Lend Me Your Ears, Do

"Hello, I'm John Cantile, and today we are in the city of Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border. That is, in fact, Turkey right behind me."
"Now the battle for Kobani is coming to an end."
"Some of us who tried to escape were waterboarded by our captors, as Muslim prisoners are waterboarded by their American captors."
"[ISIS] are just mopping up now, street to street, and building to building. You can occasionally hear sporadic gunfire in the background as a result of those operations."
"But contrary to what the Western media would have you believe, it is not an all-out battle here now. It is nearly over. As you can hear, it is very quiet, just the occasional gunfire."
"Two hundred thousand inhabitants of the city have been displaced because of the fighting that came here. You can see the refugee camps over my right shoulder over there in Turkey, where the inhabitants now are."
"Urban warfare is as about as nasty and tough as it gets, and it's something of a specialty of the mujahedeen."
British journalist John Cantlie, ISIS hostage, Kobani, Syria

The latest propaganda video presented the hostage John Cantlie as a war reporter / The Associated Press

Well, he's right where the action is. Just where enterprising and dauntless journalists wedded to their profession always hope to be. But when conflicts are so brutal and so close that so often proves to be extremely difficult. On the other hand, while such journalists take chances in approaching as close to the combat zone as they can to ensure they're in receipt of accurate information to pass on as news, few imagine they might do so while serving as hostages, with their lives in very immediate danger.


Casual, professional, fluid in addressing the situation in Kobani, as the only Western journalist present. He has a coup, a real news scoop, and he's delivering it in a rather unusual, unorthodox manner, under the conniving order to perform, by the very mujahadeen who are attacking a large Kurdish city, causing hundreds of thousands of desperately fearful people to flee their homes, murdering those whom they come across, taking women and girls as sex slaves, and enjoying the opportunity to mutilate and behead their Kurdish opponents.

Well, yes, of course he's also a captive of ISIS, held for whatever usefulness he can be to their cause. Since he's useless as a hostage for whom they can extract ransom from the government of which he is a citizen, the ever-resourceful Islamic State has decided his professional expertise can also be regarded as an asset at their disposal. So, Mr. Cantlie is accommodatingly doing all he can to aid their propaganda cause and just incidentally, in the process of helpfulness, extend his life-span.

Another in a series of videos has been revealed, featuring this inveterate journalist. Not yet decapitated as an object lesson delivered to the U.S. and Britain that their interference in the affairs of the Middle East and Islamist sectarianism is not appreciated. The skilled leaders of Islamic Jihad are using their comfort with and knowledge of social media and 'public relations' to effect. It's one thing to have footage of jihadists boasting of their conquest.

Quite another to feature the solidly reputable and respectable visage of a Western journalists describing the situation as it really is, according to ISIS, not as it is reported by those not on the scene. And so, Mr. Cantlie speaks of what he sees around him; nothing but large numbers of fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. The photojournalist has been two years in captivity. It is, without a shadow of doubt, a sobering experience.

One that leads the captive to be amenable to opportunities to be useful. It would certainly beat shuddering in the bleak darkness of an underground cubbyhole subsisting on a half-teacup of beans or rice and foetid water. Taken out not necessarily for exercise from time to time, or evacuation, but for bruising reminders that he is at the mercy of torture-loving jihadists who have nothing but raging contempt for what he represents; the hated West.

In an earlier video he had stated: "Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking he's only doing this because he's a prisoner. He's got a gun at his head, and he's being forced to do this. Right? Well, it's true, I am a prisoner. That I cannot deny But, seeing as I've been abandoned by my government and my fate now lies in the hands of the Islamic State, I have nothing to lose." True, true.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. But he must surely know that those captured and held by jihadists who insist for the good of their health, they must surrender to Islam; that having gone the conversion route, it has not aided them one iota. One by one, praying to Allah, taking comfort in thumbing the pages of the Koran, they have been slaughtered, beheaded, degraded, spirited on to their maker.

An explosion rocks Syrian city of Kobani during a reported suicide car bomb attack by the militants of Isis group on a People's Protection Unit (YPG) position in the city center of Kobani, as seen from the outskirts of Suruc, on the Turkey-Syria border

Gokhan Sahin/Getty Images