Former Unrecognized Countries

"I regret that we did not make a stronger effort to drop the name Republika Srpska. We underestimated the value to Pale of retaining their blood-soaked name. We may also have underestimated the strength of our negotiating hand on that day, when the bombing had resumed. In retrospect, I think we should have pushed Milosevic harder to change the name of the Bosnian Serb entity. Even if the effort failed, as Owen and Hill predicted, it would have been worth trying."

"The most murderous racial violence can have a sexual dimension to it, as in 1992, when Serbian forces were accused of a systematic campaign of rape directed against Bosnian Muslim women, with the aim of forcing them to conceive and give birth to 'Little Cetniks'. Was this merely one of many forms of violence designed to terrorize Muslim families into fleeing from their homes? Or was it perhaps a manifestation of the primitive impulse described above - to eradicate 'the Other' by impregnating females as well as murdering males? It would certainly be simplistic to regard raping women as a form of violence indistinguishable in its intent from shooting men. Sexual violence directed against members of ethnic minorities has often been inspired by erotic, albeit sadistic, fantasies as much as by 'eliminationist' racism."

"Who are they for a whole nation to suffer for them, both in the Republika Srpska and in Serbia, because a certain Mladic has decided that he does not want to surrender and go to court? Or Karadzic? And then they say: "I love the Serbian people." The hell they love us. They are pushing us into ever deeper problems."

"When Serb forces started to attack Bosnian Muslims, they tried to justify their unprovoked aggression by telling the world that they were yet again defending the Christian West against the fanatical East. The fact that Bosnian Muslims were not only largely secular but were mostly descended from Serbs or Croats was not allowed to stand in the way. Serb nationalists insisted on referring to them as Turks or traitors to the Serbs and the Serbian Orthodox Church. Croatians, of course, preferred to see the Bosnian Muslims as apostate Croatian Catholics. (Ironically, the effect of the war has been to make many Muslims in Bosnia much more devout.)"

"In my heart there's only one home,My republic is great in heart,In my heart the most beautiful star shines,My republic, Republika Srpska."

"We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil, Fighting for our liberty with treasure, blood, and toil; And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far, Hurrah! for the Bonnie Blue Flag, that bears a single star."

"In Dixie’s land, we’ll took our stand, To lib an’ die in Dixie!"

"Sir, if a Confederacy of the Southern States could now be obtained, should we not deem it a happy termination—happy beyond expectation, of our long struggle for our rights against oppression? I fear that there is no longer hope or liberty for the South, under a Union, by which all self-government is taken away. A people, owning slaves, are mad, or worse than mad, who do not hold their destinies in their own hands. Do we not bear the insolent assumption by our rulers, that slave labour shall not come into competition with free? Nor is it our northern brethren alone—the whole world are in arms against your institutions. Every stride of this Government, over your rights, brings it nearer and nearer to your peculiar policy; and even now, it stands, with the Bill of Blood in one hand, and the Sword in the other, and Carolina must bow her dishonoured head, and breathe forth the slavish or hypocritical profession of "ardently attached to the Union of these States." Sir, let slaves adore and love a despotism—it is the part of freemen to detest and to resist it."

"It has come to the point where the North must exterminate us or agree to separation… The war may still go on for a long time. However, we count on the financial exhaustion of the North. I admit to you that we don't understand how the government's credit has been maintained up to now."

"I wish I was in de land ob cotton, Old times dar am not forgotten. Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land!"

"Many have definitely asserted that went to England and France on a secret mission for the Confederacy. No proof of this has ever been found, but the little which has been learned of her sojourn in Europe strongly supports the theory of such a mission there. The ship which bore them to England from Bermuda was an English man-of-war, in which they sailed "at ’s special request." Then there were President Davis's personal letters to Messrs. and , requesting them that they show to Mrs. Greenhow every attention. In France she was given a private audience with .; in London, presented to . A letter written to her by James Spence, financial agent of the Confederates in Liverpool, shows her to have been actively engaged in support of the interests of the South from her arrival in England."

"It looked queer to me to see boxes labeled "His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, President of the 'Confederate States of America.'" The packages so labeled contained Bass ale or Cognac brandy, which cost "His Excellency" less than we Yankees had to pay for it. Think of the President drinking imported liquors while his soldiers were living on pop-corn and water!"

"The South has been reduced to the defensive, but offensive operations were its only chance of success. Deprived of the border states and hemmed in by the Mississippi in the west and the Atlantic in the east, the South has conquered nothing — but a graveyard."

