Asia Times September 30, 2015
Millions of people in the West may perish in a nuclear tsunami the Islamic State (IS) is planning to launch, warns a German journalist who embedded on the frontline with the terror group for 10 days in the northern Iraq town of Mosul in 2014, agencies report.
Recounting his impressions about IS in his new book Inside IS – Ten Days in the Islamic State, former German MP and noted journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer says the IS want to wipe out all those opposed to their plans for an Islamic caliphate and enslave their women and children.
According to him, the West is underestimating the power of IS which is trying to get its hands on nuclear weapons.
With more countries obtaining nukes, the chances of this terror group obtaining such weapons and using them against the West are more, the Munich native says.
The main people IS are planning to target are Shiites, Yazidis, Hindus, atheists and polytheists.
Moderate Muslims who believe in democracy too may be killed as they promote human laws over the laws of God from IS point of view.
The IS problem cannot be solved militarily or through other means of intervention because with every bomb dropped and hitting civilians, the number of terrorists will keep increasing.
“I don’t see anyone who has a real chance to stop them. Only Arabs can stop IS. I came back very pessimistic,” he says in the book.
The IS now control land greater in size than the United Kingdom.
“They are supported by an almost ecstatic enthusiasm the like of which I’ve never encountered before in a war zone. Every day, hundreds of willing fighters from all over the world come. They are the most brutal and most dangerous enemy I have ever seen in my life,” he says.
What made the meeting between Todenhöfer and his IS hosts possible was his highly critical view of America’s military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That did not, however, give him or his son, who accompanied him, the liberty to use their cell phones during their ten-day stay with them. Their phones remained in the custody of their hosts until they left them.
Todenhöfer slept on the floor in the sleeping bag he had carried with him along with his suitcase and backpack.