Attacking a maternity hospital in Kabul on Tuesday, the Islamic State reminded the world of its fetish for innocent Muslim blood.
The assault on one of Afghanistan’s few maternity hospitals killed at least 24 people, including a number of newborn babies and their mothers. But while the ferocious brutality here is shocking, it shouldn’t be surprising. ISIS revels in this kind of mayhem for three reasons.
First up, we have the group’s perverse ideology. Centered in Sunni Islamic supremacism, ISIS sees its attacks as moral acts of service to God. Notable, here, is that this attack targeted a predominantly Shia area of the Afghan capital. ISIS despises Shia Muslims, believing them to be apostates against God — traitors or “rafidah” against faith and truth. Just as the Nazis sought to cleanse Earth of what they saw as a vermin-like Jewish infestation against humanity’s moral order, ISIS seeks to purge Shia Muslims. And just as the Nazis bore few qualms about sending young children into gas chambers or death pits, ISIS have few qualms about shooting babies in their cots. ISIS is also happy to extend its definition of Muslim treason to Sunnis who refuse to kneel.
As insane as these tactics appear to us, those ISIS fighters who pulled the triggers in this way on Tuesday believed they were doing God’s work. And that they will be rewarded for serving as such.
Of course, ISIS also has a more narrow political agenda with attacks such as this one.
The group knows that the more bloody and eye-catching its atrocity, the more benefit it will accrue. While it’s certainly true that these kinds of attacks spark military reprisals and global revulsion, they also attract ISIS favor from ideologues who share in its hatred. Salafi-Jihadism of the type that ISIS purveys has many hundreds of thousands of supporters around the world. And even if only a few of these supporters are willing to look at the Kabul attack and think, “Hmmm, I want a part of that,” it means more money and guns in ISIS hands. This also explains why ISIS is so focused on attacks against Western targets: those attacks present the group as the effective “A-team” of global terrorism. The group, as it were, that every Salafist will want to play for.
Finally, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that ISIS retains a significant number of psychopaths in its ranks. As shown by the inspired service of individuals such as Orlando nightclub attacker Omar Mateen, ISIS has successfully recruited many mentally ill or socially-detached individuals. Some of these fighters have personality defects giving them cause to believe that ISIS gives their otherwise irrelevant lives meaning. But others are truly psychotic. In that sense, the murder of innocents in a hospital is just another day at the park for ISIS. Not something to dwell on or worry about.
Where does this leave us?
Well, it should motivate our renewed resolve to meet ISIS’s existentialism with our own. That requires a keystone focus on destroying ISIS narratives of ordained purpose, but also on destroying ISIS fighters and structures themselves. And it requires our political leaders unambiguous understanding that ISIS, though weakened, is far from defeated. It also demands the Trump administration’s more realistic appraisal of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. What’s happening there is proof of a peace deal that isn’t simply flawed, but washed in innocent blood.
