What i was about to say was we can disagree about the reasons. Those reasons, not the only reason, one of those reasons is the fact that police in many high crime communities have abused their authority and their power. You can deny that takes place, but it is an element. And i believe that very strongly. Having tod we are wrap up. I apologize to those standing at the microphones. Please give a nice round of applause for these panelists. [applause] [indistinct chatter] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] newsmakers, democratic chair Raymond Buckley discuss the 2016 campaign so far. New hampshires first in the nation primary, the issues that matter to hampshire voters, and the states role in vetting the president ial candidates. Today at 6 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Two things are very different today. First of all, we have a justice system. These trials were not held to what we would consider to be mild to be law. There was a lot of hearsay. No one had a defense. There were no lawyers, by the way. The courtroom is an extremely unruly place. So that is one piece of it. We dont have happen to believe in witchcraft. ,nouncer tonight on q a if talks aboutch her book. The interesting part about the accusations, especially given the way we think of salem, is that wealthy emergence were accused of which is, sea captains were accused of which is, homeless five year old girls were accused to be witches. This is not an incident where all the victims are female. We have five male victims, including a minister here. And we dont burn witches, we hang them. There was so much encrusted in myth and so much misunderstanding here that i felt it was important to dispel. Announcer tonight at 8 00 eastern and pacific on cspans q a. Now, a discussion of the history, motivations, and strategies of the terror group known as isis. The International Institute for strategic studies hosted the discussion tuesday before the attacks took place in paris. This is almost an hour. Welcome. An indepth conversation on isis. We are here primarily to avoid any confusion about isis and iiss. I have actually been asked about that. From time to time. We have two notable guests to mark the occasion. One, jodie, who has just tablets published a memorable book. On the rise of isis. He is a journalist from the Washington Post to join the staff in 1996. He has covered National Security in the middle east and currently writes about the environment, where he won the pulitzer prize, years ago, i believe. His previous bestselling book, the triple agent, which i will ask him about charlie, i think helped inspire this book. It is not i think it is in the introduction or acknowledgments. Second, we have mailing me lly, an associatean me an associate professor at west point. And more importantly, she will be joining us as a Senior Research fellow at iiss and bahrain in my brain next month in the great in bah rain next month, i believe. Im told to warn you, her views in no way reflect anything about the military or the army. We are going to have a discussion here for about 20 minutes. And then i will turn it over to the audience for q and a. This discussion will be on the record and recorded. Ask you aboutill your account. Fascinatingly, it focused on a number of individuals. Story of zarqawi, and his rise in jordan, his release from prison, his time in Northern Iraq, and ultimately his demise. Of at also tells the story number of key figures who tried , and the story of how he led the insurgency in iraq. Im wondering if you did this, took this approach for purely narrative reasons as a journalist, or if you feel that the rise of isis is really a story about individuals and their own contingencies. In other words, could isis have been prevented if zarqawi was still in an and jordanian an jordanian prison, for example. Thank you. Forthanks again to iiss hosting this event and for being such a great resource to me and members of the public over the years. Nice to meet nelly and then today. And i also add to the congratulations. Group comes to mind who is also isis and now has this particular program problem of having to explain that it is the good isis now. If you google isis these days, you wont get anywhere close to his group. I guess the starting point for me, i am, as a journalist, a story teacher storyteller by nature. Me that hisear to importance was really underrecognized. And what he was able to create was quite unique. He moves into a spate space wire al qaeda was operating. It became a huge challenge problem for us. He did it very deliberately, even though in many ways he is probably the most least suited or least qualified person to lead a terrorist movement. He had been arrested for petty crimes as a kid. When off to fight jihad, didnt do particularly well at it. But then he threw a series of circumstances innovated some really unique ideas and ways that al qaeda rejected as being too brutal. But he had such a powerful following, such an interesting core group that he formed around thislf that it became really powerful and very Strategic Force in iraq. So there was an important story that needs to be told and broken down and understood. And so much more important than the isis content because without the book, there is without zarqawi, there is no isis. It isg from something that he decided in iraq had to be done immediately as a shortterm proposition. He was talking about that as early as 2005, 2006. Importantly, he is this innovator of through sheer brutality of achieving objectives. He didnt care about his own popularity. He didnt want to be liked. He wanted to be feared and respected, and he wanted to make things happen by shaking things up. He innovated the idea of parading men before a camera and cutting their heads off. Got really for the first time in 2004. I think it is really important story and one that we really need to understand now if you want to understand isis. Zarqawi would not have existed without a series of really incredible missteps by a number of outside individuals and parties, including our own government. I just wanted to try to help worlds, not people in our being saturated with this, but understand all these points that most of us are very familiar with. And the movement that followed him. Nelly, usually social sciences dont like to