| Caliphate | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Presentation | |
| Hosted by | Rukmini Callimachi |
| Language | English |
| Updates | Ended |
| Production | |
| Production | Andy Mills Larissa Anderson (managing) Asthaa Chaturvedi (associate) |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 12 |
| Publication | |
| Original release | April 19 – June 21, 2018 |
| Provider | The New York Times |
Caliphate is a narrative podcast published by The New York Times in 2018 which covers the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). It was hosted by reporter Rukmini Callimachi.
The central figure of the podcast was Pakistani-Canadian Shehroze Chaudhry (using the name "Abu Huzaifa al-Kanadi"), who described in detail atrocities he claimed to have committed in Syria for ISIL. [1] Concerns were raised that his story was a fabrication or a grave misrepresentation, and in 2020 Chaudhry was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's O Division Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (OINSET) for lying about participating in terrorist activities. Following his arrest, The New York Times admitted to a severe editorial failing and retracted Chaudry's story. [2] [1]
A large portion of the podcast is dedicated to following the story of a Canadian ex-ISIL fighter using the nom de guerre Abu Huzaifa al-Kanadi. Callimachi found Huzaifa through Instagram, and conducted an in-person interview in a hotel in Canada. The show details Huzaifa's radicalization and career as a member of ISIL's police, including an admission of carrying out executions on behalf of ISIL. [3]
The podcast received a Peabody Award and the Overseas Press Club of America award in 2019. [4] [5] Both would later be returned by the Times after doubts around Chaudry's story came to light.
Callimachi was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for her reporting on ISIL, which included the podcast and "The ISIS Files" database. [6] On December 22, 2020, the Pulitzer Prizes board indicated it would rescind the finalist status at the request of the Times. [7]
In 2018, Caliphate won International Documentary Association's (IDA) documentary awards for the year's best audio documentary. The audio documentary category was awarded for the best in stand-alone and episodic series nonfiction storytelling in radio & podcast. [8]
On May 11, 2018, Conservative members of the Parliament of Canada demanded that Public Safety minister Ralph Goodale take action against Huzaifa. [9] Shortly after, Huzaifa told the CBC that he had lied about carrying out executions for ISIL. [10]
Huzaifa was arrested on September 25, 2020, after an investigation found that he had no ties to ISIL. He was charged with "hoax-terrorist activity", which is primarily used to prosecute fake bomb threats. Following his arrest, The New York Times revealed Huzaifa's real name (Shehroze Chaudhry) and announced that it would make a "fresh examination" of why he was featured on the podcast. [11] On December 18, editors appended a note to the episode transcripts stating that "the episodes of 'Caliphate' that presented Mr. Chaudhry's claims did not meet our standards for accuracy", [12] in addition to releasing another episode on the podcast's feed discussing the hoax. [13] The Washington Post noted that the editors note "fell short of a full retraction". [14] Michael Barbaro, host of the Times's The Daily , tweeted that "several episodes of the series do not touch on Chaudhry and their accuracy is not in question"; of the podcast's ten episodes, seven were centered around Chaudhry. [15]
Callimachi was reassigned following the incident, [14] [2] and the Overseas Press Club rescinded the award they had given for the podcast. [5] On December 18, 2020, the Times also announced that, in view of the results of its investigation into the matter, it would return the Peabody Award which had been won by the podcast. [16] [17]
A beheading video is a type of snuff video depicting a live murder in which a hostage or victim is shown to be graphically decapitated, or the head is displayed in the aftermath. Such videos are typically distributed mostly through the Internet, and are often employed by groups seeking to instill shock or terror into a population. Although beheading has been a widely employed public execution method since the ancient Greeks and Romans, videos of this type only began to arise in 2002 with the beheading of Daniel Pearl and the growth of the Internet in the Information Age, which allowed groups to anonymously publish these videos for public consumption. The beheadings shown in these videos are usually not performed in a "classical" method – decapitating a victim quickly with a blow from a sword or axe – but by the relatively slow and torturous process of slicing and sawing the victim's neck, while still alive, with a knife.
Mubin Shaikh is a Canadian former security intelligence and counter terrorism operative, currently a Professor of Public Safety at Seneca College and also Counter Extremism Specialist for the U.S.-based NGO, Parents for Peace.
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and by its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadist group and a former unrecognised quasi-state. Its origins were in the Jai'sh al-Taifa al-Mansurah organization founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004, which fought alongside al-Qaeda during the Iraqi insurgency. The group gained global prominence in 2014, when its militants successfully captured large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, taking advantage of the ongoing Syrian civil war. By the end of 2015, it ruled an area with an estimated population of twelve million people, where it enforced its extremist interpretation of Islamic law, managed an annual budget exceeding US$1 billion, and commanded more than 30,000 fighters.
Circular reporting, or false confirmation, is a situation in source criticism where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in reality comes from only one source. In many cases, the problem happens mistakenly through sloppy reporting or intelligence-gathering. However, the situation can also be intentionally contrived by the source or reporter as a way of reinforcing the widespread belief in its information.
Rukmini Maria Callimachi is a Romanian-born American journalist. She currently works for The New York Times. She had been a Pulitzer Prize finalist four times. She hosted the New York Times podcast Caliphate, which won a Peabody Award, but the Times returned the award after an investigation cast doubt on a significant portion of the podcast.