"The truth is, we shall see the Southern Cross ere the destiny of the Southern master and his African slave is accomplished. That destiny does not stop short of the banks of the Amazon. The world of wonders in the animal and vegetable kingdom, of riches incalculable in the vast domain, watered by that gigantic stream, is the natural heritage of the Southron and his domestic slave. They alone can achieve its conquest and lay its untold wealth a tribute at the feet of commerce, the Queen consort of King Cotton."

"Far from using Islam as a mere facade for bloodlust... The Islamic State’s interpretations of Koranic teachings are fundamental to its mission."

"Oil accounted for about half of the group's revenue. The rest came from looting an estimated $500 million from banks and extorting money from residents trapped in cities occupied by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS."

"In actuality, Isis is the canniest of all traders in the flourishing international economy of disaffection: the most resourceful among all those who offer the security of collective identity to isolated and fearful individuals. It promises, along with others who retail racial, national and religious supremacy, to release the anxiety and frustrations of the private life into the violence of the global."

"I think we can probably say with some confidence that if an evangelical Christian group threw gays off towers in the Deep South, gay media outlets would currently be lambasting the Christian churches for a history of homophobia which had led to this pass. There would be demands for every prominent and obscure Christian pastor to condemn this brutal act. And they would. If a group of group of deeply extrovert Jews did a similar thing we could, I think, expect a similarly stern response. But the most that can be done with ISIS is simply to report the facts and let them sit there, as though they come from nowhere. As if the traditions of throwing gays off buildings or collapsing walls on them and so on are probably just accretions of colonial times with no connection to any religious tradition."

"The world isn’t going to become an Islamic caliphate, but that doesn’t stop the Islamists from pursuing that as a goal."

"How can you say that they're "Islamic"? just because "they call themselves Islamic," why are you repeating it? if I call myself the president of USA, will you repeat that..."

"The difference is that ISIS is armed with butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube, whereas Iran could soon be armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs. We must always remember. I'll say it one more time; the greatest dangers facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can't let that happen."

"Iraq's losses mounted when ISIL took over Mosul. ISIL fighters captured Ajil and Himrin oilfields in Salaheddin province and Qayyarah and three others in Nineveh province. The production potential of these fields, 72,000 bpd under ideal conditions, was rather minuscule from Baghdad's perspective - the country at that time was exporting nearly 2.6 million bpd. But the real damage was in enabling ISIL to finance its war machine. It was able to generate an estimated $45 million a month selling the oil from these fields, and others in Syria, through a labyrinth of oil refining and smuggling operations. The windfall allowed it, for a while, to pay its fighters generously by local standards and keep its murderous campaign going for three long years."

"As we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence. That’s the story ISIL wants to tell; that’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit. We don’t need to build them up to show that we’re serious, nor do we need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is representative of one of the world’s largest religions. We just need to call them what they are — killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed."

"Isis is not an existential threat to the United States. Climate change is a potential existential threat to the entire world if we don’t do something about it."

"ISIS wasn't a threat two years ago. Why? Because they would have probably been wiped out by Assad. But we put six-hundred tons of weapons into the Syrian civil war, and what has happened? We created a haven—not just us—Saudi Arabia, Qatar‎, United Arab Emirates—they've poured weapons indiscriminately in there, and most of them have wound up in the hands of ISIS."

"We look forward to the coming, as soon as possible, of the caliphate. But the declaration issued by the Islamic State is void under sharia and has dangerous consequences for the Sunnis in Iraq and for the revolt in Syria."

"What should the United States do about ISIS now that they've taken over half of Syria and a third of Iraq?The answer is: let Assad, the Iranians, the Turks, and, yes, the Russians take care of it, since they are the states directly threatened by the growth of the so-called Islamic State. Why should we fight their war for them?Contrary to the War Party's hebephrenic appeals to intervene, inaction on our part is key to the destruction of ISIS. The Grand Caliph of the Islamic State would like nothing more than to be able to portray ISIS as the valiant opponent of a US reentry into the region. It would be a tremendous propaganda victory for them to be able to frame their cause in this context because the result would be a successful international recruiting drive that would fill the ranks of the Islamic State's army even as hundreds are killed by US drones and missile strikes."

