Kneeling
in the dirt in a desert somewhere in the Middle East, James Foley lost
his life this week at the hands of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Before pulling out the knife used to decapitate him, his masked
executioner explained that he was killing the 40-year-old American
journalist in retaliation for the recent United States’ airstrikes
against the terrorist group in Iraq.
In
fact, until recently, ISIS had a very different list of demands for Mr.
Foley: The group pressed the United States to provide a
multimillion-dollar ransom for his release, according to a
representative of his family and a former hostage held alongside him.
The United States — unlike several European countries that have funneled
millions to the terror group to spare the lives of their citizens —
refused to pay.
The
issue of how to deal with ISIS, which like many terror groups now
routinely trades captives for large cash payments, is acute for the
Obama administration because Mr. Foley was not the lone American in its
custody. ISIS is threatening to kill at least three others it holds if
its demands remain unmet, The New York Times has confirmed through
interviews with recently released prisoners, family members of the
victims and mediators attempting to win their freedom.
The Life of James Foley
The American journalist was kidnapped in Syria on Nov. 22, 2012.
Sensitive
to growing criticism that it had not done enough, the White House on
Wednesday revealed that a United States Special Operations team tried
and failed to rescue Mr. Foley — a New Hampshire native who disappeared
in Syria on Nov. 22, 2012 — as well as the other American hostages
during a secret mission this summer. Mr. Obama said the United States
would not retreat until it had eliminated the “cancer” of ISIS from the
Middle East.
ISIS
also appears determined to increase the pressure on Washington. It has
now threatened to kill a second hostage, Steven J. Sotloff, a freelance
journalist for Time magazine who is being held alongside Mr. Foley.
In
a video of the execution of Mr. Foley that was uploaded to YouTube on
Tuesday, the screen goes dark after he is decapitated. Then the ISIS
fighter who killed him is seen holding Mr. Sotloff, wearing an orange
jumpsuit and his with his hands cuffed behind his back, in the same
landscape of barren dunes. “The life of this American citizen, Obama,
depends on your next decision.”
Along
with the three Americans, ISIS is holding citizens of Britain, which
like the United States has declined to pay ransoms, former hostages
confirmed. The terror group has sent a laundry list of demands for the
release of the foreigners, starting with money but also prisoner swaps,
including the liberation of Aafia Siddiqui, an M.I.T.-trained Pakistani
neuroscientist with ties to Al Qaeda currently incarcerated in Texas.
The policy of not making concessions to terrorists and not paying
ransoms has put the United States and Britain at odds with other
European allies, which have routinely paid significant sums to win the
release of their citizens — including four French and three Spanish
hostages who were released this year after money was delivered through
an intermediary, according to two of the victims and their colleagues.
Kidnapping
Europeans has become the main source of revenue for Al Qaeda and its
affiliates, which have earned at least $125 million in ransom payments
in the past five years alone, according to an investigation by The
Times. Although ISIS was recently expelled from Al Qaeda and abides by
different rules, recently freed prisoners said that their captors were
well aware of what ransoms had been paid on behalf of European citizens
held by Qaeda affiliates as far afield as Africa, indicating that they
were hoping to abide by the same business plan.
While
government and counterterrorism officials insist that paying ransoms
only perpetuates the problem, the policy has meant that captured
Americans have little chance of being released. A handful succeeded in
running away, and even fewer were rescued in special operations. The
rest are either held indefinitely — or else killed.
In
an opinion article for Reuters, David Rohde, a columnist for the news
service and a former foreign correspondent for The Times who was
kidnapped by the Taliban, said that the uneven approach to ransoms may
have cost Mr. Foley his life.
“The
payment of ransoms and abduction of foreigners must emerge from the
shadows. It must be publicly debated,” wrote Mr. Rohde, who escaped his
seven-month detention by the Taliban only when he climbed out a window
and freed himself. “American and European policy makers should be forced
to answer for their actions.”
Mr.
Foley, a freelance videographer and reporter for GlobalPost and Agence
France-Presse, went missing 21 months ago in a town 25 miles south of
the Turkish border. According to Nicole Tung, a close friend and fellow
photojournalist, who gave an account of Mr. Foley’s activities before
his capture, he had spent weeks in Syria documenting the country’s
spiral into civil war, narrowly avoiding a falling tank shell. The
normally calm reporter — who had come under fire in Afghanistan and had
been kidnapped a year earlier in Libya — was rattled.
As
the Thanksgiving holiday approached in 2012, he contacted Ms. Tung, and
they made plans to meet for a few days across the border in Turkey.
When Mr. Foley did not show up at the hotel at 5 p.m. as planned, Ms.
Tung began calling his cellphone, finally reaching his translator.
The
man explained that Mr. Foley had stopped at an Internet cafe to file
his last images in Binesh, Syria. Soon after, armed men sped up behind
his car and forced Mr. Foley out at gunpoint.
