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Daesh

A general view of the Grand al-Nuri mosque during its reconstruction, in the old city of Mosul, Iraq, Jan. 23, 2020.

Documenting ISIS’ crimes is daunting. Coronavirus makes it even harder.

Conflict & Justice

ISIS no longer holds territory but the crimes it committed are fresh in the minds of survivors and families of victims. Collecting, preserving and documenting the terror group’s crimes has been slow but ongoing. Now, progress is even harder given the pandemic.

Laura Passoni took her four-year-old son to Syria in 2014 to join ISIS and realized quickly she'd made a terrible mistake. "From that moment I did everything to try to leave so that my son wouldn’t become a terrorist,” she says.

A Belgian woman explains why she joined ISIS, and why she came back

Books
Nouhad was sold to an ISIS fighter when she was 16.

This Yazidi woman escaped her ISIS captors in Mosul, but had to leave her infant son behind

Conflict
Young migrants and refugees walk through a town in northern Serbia toward the Hungarian border. There's a fear that young men like these might bring violence with them.

These men say they’re leaving Syria because they don’t want to fight anyone

Conflict
Raqqa air strike

British watchdog group says Russian planes are killing Syrian civilians at an alarming rate

Conflict
ISIS black and white flag

Exploring why some say we should call ISIS ‘Daesh’

Culture

Many people call the jihadist group claiming responsibility for the Paris and Beirut attacks, ISIS. Alternatively they’ve been called ISIL and even the Islamic State. But many in the Arab speaking world, and increasingly Western leaders have taken to calling the group Daesh. So what does Daesh mean?

Ibrahim Abdel Kader was executed in Turkey in late October. ISIS claimed responsibility.

Raqqa, being slowly slaughtered by ISIS long before French fighter jets attacked

Conflict

Members of a Syrian activist group fled Raqqa after the ISIS takeover. ISIS followed them into exile — and beheaded one of them.

Poster designed for Iran's anti-ISIS cartoon contest.

Iran hosts an anti-ISIS cartoon contest. What could go wrong?

Arts

Iran holds an anti-ISIS cartoon contest and invites satirists around the globe to participate. Sounds worthy, except it’s state-sponsored and this is the same country that held a Holocaust cartoon contest just a month ago.

Islamic State

ISIS? ISIL? The Islamic State? We really still can’t decide?

Conflict

Governments and news outlets still can’t seem to agree on what to call the militants who’ve named themselves the Islamic State, and now the French government is using yet another term: Daesh, an Arabic acronym. But why can’t we figure out what to call these guys?