WASHINGTON — For months, Islamic State terrorists rampaged across Syria and Iraq, seizing cities, taking hostages and terrorizing all who dared to confront them.
The tide began to turn in mid-August, when U.S. airstrikes pushed them from key Iraqi battlegrounds. Then, on Aug. 19, the group released a video that showed the beheading of American journalist James Foley.
The pattern continued.
Within days of a military defeat, the group would release images of more beheadings — at least nine over six weeks — of Western journalists, aid workers and Muslim soldiers.
Such a tactic signals that even as the Islamic State group suffers battlefield losses, it is holding on to its edge in the propaganda war. U.S. officials say that’s the only way the militants can continue to maintain support and attract new recruits.
On Friday, the Islamic State group released a new video showing the beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning after nearly two weeks of daily airstrikes against their fighters.
“Certainly since the bombing campaign, the reverses, they’re no longer boasting of taking places — because they’re not taking places. They’re losing places,” Alberto Fernandez, who heads the State Department’s office for counterterrorism propaganda, said in a recent interview. “So what do they do? They boast about cutting people’s heads off. They’re trying to substitute that for military victory.”
That might be some propaganda by the U.S itself. But the trend still is frightening, considering the Islamic State group is holding what U.S. intelligence officials think are as many as 20 hostages, including at least two Americans.
This past week, the terrorists suffered several setbacks, with U.S. and allied airstrikes Friday hitting Syrian oil refineries and a training camp. Earlier strikes pushed terrorists back from some of their positions in Iraq.
But the Islamic State group this past week also besieged the Iraqi town of Hit and ambushed an Iraqi army unit north of Ramadi, kept its tight grip on Fallujah, and closed in on the Syrian town of Kobani.
In the video of Henning’s beheading, a masked militant warns the U.S. that the gruesome attacks on individuals will continue as long as the airstrikes do. He also threatened that an American hostage, identified as Peter Kassig, would be next. “It is only right that we continue to strike the neck of your people,” the masked terrorist said.
Violence has been a focal point of Islamic State propaganda, to show the terrorists’ might and recruit the thousands of foreign fighters who have rushed to join them. The group has released videos or pictures of beheadings of Kurdish fighters, including several recently captured in clashes near the Syria-Turkey border.
“(The group) wants to create the impression of victory and demoralize its Kurdish enemies,” the Clarion Project, a Washington-based organization that tries to counter Islamic extremism, said in an Aug. 28 alert about the beheading of a Kurdish soldier.
