The Daily - Introducing “Caliphate,” a New York Times Audio Series

Episode Date: April 19, 2018

The New York Times presents a documentary audio series that follows Rukmini Callimachi, a foreign correspondent for The Times and a frequent voice on “The Daily,” as she reports on the Islamic State and the fall of the Iraqi city of Mosul. With the producer Andy Mills, Rukmini journeys to the heart of the conflict to grapple with the most pressing questions about ISIS and to comprehend the power and global pull of the militant group.Today, instead of our usual show, we offer the Prologue and Chapter 1 of “Caliphate.” For more information about the series, visit nytimes.com/caliphate.This episode includes disturbing language and scenes of graphic violence.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is a special episode of The Daily. Today, the Islamic State has attracted tens of thousands of followers from over a hundred nations around the world and, at their peak, controlled a total landmass larger than the United Kingdom. What is it that drew so many? And what is it that they're really trying to build? It's Thursday, April 19th.

We here at The Daily have been working on a new series focused on the reporting of my colleague, Rukmini Kalamaki. And today, we're bringing you the first two installments of that series, starting with The Prologue. How does ISIS prepare you to kill people? Is there anything? We had dolls. Yeah, we had dolls to practice on.

We also have cutouts of ballistics gels. It would feel a lot like human. And inside the ballistics gels, they'd have sacks where major organs would be. And then you could just slice, practice, behead, stab, and just practice. So it kind of felt like what a medical student would do. And you had to have to know how to use a knife on a human. Test one, two.

How's this? It's okay? Yeah. Okay. Okay, can I go back to the image? Of course. So, can you describe what we're looking at? Yeah. It's a man standing in the desert.

He's clad in black. His face is covered. All you see is a slit for his eyes. He has a knife in his hand, and he's stabbing it in the direction of the camera. At his feet is another man. I wish I had more time. This one is wearing an orange jumpsuit.

I wish I could have the hope of freedom and seeing my family once again. His name is James Foley. He's an American freelance journalist, and he's been kidnapped by the Islamic State. This is James Wright Foley, an American citizen of your country. And he's about to be executed. Any aggression towards the Islamic State will result in the bloodshed of your people.

This is basically how the world meets ISIS. Yeah. And now... Breaking news out of London, a deadly terror attack overnight. Years later, ISIS is... A van plowing into a crowd of people out simply enjoying a Saturday night. A bunch of guys in a van who are plowing into pedestrians on London Bridge, pulling out kitchen knives, stabbing people on the streets where they live.

Two suspects in San Bernardino's mass shooting identified. It's a husband and wife. I heard rapid shooting, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Who head to a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California, and come in guns blazing. Breaking news, an explosion at the very busy Port Authority bus terminal. It's an immigrant living in Brooklyn who straps on a suicide vest and tries to detonate it in a subway tunnel in Times Square, just a block away from my office. He told investigators

he detonated an explosive device in the name of ISIS. This is ISIS now. And I truly believe this is a defining moment in history. ISIS is the latest incarnation. This is clearly a case of good versus evil. Of a war we have been fighting now for nearly two decades. And make no mistake about it, good will prevail. We will continue to hunt down terrorists and dismantle their networks, and we reserve the right to act unilaterally. I'm going to bomb the shit out of them. It's true.

I don't care. They've got to be stopped. But here's the thing. Despite the billions of dollars we have spent, despite the thousands of lives that have been lost, both our own soldiers and the civilians that have been caught in the crossfire, there are more terrorists now

than there were on the eve of September 11th. Not less. Just try to get your head around that. There are of September 11th, not less. Just try to get your head around that. There are more terror groups now, not less. There are more ways that they attack. There are more strategies to do so. There are more tools that they use. There are more of them, not less. So like, as for you, in the simplest terms, what is it you're trying to find out? I am trying to answer one question. Who are they?

This is something you learned in the training. Yeah. They said that, you know, it's going to be hard for you guys, killing and everything. Who are they really? They said, first time, it's going to affect you a lot. You're going to be sad, you're going to be sick, and you might even faint from the blood. Who is it that we are really fighting?

