and space and their extremity will alienate their own base.”

Hassan Abu Hanieh, an Amman-based political analyst who follows extreme Islamist groups, cautioned that the Islamic State still has the pilot — assuming he is alive — and may well use his fate to try to shift Jordanian public opinion. Jordan is one of four Arab countries participating in airstrikes against ISIS.

While ISIS cares little about public opinion in Japan — or Britain or the United States, two other countries whose nationals have been beheaded — Jordan is a different matter. “It has goals for expansion into Jordan, and when ISIS realized this is a losing game on their end, they stopped the game and killed the Japanese, but not Lt. Kasasbeh,” Mr. Hanieh said.

Other than the Jordanian pilot, ISIS is known to be holding two Western hostages: the British journalist John Cantile, who has made a series of videotaped speeches on behalf of ISIS, and an American female aid worker, whose identity is being kept confidential. Another female aid worker from an undisclosed country is also being held. In addition, three staff workers for the International Committee of the Red Cross disappeared in October 2013, although no information has been released about their identities or who abducted them.

The Islamic State reportedly has been paid millions of dollars in ransom for its hostages, particularly in the past six months, making hostage-taking an important form of financing.

As one journalist working along the border between Turkey and Syria put it recently, “Journalists in Syria are seen as walking bags of money.” Unsurprisingly, most journalists and foreign aid workers are now avoiding Syria entirely — raising fears that the extremists would begin taking hostages elsewhere.

“The F.B.I. has recently obtained credible information indicating members of an ISIL-affiliated group are tasked with kidnapping journalists in the region and returning them to Syria,” American law enforcement officials warned journalists in an October bulletin. “Members of this group might try to mask their affiliation with ISIL to gain access to journalists.”

Many journalists working in the area are well aware of the risks. “ISIS has a network of agents roaming the areas that mostly attract journalists, near the border,” said Zaher Said, a Syrian who works for Western journalists in the Gaziantep area of southern Turkey.

“They disguise themselves as drivers or fixers offering to help journalists work in the south of Turkey, in order to establish good ties with them for a future plan of kidnapping them to the other side of the border,” said Mr. Said.

Most experienced journalists were aware of the risks in Turkey, and so far none had been kidnapped there. “It is not only ISIS and its network that poses a risk, but also self-motivated bounty hunters,” he said.

煽動約旦不成 IS人錢兩空

激進組織「伊斯蘭國」（IS）最近成功用日本和約旦人質吸引全球目光，但恐怖主義專家指出，IS幾乎沒達成原定目標，既沒拿到兩億美元贖金，也沒換到伊拉克女炸彈客蕾莎薇，而威脅殺害約旦飛行員卡薩薩巴，也未能強化「反對約旦政府加入空襲IS聯軍」的聲浪，相反地，原本不太支持轟炸IS的約旦人開始站在政府這一邊。

紐約時報報導，就在上周，約旦社會對於反IS國際聯軍的態度大幅轉變，全國人民和各部族都關心卡薩薩巴安危，許多約旦人上月廿五日還認為約旦捲入事不關己的戰爭，後來都改變看法，在第二個日本人質後藤健二被斬首的影像曝光後尤其如此。

約旦安曼「聖城政治研究中心」主任阮塔威說：「從約旦加入反IS國際聯軍的第一天起，部分約旦人就認為那不是我們的戰爭，另一部分人認為戰爭遲早會變得跟我們有關，與其在自家臥房裡跟他們作戰，不如在別國後院。」

出身卡薩薩巴家鄉卡拉克市的約旦國會議員亞木恩說：「現在每個約旦人都很關心卡薩薩巴，我們不會因為任何人挑撥離間就反對政府。最近幾天IS威脅要取卡薩薩巴性命，反而傷到IS自己，約旦社會不但沒有分裂，反而更支持政府。」

美國麻州克拉克大學極端組織專家歐拉．澤克立說，IS處置日本和約旦人質策略不一，看來他們最想達成的目標應是強力曝光、影響輿論，卻失敗了。

美國賓州布林莫爾學院研究激進分子的心理學教授麥考利說：「殺害第二個日本人質大錯特錯，IS沒因此得到任何好處。」

駐安曼政治分析家漢尼耶指出，IS想在約旦擴展勢力，但當他們體認到自己踢到鐵板，他們就收手，殺日本人而不是卡薩薩巴。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/world/middleeast/isis-tactics-questioned-as-hostages-dwindle.html

2015-02-03．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯李京倫