focus on individuals. Your mind, what were the main circumstances that led to the rise of isis . Ideological reactions to the u. S. Invasion, opponents to the top regimes. First, thank you for inviting me to be part of this event and to me joby. If i may Say Something about so one of the things that joby tells us about his book is this bombing that was carried out initially by zarqawis group that they tried to target an adult cinema. And the wouldbe bomber was too engrossed with the film that he was watching that he forgot about the mission he was supposed to carry out. He lost hisbought legs in the process. So i started reading it while i was on the train to work, and on that day, there were some mechanical difficulties on the train. And apparently we needed to change trains and everybody left the train except for me. I couldnt hear any of the announcements until one of the train conductor stood over me and said you really need to leave the train. [indiscernible] [laughter] by all means. I found myself really really enjoying many of these stories and aspects that i hadnt read elsewhere. Y oni do want to commend job taking us back to the early is, or the group that calls itself the Islamic State. Since june 2014 when it was proclaimed to be, the caliphate has had so many books that has flooded the market, and so many of them seem to begin with and personalities do matter. And i think what we have found zarqawi is actually a different brand of jihadism. I think for a very long time, we had been accustomed to the jihadism that was dominated by al qaedas leadership. Other personalities of bin laden. Perhaps by the personalities of, shall be shaken, bourgeois jihadis. Those that shows up as a result of idealism. They were the dangerous dreamers. But we saw a kind of jihadists ideast was really about ideals, about the need to die for a cause and so on. And i think with zarqawi, we are different atmosphere to it is certainly bridge law, but the thugs who decided they wanted to be jihadis. Jihadis. And we have seen some of those differences between al qaedas brand of jihad is a, at least on , and based onm the narrative side, and what we are seeing today. In that respect, the book really fills an important gap. But i do want to say that there were aspects of the book that i think it doesnt we still have gaps in understanding the foundation of is. Seriousink there was a gap in the book from 2006 to around 2011. This is my bias here. Im studying the leadership of what was called isi between 2006 and 2010. Daddy hink big baghdadi is the neglected leader. And something that has been neglected about this period, particularly it was because he wanted to declare the state. The Islamic State of iraq was on the him. He was the one who proclaimed it. There was also another phase i would like to know little bit more about in order for us to have a better appreciation of i. S. Which is a time when you described him of when zarqawi demoted himself. This is when it became a part of and this is a very important time because we saw many groups in iraq who actually joined is r. The umbrella, and kellys group was one of many. We saw many serious divides. We saw some of the groups appealing to bin laden. What kind of disaster did you bring . Why dont you dissociate yourself from these groups . From zarqawi . If there was one report i dont know about its authenticity it suggests it was albagdadi who was the leader. When i read his statement, he is he is he provides almost, if you like, that the reservation the arise theorization of what he calls the beheading. Unstoppable, at least in [indiscernible] we may say there was no state, and of course it was weak, but the hierarchy and the infrastructure of the state at least on paper, and of course all these various to said operations and various other operations that were mounted and iraq, were also a time during ab u omars year. Because that is your book. May be. [laughter] joby, i would like to ask you about your time in jordan, seeing it as a factor in your, as i have said before, probably what helped inspire this book. You went to remote places outside of oman, including prisons. Im wondering if you could talk a little bit about the people you met from the g. I. D g. I. D and their role in jordans security establishment and how that contributed possibly positively or negatively to the rise of isis and the story in general. I think that jordan and the g. I. D. Are really essential characters in the story. Zarqawi was a jordanian. At the same time, as i understand him, his real influence as a jihadi was out of the country. It is not part of the jordanian movement per se. Was influenced more by his his experience in afghanistan, and then coming back to jordan years later and helping start a prisonat all ended up in part because of these lovely attempted bombings that they could never pull off. He didnt have a single successful attack ever. The one that filled the most famously was just described by nelly. But what was important and what comes out of this story is really jordans role it is interesting they recognized they had a serious problem, they sought as early as the early 1990s with these afghan fighters coming back to the country looking for things to do, being radicalized, and getting into trouble. Pretty sophisticated containment operation began at that time. It was pretty good it had to deal pretty new. It was sort of a homegrown terrorist problem that they were having to deal with, its quite brutally at times. There was a combination they did very well. They had extremely good penetration, which i think is easier to do in a small country. But i have always been impressed hashe fact that the g. I. D. A pretty good grasp of everything that is going on and they control the potential troublemakers. Fortress has the nickname for it used to be the fingernail factory. They have become a little bit more a little less rough around the edges. But they do what they need to do, including keeping people in prison for quite a long period of time. The ideological partners was a guy who was a kuwaiti born palestinian who had sort of the philosophy that started this movement. And after he was released, zarqawi and Office Elements were eventually released in a general amnesty in 1999, but the jordanians saw him as a threat and they kept him essentially