But what you have to do is you just have to drink down those emotions. Remember you're doing this for God. Remember you're carrying out what it says in the Quran and what your duty is as a Muslim. And you, I mean, you didn't question that? I didn't, no. I didn't question that. We'll be right back. Chapter 1, The Reporter. You got a moment? Yeah, I'm just like, can you give me five? Will you be back there? I'll just meet you in that room with your stuff. Hello, hello.

Do I need to bring it closer? Hello. Yeah, here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. So, Rukmini, before I started following you around all the time, I knew that you were a reporter. I knew that you talked to terrorists on the internet. I knew that ISIS was your beat. reporter. I knew that you talked to terrorists on the internet. I knew that ISIS was your beat. But I don't think I had any idea what that reporting actually looks like. Right. Yeah.

Hey, Hawk. When you hear that, it's outgoing. Outgoing. I didn't know you are going right up to the front lines of the war against ISIS. There's a building that appears to have been airstriked. And as the coalition soldiers are pushing ISIS back... Have these buildings been cleared? You are right there, directly behind them. What are you doing right now? I'm trying to get out some trash bags. We're about to go into the building.

And you pull out garbage bags. Hang on, stick it here. Like trash bags that you've brought from home. And you just start picking stuff up. A bunch of computers. Hard drives yanked out. Like garbage out of buildings. This is a school book.

So we basically have a nice stamp right here. So we're in the right place. And when I tell people about that part of your job, they almost always ask two questions. First, there's a backpack right there and I really want to search it, but I'm a little scared to put my hand inside it. Isn't that dangerous? They could be booby-trapped, huh?

Could be. And I'm always like, yes, very dangerous. Fuck, fuck. There are explosions. That's close. And gunfire. Hey, smoke. You see this?

And airstrikes. How many airstrikes have you worked for? Three or four. Three or four? Try like 10. And the other question they ask is, how is that worth it? Right. Like, what do you say to that? So look, every reporter that covers conflict and war knows that you have to be there.

You have to be on the ground if you want to try to understand the story. And as for me, I'm trying to understand ISIS. And one thing I've learned is that if you're able to get to the buildings that they occupied right after they are liberated, and I mean right after. Ruth, can you describe what you're doing? Well, we're in a room off the side of a church that ISIS had used as a base. I'm looking at a notebook here. You often can find the documents that they left behind. Look at this one. It's a little diary.

It's like day by day. These are not documents that are meant for publication. So look, this is where they slept. This is a prayer mat. And then over there, these are the rockets that they manufacture. Imagine if you walked into my home right now, right? If you walked in right now, you would probably find my Bank of America statement. If you found that, you would find all of my daily transactions. You would know what diet I have. You would know that I have a penchant

for buying a certain kind of rice milk. You would know the stores that I go to shop at. So you might conclude from that that I'm probably middle class. If you walked over to the bookshelf, you would find books in Romanian, in English, and in French. And you could deduce from that that I most likely speak three languages

or that members of my family are bilingual or trilingual. If you went upstairs and you went into my bedroom and you found my diary, you would find my most private thoughts. And you're saying you do that to ISIS. And so I do that. So I am doing that to ISIS and Al-Qaeda, right? I am looking for ISIS's diary. I am looking for their internal correspondence, their receipts, their personal tips with co-workers, some of which end up getting sent to the equivalent of ISIS HR. The things they're struggling with, that they're writing letters back and forth about. And so the documents are generally what you are using to answer this

question, who are we really fighting? Yeah. You drove to Syria with your friend from Bremen, right? I thought to myself, I'll go down there, I live under Sharia. Of course, I'm a journalist, so I also want to talk to them. They said we need people who are willing to give their life, especially in suicide mission. That's incredibly difficult, but I've been able to speak to around two dozen of them, both in prisons in Europe. What did he do before ISIS came here? And in jails in both Syria and Iraq. He worked four months with them as a mechanic. Those interviews have been crucial for

me in understanding the general framework of how ISIS works and the motivations that push people to join them. But many of those interviews have also left me frustrated. They tired him and bent him over his chair. Because? And he chopped off his head. The overwhelming pattern is that they'll have witnessed an execution. They'll have witnessed a beheading. They'll have been present when a stoning took place.

When you saw those things, did you feel sick to your stomach? What was your reaction? I was shaky because I was shocked. But they never took part in it themselves. It seems to me that many times along the way you said no. Yeah. They weren't getting suspicious of you at this point? They were looking at me and asking me, why are you here then?

