South Korea/Japan and ISIS' war of attrition

By David Keelaghan

If the Paris massacres didn’t prove Islamic fundamentalism was a global problem, events these past few days have certainly added more fuel to that particular fire. Japan and South Korea, more accustomed to arguing over Tokyo’s historic revisionism of World War II, instead were both forced to turn their attention toward Syria this week.

For South Korea, this came in somewhat embarrassing circumstances. On Wednesday, The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency confirmed that the teenager reported missing last week in Turkey had most likely crossed the Syrian border to join ISIS. The 18-year-old, identified only by his surname Kim, had apparently exchanged messages with a member of the radical Islamist group over Twitter and later Surespot, a secure mobile messaging app, before leaving Korea on Jan.8. After analyzing his computer, police found that Kim had developed a near obsession with ISIS, and had left what now appear to be prophetic words on his Facebook page a day before arriving in Turkey: "I want to leave my country and family. I just want to start a new life."

Last seen meeting another man outside his hotel in the Turkish border town of Kilis, the two subsequently took a taxi with Syrian plates to a refugee camp 18km away in Besiriye. His whereabouts since then is unknown, but the evidence sourced from his computer certainly points to Kim adding his name to a growing list of foreign fighters pledging themselves to the Islamic State.

Japan, in contrast, is currently dealing with a hostage situation involving two of its countrymen.

On Tuesday, well-known freelance journalist Kenji Goto and military contractor Haruna Yukawa were shown in a video released by Islamic State’s media arm. Ominously for the two, the footage draws comparison to previous releases by ISIS in that Goto and Yukawa are shown on their knees and dressed in orange jumpsuits. They are accompanied by an ISIS militant brandishing a large knife, who speaking with a British accent addressed Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe directly: “To the Prime Minister of Japan: Although you are more than 8,000 and 500 kilometers from ISIS, you willingly have volunteered to take part in this crusade. You have proudly donated $100m to kill our women and children, to destroy the homes of the Muslims.”

The man speaking in the video is believed to be “Jihadi John,” who gained infamy last year after appearing in videos beheading Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff and Peter Kassig, as well as British hostages David Haines and Alan Henning.

Warning the Japanese public they had 72 hours to force the government into ending support of the U.S. campaign against ISIS, the militant then demanded a ransom of $200m to release the captives.

The figure, though huge, appears to be a direct response to Abe’s pledge in Cairo last Saturday of $200m in non-military aid for countries fighting the Islamic State.

Speaking after the release of the video, Shinzo Abe was bullish over his stance in the Middle East, saying: “The international community will not give in to any form of terrorism and we have to make sure that we work together."

Given ISIS’ track record, should Japan refuse to pay the ransom, as currently appears likely, the prospects of Goto and Yukawa returning home look bleak.

While the two have been criticized in some quarters for putting themselves in harm’s way, nevertheless, their intention was never to end up presented to the world’s media with their lives being used as bargaining chips.

That their perilous situation comes at a time when a South Korean national has apparently joined their captors is somewhat ironic, given the history of the two nations. Kim, who had been set to sit his high school qualification exams later this year, may find Syria a different proposition than he had planned for, however. Should Tokyo relent and pay the $200m ransom, it’s hardly inconceivable that the Islamic State’s latest recruit will soon appear before a camera himself on his knees and in an orange jumpsuit.

The story of Kim is notable exactly because it is so strange. South Korea is normally not a stronghold for jihadist recruitment. Regardless, one of the group’s major strengths has been its ability to use social media to build support and convince disenfranchised people across the world that theirs is a just and noble cause.

Although exact numbers are hard to come by in the morass that is present day Syria/Iraq, the U.S. State Department estimates that around 16,000 foreign fighters from 90 different countries have joined ISIS since 2012.

To put that in context, there are currently 191 member nations in the UN, meaning almost half of them have had someone fight under the ISIS banner.

One such individual is the aforementioned “Jihadi John,” given that name by his captives as he shared nationality with the Beatles’ John Lennon.

Such beliefs are a minority view among its large Muslim population, but the U.K has nonetheless provided a fertile breeding ground for Islamic radicalism. Hundreds have left to join the fight in Syria and Iraq, although many of those same people subsequently found that preaching jihad is significantly easier than actively participating in it.

The British security service, MI5, claims that around 300 jihadists have returned to Britain after experiencing first-hand just what the frontline of war was really like. That they made it home at all should offer some comfort, given the fact ISIS normally doesn’t take kindly to resignations.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K-based watchdog on the conflict, said that in the last three months of 2014, ISIS executed 120 of its own fighters who wanted to return to their home countries.

This severance policy has not detracted from hordes of young men and women continuing to cross the porous Turkish/Syrian border in search of jihad, however. Last month, it was reported that at least 19 men, the majority of whom were Russian, made that exact crossing on route to joining the Islamic State ranks.

Given the situation on the ground, and the unreliability of the information provided by both the Syrian and Iraqi governments, the exact number of ISIS militants ranges widely from 30,000 up to 200,000, depending on who you speak to.

What cannot be disputed, however, is that the U.S. air bombing campaign instigated last summer does not appear to have slowed ISIS’ growth in any significant way. It still controls a huge amount of territory in eastern Syria and Northern Iraq, and rather than consolidating its position, the group this week made inroads along the Syrian/Lebanon border. Reports have also surfaced that ISIS is even operating in parts of southern Afghanistan now too.

With the Syrian civil war approaching its fourth year, and the Iraq War which supposedly ended in 2011 raging again in another guise, the threat presented by ISIS won’t be disappearing anytime soon. As with everything else in the region, short-term thinking usually leads to long-term problems. Such is the case with the Islamic State, who show every sign it is a force ready and willing for an ongoing war of attrition.

David Keelaghan is a freelance writer from Ireland based in Seoul. He works with The Korea Times. You can contact him at https://twitter.com/davidkeelaghan, or https://bulmerhobson.wordpress.com.