The Daily - The Daily Presents “Caliphate,” Chapter 3

Episode Date: May 5, 2018

The New York Times has introduced a documentary audio series that follows Rukmini Callimachi, who covers terrorism for The Times, on her quest to understand ISIS. Today, as a special episode of “The Daily,” we offer Chapter 3 of “Caliphate,” in which ISIS turns fantasy into reality for a new recruit. 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 and the team that brought you The Daily, this is Caliphate. So I got everything together. Chilled with my friends for a bit that I had in Pakistan. They didn't know either. No one knew. I kept low. I knew I was going to be called a terrorist. It's looked down upon. Going out on jihad. Killing and this and that. So one of them dropped me off to the airport. And that's from there I went. All right, chapter three, the arrival.

All right, so you've now gotten, so you land in Istanbul. It's when, in 2014? This was in Istanbul. It's when, in 2014? This was in February. So walk me through. I mean, you're getting to passport control. Yeah, I got through passport control, and they asked me why I'm here. I told them I'm here for a humanitarian mission, and I have to go meet up with my agency outside. And they didn't really care, really.

From there, I met up with my link, Abu Muhammad. Did he say, meet me at this diner, I'll be in a red hat? No, no, no. He found me, actually. He told me, describe what you're wearing and everything, where you're standing, beside what are you standing, and everything. But you're using your smartphone to communicate with him and saying, I'm wearing this, I'm wearing that, I'm standing here. Yes, I was talking to him.

Through Tumblr. And he was a big, fat guy. He looked more like a bouncer-type guy to me, I guess. And then he came up to me, and I'm like, yeah. He's like, okay, come with me. So he picked up me and these four or five other guys. We drove just outside of the city. He said that I have to get you guys into Syria quick.

I have more people to pick up back in Turkey. He told us to travel 75, 80 meters along the fence. There's guys over there. You pay them and they point you to a hole in the fence. What kind of fence are we talking about here? Like chain link fence with barbed wire on top and then electric circuitry running up and down it. We paid him each 75 liras. And then he pointed us to a hole. He said, just go through there,

crawl through and run into Syria. He said, just keep running and you'll know when to stop. Just run, run, run far as you can. Run, run, run. What are you thinking at this point in time? Are you, is your heart pounding? This is so stupid. Why are we running into like a war-torn country? Can't we just go in like normal people who wouldn't, you know, cross the border and take us in like a truck or something? You're recruiting us.

That was what was on my mind. But I'm like, okay, I guess training starts here. We have to start trying to test us or something. Be if we're loyal or not. That's what in my mind. But I'm like, okay, I guess training starts here. They're trying to test us or something, if we're loyal or not. That's what I instantly thought, and then I just did what everyone else did. And we didn't run for very long, and there was like a truck. It was a pickup truck type thing. They're like, did you guys come from Turkey just now? We're like, yeah.

They're like, okay, come, get in. And then we left. And they straight drove us into Jarabulus. When you got to Jarabulus, did you see the ISIS flag? Yes, that's the first thing I saw. It looked glorious. It's like, wow.

It was waving in the wind. It just looked like a glorious black flag. I'm like, finally, I can live under the banner of Tawhid. The banner of Tawhid means the banner of a single god.

Yes. That was the flag of Isis. Right, so to you, this is the promised land. Yeah. All right, Rukmini. Yeah. This promised land idea, what is that?

What is he referring to there? Right. So you have to understand that for generations, jihadists have been dreaming of this thing that they call the caliphate. The caliphate is essentially a Muslim empire. It's a land that is for Muslims, governed by Muslims, as a theocracy where no other religion is allowed to thrive, and it becomes a safe space for them. Osama bin Laden talked about this frequently. Other jihadists dreamed of it. But ISIS broke with all of the other groups and says the time is now.

But ISIS broke with all of the other groups and says the time is now. Why ISIS and not the Nusra Front? So even in Syria, you had a chance to choose between groups, right? ISIS had a bigger goal of establishing establishment and control. In this time, in this generation, in this period on earth, in Iraq and Syria, in the chaos of those wars, they were going to fulfill this promise. So there's something, there was something inspiring about the fact that ISIS, unlike al-Qaeda, was saying we're going to do the caliphate now rather than something in the distant future. And that was a big idea back then, and they were planning on establishing it.

