The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), 2007–2013: The Age of Serialization, Shadow Authority, and Martyrs

Declaring itself the Islamic State of Iraq (dawlat al-ʿIrāq al-islāmiyya, ISI) in late 2006, a still early incarnation of the Islamic State advances to a phase of local hegemony and circulates jubilation videos to announce an Islamic state in its conquered territory. In the midst of the War in Iraq the group initially expands and veils its triumphalist propaganda in a TV newscast aesthetic in order to win over the local population. Then, by 2008, the group encounters enormous military setbacks, and the negative development of its military situation forces Islamic State video editors to rely on a predetermined editing structure borrowed from the Qur’an to ensure messaging during the Islamic State’s first downfall period between 2008 and 2011. This editing structure initially ensures the production of short message war reports and is later developed into an extendable structure by long-form martyrdom videos, the two central video formats of the ISI period. This chapter traces the development of the predictable constituent syntax that has sustainably shaped the Islamic State’s video editing, and it develops a set of viable hypotheses about its structure, functions and motivations. From this syntax result the two key developments of the ISI period—serialization and a television-style aestheticization—that precede cinefication, and that simultaneously prepare the ground for cinefication: those aesthetic channels of film that the underlying editing structure leaves open (especially symbolism in videography, visual effects design, technology and experimentation with narrativity) are the aesthetic channels through which cinefication develops in later periods.