Over and over, this is the story they tell. Why are you here then? Over and over, this is the story they tell. When they did so, he said, I don't want to work with you anymore. So he quits. They were a cook. They were a driver. They were a translator. So Bashir, do you want to tell me what really happened? Or do you not want to be interviewed at all?

They present themselves as having been witnesses to horror, but never having carried out the horror themselves. I've lost interest because he's contradicted himself so many times that I just can't tell that anything he's saying is true. That's usually how it goes. Usually. Did you guys consider, you know, in these suicide attacks, like the Paris attacks, obviously children and women were also killed. Yeah.

How did they justify that? They said that they use the exact same justification for every attack. It's that they do it to us, so we do it to them. They bomb our women and children indiscrimin, so we do it to them. They bomb our women and children indiscriminately, we do it to them. So at a certain point, you decide that you want to quit. Yeah. Was there one moment or a series of moments?

The second time I did the kill, I killed someone. What are we going to call him? The Canadian? He wants us to call him Abu Huzaifa. This is his code name that he's chosen? Right. This is his nondegar, as they call it. And every ISIS fighter has a nondeguer. They don't enter the terrorist group with their own name. And the reason they do that is as a security measure to try to protect their identity.

So, Huzeifa. Abu Huzeifa. Abu Huzeifa. Yeah. All right. And how did you find him? It started with Instagram. So, he came to my attention through a researcher named Anad Agrin. She, like me, trolls these chat rooms and these platforms and she

had gone online and found Abu Huzaifa's Instagram feed. And in that Instagram feed she was able to put together that Abu Huzaifa is a Canadian, that he had been inside the Islamic State sometime, we believed, in 2014, and that he had returned to Canada and was somehow living in the general population. Did you ever see his Instagram? Yes. Yeah. You've got it. You've got it on. these are screenshots that you took on your screenshots that that onat took uh he's taken it down since then okay so basically his um his profile just shows the smiling kid um looks like he's wearing what like maybe a workout shirt yeah um but if you go back through it there are some things that are somewhat disturbing.

So for example, he reposts an image of a knife. Hang on, let me find it. Here it is. To me, it looks like a combination between a screwdriver and a normal knife. So it has this circular, this kind of spiral shape so that wherever you insert it, it doesn't cut along just one edge. It cuts in a spiral direction. And there's a caption on the image that he reposted. The caption says, deadliest knife ever. It takes a team of surgeons to seal the wound. Victim bleeds out in minutes. This is one evil knife. So Anat ended up doing a report on this and she sent it to me.

And I passed this on to our research team at the New York Times. And they were then able to cross-reference that material with his LinkedIn account. On his LinkedIn account, we found his email. And I sent him an email expecting, like I always do, that these people are not going to respond to me. Wait, what did you say in your email? I said to him what I always say, which is, my name is Rukmini Kalimaki. I'm a reporter for The New York Times where I cover al-Qaeda and ISIS.

And I'm very interested to learn about the Islamic State and your experience inside it. And of course I sent this expecting, you know, the obvious, which is that either he would not respond or he would say no. But... Hello? Hello. It's Rukmini here from the New York Times.

How are you? I'm good. Hi, Rukmini. How are you? Good, good, good. Am I catching you while you're in the car? Yeah, but it's okay. I got hands-free.

Okay. To my true surprise, a couple of days later, he responded. And I'd left Canada not directly for Syria. Yep. In the email, you know, I very gently asked him for his phone number. Once I had his phone number, I asked him if he would let me call him. Then I called him, and then I asked him for permission to come to Canada to see him. And would you allow me to come to **** with my team?

At every step, I thought he was going to say no. When would you come? I mean, that's kind of up to you. The fact that he said yes, and the fact that it had been so easy to find him, started to make me feel nervous. You know, I remember thinking, is there something I'm missing? Is this maybe a fake?

Why does he want to talk to me? You know, why would he want to talk to me? But what kept me going is I could also hear the hesitancy in his voice. certain things, like can you show me your, the stamps on your passport? Do you have images from Syria? But what kept me going is I could also hear the hesitancy in his voice. I have a few things I can show you. And so I had to take the chance. Test, test. That's good.