It was like in the works. And at this point in Josefa's story, where is ISIS at in this dream they have of building a state? So this could be a major turning point in the brutal war for control of Syria. They have started to take more and more territory. Rebels gather to celebrate their progress at a main crossroads. They've taken over towns, villages, including Raqqa. And in the places that they've taken over, they are starting to put together the trappings of government. It's becoming clearer and clearer to anyone who's paying attention that they are the winning group.

In the chaos of the Syrian civil war, they're the ones who are getting the most traction, the most land, the most fighters. President Obama speaking out about America's deadliest enemies, his choice of words getting a lot of attention. This is also around the same time in 2014 when President Obama... In an interview with the New Yorker magazine, he compares groups linked to Al Qaeda to an amateur basketball team. Goes so far as to call ISIS the JV team. Quote, the analogy we use around here sometimes that I think is accurate

is if a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant. But I was seeing this. And they were saying the caliphate is coming. Yeah. Meaning the caliphate is coming. Congratulations, the caliphate has come. I was seeing young men like Huzaifa who were leaving the West, going across the ocean to build this new state. I was talking to my Al-Qaeda sources in Mali and in Africa who were telling me, Rukmini, I'm getting ready to quit Al-Qaeda to go join this group because they are building this new nation. I want to be part of the first generation that establishes the new caliphate. At first, did it live up to itself? It did.

It was pretty organized. Like, it looks pretty clean. It doesn't look so war-torn. So I'm like, it shouldn't be so bad. It looks like they have everything under control. You know, you'd see everyone just walking around normally, the city life going on. The guys were quite friendly at first, too.

They were nice. They were explaining to us how everything would work, how we'd finally become a part of the Daulat al-Islam. They'd ask you to fill out the form of references, background checks, and what we needed to provide to them. Wait, they made you do background checks? Yes. And they had you fill out forms? Yes. The things that Huzaifa describes, I've seen these forms. I've held them in my own hands.

The form was like any regular form, your name, age, what level of education you have, where did you study, what countries have you ever traveled through and lived in, how you came to find out about them, why are you here, have you ever fought before, who referred you? Keep in mind, this is a group that at this point is paranoid of being infiltrated by spies. So an important relationship that you have to cite when you're coming into the Islamic State is your reference. So who is your reference at this point? Abu Muhammad, he was the same guy that smuggled me in, right? This is a person that is already inside of ISIS, that has been vetted by the group, and that is willing to basically just stand up and say, hey, I know this guy. I vouch for him. And they interview you. They ask me, what experiences do I have of jihad? What knowledge do I have of mujahideen fighting?

What did you say? I told them that I was familiar with al-Qaeda. I told them I was familiar with the Syrian battlefields and the Afghan battlefields. And then? And then they asked me what role I wanted to play. We know that they did an application process. They asked you if you want to become a suicide bomber.

Do you want an administration job? Do you want to become a mujahid? Do you want to become a local police officer? To basically determine where you will best fit inside the Islamic State. So what they called

the local police was a hispa and I enrolled into that. I thought you went there to be a fighter. Why be a police officer? Um, well, you know, when you're right there in front of the battlefield, you're like,

okay, what if I die? Because I had heard of a British guy. This is Iftikhar Jaman. I think his name was like Iftikhar or something. Whose parents run an Indian takeaway. Last summer, he left his job in a call center and like hundreds of other British Muslims, signed up with the deadliest fighter group in Syria.

And as soon as he got into battle, he was shot. He was killed almost instantaneously. And I wanted to avoid that. So I'm like, you know, I'll just work with this first. Did something scare you? So you're there on your second or third day. Up to now, you're telling us that you wanted to fight, you know, against the crimes of President Bashar al-Assad. But did something happen in that night or that day where you said, oh my goodness,

I'm, my God, I'm in too deep? Yeah. It was the fact that I don't think I can kill someone with my own hand. At that point, I didn't think I could right away. So maybe why not just run this police position? Because I thought that was the next lower thing to frontline battlefield. I'm like, maybe I can pick up some skills over there. So he decides to sign up for the Hizb ut, the religious police. They took picture of you. And they accept him.

