No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Alternative Narratives and Countering Violent Extremism in the Arc of Instability: Reflections on Post-ISIS Iraq
Abstract
This chapter is a contribution to the debate on information resilience and national security from the perspective of countering violent Islamist extremism in the arc of instability. The narratives crafted by various violent Islamist extremists are a form of information resilience, but in this case, they act as counterforces, hindering state efforts to prepare for and withstand the onslaughts of terror groups. This challenge is particularly pronounced in weak and fragile states within the arc of instability. The aims of the chapter are threefold: to explore the information resilience of terrorist groups vying for power in the arc of instability; to examine the reactions and responses that extremism has produced in the commercial media; and, finally, to discuss the key challenges that governments are grappling with in controlling media content that is seen as having the potential to destabilise the already fragile security situation.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
The aim of the report is to shed light on key challenges of
peacebuilding, reforms and reconciliation in Iraq with specific
focus on north-western parts of the country, areas that formed
between the years 2014-2019 the base of the international
terrorist organization IS.
he paper examines the digital practices and discourses of the Islamic State (IS) when exploiting Social Media Communication (SMC) environments to propagate their jihadist ideology and mobilise specific audiences. It draws on insights from Social Media Critical Discourse Studies, observational approaches, and visual content/semiotic analysis. The paper maintains the complementary nature of technological practice and discursive content in the process of meaning-making in digital jihadist discourse. The study shows that digital practices of strategic sharing, distribution and campaigns to re-upload textual materials are made possible by exploiting SMC communicative affordances. As for the analysis of discursive content, the paper focuses on YouTube and highlights strategic patterns and covert references in an IS-produced flagship video. It illustrates how IS discourse constructs its envisaged in-group/outgroup by (re-)symbolising current events within historical, political and ideological conflict scenarios, i.e. the incessant resistance and legitimacy of forces of virtue vs evil. By foregrounding symbolic references to military outgroup actors, IS legitimises its own violence and projects a powerful self-identity against a (perceived) global hegemony. The paper shows how the combination of a technologically savvy operation and a resistant, anti-hegemonic narrative, embedded in a strategically framed symbolism of Islam, may resonate with global (quasi)-diasporic digital consumers.
In this research note, we present results from a review of research on local resilience in relation to radicalization in public health, social work, crisis management, and community policing using terrorism studies as a point of departure. In order to identify agreements between literatures, we focus on how local resilience is understood, how it is said to be promoted, and how this knowledge could be synthesized. We show that resilience by and large is understood as both a process and a capacity underpinned by cooperation, social networks, and community resources and that an initial mapping of existing strengths and resources is pivotal for local resilience-building.
This article analyses Dabiq magazine to explore the strategic logic of Islamic State (IS) appeals to English-speaking Muslims. It offers the field a conceptual framework through which to analyse IS’s communications strategy and a top-down empirical study of Dabiq’s contents. This paper argues that Dabiq appeals to its audiences by strategically designing in-group identity, Other, solution and crisis constructs which it leverages via value-, crisis- and dichotomy-reinforcing narratives. By fusing identity- and rational-choice appeals, IS provides its audiences with a powerful ‘competitive system of meaning’ that is designed to shape its readership’s perceptions, polarise their support and drive their radicalisation.
This article examines the coercive and deterrent utility of targeting the leaders of violent, non-state organizations with precision force. Building on the literatures on targeted killings and deterrence theory, this article provides a case study analysis of targeted killings in Afghanistan. Relying on publicly available and semi-private sources, the article presents a comparative analysis of four targeted killings conducted against Taliban leaders. Findings suggest that the eliminations degraded Taliban professionalism, diminished the group's success rates, influenced their selection of targets, and weakened morale. These findings speak to the efficacy of targeted killings in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency and to their value as both counter-capability and counter-motivation operations.
