Why do al qaeda behead

Authorities have linked drug trafficking organizations to gruesome acts on both sides of the border. In there were at least beheadings in Mexico connected to drug violence. Cartels use beheading as a means to terrorize and to control. For example, early in the conflict, the cartels frequently targeted police, which led to mass resignations in some Mexican municipalities Bunker, Campbell, and Bunker Discoveries of a dozen or more headless victims at one time are not unusual in Mexico.

In May officials discovered at least 49 headless bodies discarded on the side of a highway outside Monterrey. The Zetas, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Knights Templar, and others have used a variety of decapitation tools and in some cases they release footage online. The number of incidents, poor attribution in many cases, and the range of victims point to a campaign aimed at terrorizing local populations and intimidating rivals and state security forces.

Competition between cartels has seemingly created an outbidding dynamic of escalating brutality. Hostage-taking and decapitation were also employed during the early years of the Iraq War where over foreign nationals were abducted between and More than 35 of these incidents ended in the execution of the hostage Shay , However, the majority of abductions in Iraq entailed criminal gangs kidnapping and ransoming other Iraqis.

Best known to Westerners are the exploits of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the senior al-Qaeda leader in Iraq until his death in Zarqawi gained international notoriety for his brutal executions and the international al-Qaeda leadership sought to distance themselves from his actions. Zarqawi beheaded Berg and Armstrong personally. Militants used the tactic less frequently during the subsequent decade, but beheadings have captured public attention once again as the Islamic State uses the tactic in a broader campaign of violence.

Recent videos portray gruesome, torturous actions meant to terrorize and intimidate particular audiences. The Islamic State employs counter-normative violence against symbolic victims to gain compliance from adversaries.

Its attacks generate fear and send signals to international and local audiences. The nature of the terrorist act, its atrocity, its location and the identity of its victim serve as generators for the power of the message. Violence, to become terroristic, requires witnesses. If the killing of one is done primarily for the purpose of frightening thousands then we speak of terrorism. One way to understand IS beheadings is through the lens of rational calculations.

IS could anticipate that opponents will capitulate to its demands to avoid further victimization. In this view, militants believe in the efficacy of extreme forms of violence as part of a reasoned repertoire of deterrence, compellence, and coercion. This reasoning is consistent with the ostensible goal of halting airstrikes mentioned in several decapitation videos.

In either case, if IS militants are not irrational fanatics, then their actions ought to have some strategic intent. Likewise we should not dismiss their media dissemination of beheading videos as propaganda. Beheadings and threats of violence also serve to coerce local populations. Beheadings and large-scale acts of barbarity are instruments that IS uses to achieve compliance in pursuit of regional policy goals; striking fear in its enemies and weakening their resolve Jones Under threat of violence, some communities have capitulated to IS.

The brutal and public nature of these extremely violent acts communicates the consequences of resistance. For example, according to a report in the Daily Mail , two Yazidi teenage girls were beaten mercilessly and shown videos of their neighbors being beheaded.

Sometimes they would stand on them. There were so many heads. The widespread fear and significant territorial gains illustrate the efficacy of this strategy McCoy General conditions of insecurity during armed conflict might also help explain beheadings; the situation compels behavior.

Escalation and tactical choices depend on whether the organization feels threatened by rivals, the state, or international actors. Gupta The more secure a group feels, the less likely it is to use extreme tactics. A powerful actor i. Competition with the al-Nusrah Front and other al-Qaeda groups in Syria, along with opposition from state security forces and international actors, has led the Islamic State to respond to what it perceives as an existential threat to its survival.

Strategic objectives and external threats do not fully explain why the Islamic State has embraced beheading. The timing of the beheadings suggests that IS used beheadings as a strategy against Western targets when it was gaining strength as well as after its opponents began to deal crippling blows to its advances in Iraq and Syria.

Furthermore, it seems implausible that IS believed beheadings would compel a U. Identity politics offer a persuasive complementary explanation. Militant group identities include notions of how members see themselves in relation to other collective actors, as well as appropriate behaviors given those beliefs.

Militant groups assign meaning to political developments during conflict and continually renegotiate their relationships with other groups. Research on the Iraq War found that Sunni militant organizations adopted different targeting policies and shifted strategies over time Gabbay and Thirkill-Mackelprang The Ansar al-Sunnah group, for example, refused to work with Zarqawi despite nearly identical goals and prior cooperation with al-Qaeda.