So the next step is you and I, you know, booked a ticket. You think it would throw off the feng shui if you sat here? Mm-mm. And we flew to Canada. We're not going to say where we went. The microphone faces this way, and you're projecting your voice this way.

You know, we set up ourselves in this hotel room. I texted him the name of the hotel, the address, the room number. And he agreed to come after the end of his workday, because he was working, I believe, at a restaurant. And then we started to wait. of his work day, because he was working, I believe, at a restaurant. And then we started to wait. And he was initially late by 15 minutes, then 20 minutes, then 30 minutes. We're still waiting. He says rush hour. I'm texting him and wondering if we're going to be,

you know, stood up. About an hour now, it's gone by. I mean, at a certain point, I almost gave up. I thought, this is it. We've basically just thrown away a plane ticket to Canada. And at some point, I remember that you turned around to ask me, do you think there's any chance

that this person is dangerous? Right, I asked you if you ever got scared. Do you remember what you did? No. Have you ever been afraid? Great, of course. Well, first... Oh, fuck.

Oh. A vacuum cleaner suddenly flipped on in one of the hotel rooms around us, which scared me. I had this really embarrassing thing happen. And then... You're recording. Can that not be? No, this is too embarrassing.

Okay. You had me turn off the microphone. I had you turn off the recorder, right? Right. And then you told me a story, and I think that, would you tell that story now? About the 911 call? Yeah. Yeah.

Sure. the 911 call? Yeah. Sure. So I don't usually scare easily, but in 2015 I get a phone call from the FBI. Are you Mr. Kamini Kalimaki? Yes, I am. May I come to see you right now? I can be at your office in the next 20 minutes. And we went into a conference room not far from here, and the agent read a prepared statement. He said, you are the subject of a targeted threat from the Islamic State, and we can't tell you more. That was the first serious threat. But it started to percolate, you know, somewhere that they were noticing what I was doing. Since then, I've seen how I've become a presence in their online chat rooms.

They talk about my reporting. They dissect my tweets. They sometimes insult me. And these insults, if I can just say so, sometimes are pretty funny. I think they figured out that I'm sensitive about my weight. So they sometimes call me oink-meany instead of rook-meany. It's oink-meany like pig. Fat-matchy. Oink-meany, fat-matchy. I'm sorry to laugh. I mean, there's something ironic about being fat-shamed by ISIS, you know. So, you know, they'll make jabs about how I've put on a couple of pounds based on my latest TV appearance.

But then sometimes what they say is dead serious. So, for example, when I was in Mosul a couple of months ago, they started talking about how they were hoping that I would get killed in Mosul, just like the Kurdish journalist who was killed there at the same time in the city. But then let's see, what are the others? Do you have like a folder on your phone where you keep the threats? Is that what I'm looking at here? Yeah, exactly. One of them is a masked man who was holding up a knife that he's pointing towards the camera. And he said under a picture of me, wanted to be killed this crusader woman that refuses to join to Islam,

Rukmini Kalimaki. Please join to religion before beheading or truck from our soldiers of Islamic state. Okay, pretty explicit. So they created a channel where they're pretending to be me, and then they're pretending to post in this channel as me. And it says, I have to confess something here. I started covering ISIS because they are real men. I always fantasize about getting raped by them. That's all my fantasies. This is the sole reason I made multiple trips to Mosul, just to get captured by ISIS so that they can fulfill my desires.

So I'm used to this stuff now. But back when the FBI first came, it didn't really sink in. It was so unbelievable that honestly, I just, I think first came, it didn't really sink in. It was so unbelievable that honestly, I just, I think I just stored it away somewhere else. And then weeks went by. There was another apparent terror attack in Europe, this time in Germany. And months went by. A series of deadly bombs, at least one packed with nails, killing dozens, injuring hundreds. And in that period of time, I covered attack after attack. Two terrorists stormed the church during morning mass,

taking a priest, two nuns, and two churchgoers hostage. And a planned and deliberate attack in suburban Sydney. It starts to just marinate in your consciousness. Yeah. German media reports the attacker shouted Allah Akbar as he hacked at the passengers. And then about a year later, I was home alone, late at night. So I'm home alone, and I'm by myself because at this point in time,