Executions by ISIS refers here to killing by beheading, immolation, shooting, or other means of military and civilian people by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). ISIL has released a number of propaganda/publicity videos of beheadings or shootings of captives. Houtat Sulūk is reported to be a mass grave.
The ideology of the Islamic State, sometimes called Islamic Statism, has been described as being a hybrid of Salafism, Salafi jihadism, Sunni Islamist fundamentalism, Wahhabism, and Qutbism. Through its official statement of beliefs originally released by its first leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2007 and subsequently updated since June 2014, IS defined its creed as "a middle way between the extremist Kharijites and the lax Murji'ites".
Amaq News Agency is a news outlet linked to the Islamic State (IS). Amaq is often the "first point of publication for claims of responsibility" for terrorist attacks in Western countries by the Islamic State. In March 2019, Amaq News Agency was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US Department of State.
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is an Iraqi living in Britain who specialises in the Syrian Civil War, Iraqi Civil War and the Islamic State. He has been consulted as an expert by major media outlets including Al Jazeera,The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, and others. He authored a major report published by the New York Times in partnership with George Washington University in their 2020 series, "The ISIS report". He has faced criticism over his alleged sympathies towards ISIL in his work, as well as his conduct and alleged close relationships with ISIL fighters.
Smoking in Iraq is a widespread and culturally accepted behavior in Iraqi society. Since 2003 however there has been a greater push from the government to impose stricter rules. Since 2009 it is illegal to smoke in or around public buildings, although the ban remains unpopular with the Iraqi public and enforcement is inconsistent.
Al-Baghuz Fawqani is a town in Syria, located in Abu Kamal District, Deir ez-Zor. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Al-Baghuz Fawqani had a population of 10,649 in the 2004 census.
On 18 February 2018, a 22-year-old man local to the Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan carrying a knife and a double-barreled shotgun opened fire on a crowd at an Orthodox church in Kizlyar, killing five women and injuring several other people, including two police and three others. He was shot and killed by police on duty nearby.
Shehroze Chaudhry is a Canadian who gained international attention under the pseudonym Abu Huzaifa al-Kanadi as the subject of Caliphate, a podcast hosted by Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times. He had claimed that in 2014, he emptied his bank account, traveled to Syria, and joined the terrorist group Islamic State (IS), where he remained until 2016. In the wake of the podcast's release, Conservative MPs called on the government to find and arrest al-Kanadi amid rumours that he had returned to Canada.
Katiba al-Bittar al-Libi is an armed Islamist group operating in Iraq, Syria and Libya. The group is composed largely of Libyan fighters who entered Syria in the wake of the Arab Spring and early post-civil uprising stage of the Syrian Civil War. Though the group is composed largely of Libyans, the group also has large amounts of Tunisians and Francophone Maghrebis from Europe, reportedly the perpetrators of the November 2015 Paris attacks and Manchester Arena bombing, including Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was suspected to be a leader of the group, were members of the group or affiliated with it, the group also pioneered the Inghimasi tactic used in the attack, and its fighters have largely employed the tactic on the battlefield. The group maintained close ties to Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia through networks in Libya and has established multiple training camps across Libya and has recruited Tunisians to these camps, which were located around Sirte and Tripoli. During beginning of the infighting between ISIL and its former allies such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham fighters from Katiba al-Bittar took part in open fighting against ISIL's opponents in Markada and Atarib, in the process losing several fighters.
Hoda Muthana is a U.S.-born Yemeni woman who emigrated from the United States to Syria to join ISIS in November 2014. She surrendered in January 2019 to coalition forces fighting ISIS in Syria and has been denied access back to the United States after a U.S. court ruling rejected her claim to American citizenship. When she was born, her father was a Yemeni diplomat, making her ineligible for American citizenship by birth.
Kimberly Gwen Polman is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen, who travelled to Daesh occupied territory in 2015, and married an Islamic militant she had befriended online. In 2019, after she surrendered to forces allied to the United States, Polman told reporters she deeply regretted her actions.
The al-Hawl refugee camp is a refugee camp on the southern outskirts of the town of al-Hawl in northern Syria, close to the Syria-Iraq border, which holds individuals displaced from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The camp is nominally controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) but according to the U.S. Government, much of the camp is run by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who use the camp for indoctrination and recruitment purposes.
The origins of the Islamic State group can be traced back to three main organizations. Earliest of these was the "Jamāʻat al-Tawḥīd wa-al-Jihād" organization, founded by the Jihadist leader Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi in Jordan in 1999. The other two predecessor organizations emerged during the Iraqi insurgency against the U.S. occupation forces. These included the "Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah" group founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004 and the "Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah" group founded by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his associates in the same year.
Glenna Gordon is an American documentary photographer, photojournalist, editor, and educator based in New York City. She is known for documenting such event as the Ebola outbreak, ISIS and Al Qaeda's hostage situations, and the kidnapping of more than two hundred and fifty Nigerian school girls. She is also known for her documentation of Nigerian weddings. Her work has been commissioned by The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Wall Street Journal, and Smithsonian. Gordon is an adjunct professor at the New School in New York City and an editor at Red Hook Editions.
Caliphate (winner) Reporters: Rukmini Callimachi and Andy Mills Producers: Andy Mills, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr and Asthaa Chaturvedi
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