This article discusses the reasons why content moderation and control in cyberspace, being a primary means of online countering violent extremism (CVE), does not work as intended. It makes four main arguments. Firstly, despite years of efforts from CVE stakeholders, the propaganda of militant Islamist VEOs is still easily accessible on the Internet. This study has mapped hundreds of addresses engaged in digital jihadist activities at the turn of 2020–2021. It effectively proves that the current approach to online CVE brought few tangible effects. Secondly, these programs have been unevenly
applied to militant Islamist organizations. There have been groups which represent violent extremist ideology but are not actively combated by stakeholders. As a result, these groups have been able to establish a solid foothold on the surface web. Thirdly, the efficiency of CVE strategies based on content takedowns are decreased by the relative ease of terrorists reestablishing banned communication channels, the availability of vast alternatives for online propaganda dissemination, the introduction of impractical legislation by governments, overlapping jurisdictions on the Internet and the “Streisand effect.” Finally, adequate strategies aimed at curbing digital jihad should be primarily based on offline and online activities which fall outside of the remit of CVE.
While jihadism appears to be on the rise in Africa, the explanations of violent extremist groups’ capacity to foment jihadi insurgencies and mobilize recruits remain poorly understood. Recent studies have challenged the assumption that the rise of jihadism in Africa is the result of poor governance in areas of limited state reach, highlighting instead the significance of the (perception of) abuses perpetrated by state authorities. Looking at collective action and its structural determinants, it is rather state action—and not the lack thereof—that best explains the capacity of mobilization of jihadi insurgencies in African borderlands. In order to test this theory in a least-likely case, the article explores the genealogy and evolution of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), mobilizing extensive qualitative evidence. Borrowing the analytical framework from civil war studies, it argues that the contentious political dynamics observed in Niger’s borderlands amount to a case of symmetric non-conventional warfare, where abuses perpetrated by state proxies trigger an escalation of homegrown terrorism. It therefore supplies a further specification of the theories investigating the complex interplay between the processes of jihadi mobilization/rebel governance and the practices of counter-terrorism in weak states.
This article analyses the Islamic State media department’s involvement in deceptive influence efforts. Relying on an extensive database of the department’s products from its origins to the present (Tawhid wal-Jihad, Al-Qa’ida in Iraq, the Mujahidin Shura Council, the Islamic State of Iraq and ISIS), Craig Whiteside identifies situations when decisions are made to involve the media in deception efforts, and why. He finds that the Islamic State used deception infrequently and carefully, usually in a defensive manner, while carefully balancing the need for credible and truthful information activities outside its deception efforts.
This book discusses the role of political narratives in shaping perceptions of instability and conceptions of order in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The authors illustrate how, in times of socio-political turmoil and outbursts of discontent such as the Arab Spring, political entrepreneurs explain and justify their political agendas by complementing hard power solutions with attractive ideas and discursive constructions that appeal to domestic constituencies and geopolitical allies.
The book is divided into two parts. The first focuses on non-state actors, such as confessional communities and ideological movements, who aim to develop narratives that are convincing to their respective polities. It also studies regional powers that seek to determine their positions in a competitive environment via distinctive narrations of order. In part two, the authors investigate the narratives of global players that aim to explain and justify their role in an evolving international order.
This chapter reflects on the challenge of countering the Islamic State (IS) in the information environment. National and international efforts to counter the group must—and must continue to—go beyond military operations and political initiatives and include a range of counterpropaganda activities. This chapter combines a scholarly approach with the view of practitioners in order to identify and discuss the challenges brought about by two types of counterpropaganda. First, it examines the issues associated with efforts to deny IS access to the information environment, especially online, by shutting down accounts and deleting content. Second, it addresses the possibilities and pitfalls of various approaches to directly engage and compete with IS propaganda in the information environment, including through the propagation of counter- and alternative narratives.
The media plays a crucial role in contemporary conflicts because an image war is occurring alongside the military confrontation. The Islamic state of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) sets a prime example for the usage of image as part of its fighting strategy, using various platforms to communicate its narrative. This study evaluates ISIS’s image front by analyzing its messages promoted through various online communication platforms: audio statements made by ISIS leaders, official videos, Dabiq and Rumiyah magazines, Islamic chants (nasheeds), and Amaq news reports. The findings indicate that ISIS uses messages strategically in an attempt to create and maintain its image as a powerful organization. The three main themes are power projection, violence, and Islamic religious messages (while different emphases are placed on various platforms). Most messages target Muslims, while others (usually threats) target the organization’s various enemies. It appears that ISIS invests considerable resources and efforts into promoting its narrative as part of the image war—projecting its power, based on religious arguments, on one hand, and demonizing and threatening its enemies on the other, using repeated themes, descriptions, metaphors, and visual images (videos, pictures, and infographics). The study’s analysis indicates that ISIS puts a lot of emphasis on the media/image aspects of its battle, and uses all of the tools in its tool box in an attempt to succeed in the image war, a central front in contemporary conflicts.