“I
was sitting on the bed, in this depressing, dark hotel; the fact that
the fixer answered the phone — when Jim was not answering his — was the
cue that something had gone terribly wrong,” said Ms. Tung, who
immediately contacted Mr. Foley’s family and editors.
Across
the ocean at his home in Cambridge, Mass., the chief executiveof
GlobalPost Mr. Balboni, reached for his Blackberry and had a terrible
sense of foreboding: The email informing him of Mr. Foley’s abduction
was almost an exact replay of the horror his staff had endured a year
earlier, when Mr. Foley was kidnapped with three others by Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi’s forces in Libya.
“We
had joked that we needed to take away his passport,” Mr. Balboni said
Wednesday. “I don’t want to say it was déjà vu, but in a way, it was,”
he added. “It just turns your life upside down — in one way, I knew what
was coming, but I did not know the fullness of it.”
Obama’s Statement on James Foley
President Obama addressed the beheading
of James Foley, an American journalist, by the terrorist group the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Publish Date August 20, 2014.
Image CreditKevin Lamarque/Reuters
When
he was executed this week, Mr. Foley became the second Western reporter
to be killed by Islamic extremists since 2002, when Daniel Pearl, a
Wall Street Journal reporter, was beheaded by a top Qaeda operative. Mr.
Pearl’s murder was praised by a leading ideologue in a how-to manual
that promoted the tactic of kidnapping foreigners. Since then, the
terror network has turned to abducting Westerners to finance itself —
seizing more than 50 foreigners in the past five years, almost all of
whom were released after their governments paid sizable ransoms,
according to a review of the known cases by The Times.
However,
in Iraq, where ISIS was founded, commanders grabbed foreigners for the
sole purpose of killing them. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al
Qaeda in Iraq, became known as the “Sheikh of the Slaughterers” because
he personally decapitated his foreign captives.
He
created his own execution style, forcing his victims to don orange
jumpsuits — a mocking reference to prisoners held at the United States’
detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. So brutal, frequent and
graphic were the killings that the then-No. 2 of Al Qaeda, Ayman
al-Zawahri, wrote to Mr. Zarqawi advising him to quit the graphic
executions and just shoot the prisoners instead.
Mr.
Zarqawi’s Iraq-based fighters regrouped in Syria in 2011, where they
eventually rebranded themselves as ISIS. Their tactics proved so brutal
that Al Qaeda formally expelled them from the terror network this year.
However, in regard to kidnapping, ISIS’s tactics initially appeared to be in line with that of other Qaeda branches.
Before
Mr. Foley was killed, his ISIS captors asked for a 100 million euro
ransom, approximately $132 million, according to Philip Balboni, the
chief executive and co-founder of GlobalPost, the publication where the
journalist worked.
(The Foley family has not responded to requests for comment.)
Once
the United States authorized airstrikes in Iraq this month, it appears
that ISIS took a leaf out of the book of its founding father: They
forced Mr. Foley to wear the telltale orange jumpsuit, and beheaded him
on camera — a horrifying ode to the “Sheikh of the Slaughterers,” who
himself was killed by United States forces in Iraq in 2006.
The
eldest of five children from Rochester, N.H., Mr. Foley graduated from
Marquette University in 1996 with a history degree. He joined Teach for
America that year, working at an elementary school in Phoenix, officials
with the organization said. In 2008, he earned a master’s degree from
the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
“He was so clear on what he wanted to do,” said Ellen Shearer, a professor who taught Mr. Foley at Medill.
Unlike
most freelancers who often take sizable risks without the safety net of
an established news organization, Mr. Foley found a second family at
GlobalPost, which paid a security firm millions of dollars to try to
find him, Mr. Balboni said.
After
his fortuitous release in Libya, GlobalPost brought him back to Boston,
where he spent a stint as an editor, but it did not last long.
“When
you are touched by being in a war, you can’t get rid of it,” said Mr.
Balboni, a veteran reporter as well as a former Vietnam War Army
officer.
Mr.
Foley was remembered by colleagues for his courage — to some a bravery
that he took to its extreme. Yet at the time of his capture, Ms. Tung
said, the tank shell explosion in Syria had spooked him, and he was
looking for some time off. “It landed close enough to feel like it was
time to get out,” she said.
His
colleagues point to the remarkable bravery he displays in his final
moments as a testament to the man he was: Looking straight at the
camera, Mr. Foley’s face is concentrated. When the jihadist lifts the
knife to his throat, and pulls his head back, he does not try to pull
away.
Correction: August 21, 2014
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the length of time David Rohde was held captive by the Taliban. It was seven months, not a year.
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the length of time David Rohde was held captive by the Taliban. It was seven months, not a year.
Correction: August 21, 2014
An earlier version of this article misstated the ransom amount demanded by Mr. Foley's captors. It was 100 million euros, not $100 million.
An earlier version of this article misstated the ransom amount demanded by Mr. Foley's captors. It was 100 million euros, not $100 million.
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