Put you in a safe house. And pretty soon he's taken to a training camp. After that, training started. So you enroll in the Hizb, the Hizb means the religious police. The religious police, yes. Right. So what happens next? Weapons training.

We got, the very first thing we learned was parts of a rifle. The training was a couple of weeks long. And again, this is something that I've seen both in the documents that I have and in the interviews I've done with others. And it was, I would say, half weapons training. And these rifles were AKs. Learning how to use an AK-47. How to reload them.

How to clean out the gun. How to care for it. How to handle the gun if it AK-47. How to reload them. How to clean out the gun. How to care for it. How to handle the gun if it gets jammed. How to shoot it. We'd have to learn how to sleep with it between our legs pointed upwards. This is a technique so that you can grab it as quickly as possible. As quickly as possible and fire. And so you learn how to use an AK? Yeah. And a handgun. A Glock. Did you feel comfortable using the Glock by the end of your training? Yeah. Yeah, I actually really liked it because it was a lot like paintballing.

It's a sport that I used to play here and it was pretty fun. And then the other half was religious Sharia training. For a police officer, they said they need to have knowledge. You need to know why you're giving out punishments or you need to know why you're saying what you're saying. You need to know why you're giving out punishments or you need to know why you're saying what you're saying. You're learning the religious underpinnings of what you are doing in this hardline Islam that they are preaching. They taught you how to deal with locals there, what to do with them, what's a no-go. When you're apprehending someone, don't go to their female relatives or anything.

Go straight to the man himself and talk to him himself. If someone was caught, what straight to the man himself and talk to him himself. If someone was caught, what procedure to go through. In general, the trainers are people who have a history in the jihadist group, not necessarily in Iraq or Syria, but, you know, we heard of Moroccans, of Libyans, Saudis. We've also heard of people who were in the armies of their home countries, Russians who were in the Russian army, Chechens who come with their military training and share that with people on the ground. At this point, I was pretty excited. I invested myself fully into the training,

into the Sharia course. I did pretty good. I impressed my classmates. I did impress some of my commanders. I was always in their good books. What did you do to impress them? What did you like about your behavior? Obedience.

They liked the fact that I wouldn't question them too much and I'd stay quiet at times when I had to stay quiet. They liked how I was like straight up when I didn't know what to do, I didn't know what to do. They liked that. Evening time, they'd do training, military training. It would be obstacle courses, sleeping out, living without food. They'd ask you to carry out small-time missions for them, mostly delivery missions, like how we'd work as a team. They'd pair you up with different fighters and kind of put unity between the guys there. So he eventually gets posted to a town called Membij in northern Syria.

I've heard of Membij. I've heard of it many times because it became a hub for foreign fighters, for the Europeans, the North Americans who were joining this group. In fact, some of the most famous members of ISIS who went on to carry out devastating attacks in Europe, Abdelhamid Abawud, the leader of the Paris attacks, and others passed through Membage. The town itself is pretty small. I think the last census had 100,000 people. It's not far from the Turkish border. And he's living there in a communal house in a dormitory with other foreign fighters

who he shares every meal and every prayer with. And his job is to police the society around him according to the medieval codes of the Islamic State. What is the procedure? If someone was caught, like if they had cigarettes they were selling, gambling or if their pant legs weren't long enough, because for men they have to be above the ankle if they weren't long enough, so we'd have to make sure if the girls are wearing their clothing properly.

But the girls weren't our main concern. There was a female brigade for that. He was looking for things that to our Western eyes seem incredibly petty. His beard wasn't the right length, had to be at least fist length. What they're trying to do is they're trying to recreate the world that existed in the 7th century. This is the period of time when the Prophet Muhammad walked the earth, right? And so in their minds, they have fixed this epoch in time as being good. So everything that happened at this period in time is the way they are going to make people live now. People are going to have long beards.

Women are going to be fully covered up. Men need to wear trousers that look sort of like capri pants. Everything is being drawn from their interpretation of how life was lived in the 7th century. Yeah, like the Sun, the Sharia code, it's just like, I guess they put it into codes. Stuff like 148 was for cigarettes, 192 was tax evasion, 166 was drug dealing. They were incredibly organized and incredibly bureaucratic in how they went about creating their terrorist state. They'd go to a chief, a police chief, with the ticket and everything, with everything they've done,

with the evidence, we'd take them in, then he would give out the actual, what punishment they can have. And they enforced their rules through an intimidating and gruesome level of violence. What kind of punishments are you getting? Give me a handful of not severe up to the most severe.

