Speakers: Mara Redlich Revkin, National Security Law Fellow, Georgetown University Law Center

Elisabeth Jean Wood, Crosby Professor of the Human Environment and Professor of Political Science, International and Area Studies, Yale University.

The Islamic State (IS), which controlled significant territory in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017, engaged in a wide repertoire of violence against civilians living in these areas. Despite extensive media coverage and scholarly attention, the determinants of this pattern of violence remain poorly understood.

Mara and Elisabeth argue that, contrary to a widespread assumption that the IS wielded violence indiscriminately, it systematically targeted different social groups with distinct forms of violence, including sexual violence. Their theory focuses on ideology, suggesting it is a necessary element of explanations of patterns of violence on the part of many armed actors.

Mara and Elisabeth find support for their theory in the case of sexual violence by IS by triangulating between several types of qualitative data: official documents; social media data generated by individuals in or near IS-controlled areas; interviews with Syrians and Iraqis who have knowledge of the organisation’s policies including victims of violence and former IS combatants; and secondary sources including local Arabic-language newspapers