ISIS, GENOCIDE AND A “THICK DESCRIPTION†OF POWER
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21776/jtg.v6i2.118Abstract
Introduction
On August 3, 2015, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters were marching with full military equipment to Kocho, a village that belongs to Yazidi, one of the minorities in Iraq, near Mount Sinjar (Kikoler, 2015). They captured 1200 men, women and children whom in the next two days ISIS told to leave their religious practice, which is a combination of elements of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and to convert to Islam. When the majority of Yazidi's men refused the demand, all of them were taken with their eyes blindfolded around 500 meters outside the village, and upon arriving at the destination, they were lined up, videotaped and shot (Amnesty International Canada, August 18, 2014). The women became sex slaves (Smith, 2014) and the children were transferred to ISIS’s camp to train as soldiers (McLaughlin, 2016).
The story above from Kocho is a one of frames that is used repeatedly to justify the allegation of ISIS conducting genocide toward Yazidi as well as other minorities in Iraq and Syria. The European Union, for instance, announced in the beginning of 2016 that ISIS was "committing genocide against Christians and Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities (Brown, 2016). Later, this statement was followed by the announcement of the US government in March 2016 that stated ISIS “is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christian and Shiite Muslims†(Labott & Kopan, 2016).Â
Huy (2010) in his comment on the book of one Khmer Rouge’s survivor, Bou Meng, says genocide “has always been a political act, and always will be.†Politics, according to Morgenthou (1985), is about interest defining in terms of power. Indeed, as one of the ISIS's fighters says above, by joining ISIS and subsequently becoming involved in genocidal acts, it brings them the feeling of being free. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), to be free means to be “able to act as one wishes, determining one’s own action or choice; done or made without compulsion or constraint†(Oxford English Dictionary online, 2016). In other words, the perpetrators acknowledge that their ruthless behaviors are the sign of power because, as it is written in the OED, power creates a sense of the “ability to act or affect something strongly; [exhibiting] physical or mental strength†(Oxford English Dictionary online, 2016).Â
How can genocidal acts be political while also creating a sense of power within the perpetrators? To what extent do the atrocious acts of mass killings, sex slavery as well as human trafficking involving children create a sense of power to ISIS’s fighters? This essay aims to construct a "thick description" of power within ISIS’s genocidal acts. The ideas brought forth is that genocide as it was against Yazidi reflects the meaning ISIS’s members give to power and how it operates in social life.Â
References
Amann, D. M., & Oxman, D. (1999). Prosecutor v. Akayesu. case ICTR-96-4-T. international criminal tribunal for Rwanda, September 2, 1998. AJIL, 93, 195-988.
Amnesty International Canada. (August 18, 2014). Testimonies from Kocho: The village ISIS to wipe off the map. Retrieved March 1, 2016, from http://www.amnesty.ca/blog/testimonies-from-kocho-the-village-isis-tried-to-wipe-off-the-map
Austin, J. L. (2016). How to do things with words. In H. Bial (Ed.), The performance studies reader (pp. 205-210). New York: Routledge.
Barthes, R. (1991). Mythologies. New York: The Noonday Press.
Bartov, O., & Mac, P. (2014). In God's name. In J. Meierhenrich (Ed.), Genocide: A reader (pp. 142-144). New York: Oxford University Press.
Beeman, W. O. (1997). Conformity and conflict: Readings in cultural Anthropology. In J. P. Spradley, & D. W. McCurdy (Eds.), Conformity and conflict: Readings in cultural Anthropology (pp. 330-336). New York: Longman.
Brown, L. (2016, Feb 4). European parliament calls ISIS atrocities against religious minorities "genocide. CSNNews, pp. 1.
Butler, J. (1990). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. In S. Case (Ed.), Performing feminisms: Feminist critical theory and theatre (pp. 270-288). Baltimore: JHU Press.
Card, C. (2014). Genocide and social death. In J. Meierhenrich (Ed.), Genocide: A reader (pp. 302-304). New York: Oxford University Press.