Not severe would be, I guess, address code violations and flirting. That was when we'd put the guy in a cage in the middle of the street, just leave him there. What's this cage look like? A regular steel bar cage. I guess it'd be like a 4x4. And he'd have to wear sometimes a sign around his cage or a sign on his neck. It's the humiliation kind of thing.

Severe would be for thieves and for those who are not claiming what their capital is. Like they're not paying their taxes. Those are pretty severe punishments. Those go up to amputations and stuff like that. What's the death penalty for? What kind of crimes? Oh, the death penalty would be, like, hiding weapons in your house and not having them declared.

Drugs and alcohol. And out-of-marriage sex. Adultery, yeah. But lashes were the most basic punishment. So when you say lashings, do you mean like a... I don't know how big of a deal you're going to get. Oh, so lashing, there would be a certain amount of lashes, and that lashing would be done with a belt a leather belt and it would be like at least this thick with studs coming out this much metal is it like two inches maybe two and a half inches and how many tickets did you write in the

time that you were there oh like over 10 10 15 or yeah not that much. It was pretty easy. I didn't really like getting people into trouble. They were so innocent over there. Their faces, the families and everything. When you go talk to them, to confront them about something, the way they would react to you was you could sense the fear in their eyes. Like, oh my goodness, I have kids, my kid's with me. What's the most luscious that you meted out against a particular individual?

Oh, 115, 120 around. He, his wife wasn't wearing a niqab. It was his fault, yeah, because not enforcing it on his wife is his fault. How old was he, do you think? He was in his 40s. What does he do? Does he kneel in front of you? Does he stand in front of you? Is he naked? He has his hands tied in front of him, and he'd be wearing just a thin T-shirt and whatever clothes he had on. You'd have to lift the T-shirt up over his head so he'd be sort of blindfolded.

And then the guys, there'd be one guy in front who'd hold his hands even tighter together and they'd sort of just bend him forward and you'd just whip him and then you'd just go at him. How hard were you hitting him? I'd always give it my all. I'd feel bad, but I'd always give it my all. Again, I had my superiors over me, watching me.

Does he scream? Yeah, he screamed. They say, like, please have mercy on me and stop. Please stop. For the sake of God, stop. Took me an hour. I gave him the lashes in sections. So I'd do, like, 50 or so at at a time and then I'd stop and 15 more.

And then I took a little break. Again, you did feel bad. You're like, okay, so I'm actually inflicting pain on someone. Imagine this was happening to you and you're already afraid of going to the front lines and dying. Had you seen blood before? I mean real blood before this experience? Not like in person. Online I'd see that stuff, beheadings and stuff, but like not in person. How much did it cut on you? Uh, a lot. It'd get on your arms and like drops of it on your clothes. Sometimes a lot would get on your clothes and it wouldn't get out. So as he's telling us all this, like what's going on in your head?

It very much jives with the other accounts I have heard of what these punishments are like, down to the technical details of how they're carried out, the physical force that it takes to do it, the fact that the person executing the sentence is getting bloodied in addition to the prisoner, right? But in general, you hear the accounts of the savagery from the perspective of the victim. So you're usually putting this together on the other side, having talked to the person who received the whipping. So you're usually putting this together on the other side, having talked to the person

who received the whipping. Right. Had you ever had an experience of a former ISIS member opening up like this to you in this kind of confessional detail? No. No. There was also times where, aside from policing the local population, you'd have prisoners coming in from Iraq all the time.

Prisoners of war, dissidents coming in. And we'd have to kill them. And you did that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For the next couple months, you'll be hearing Caliphate unfold on the daily every Saturday, with Chapter 4 coming next Saturday, May 12th. We're also releasing Caliphate as a standalone series,

and we're publishing new episodes on Thursday afternoons, two days before you'll hear them on The Daily. So if you want to listen early, you can subscribe to the series by searching for Caliphate on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen. And for Time subscribers, we're making episodes available a full week early. So if you're a subscriber, Chapter 4 is available right now at nytimes.com. If you've been looking for a reason to subscribe, now might be a good time.