"No, we don't have to ally with Assad–or the Iranians, for that matter–for them to deal effectively with our monstrous creations. We simply have to stand aside and watch as those states with a real stake in this fight are allowed to take aim and fire. In this case, inaction is the most effective act we can take: by stopping our support for the Syrian Islamists, we cut off a major source of support for ISIS–and leave Assad free to go after them hammer and tongs.ISIS and its sympathizers worldwide would like nothing better than to lure us into another land war in the Middle East, one in which we would fare no better than we did last time around. Yet that is the only alternative to the Rand Paul strategy."

"And as for his claim that the Islamic State "is certainly not a state," the President's tone is rather too defensive. He says "it is recognized by no government, nor by the people it subjugates," but none of these factors are relevant in determining what constitutes a state–which is nothing more or less than a monopoly on the use of force in a given territory. The horror that is ISIL is merely the process of state formation looked at up close: the terror they employ is simply an exaggerated rendition of how every state gains its "legitimacy"–by definitively establishing its coercive monopoly. While ISIL is doing so in a particularly graphic manner, in principle it is acting no differently than any other embryonic state in history, benign creation myths to the contrary notwithstanding."

"This week, Unesco has added its voice to a chorus of concern, warning that looting in Iraq and Syria is taking place on an “industrial” scale – one more sorry aspect to the devastating conflicts in the region. This Mesopotamian area, the cradle of civilisation, is a giant archaeological site – it’s where the first cities were built, and contains treasures from the Roman, Greek, Byzantine and Islamic periods. Today, the pillaging of cultural heritage sites shows up on satellite maps that are pock-marked with hundreds of recent, illegal excavations. Some media reports suggest this income stream is the “second-largest source of revenue” for the group (after oil sales), but in reality it’s impossible to tell. What’s certain is that, while Isis grimly documents its destruction of Unesco sites such as Nimrud, profiteering from plundered antiquities has helped make it the most cash-rich terror group in the world."

"Using information gathered by local Syrian activists, Al-Azm found that Isis initially levied 20% taxes on those it “licensed” to excavate. In mid-2014, the group began to contract out excavation. But by autumn of that same year, Isis was “starting to hire their own archaeologists, digging teams and machinery – and that’s when we saw a peak of looting activity”. At that point, the trade was lucrative enough for Isis to invest in it. All this coincided with the US-led coalition’s bombing campaign against Isis targets, which curtailed other income streams such as oil, livestock and crops from seized areas. Isis began to enforce punishments for looting without a licence, says Al-Azm. The group started to control the dealers and middle men, getting savvy to the market, scouring the internet to see which artefacts would sell at a higher value."

"The Islamic caliphate can’t be restored by force. Occupying a country and killing half of its population... this is not an Islamic state, this is terrorism."

"We are truly in a battle for our very lives not just in the sense that they will kill us if they can, but in the sense that life itself is being challenged, that it's life versus death, you either love life or you love death, creation versus destruction, love versus hatred, that's what this is about. And so, when we see the Islamic State (ISIS), we see not only that they embody Islam as I have explained here in this, that's all in the Quran what they do, but also that they embody what may be, the foremost evil force that the world has ever seen."

"Just two years ago, ISIS controlled a vast amount of territory in both Iraq and Syria. Since then, we have retaken more than 20,000 square miles of land and liberated millions of Syrians and Iraqis from ISIS’s “caliphate.” ISIS’s loss of territory is further evidence of its false narrative, which tries to legitimize a record of savagery that includes brutal executions, the exploitation of children as soldiers, and the sexual abuse and murder of women and children. To all of the young people on the internet believing in ISIS’s Propaganda, you will be dead if you join. Think instead about having a great life. While on occasion these cowards will resurface, they have lost all prestige and power. They are losers and will always be losers."

"Last night, the United States brought the world’s number one terrorist leader to justice. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. He was the founder and leader of ISIS, the most ruthless and violent terror organization anywhere in the world."

"The thug [al-Baghdadi] who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him."

"The shocking publicized murder of a Jordanian pilot, a wonderful young man — spoke to the King of Jordan; they all knew him, they all loved him — he was burned alive in a cage for all to see. And the execution of Christians in Libya and Egypt, as well as the genocidal mass murder of Yazidis, rank ISIS among the most depraved organizations in the history of our world."

"ISIL herded approximately 450−500 women and girls to the citadel of Tal Afar in Ninewa where, two days later, 150 unmarried girls and women, predominantly from the Yezidi and Christian communities, were reportedly transported to Syria, either to be given to ISIL fighters as a reward or to be sold as sex slaves, the report said. So where are the 'war on women' advocates? I know, crickets chirping. The progressive socialist feminist movement would rather not have Obama admit he was wrong than save these women."

