by Clint Watts
As of now, the future doesn’t look too bright. But I have seen successful ways for users—citizens, corporations, and countries—to survive and thrive in our social media. I’ve seen how some open systems can again be harnessed for good, and how people can protect themselves and their communities. The formula for a social media counterattack against the world’s worst is out there; we just need to pursue it, one tweet, post, or share at a time. To find the answer, I propose we start not at the birthplace of social media, Silicon Valley, but in the birthplace of global jihad, Afghanistan.
Three Generations of Jihadi Groups, Leaders & Media
Group Leaders/Media Stars Founded Location(s) Media Advancement
Services Bureau (Mujahideen) Abdullah Yusuf Azzam 1980s Afghanistan; Pakistan Print, Audio Tapes
al-Qaeda (AQ) Osama bin Laden; Ayman al-Zawahiri 1988 Afghanistan; Pakistan; Sudan; Global Television, Yahoo Groups, Websites
al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI); Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi 2004; 2006 Iraq Private Forums, Online Video
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) Anwar al-Awlaki 2009 Saudi Arabia; Yemen Online Magazines
al-Shabaab Ahmed Abdi Godane; Omar Hammami 2006 Somalia Social Media
Islamic State of Iraq & al-Sham (ISIS); Islamic State (IS) abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; abu Mohammad al-Adnani 2013; 2014 Iraq; Syria; Global Multiplatform Social Media, App Development
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The Rise and Fall of the Virtual Caliphate
They were only a few hundred yards from him. Delta Force operators climbed the rocky steeps into the high mountains of Tora Bora, Afghanistan. Just three months after the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, sat surrounded in a cave complex not far from where he’d fought a famous battle in Jaji against the Soviets more than a decade before and later built a terrorist training camp known as al-Masada—“The Lion’s Den.” Now, barricaded in this high-altitude perch, bin Laden’s remaining cohort faced unending air strikes.
Bin Laden sent out a final call to his followers on December 13, 2001: “Our prayers were not answered. Times are dire and bad. We did not get support from the apostate nations who call themselves our Muslim brothers.”
Bin Laden’s plea proved premature. Delta Force and CIA operatives closed in on his rocky retreat, but they needed reinforcements to seal off the mountaintops. Requested support from U.S. Central Command’s (CENTCOM) headquarters didn’t come. General Tommy Franks, commander of CENTCOM, instead sought a light U.S. military footprint and chose to use local proxies—Afghan militias—to surround the Tora Bora retreat. This decision provided bin Laden with a lifeline.1
Al-Qaeda operatives trapped in the cave complex engineered a cease-fire with the Afghan militia forces surrounding Tora Bora. Some of these Afghan militias even turned their weapons on U.S. operatives as they sought to advance on bin Laden’s refuge. The temporary cease-fire opened a narrow window, and bin Laden slipped across the Pakistani border. Al-Qaeda no longer had a physical base in Afghanistan, but it would soon establish a virtual one, which endures to this day.
Bin Laden knew that from Pakistan he could never replicate the al-Qaeda he had founded more than a decade before. Hunted by the entire international community, with his aides and deputies constantly on the run, he couldn’t exert the same operational control needed to administer a global terror group. Nor could he inspire, radicalize, and recruit new operatives using the traditional methods he’d come to rely on.
Ironically, in those months following September 11, al-Qaeda seemed to be in decline, but the convergence of two fortuitous events for al-Qaeda reinvigorated the terrorist group. The U.S. calamitously invaded Iraq, fracturing and destabilizing a nation in the heart of the Muslim world. Images of American boots marching into Muslim territory breathed new life into al-Qaeda’s ideology. Aspiring jihadis, stoked by al-Qaeda’s message, had a focal point for their outrage and actionable goals. They could travel to Iraq to free Muslims from Western oppression.
The internet was the second gift to al-Qaeda operatives now on the run in several continents. Had bin Laden jumped into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan only a few years earlier, only human couriers could have kept the network together. This meager communication method would have quickly failed under intense pressure from counterterrorism forces. While the physical doors into Afghanistan were shutting in 2002, the internet portals connecting al-Qaeda operatives, affiliates, and hopefuls were saving the group.
Al-Qaeda’s move to the internet was born not from any grand strategic design but out of the need to survive. The terrorist organization had formed from the remaining foreign-fighters who had answered the call for jihad in Afghanistan against Soviet invaders in the 1980s. Al-Qaeda’s strategy from the outset sought to build not a terrorist juggernaut but rather a network of ideologically devout and trained jihadi fighters acting as a revolutionary vanguard for conflicts in Muslim-majority countries far and wide. In the beginning, al-Qaeda’s central leadership dispatched operatives as trainers and propagandists all over the world but offered little promotional material beyond training videos and audio broadcasts from ideological leaders. Al-Qaeda’s propaganda came not from the center, but from the network. Premier jihadi content of the era came from those on the front lines; videotapes from Bosnia, Chechnya, and Algeria powered the propaganda machine.
