The killing of British aid worker David
Haines "will not lead Britain to shirk our
responsibility" to work with allies to take on ISIS,
British Prime Minister David Cameron said
Sunday.
Instead, he said, "it must strengthen our resolve."
Speaking a day after the Islamic terror group
posted a video showing Haines' beheading -- the
latest in a string of such videos -- Cameron
vowed to work with the United States to support
its "direct military action." He also emphasized
that "this is not about British troops on the
ground."
"We have to confront this menace," Cameron
said. "Step by step we must drive back,
dismantle, and ultimately destroy ISIL and what it
stands for." Together with allies, he said, "we will
do so in a calm, deliberate way but with an iron
determination."
The group, which calls itself the Islamic State, is
also known as ISIS and ISIL.
"This organization poses a massive threat to the
entire Middle East," Cameron said, making a
public statement before an emergency meeting of
security and intelligence officials.
The European Union joined Cameron in
condemning Haines' "atrocious
murder" and said it was committed to
fighting terror.
"Together with international and
regional partners, the EU will spare no
effort to ensure that an end is put to
this atrocious terrorist campaign and
all perpetrators are held accountable,"
the EU statement said.
Cameron listed five points in the
British strategy: to work with the Iraqi
government and Kurdish regional
governments and help them protect
minorities being slaughtered by ISIS;
to work at the United Nations "to
mobilize the broadest possible
support" against ISIS; to contribute to
U.S.-led military action; to assist in
humanitarian efforts; and to "reinforce
our formidable counterterrorist effort
here at home."
Some British Muslims have joined ISIS, and the
militant who killed Haines and two Americans --
James Foley and Steven Sotloff -- may be British.
'Not Muslim, but monsters'
The video of Haines' killing looks very similar to
those that showed the beheadings of Foley and
Sotloff , and the masked militant sounds like the
same man.
"It falls to the government and to each and every
one of us to drain this poison from our society
and to take on this warped ideology that is
radicalizing some of our young people," Cameron
said.
"Islam is a religion of peace," Cameron insisted,
saying of the ISIS militants, "They are not
Muslim, they are monsters."
Britons "need to know that this is a fanatical
organization" that plans attacks across Europe
and in the UK, Cameron said.
"It was an ISIL fanatic who gunned down four
people in a museum in Brussels," he said referring
to Mehdi Nemmouche, a Frenchman from Roubaix
in northern France, accused of killing four people
at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in May.
Nemmouche recently spent a year in Syria and is
a radicalized Islamist, the chief prosecutor of
Paris said in June. French journalist Nicolas
Henin said last month that Nemmouche tortured
prisoners he guarded while fighting for ISIS in
Syria.
"He did beat me a number of times. I don't know
of any bad treatment to any other foreign
hostages coming from him specifically but I
witnessed him torturing local prisoners."
'Your evil alliance with America'
The video of Haines' death shows a masked ISIS
militant placing his hand on another captive,
whom he identified as Alan Henning, a British
citizen.
On Sunday, Henning's family distributed an image
of him holding a child at a refugee camp on the
Syria-Turkey border. The family asked media to
use this image rather than the one of Henning in
an orange jumpsuit kneeling beside his captor.
ISIS which controls large areas of northern Syria
and Iraq, previously publicized grisly videos of the
beheadings of American journalists Foley and
Sotloff. It has also brutally slaughtered large
numbers of Syrians and Iraqis in the territory it's
seized.
In the two previous videos, the killer directed his
comments at the United States, which had begun
airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. But the latest one
singles out Britain.
"Your evil alliance with America, which continues
to strike the Muslims of Iraq and most recently
bombed the Haditha Dam, will only accelerate
your destruction and claim the role of the
obedient lap dog," says the militant.
The United States launched airstrikes on ISIS
positions near Haditha Dam in western Iraq a
week ago and is working to build a coalition of
countries to support its efforts to combat the
terrorist group.
"Cameron will only drag you and your people into
another bloody and unwinnable war," says the
killer, dressed all in black with only his eyes and
hands showing. He calls the beheading "a
message to the allies of America."
Like them, Haines appears kneeling
beside the executioner in a barren
desert landscape, dressed in a bright
orange jumpsuit. He had been shown
briefly in the earlier video of Sotloff's
killing.
'Just another bloke'
Haines, 44, went to Syria to help
organize the delivery of humanitarian
aid to a refugee camp in Atmeh, close
to the Turkish border. He was
abducted near the camp in March
2013.
"David was most alive and
enthusiastic in his humanitarian roles,"
his brother, Mike, said in a statement .