"We have endured a lot of harm from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his brothers, and we preferred to respond with as little as possible, out of our concern to extinguish the fire of sedition. But Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his brothers did not leave us a choice, for they have demanded that all the mujahideen reject their confirmed pledges of allegiance, and to pledge allegiance to them for what they claim of a caliphate."

"In the two years since the self-declared Islamic State lost its last physical stronghold in Raqqa, Syria, thousands of ISIS foreign fighters, along with their wives and children, have remained in limbo, mostly in Iraqi custody or in Kurdish detention camps in northeastern Syria. The question now is what to do with them — an issue that gained urgency following a United Nations Security Council briefing last month on a resurgence of ISIS in Syria. Roughly 40,000 traveled to the self-declared Islamic State from 81 countries. Some fought in Iraq and Syria for ISIS, while others, including some women and their children, were victims of violence. Whether they came willingly or not, those who remain — some 64,000 from 57 countries, mostly women and children — live amid dire conditions that human rights groups have described as breeding grounds for future radicalization. What should happen next to the fighters is relatively clear, according to international law experts. “All terrorist crimes need to be prosecuted,” said Naureen Fink, executive director of The Soufan Center, a global security research institute, echoing a sentiment expressed by all 17 extremism and counterterrorism experts with whom FRONTLINE spoke for this story. Who should be responsible for holding those trials is not so straightforward. There is no international tribunal with a mandate to prosecute ISIS-related crimes, and the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction in Iraq or Syria. Iraq has tried more than 20,000 cases of ISIS-related crimes. But with a judicial system internationally criticized for due process and human rights violations, Iraq poses a dilemma for countries with conflicting human rights standards. And while they’re considered an ally by the U.S. in fighting ISIS, the Kurdish forces running the camps in northeastern Syria are not recognized as a government with the authority to hold trials."

"Meanwhile, a FRONTLINE review of the 10 states that yielded the largest numbers of ISIS foreign fighters and family members found that most of these countries, especially in Europe and the Middle East, are reluctant to repatriate their citizens. Children and women — the latter of whom are often seen as victims — have been the primary exceptions, especially in Central Asian countries. For some European leaders, “repatriating terrorists would be political suicide,” said Thomas Renard, a senior research fellow at the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations in Belgium. European nations also claim that home-country courts might not be able to successfully prosecute fighters due to a lack of battlefield evidence, Renard said."

"In the U.S., the official policy under former President Donald Trump was pro-repatriation. The State Department said 28 American ISIS fighters and their family members have been returned to the U.S. to date — from a total of about 300, based on statistics provided by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. President Joe Biden’s administration will do the same, a State Department spokesperson told FRONTLINE. Of the 28 people repatriated, 12 adults have faced charges related to terrorism, according to the State Department. “We encourage countries to take back their foreign terrorist fighters and associated dependents from Syria and Iraq,” the State Department wrote in an e-mail to FRONTLINE. “The United States believes that repatriation, prosecution as appropriate, and rehabilitation and reintegration is the best way to keep fighters off the battlefield and address the humanitarian crisis in detention centers and [internally displaced people] camps in [northeast] Syria.”"

"Many countries either don’t know or don’t disclose the number of citizens who traveled to join ISIS — including all countries in the top 10, save for Russia — and many don’t make public the number of returnees brought to trial. “Lack of transparency translates to lack of accountability,” said Fink of The Soufan Center. “It helps countries not to be transparent, because they don’t want to talk about what they’re doing when [fighters] come back.” Fighters who do come home, either by government intervention or on their own, are considered a “great security threat for countries upon their return,” said Gina Vale, co-author of a 2019 International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) report that offers the most recent estimates of individuals affiliated with ISIS by country."

"It might come as a surprise to many, but the truth is that Islam today no longer has a living and evolving theology. In fact, with few exceptions, Islam’s last genuine theologians belong to the early part of the 19th century. Go to any mosque anywhere, whether it is in New York or Mecca, and you are more likely to hear a political sermon rather than a theological reflection. In the highly politicized version of Islam promoted by Da’esh... God plays a cameo role at best. Deprived of its theological moorings, today’s Islam is a wayward vessel under the captaincy of ambitious adventurers leading it into sectarian feuds, wars and terrorism."