The way that IS understands the conflict and defines itself in relation to other actors explains its brutal tactics. Similarly, beheadings serve as a recruiting tool that sends a clear message — there is no room for negotiation or reconciliation. Growing evidence suggests that the Islamic State has found greater success in attracting younger recruits, rather than seasoned Islamist militants, with its provocative acts of violence Joscelyn Some view the rise of IS and its defiance toward the West as a source of pride.

Some potential recruits are attracted by IS tactics, but many are inclined to disbelieve news media accounts that show IS mass killings and beheadings Kirkpatrick Psychological processes lead many of those already sympathetic to IS nationhood goals to dismiss the evidence of atrocity as a Western campaign to vilify Islam. Either way, a strategy that includes extreme forms of violence moves the organization closer to its goals. The beheading videos define victims and opponents of the Islamic State as culpable, as deserving criminals, whether through direct action or complicity.

Surely only the guilty would feel compelled to confess their sins? The viewer is meant to see the incidents as executions, not murder, which implies an illegitimate, criminal act. Executions suggest a judicially-sanctioned punishment, albeit aimed at a collective perpetrator — the West, Shiite opposition, or apostate regimes Jones The Islamic State also uses violence as an internal sanction, to communicate appropriate behaviors, and to punish and control members.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights notes that IS recently executed four militants; two for spying and the other two for theft. However, beheadings are mostly reserved to send a strong message to rival combatants and security forces.

One crucial aspect of beheadings by IS militants is the visceral symbolism captured in decapitation videos with the ritualistic placement of the head back onto the body. Popular commentary and debate about whether Islam condones the brutal practices employed by IS militants seems to imply a cultural explanation might account for IS beheadings. This reflects that it receives its support mostly from young unemployed people in the predominantly Muslim region of Cabo Delgado.

A group with a similar name has existed in Somalia for more than a decade. It is affiliated to al-Qaeda, unlike the Mozambican group which allied itself with the rival IS movement in IS sees the insurgents as being part of what it calls its Central Africa Province.

It released images last year showing fighters in Cabo Delgado with AK rifles and rocket propelled grenades. This alarmed counter-terrorism experts, as it suggested that global jihadists were exploiting a local insurgency for their own gains. Some analysts believe the insurgency's roots lay in socio-economic grievances, with many locals complaining that they have benefited little from the province's ruby and gas industries. In a video last year, one militant leader said: "We occupy [the towns] to show that the government of the day is unfair.

It humiliates the poor and gives the profit to the bosses. The man spoke about Islam and his desire for an "Islamic government, not a government of unbelievers", but he also cited alleged abuses by Mozambique's military, and repeatedly complained that the government was "unfair".

Mr Briggs told the BBC World Service it was difficult to determine their exact motivations as they did not have a manifesto. It's really hard to see what is the end game. After visiting Cabo Delgado's capital Pemba last year, a delegation from the South African Bishop's Conference said that "almost everyone spoken to agrees that the war is about multinational corporations gaining control of the province's mineral and gas resources".

Cabo Delgado is one of the poorest provinces in Mozambique, with high rates of illiteracy and unemployment. Discoveries of a huge ruby deposit and a giant gas field in , raised hopes of jobs and a better life for many local people, but those hopes were soon dashed.

It was alleged that any benefits were being taken by a small elite in the Frelimo party, which has governed Mozambique since independence in New Islamist preachers, both East Africans and Mozambicans trained abroad, established mosques and argued that local imams were allied to Frelimo and its grab for wealth.

Some of these new mosques provided money to help local people start business and create jobs - and the Islamists argued the society would be fairer under Sharia. This proved attractive to youth, who form the backbone of the insurgency.

Terrorists crave attention, more now in the digital age, perhaps, than ever before. Islamic State and other jihadist groups have many ways to commit mass murder. But for generating a spectacle that will be noticed — and shuddered at — the world over, sawing off the head of an American journalist or a European relief worker, then uploading the video to the Internet, is hard to beat.

Yet beheadings, too, can lose their shock value. As late as , the guillotine was still being used for executions in France. In the colonial era, severed heads of criminals were sometimes displayed on Boston Common.

Plus, modern video games and ultrarealistic computer graphics make it easier than ever to grow inured to almost any image or scene, no matter how grisly or intense or intimate. There is more to the Islamist passion for decapitation than psychological warfare and a hunger for notoriety.