FAS hosts panel to further understanding of ISIS

The Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) held a panel in Shriver Hall on Wednesday to discuss ISIS’s strong impact on the Middle East and global strategies to counter their advances.

The panel featured Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Algeria; Hadi al-Bahra, the former president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces and David Faris, an assistant professor at Roosevelt University. Ryan Calder, an assistant professor in the Hopkins sociology department, moderated the discussion.

Junior Bryan Ricciardi, one of the executive directors of FAS, explained that the organization planned this panel so that students could gain a greater understanding of the implications of ISIS’s rise to power.

ISIS, which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, is a terrorist group that follows a extremist vein of Islam, aiming to establish a caliphate, or a state ruled by a single political and religious leader under Islamic law.

“We hope that the panel will inform the Hopkins community and the greater Baltimore community about the threat ISIS poses in an environment conducive to measured discussion,” Ricciardi wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

He wrote that in an effort to create a diverse panel, each speaker was carefully chosen to represent different takes on the topic.

“Our hope is that these three different perspectives will elicit a more fundamental understanding of ISIS and the threat it poses,” Ricciardi wrote. “Al-Bahra represents the perspective of those directly fighting ISIS in Syria. Ambassador Ford represents a U.S. foreign policy perspective. Finally, Faris has a political science academic perspective on the issue.”

Before the panel, audience members were invited to read the article, “What ISIS Really Wants,” from The Atlantic. The article gave a brief background on the terror group, its motives, the ramifications of its actions and possible ways to curb its advances.

Faris spoke about the history of ISIS in Syria and its strategic use of social media platforms such as Twitter.

“The thing that’s really different about ISIS as compared to, say, al Qaeda [is] when al Qaeda started in the 1980’s, they really didn’t have internet,” Faris said. “The typical al Qaeda video is of an old man pointing his finger at you for an hour, and people weren’t super into that.”

With between 46,000 and 98,000 Twitter accounts associated with ISIS, Faris describes the group’s use of social media as incredibly powerful.

“Their goal, frankly, is for you to look at it,” Faris said. “Twitter is really central to their strategy,” Faris said.

Al-Bahra discussed the conflict in Syria, and how the factions are involved in the country’s politics.

“As you know, in Syria, we have been under dictatorship for the last half of the century,” al-Bahra said.

He said that the effects of ISIS in Syria have been no worse than those of Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship.

“The regime of Assad has stolen the most precious thing that anyone could possibly have, which is the ability to dream,” al-Bahra said. “If we cannot dream, we cannot hope for anything.”

Despite the sudden ascension of ISIS’s presence on social media, he said that the group is not actually new.

“ISIS was not a surprise organization,” al-Bahra said. “The whole idea of ISIS started in 2001 [from] a discussion on how to establish an Islamic State.”

Ford expanded upon al-Bahra’s contribution by recounting the story of a Syrian soccer goalie, who, after rebelling against the regime and being isolated by the military for two years in his town with no basic necessities, joined ISIS in desperation to improve the quality of his life. He also provided an ethnoreligious perspective on the problem in Iraq, citing the historical and political demarcation between the two factions of Islam, the Sunni and the Shiite.

He stated that brutality was a major factor in the strength of ISIS.

“The Islamic State aggravated, and badly aggravated, the existing sectors,” Ford said. “You have to address the fear. People go to the Islamic State for protection, and they think they will be treated fairly.”

While al-Bahra agreed, he emphasized the importance of devising a strategy to defeat ISIS.

“ISIS existed because we failed in combating al Qaeda, which is less sophisticated than ISIS... We cannot defeat ISIS based on military operations only,” al-Bahra said.

He stated that the development of a new government system was also paramount.

Most audience members reacted positively to the panel, stating that the discussion was very informative.

Janey Solwold, a principal technical writer at computer software company Software AG, said she was surprised by the ideas put forth by the panel.

“Even though it’s a complex problem, it seems to me it might be more solvable than I thought it was going in,” Solwold said. “The one thing they didn’t mention was sort of the role of Islam and religion in this — it was more power and economics, and I think that’s more solvable, although still complicated. That was surprising to me, that it didn’t focus on these religious differences.”

Senior Megan Carney also said she learned a lot from the panel.

“I thought it was really good that each person brought something different to the table,” Carney said. “I thought their personal experiences of working [in] the area brought something unique to it.”

Correction: The article previously stated that al-Bahra believes ISIS has had a greater negative effect on Syria than the Assad regime did. He actually said that ISIS has been no worse than the dictatorship, and his quote should read “The regime of Assad has stolen..." not "The regime of ISIS has stolen..."