imprison for the rest of, you know, until actually just a few months ago. When he lets them out was putting out messages that they supported. Criticizing zarqawi, for example. They have been pretty good at controlling some of these groups. It is not just the jordanian population they are dealing with, but a huge number of outsiders. And not just any refugee camps, but all the cities. And then you also have the problem of having isis on two sides of the border in iraq and syria. Has amplifiedem in the last couple of years. They are continuing complaining to me when asked the to them about just how, you know, not just a resource problem, but they feel disadvantaged and shortchanged on every front. And they are fighting a challenge that is really unique in the region and their absolutely essential to keeping prices from spreading further keeping isis from spreading further. Elementsort of a tragic to what is happening to the country. Acted upon by outside forces in a way that has been disastrous economically. From your time in jordan, did you pick up any certain blowback among the population about the treatment of prisoners . Or does it affect the radicalization . Well, one mistake that was made and i think the jordanians would it be knowledge this would acknowledge this, back in the 1990s, they kept the jihadists to gather. And this was a tactical decision because these hardcore guys were affecting the regulars, the ordinary criminals. So they chose to put them all together, and the book opens up with the scene of these 50 radicals all present together in this gel that all prisons to all prisoned together in this jail that had been abandoned. It is obviously hard to get a true version of what happened, but essentially it helped drive these guys together, it helped to create a more radical clic than had existed before that. And not came back to hot the jordanians haunt the jordanians many times over. It is part of their efforts today, they are very good at not to penetration, but good human intelligence. Talking to ordinary officers, the equivalent of almost more fbi then cia, dealing with families of young men who were camp ando the jihadist working with parents, working with siblings and making many, many houses. A real street level care and attention being paid to potential problems that were coming up. I think that is what makes them remarkably, if you look at the region, stable compared to their neighbors. Nelly, going back to isis today, can you help us situate them in the spectrum of Islamist Groups and talk a little bit more about the difference with al qaeda and how that evolved . Sure. Time mentor of saarc normally iarqawi, prefer to call them jihadis. The islamists are those i consider to be groups who use islam as part of their political agenda, but they are willing to conduct elections. They are part of the political process. Are those whos reject the political process altogether. On the jihadi spectrum, i think we counter the group that came , reallyisis, or i. S. Through the lens of the king. He is the person, or the ideologue, whose writings provided the foundations of that brand of secretary is an secretary and is a secretarianism. One of his early books that became quite popular amongst his followers is the religion of abraham. In it, he really provides the deceit for that kind of secreta rianism that zarqawi would really run with. Zarqawieen said that and others abused his writings, but they didnt really. You just go back and read his writings and you know that he is hisone who reneged on words, but they didnt use them. And that to get into too much technicalities about this, but the main difference and this is the difference that was very clear to bin laden when they first met saarc hourly back in 1999 zarqawi back in 1999, they didnt want to have anything to do with him. I do want to get too technical, but these are the kind of social contracts of the jihadis, or in that case, the global contract. It is the notion of with whom you want to associate, in terms of believers. And it is from with whom you want to disassociate. Whereas al qaeda and bin laden, they wanted to focus and emphasize the values of bringing people together. Turn, concerned about the people you need to disassociate. Precisely because they did not share your believes and they didnt really they reject the shiites and the way the ought to reject them and so on. And for those who actually emphasized that aspect, this this association on the basis of beliefs disassociation on the basis of beliefs, they were forced to resort to that 20 muslim declares to be unbelievers. Mainstream muslims, including bin laden and he wouldnt be mentioned but even people like bin laden were very, very careful and they were not utilize it. Mainstream muslims would tell theonly got decides believers intentions because you can only use it against those only god knows it. Whereas our car we zarqawi knew better. He thought they wanted to cleanse and purify the faith from those believes they disapproved of. On the ideological spectrum, this is where we see the roots of that sectarian ideology emerging. Out of his writings. Zarqawi becomes the arm that advances it. We see his disciples, one of the people who was fighting along zarqawi. He died in iraq. He was furious with zarqawi, howard dare you send him to the battlefield. How dare you sent him to the battlefield. From that respect, we see a clear difference between the strategically oriented to hotties jihadis and those who were sectarian, who were prepared to sacrifice strategic objectives to appear if i be the tension was always probable. To purify the faith. The tension was always palpable. They said they had refused to to teach his book in the training camps. That is why zarqawi did not want to join al qaeda. Later on, bin laden and others were more pragmatic. They brought him in when he became more mellow bowl. The issues, it is not that the regime only used him. He was also using the machine. Also, abusing the jihadis who followed his views. It seems, if you look at the trajectory in and out of prison, it is one where he was willing to make concessions. Soon thereafter, we see him being released from prison. You want to add anything . I will ask one more question to joby. You described in depth in the book, i think quite well, about the milita