"“Pure Mohammadan Islam”: This is what ISIS, Daesh in Arabic, promises to deliver once the caliphate has defeated “Infidel” enemies and secured its position. The promise is at the core of its propaganda, including in cyberspace. Its recent blitzkrieg victories and high-profile beheadings are not the only reason ISIS has attracted universal attention. Perhaps more interesting is Daesh’s ability to seduce large numbers of Muslims across the globe, including in Europe and the United States. It does so with an ideological “product” designed to replace other brands of Islamism marketed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Khomeinists in Iran. Daeshism, to coin a phrase, also aimed to transcend the ideological hodgepodge marketed by al Qaeda franchises."

"The promised “Pure Mohammadan Islam” is based on three rejections... The first rejection is of traditional Islamic tolerance for Christians and Jews — who, labeled “People of the Book,” could live in a caliphate by paying protection money (jizyeh). The idea is that the “protection” offered by Mohammad belonged to the early phase of Islam when the “Last Prophet” wasn’t strong enough. Once Mohammad had established his rule, the Daeshites note, he ordered the massacre of Jews and the expulsion of Christians from the Arabian Peninsula... The second rejection is aimed against “Infidel ideologies,” especially democracy — government of men by men rather than by Allah... Daesh’s third rejection is aimed against what is labeled “diluted” (iltiqati) forms of Islam — for example, insisting that Islam is a religion of peace. In Daesh’s view, Islam will be a religion of peace only after it has seized control of the entire world. Until then, the world will be divided between the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb). There can never be peace between Islam and whatever that is not Islam. At best, Muslims can make truce (solh) with non-Muslims while continuing to prepare for the next war. Daesh also rejects the “aping of Infidel institutions” such as a presidential system, a parliament and the use of such terms as “republic.” The only form of government in “Pure Mohammadan Islam” is the caliphate; the only law is sharia."

"Ever since its emergence a few months ago, the declared ambition of the startup caliphate of the Islamic State has been to “wipe out every trace of Infidel influence” in areas under its control. Yet, with each passing day, it becomes more clear that, its deadly fantasies notwithstanding, the IS can’t escape from a world created and dominated by the Infidel. Start with the name that the IS, or Daesh in Arabic, has chosen for itself: ad-dawlat al-Islamiyah, or “Islamic Government.” The concepts of “state” and “government” are entirely Western, not adopted by Muslim peoples until the 19th century. The very words “state” and “government” are never mentioned in the Quran. Daesh’s “caliph” has also appointed a number of vizirs. This, too, is un-Islamic. Of Persian origin, the word vizir designated high officials of the pre-Islamic Sasanian Empire overthrown by Arab Muslim warriors in the 7th century. Mohammad had no vizirs, nor did any of his four immediate successors, the so-called “Well Guided caliphs...” The Islamic State’s most noteworthy embrace of the works of the “Infidel,” however, is surely its use of the satanic Internet. Its personnel, including converts from Europe and North America, regularly display across the Web what seems to be the main, if not the only, thing they’ve learned from Islam: cutting the throats of defenseless captives."

"It is not solely by weapons that ISIS imposes its control. More important is the terror it has instilled in millions in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and, increasingly, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Indeed, Jordan’s panic-driven decision to execute two jihadists in response to the burning of its captured pilot is another sign of the terror Daesh has instilled in Arab governments and much of the public. In the short run, terror is a very effective means of psychological control of unarmed and largely defenseless populations. Even in areas far from Daesh’s reach, growing numbers of preachers, writers, politicians and even sheiks and emirs, terrorized by unprecedented savagery, are hedging their bets. Today, Daesh is a menacing presence not only in Baghdad but in Arab capitals from Cairo to Muscat — an evil ghost capable of launching attacks in the Sinai and organizing deadly raids on Jordanian and Saudi borders. ISIS enjoys yet another advantage: It has a clear strategy of making areas beyond its control unsafe. No one thinks Daesh can seize Baghdad, but few Baghdadis feel they’re living anything close to a normal life. Daesh’s message is clear: No one is safe anywhere, including in non-Muslim lands, until the whole world is brought under “proper Islamic rule.”"

"They've created ISIS. Hillary Clinton created ISIS with Obama — created with Obama. But I love predicting because you know, ultimately, you need somebody with vision."

"The core of the Syrian tragedy consists of the fact that Assad and ISIS represent the two faces of the same coin. Both want the Syrian people, or what is left of them inside the country, scripted out of the equation. Both have enough of a popular base to hang on for some more time even if they did not receive succor from the outside which they regularly do. At the same time neither is strong enough or is ever likely to have the popular base to impose its agenda on Syria."