Growing Tally of ISIS Victims

The reported execution of Croatian worker Tomislav Salopek on Wednesday adds to the grim tally of Western hostages that ISIS has subjected to the barbaric medieval practice of beheading. 

Beginning in 2014, the victims include the American journalist James Foley, Lebanese officer Ali Sayyed, the US-Israeli national Steven Sotloff, British aid worker David Haines - who lived in Croatia - Lebanese soldier Abbas Medlej, French mountaineer Herve Gourdel, British aid worker Alan Henning, Japan's Haruna Yukawa and a much larger tally of Afghan tribesmen, Egyptian Coptic and Ethiopian Christians and almost countless Syrian army soldiers.

 A number of things stand out from this bloodstained record of infamy. One is that the foreign policy of the government from which the victims come is almost irrelevant.

ISIS may especially relish the opportunity to take revenge on Syrian soldiers, or on UK or US nationals for the part that their countries have played in the Middle East but Croatia has played no meaningful role in these conflicts. Nor, obviously, has Ethiopia.

 The majority of victims of ISIS beheadings have, of course, also been Muslim, although ISIS clearly sees these as Muslims of the wrong sort. Most worrying of all is the fact that avoiding the war zones of Iraq and Syria is no longer enough to escape ISIS's long reach.

The Afghans were caught in Afghanistan, not in the Syria-Iraq zone. Salopek was caught in Cairo, once a safe city for countless Western tourists and contract workers, a fact that will gravely embarrass the regime of General Abdel Sisi. Gourdel was caught far away in Algeria. Others were captured in Libya.