"His joy and anticipation for the work
he went to do in Syria is for myself
and family the most important
element of this whole sad affair."
Before becoming an aid worker, Haines worked for
the Royal Mail. He was an aircraft engineer with
the Royal Air Force before he went to work with
ScotRail, a Scottish train company, his brother
said. A stint with the U.N. in the Balkans would
change Haines' life path.
"There are many accolades from people in that
region that David helped. He helped whoever
needed help, regardless of race, creed or religion,"
his brother wrote. "During this time David began
to decide that humanitarian work was the field he
wanted to work in."
His brother also described Haines as an ordinary
man -- "just another bloke" -- who grew up with
strong family values that he carried into
adulthood.
"David was a good brother, there when I needed
him and absent when I didn't. I hope that he felt
the same way about me. He was, in the right
mood, the life and soul of the party and on other
times the most stubborn irritating pain in the ass.
He would probably say the same about me," Mike
Haines wrote.
David Haines had more than a decade of
experience doing aid work, helping victims of
conflict in the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East.
He was in Syria as a logistics and security
manager for ACTED, a French aid group that was
helping to provide food, tents and water for tens
of thousands of people who had fled to the Atmeh
camp amid the vicious civil war.
When he wasn't working in troubled areas, Haines
lived in Croatia with his wife, Dragana, and their
4-year-old daughter, Athea.
He grew up in Scotland, and his first marriage
was to his childhood sweetheart Louise,
according to his brother.
His teenage daughter from that marriage,
Bethany, talked about how much she misses her
father in comments on a social network, Ask.fm,
late last year.
Asked what she wanted at that time, Bethany
replied simply, "For my daddy to come home."
'Warped ideology'
The British government said earlier this month
that it had attempted to rescue one of its citizens
held by ISIS "some time ago" but had failed. It
didn't provide any further details.
U.S. President Barack Obama, who announced
last week that U.S. airstrikes would go after ISIS
in Syria, condemned "the barbaric murder" of
Haines.
"The United States stands shoulder-to-shoulder
tonight with our close friend and ally in grief and
resolve," he said in a statement late Saturday.
The murderous, meteoric rise of ISIS has caused
alarm across the Middle East and beyond.
The Muslim Council of Great Britain issued a
statement Sunday condemning Haines' killing
"unreservedly."
"David Haines went out to the region to help the
people of the region," said Shuja Shafi, the
council's secretary general. "That extremists
chose to murder him only shows once again the
depravity of their warped ideology."
ISIS members "claim to be acting in the name of
Islam," Shafi said. "But there is nothing in our
faith that condones such behavior."
U.S. building anti-ISIS coalition
In his statement, Obama reiterated his intention
"to degrade and destroy this threat to the people
of our countries, the region and the world."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has spent
recent days in the Middle East trying to build
support for the U.S. strategy to combat ISIS.
Those efforts are expected to continue Monday in
Paris, where France is hosting an international
conference on the crisis in Iraq.
Countries in the Mideast and outside the region
"are prepared to engage in military assistance, in
actual strikes if that is what it requires" to fight
ISIS, Kerry told CBS' "Face the Nation" on
Sunday.
Some nations "are clearly prepared to take action
in the air alongside the United States and to do
airstrikes if that's what they're called on to do,"
he said. Some nations have offered to put troops
on the ground, "but we're not looking for that at
this moment anyway," Kerry added.
Pressed for more specifics, Kerry said, "It's not
appropriate to start announcing, 'Well, this
country will do this, this country will do that.'"
Australia is preparing to deploy as many as 10
planes, most of them combat aircraft, to the
United Arab Emirates in response to a U.S.
request to contribute to the coalition, Australian
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Sunday.
It will also put together a team of special
operations personnel who could act as military
advisers to Iraqi forces and others fighting ISIS,
Abbott said in a statement .
"We are not deploying combat troops but
contributing to international efforts to prevent the
humanitarian crisis from deepening," he said.
In a Sunday interview, White House chief of staff
Denis McDonough declined to say if any members
of the emerging coalition would put troops on the
ground, but he said that there will be a focus on
training Syrian rebels and Iraqi and Kurdish
fighters to take on ISIS with coalition backing.
That backing will come in the form of airpower,
intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance and
training, he told CNN's "State of the Union," and
it will be especially important to draw Sunni
fighters into the battle.
Asked if American involvement could make things
worse, given the nature of ISIS threats against
the West, McDonough said that with Haines'
execution came a reminder that ISIS is inhumane,
barbaric and depraved.
"The thought we could make them more so is
faulty," he said.
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