Four Corners: Aug 4

Four Corners screens a Panorama story “ISIS:Terror in Iraq, reported by Paul Wood, that analyses why young men from around the world are fighting in Iraq and Syria.

They’re known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and they are sweeping across Iraq with frightening speed. They brutalise anyone they perceive as an enemy and then show the results in graphic detail, through a co-ordinated campaign on social media.

Their goal is clear. To create an Islamic state ruled by fundamentalist law.

The official Iraqi Army fled in fear and the advance of ISIS has been slowed by Kurdish forces and equally brutal Shia militia. The result – a divided nation.

This week on Four Corners, BBC reporter Paul Wood goes into the front lines of this shocking conflict to investigate how and why ISIS or Islamic State, as they now call themselves, are ripping Iraq apart. He travels with Kurdish forces as they battle the invading Islamic fighters, going house to house in the town of Jalawla. He hears what it was like to live under ISIS rule as they swept through Syria and he assesses the capacity of Iraq’s Shia forces to halt the advance of the radical fundamentalists.

Wood also manages to speak with members of the terror group and tries to understand why young men from other parts of the world are prepared to go to Iraq, ready to fight and die for their beliefs. Will these foreign recruits bring the terror back to their home countries?

Their response is chilling.

“If you don’t leave our Muslim brothers around the globe and mind your own business… you can expect these attacks and so can America and so can any other country.”

The program also features interviews with two highly regarded analysts who have been tracking the source of foreign recruits and trying to understand the process that leads so many young foreigners, including Australians, to fight in Syria and Iraq.

The answers are vital for the West. Should it confront the caliphate or let it grow? There are risks either way and real dangers that go way beyond the Middle East.

Monday 4th August at 8.30pm on ABC.