Al-Qaeda’s first organized forays as a terror group didn’t go well. Trainers dispatched to Somalia hoping to mobilize clans to fight against international forces fared poorly. Bin Laden’s foot soldiers achieved little, but strategically they learned a good deal. After those missteps, al-Qaeda stepped up its information warfare as a primary method for spreading the word of jihad and inspiring recruits. “Jihadi radio stations operating in Yemen and Somalia will have a more powerful effect on them than nuclear bombs,” one al-Qaeda operative argued in a 1994 memo suggesting the regional governments they sought to topple would crumble from within with words more than military might from the outside.2 Young Somali men, in particular, proved more amenable to stories of jihadi conquest, and al-Qaeda sought to “establish a coordination and communications center to connect the youth in the different areas in and out of the country.”3
Following this change in strategy, al-Qaeda quickly moved to television to spread its message. In 1997, bin Laden famously gave his first international television interview to CNN’s three Peters: Peter Arnett, Peter Bergen, and photographer Peter Jouvenal.4 But just two years later, al-Qaeda’s protectors in Afghanistan, the Taliban, halted bin Laden’s major news network interviews. The more attention bin Laden garnered, the more the world scrutinized the Taliban’s harsh rule. To bypass this restriction, bin Laden commissioned a media committee to propagate his tapes to the Arab world. The media committee filmed interviews, crafted exposés, and used a trusted network of couriers to relay al-Qaeda’s messages to the outside world—an essential system that helped sustain bin Laden’s media presence after the Twin Towers fell.
As early as 1995, bin Laden had also been building an online communications network, using email and bulletin boards. These first centralized efforts to create a digital infrastructure occured alongside those of grassroots groups, students, and religious purists establishing websites promoting jihadism starting in the mid-1990s. Azzam Publications, a London-based publishing house dedicated to promoting the ideas of Abdullah Azzam (often called the father of global jihad), opened in 1996 and posted pro-jihad videos and articles on its website.
Throughout the mid- to late nineties, websites and email chains provided a communications leap forward for terrorists (and the rest of the world), but they had a major limitation: they were one-way modes of information sharing. Bin Laden and his clerics could only broadcast to audiences. They could not easily follow up with those inclined to join the ranks. All that changed, though, with the dawn of the new millennium. With the emergence of vBulletin, commercially available software allowing group discussions, and Yahoo Groups, audiences now had
a direct window to communicate with Islamist webmasters, clerics, and leaders. In 2001, the Global Islamic Media Front started a Yahoo Group and related website. They required users to acquire a password to access the discussion page. Many others featuring general Islamist discussions with a sprinkling of jihadi talk popped up and down toward the end of the decade. None endured for long before rumors of intelligence operatives penetrating them squelched their dialogue or counterterrorism arrests of forum administrators led to their closure.5 Two-way communication between al-Qaeda leaders and hopeful jihadis increased, but more content needed to follow to sustain audience engagement.
To fill that void and gain greater control of jihadi discussions, al-Qaeda created an official media group, as-Sahab, which released its first video in 2001, showcasing al-Qaeda’s successful attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.6 Bin Laden recognized the value of jihadi websites and began sending audio and written statements from top al-Qaeda leaders directly to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s leader, Yusuf al-Uyayri, and his site, Al Neda.7 Websites and forums served as principal communication points for those around the world inspired by the incredible success of the 9/11 attacks and seeking to join bin Laden’s ranks.
The Al-Ansar forum surfaced in 2003 as the first site truly dedicated to jihadi dialogue and activities in Iraq. Al-Ansar lasted only until late 2004 or early 2005, but it signaled two important trends: the rise of password-protected forums and the magnetism of content about al-Qaeda in Iraq’s operations. Forums linked disparate supporters in a single channel and built like-minded communities where two-way conversations led to real person-to-person communication and in some cases facilitation into terrorist organizations—bridging the gap between online propaganda radicalization and physical recruitment into terrorist ranks.
Islamists and their more violent jihadi brothers quickly recognized that it would be important to develop as many websites and forums as possible. Having only one website left the network too vulnerable—one site, after all, could easily be permanently shut down. Wise users and administrators sought to replicate and network their online presence. Azzam Publications placed a warning on its site:
Due to the advances of modern technology, it is easy to spread news, information, articles and other information over the Internet. We strongly urge Muslim Internet professionals to spread and disseminate news and information about jihad through e-mail lists, discussion groups, and their own websites. If you fail to do this, and our site closes down before you have done this, we may hold you to account before Allah on the Day of Judgment.8
Replication of sites and duplication of content became key features of online survival for al-Qaeda supporters. Openly available software and hosting services meant websites and forums could be created by anyone in minutes, and accessed by anyone around the world with an Internet connection. This lowered technical boundary for mainstream internet users meant relatively novice jihadis now had the power to create their own safe havens online.