Images of death and dying in the media around the globe have a symbiotic relationship with nation states as they can bolster state control by defining who has the right to take lives in the interests of the community, by identifying enemies of the state, by demonstrating dominance over enemies, and by lending a moral posture to the state’s war efforts. Previously, the growing corpus of research on media’s display of death and about to die images has focused almost exclusively on media outlets that bolster established states on the global stage. By analyzing 1965 death and about to die images displayed in Dabiq, ISIS’s English-language magazine, and al-Naba’, the same group’s Arabic-language newspaper, this study adds an understanding of the messaging strategies deployed by groups striving to challenge, rather than reinforce, existing national boundaries. The findings suggest that while ISIS adopts some standard media practices, it also utilizes unique and audience targeted approaches regarding the frequency of image use, the identify of the corpses, the display of dead bodies, and the presentation of those responsible for the pictured dead bodies in its media campaign.
This article answers three questions: What is the nature of the Long War? How is progress (or lack thereof) to be assessed? Where is it likely to go next? An appreciation of Clausewitz shows that practical centers of gravity exist for the Long War, and that the conflict pivots upon the ability to persuasively link ideology to events via a strategic narrative. A close examination of an illustrative case study, the interaction between the US and the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq 2004 – 2006, shows that Al Qaeda has suffered a severe setback, but also that the nature of the war is set to shift yet again. Further tangible progress for the US requires waging the Long War as a global counterinsurgency based on a strategy of ‘selective identification’ (versus pure ‘disaggregation’) as well as an understanding of how to more effectively craft a strategic narrative.
This paper looks at the virtual dimension of contemporary insurgency and counterinsurgency. It argues that the West is faltering in the ‘War of Ideas’ with global Jihad for the main reason that the messages that we wish to convey lack narrative coherence. This is a result of the fact that we misapprehend the nature of the virtual operational environment whereas our opponents possess an intuitive grasp of it as a result of which their structure and method of operations are better adapted and more effective than our own. There is no reason, beyond inertia, that this should remain the case.
The ISIS Twitter census: Defining and describing the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter (The Brookings Project on US
- J M Berger
- Jonathon Morgan
Alam al-Daa’sh min nash’a ila i’lan al-khilafa [The world of ISIS from its origins to the establishment of the Caliphate
- Al Hashimi
- Husham
Jihad and death: The global appeal of Islamic State
- Olivier Roy
Stop the assault on free speech, drop the draft digital content regulation in Iraq
- Access Now
Al-asalib al-iqna’iyya li tanzim Daash fi tajnid al-afrad: Muqaraba ‘ilmiyya [Persuasive tactics of ISIS in the recruitment of individuals: A scientific approach] Majallat al-bahith al-I’lami
- Khalil Ahmad
ISIS in Iraq: The challenge of reintegrating ‘ISIS families
- Husham Al-Hashimi
Twenty years after 9/11: What is the future of the global jihadi movement?
- Colin Clarke
Dabiq: The strategic messaging of the Islamic State. Institute for the Study of War
- Harleen Gambhir
Everything you have told me is true: The many faces of al-Shabaab
- Mary Harper
Iraq after the territorial defeat of Islamic State: Slow recovery or danger of after-effects? The Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers
- Marko Juntunen
- M Juntunen
Understanding fourth-generation war
- William Lind
Preventing violent extremism, the Middle East. D7.1 Policy brief summarising the EU and other stakeholder’s prevention strategy towards violent extremism in the region, Middle East
- Prevex
Terrorist migration to the dark web
- Gabriel Weimann
Mitigating the impact of media reporting of terrorism: Syrian and Iraqi citizen journalists versus the Islamic State. International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT)
- Haroro Ingram
ISIS and the global image war: An archival perspective on iconoclastic performance and bio-political authority
- Christian Rossipal
Iraq’s proposed cybercrime law would curb freedom of expression and press. The New Arab
- Tayib Memny
Afghanistan’s uncertain future: fragmented realities and geopolitical fault lines
- Olli Ruohomäki