Every Islamic State execution is a public spectacle. But you’ll never see most of them

It seemed like the Islamic State (IS) had run out of ways to shock the world until Tuesday, when the group released a new video purporting to show militants burning alive captured Jordanian pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh in a metal cage. 

The video, which is around 20 minutes long, combines many of the same features we've come to expect from IS videos, and some we haven't seen before.

In past videos that showed the beheadings of high-profile hostages from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan, the camera faded to black when the masked militant put the knife to his hostage's neck. There's no such fade in this video. The viewer is spared nothing. Al-Kassasbeh's suffering and apparent death is vivid and brutal — cynically transformed into a Hollywood-quality spectacle for the world to watch in horror. 

While Jordanians and the world mourn al-Kassasbeh, it's worth reflecting on a pattern that's perhaps even more troubling: For every high-profile hostage who's been forced to wear the now iconic orange jumpsuit and die in front of an HD camera, hundreds of other victims in Syria and Iraq have been executed, monitors and witnesses say.

When GlobalPost correspondent Tracey Shelton reported this summer from northern Iraq, she met many Yazidis, members of a minority religious group that IS considers infidels, who told her stories of mass public executions of men and enslavement of women during IS's August assault against Yazidi towns around Mount Sinjar.

IS itself promotes news of many of the killings, which are less visible to Western audiences but no less designed to function as public spectacles.  

Different publics and messages

IS has turned public executions into multifaceted tools of social control, recruitment and unconventional warfare, as well as performances of legitimacy and strength.

They're not all meant to start trending on Twitter.

IS speaks to a variety of different publics: Foreign governments, leaders, and citizens of those nations; people living in areas IS controls or could control in the future; IS militants fighting in Iraq and Syria; and sympathetic foreigners and potential foreign recruits.

And it communicates its messages in a variety of publics using a variety of forms of broadcast: Live in the town squares, streets, and places of worship within its self-declared caliphate; and around the world virtually via news media, and social media. 

Its messages, too, are varied. But one of the tools that spans across these campaigns is public execution. 

The most recent video is totally horrifying, and yet, in the universe that IS has created, it's just a widely disseminated and slickly produced version of everyday life.

Orange jumpsuits

Most visibly to Western audiences, IS has used high-profile videos featuring an English-speaking executioner — dubbed "Jihadi John" in some Western media — in order to terrorize people in the West, taunt foreign governments, and perform their power for potential foreign recruits.

While foreign hostages likely died under very controlled circumstances out of the "public eye," it would be hard to argue that their executions weren't "public" in conception, enactment, and dissemination.

You could argue that for most people in the world, the evolving story of IS has been defined by these videos. We know the names of the dead well. 

James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning, Abdul-Rahman (Peter) Kassig, Haruna Yukawa, Kenji Goto, and now, Maaz al-Kassasbeh.

It's not clear how many more names will be added to that list.

As The New York Times reported recently, IS is running low on individual hostages who could be used for high-profile executions. The group still holds a 26-year-old American female aid worker and British journalist John Cantlie. As the Times points out, though, there are "untold numbers" of Syrians being held as hostages. If the killing of al-Kassasbeh proves anything, it's that IS can be sickeningly creative when it comes to shocking the world, so there's no way to predict what might come next.

Local governance and social control

In the time it's taken IS to execute eight high-profile foreign hostages, the group has publicly executed Syrians, Iraqis, and ethnic minorities living in its self-declared caliphate.

It's very difficult to get accurate numbers and consistent reports, but as information and anecdotes have trickled out thanks to monitoring groups, governments allied against IS, and other sources on the ground, a clear picture has developed — IS routinely uses public executions as a means of governance and a tool of social control.

IS militants use public executions to demonstrate authority and establish power over the population. They also use executions to project legitimacy by wrapping the killings in their own interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law. (They recently published a penal code, according to the Independent.)

On Jan. 20, 2015, The New York Times reported on a wave of public executions in IS-controlled areas of Iraq, for example:

– In Mosul, two men accused of stealing were crucified and shot to death. Two other men, accused of engaging in homosexual acts, were thrown off the roof of a building.

– A woman was stoned to death for adultery.

– Four doctors were executed after they refused to treat IS fighters.

– Three women lawyers were executed for reasons that are unclear, but IS has a history of executing educated women. 

The UN also heard repeated, but unconfirmed reports that IS had executed 13 boys and young men for playing soccer.

The immediate audience for these executions is local, but IS pushes images and videos out onto social media, where they're circulated by IS supporters and jihadi forums. Keep in mind — just because a photo of IS militants throwing a man off a rooftop doesn't circulate in your own social network or show up on CNN doesn't mean it's not viral somewhere else.  

Recruitment: Dabiq

Likely part of the reason IS disseminates images and videos of executions via social media is to attract new members, whether they're people who'd consider traveling to fight in Syria or Iraq or those who'd participate remotely by promoting IS online and in their communities.

But IS doesn't just rely on informal sharing for its stonings and beheadings to reach sympathetic eyes.

It's got a magazine for that.

If you want to see how IS communicates to its potential foreign recruits, check out a copy of Dabiq, the group's glossy and design-conscious propaganda periodical. There are six issues so far, and they're available online in multiple languages, allowing curious proto-jihadis around the world to read about IS triumphs, learn the basics of whatever ideology IS claims to uphold, and get information about the enemies of the caliphate. 

Every issue of Dabiq has featured coverage — including text and photographs — of public executions.

IS has also used Dabiq to celebrate the mass public execution of enemy soldiers, most of them alleged Syrian pro-government fighters. Issue three included a lengthy report with multiple photographs detailing the mass execution of members of the al-Sheitaat tribe in Deir al-Zor Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS executed 700 people there by beheading and gunshots. Photos in Dabiq showed IS militants firing into large groups of prisoners, images of whom were blurred as they toppled from their knees into mass graves.

Dabiq has also incorporated extensive "coverage" of the high-profile hostage executions. The heavily produced magazine mirrors, in a way, the high production quality of those videos.

Issue three prominently featured news of the killing of James Foley, including a full-page, high resolution photo of the moment a militant put his knife to Foley's neck. 

An end to the bloodshed

Ever since IS executed Foley, who had worked for GlobalPost, and "Jihadi John" appeared onscreen holding Steven Sotloff by the collar of his orange jumpsuit, the world has debated how to counter the terror group. The US launched their campaign of airstrikes against IS just weeks before Foley was killed, and, with the help of coalition partners and local ground forces in Iraq, has managed to make some gains pushing them back.

The question isn't so much 'how do we stop the killing?' as it is: How do we put an end to the world IS has created — one it reaffirms and puts on display for the world each time it murders a person in the eyes of others?

More from GlobalPost:

As the Islamic State’s defeats grow, so does its need to shock

Inside the Cairo neighborhood that won't stop protesting

Islamic State beheadings are firing up Japan's hawks

Peter Greste is now free, but there are still 11 journalists left in Egypt's prisons

Here's what moviegoers in Baghdad think of 'American Sniper'