my husband was working the overnight at his company. At 12.30, I think, at night, I'm getting ready to go to bed. I'm actually under the covers and I'm upstairs with my two dogs. And suddenly my Rhodesian Ridgeback, which is a big dog, starts growling. The hair on his back is straight up. Immediately afterwards, I start hearing somebody ringing the doorbell downstairs. And they're ringing continuously. So it's not like, it's not like knock, knock and then go away. It's like, you know, knock, knock, knock. I'm thinking to myself, what is this? You know, like, like, you know, who is this? What is this? So I get a hold of my, my husband who assures me that it's not him. At this point, I've turned off the lights in the

second floor bedroom because I don't want the people who are outside to see where I am. So the dog is barking, the knocking is going on, and the doorbell is ringing and ringing and ringing. At this point, I'm so scared that my hands are not even working. 911, where is your emergency?

Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry to bother you. I don't know if this is an emergency. So the FBI agent who had come to see me had told me that they had alerted the particular police precinct where I lived. He said, if you ever have any issues, all you have to do is call 911. They have you on a list. We'd rather that you call rather than waiting for something to happen. My name is Rukmini Kalimaki, and I've had direct threats against me and my family. Ma'am, where is your emergency? But the operator who picked up must have thought I was crazy. Okay, so you're being, the FBI is making threats against you is what you're saying?

No, I said, did you see anyone? I was afraid to go up. I was afraid to show myself. Like, I just saw the silhouette of a person. And I can't remember exactly what the woman said, but it was something like, Ma'am, are you trying to tell me that ISIS is ringing your doorbell? Okay, I'll send an officer over to talk to you. Thank you so much, ma'am.

You're welcome. Bye-bye. So she calls me back and she says, Ma'am, I'm calling to tell you that we've investigated, and it happens to be the water department. There's been a water main break on your street, and as a result of this, they're going house to house to tell the neighborhood that your toilet is not going to flush. What do you think the moral of that story is, though?

What's the moral of that story? Like, why is it that that's the story you chose to tell me when I asked you if you've ever been afraid? I guess the story illustrates how I got and stared into the very thing that ISIS is trying to do. Because in the end, the purpose of these acts of savagery and violence are to terrorize us. They're trying to scare us, right? They're trying to make themselves into boogeymen and live in our imagination. And that night— They got you.

They got me that night. Yeah. So back to the hotel, we were there for like, what, two hours? Yeah. And then suddenly, out of the blue, there was... a knock at the door of our hotel room. And I was shocked because I had expected him to go to the lobby and that the lobby would call us, but instead he had managed to walk past the lobby.

How are you? Thank you for coming. We were getting a tad nervous. We were like, oh, my God. The traffic is like peak number two. Yeah. And I opened the door, and he had a hoodie on, and the hoodie was pulled so far forward that I could barely see his face. His face was in shadow.

And he kept it kind of pulled down like that for some time. Come on in. So we thought that we would, what did you want? I remember both of us being really friendly. I was like overtly like, hey, what is it dad? Can I get you some tea? No, it's fine. And then we sat down and started talking. Right. So, first of all, thank you so much for coming. You're obviously taking a risk, you know, in speaking to us. So I just wanted to ask if it's okay that we call you Abu Huzaifa?

Abu Huzaifa. Abu Huzaifa. Abu Huzaifa, yeah, with an F. Okay. So, as you know, I'm Rukmini this is Andy and as I explained to you when we talked earlier I'm trying

to understand the ideology of ISIS it's obviously an ideology that has a lot of pull tens of thousands of people have joined this group and I'm looking to you in the hopes that you can help us understand it better. Does that sound okay? Yeah. For the next 10 weeks, you'll be hearing Caliphate unfold on the daily every Saturday,

with Chapter 2 coming next Saturday, April 28th. We're also releasing Caliphate as a standalone series, and we'll be publishing new episodes on Thursday afternoons. You can subscribe to the series by searching for Caliphate on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher or wherever you listen. And for Time subscribers, we're making episodes available a full week early. So if you're already a subscriber,

Chapter 2 is available right now at nytimes.com slash caliphate. That's nytimes.com slash c-a-l-i-p-h-a-t-e. If you've been looking for a reason to subscribe, now might be a good time. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.