The recent death of an Iranian army general highlights the serious gaps in media coverage of the Islamic State (IS). Brig. Gen. Hamid Taqavi was shot in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra by an IS sniper while training Iraqi troops. His death raises obvious questions about Iran’s role in fighting IS: Isn’t training Iraqis to fight IS one of the purposes of the US mission to Iraq? What is Iran’s role in the conflict?

Other recent headlines suggest bombs falling across many parts of Iraq with very few people actually aware of who is dropping them. This is one weird war.

In other IS news, on Dec. 24 a Jordanian F-16 bomber plane was shot down by a heat-seeking missile near Raqqa, the de facto capital of IS, and then IS militants captured the crashed jet’s pilot, First Lieutenant Mu’ath Safi Yousef al-Kaseasbeh. IS immediately called for Jordan’s resignation from the US-led anti-IS coalition. IS also took to Twitter to “crowd-source” suggestions on how al-Kaseabeh should be killed.

All of this came on the heels of journalist Jurgen Todenhofer’s report on his time spent with IS. Todenhofer, of course, concluded that IS is a grave threat to global civilization but “cannot be defeated with bombs or missiles.” Well, then, how is the US going to defeat an entity that is clearly winning the battle for hearts and minds in the Middle East? Most interestingly, Todenhofer has a long history of standing up against war and violence.

Despite the urgency of the IS situation, major American media coverage of events in the region tells us little about what is happening there. A Dec. 29 review of The New York Times, The Washington Times and The Washington Post found IS coverage to be, well, non-existent. What is going on? Did we collectively forget that 4,500 American lives have been lost in Iraq, and another 32,000 wounded?

At least The Christian Science Monitor threw some gas on the fire last week by writing the following headline and subhead: “Worse than Islamic State? Concerns rise about Iraq’s Shiite militias. The Islamic State is a serious threat to Iraq from the outside, former military officials agree. But Shiite militias, which are gaining influence, threaten [Iraq] from within, they say.” Aren’t we being told, on the other hand, that IS is a more serious threat than Al Qaeda? So now, Shiite militias are a graver threat than IS? Again, this is one weird war.

In another surprising story, The New York Times reported on Dec. 28 that Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata was turning to the ivory tower of American academia to try to understand IS with a series of conference calls.

Understanding IS begins with the media actually covering its story from Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Washington, among other places. Without increased coverage, we as a collective people will not understand what must be done. But for now, coverage will remain awful, our understanding will remain non-existent, and chaos will continue to develop in the Middle East.

~ J. Demers for Global 24 Radio