Chute, H. (2006). The shadow of a past time: History and graphic representation in Maus. Twentieth Century Literature, 52(2), 199-230.
de Saussure, F. (2006). Nature of the linguistic sign. In S. Manghani, P. Piper & J. Simons (Eds.), Images: A reader (pp. 105-107). London: Sage Pub.
Foucault, M. (1988). Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason. New York: Vintage.
Goodenough, P. (2016). ISIS urges supporters to kill Muslims "infidels" in the west. Retrieved March 12, 2016, from http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/isis-urges-supporters-kill-named-muslim-infidels-west-rep-ellison
Hinton, A. L. (2012). Critical genocide studies. Genocide Studies and Prevention, 7(1), 4-15.
Hooks, B. (2010). Critical thinking. In Bell Hooks (Ed.), Teaching critical thinking: Practical wisdom (pp. 7-11). New York. Routledge.
Jaspers, K. (2014). The question of german guilt. In J. Meierhenrich (Ed.), Genocide: A reader (pp. 365-367). New York: Oxford University Press.
Kikoler, N. (2015). Our generation is gone. Washington: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Labott, E., & Kopan, T. (2016). John Kerry: ISIS responsible for genocide. Retrieved March 18, 2016, from http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/17/politics/us-iraq-syria-genocide/
Lemkin, R. (2014). Genos and cides. In J. Meierhenrich (Ed.), Genocide: A reader (pp. 57-61). New York: Oxford University Press.
MacKinnon, C. A. (2014). Defining rape internationally. In J. Meierhenrich (Ed.), Genocide: A reader (pp. 334-337). New York: Oxford University Press.
McCants, W. (2015). The ISIS apocalypse: The history, strategy, and doomsday vision of the Islamic state Macmillan.
McLaughlin, E. (2016). How ISIS recruits children, then kills them. Retrieved feb 22, 2016, from http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/19/middleeast/isis-child-soldiers/
Morgenthau, H. J. (1985). Politics among nations.. New York: KnOpt
Oxford English Dictionary online. (2016). Oxford english dictionary online., 2016, from http://www.oed.com
Panh, R., & Bataille, C. (2013). The elimination: A survivor of the Khmer Rouge confronts his past and the commandant of the killing fields. New York: Other Press, LLC.
Parsons, T. (1963). On the concept of political power. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 107(3), 232-262.
Schmid, A. P. (2015). Introductory note. Perspective on Terrorism, 9(2), 80.
Shah, N. A. (2011). Islamic law and the law of armed conflict: The conflict in Pakistan. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Shapiro, C. R. (2014). Children's drawing of Darfur. In J. Meierhenrich (Ed.), Genocide: A reader (pp. 394-397). New York: Oxford University Press.
Sharlach, L. (2000). Rape as genocide: Bangladesh, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. New Political Science, 22(1), 89-102.
Simone, G. (2009). Wonder Woman: Rise of the Olympians. New York: DC Comics.
Smith, A. (2014). ISIS publish pamphlet on how to treat female slaves. Retrieved March 11, 2016, from http://www.newsweek.com/isis-release-questions-and-answers-pamphlet-how-treat-female-slaves-290511
Sofsky, W. (2014). Nazi concentration camps. In J. Meierhenrich (Ed.), Genocide: A reader (pp. 229-233). New York: Oxford University Press.
Spiegelman, A. (2011). MetaMaus: A look inside a modern classic Maus. New York: Pantheon.
United Nations. (2014). United Nations Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In J. Meierhenrich (Ed.), Genocide: A readers (pp. 62-65). New York: Oxford University Press.
Vannak, H. (2010). Comment. In B. Meng (Ed.), Bou Meng: A survivor from Khmer Rouge prison S-21 (). Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia.
Wallace, A. F. (1956). Revitalization movements. American Anthropologist, 58(2), 264-281.