As websites spread and newcomers clicked into discussions, a second enduring challenge quickly emerged: How does a global terror group maintain security and control over a worldwide movement of unknown people? Password-protected forums were a stopgap measure, and they grew and flourished. A pyramid scheme quickly dictated hierarchy among the propaganda outlets. The forum administrators who had been blessed by al-Qaeda provided exclusive inside information and naturally grew in popularity, garnering more members and more supporters. Competition among forums accelerated propaganda creation and distribution as each jihadi supporter sought to raise his own status in the jihadi community. Forums also created directories where more specific discussion on jihadi subdisciplines could be flushed out and niche content—text, audio, video, and files—could be uploaded and shared.
Al-Qaeda recognized the growing value of forums and shifted its distribution of bin Laden’s video productions away from Al Jazeera television to online channels, allowing the content to go viral, spread rapidly, and become more available to jihadi sympathizers.9 In early 2006, al-Fajr Media Center emerged as the group’s official distributor for all things jihad: al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda affiliates, and even non-aligned jihadis.10
In those same years that al-Qaeda turned to the internet, so did counterterrorism experts. Political science nerds could now study terrorists from the comfort of home computers, without setting foot in conflict zones. The key to opening these terrorist research troves was simply a password. Arabic-speaking professors fared the best in gaining access to al-Qaeda’s forums, but any aspiring counterterrorism expert needed only to team up with a translator and pose as a jihadi supporter to gain a password to an internet forum, and they could be nearly as informed on al-Qaeda’s thoughts and dreams as any intelligence agency.
Having quit my short stint as an FBI special agent only a couple of years before, I watched the new era of e-research with skepticism and amazement from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. In response to the September 11 attacks, two military academy graduates from rival services—1977 West Point graduate Vincent Viola and 1953 Naval Academy graduate H. Ross Perot—had provided the funding to launch this half-military, half-academic think tank positioned inside the Department of Social Sciences at the U.S. Military Academy. Before the internet, veteran academics spent months and years conducting field research and dangerous in-person interviews to gather insights on terrorists. By 2005, new scholars instead spent days and weeks gathering data online, churning out short analytical pieces nearly as rich in insights.
While bin Laden and company continually improved their e-jihad, two new forces surfaced, weakening their control. The first was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a flamboyant jihadi general in Iraq. Online jihadi supporters enjoyed bin Laden’s speeches, but they loved Zarqawi and his troops’ destructive violence. Zarqawi was a man of action, constantly aggressing against the United States, the UN, the Iraqi government, and even Shia Muslims. Whereas bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, opined from safe havens in South Asia, Zarqawi’s Iraqi campaigns executed direct sustained combat against U.S. forces in Iraq.
Al-Qaeda propaganda benefited from a new social media platform, new technology, and a new medium: video. Improvised explosive device (IED) attacks on coalition troops, beheadings of captured Western prisoners like the American Nicholas Berg, suicide bomber operations, and sniper shots on American troops were captured on handheld cameras and rapidly posted online. Links posted on forums could relay jihadi successes large and small throughout the jihadi sympathizer ecosystem. Online, videos of violent actions quickly eclipsed footage of proselytizing al-Qaeda senior leaders. Young jihadi boys wanted action, they wanted blood, they wanted to be Zarqawi. By 2006, foreign fighters inspired by internet postings were flowing into Iraq, seeking to join Zarqawi’s legions.
And then there was YouTube, which burst onto the scene in February 2005. Previously, sharing videos required one to upload content to servers and then distribute the links on forums. Servers could be traced and shut down by law enforcement. Digital signatures compromised forum administrators and their online fans, and pursuit by counterterrorists stalled jihadi outlets. YouTube provided a ubiquitous medium any terrorist supporter could access or upload content to. No need to have your own server or hosting service. YouTube was both a spot to upload content and a place to discuss it—the comments sections quickly blew up. Any supporter could access it, and administrators couldn’t block their entry by restricting passwords or moderate their speech by suppressing their comments. Furthermore, once content was uploaded to YouTube, the link could be shared on forums far and wide, where other jihadis could rapidly view, share, or download the content.
But bin Laden couldn’t quite keep up with social media’s rise. Announcements of an impending bin Laden speech from Al Jazeera had become commonplace. Researchers studied the footage looking for clues into bin Laden’s thinking and al-Qaeda’s direction. Even as a counterterrorism enthusiast, I couldn’t get through the summarized translations.
His pronouncements went on for thirty or forty-five minutes. He offered little to excite young recruits. He was always perched in the same room and robes, AK-47 by his side. His speech was heavy, weighed down by customary references to past leaders, and he spat out the same narratives over and over. America is the devil, Muslims must unite and rise up against foreign invaders in (fill in the blank), it’s your duty as a Muslim, and one more thing: Death to Israel and the Jews . . . Who was watching these bin Laden vids? Sure, there’s always a devotee here and there engrossed in the words of their prophet. But I couldn’t imagine many al-Qaeda supporters spending their time poring over his every word. Aside from the 2005 London transport bombings, bin Laden and his senior leaders hadn’t executed a successful spectacular attack in years, and the successes they claimed online came almost exclusively from affiliates, namely their branch in Iraq.