by Clint Watts
Jihad’s younger generation held few direct links to bin Laden’s veterans, and their preferences didn’t match al-Qaeda’s wishes. Bin Laden and his secretaries had founded their jihad as an exclusive, ideological elite created through attendance at training camps and hardened on the battlefield. On social media, though, everyone could become their own imam, picking and choosing from sacred texts justifying any act of violence. Social media fanboys demonstrated more commitment to violence than allegiance to al-Qaeda’s version of Islam. As the Islamic State overtook al-Qaeda, it diluted clerical authority, opening jihad to the masses via any means necessary as long as it achieved one goal: an Islamic state.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, presumably trapped in Pakistan, has watched as what he championed slipped out of his grasp. The Islamic State, in less than two years, overshadowed its forefathers, achieving part of jihad’s vision and leading a violent terrorist rampage around the world far greater in scale than anything al-Qaeda had ever achieved. As expected, the Islamic State’s incendiary violence and rapid rise brought an international response, and al-Qaeda affiliates raced to catch up, remodeling themselves in some of the Islamic State’s ways. By 2016 and into 2017, Twitter, Google, and Facebook had all taken steps, slowly but successfully, to rid their systems of jihad’s most prolific propagandists and operators. Surviving foreign fighters and their remaining fanboys and fangirls scurried to alternative social media applications, seeking encrypted, secret communications channels, where they could regenerate and hope to proliferate. To date, this hasn’t happened, and young jihadis openly whine in closed forums about the need for a new social media home. Websites to forums, forums to social media, mainstream apps to encrypted apps—terrorists have and will continue to evolve, migrate, and innovate on these technologies and whatever comes next.
3
“That Is Not an Option Unless It’s in a Body Bag”
“A return of the crusades, but the cross could not save him from the sword.” In January 2013, I awoke to a tweet from al-Shabaab.1 A dead French soldier surrounded by his military equipment lay on a bright orange blanket. A gold cross necklace, the kind commonly worn by Christians around the world, had been pulled from his shirt collar. French officials acknowledged the loss of one of their soldiers during a failed rescue mission to free a French hostage held by al-Shabaab in Somalia.
Soon after the pictures surfaced, Twitter closed al-Shabaab’s account, @HSMPress, for violating the company’s terms of service when they posted violent images. But al-Shabaab would come back to Twitter soon after the closure. While many laud ISIS’s use of social media, it was al-Shabaab that mastered Twitter first.
Fresh out of Afghanistan and unwelcome back home in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden’s first troops had settled outside Khartoum, Sudan. Itching for a new campaign in a Muslim land, al-Qaeda dispatched the jihadi equivalent of Special Forces teams to Somalia in 1992, hoping to train, recruit, and inspire Muslim foot soldiers to attack United Nations forces who were working toward peace in the famine-stricken country.
But al-Qaeda’s first missions didn’t fare any better than other foreign interventions in Somalia. Terror group trainers venturing into the hinterlands immediately encountered resource constraints. Food, water, weapons, equipment—the challenges faced by any Somali warlord were also a problem for al-Qaeda. The country’s clans were open to the training but were less interested in perpetrating the kinds of attacks al-Qaeda’s central leadership wanted. They were more focused on rival local clans than interested in attacking United Nations troops. Over a couple of years, al-Qaeda’s operatives achieved little in Somalia’s fractious environment, expending resources with little return. “Leave it, it is rotten ‘tribalism,’” said al-Qaeda’s strategic planners.2 Similarly, the United Nations’ intervention to stem Somalia’s chaotic violence abruptly ended after U.S. forces lost eighteen soldiers, with many more wounded, in a protracted battle in Mogadishu, later portrayed in Black Hawk Down.
Al-Qaeda left Somalia behind, but its departure didn’t stop a jihadi strain from festering. Amid Somalia’s endless clan warfare, Islamist groups used violence to secure their turf emerged. Somalis trapped in Islamist-dominated areas tolerated their rigid ideology and severe punishments, in exchange for security and any economic opportunity. The Islamic Courts Union (ICU) formed in the absence of an official Somali state in southern and central Somalia. This alliance of Sharia courts allowed for intertribal resolution of disputes and some semblance of governance in a country stricken by more than a decade of war.
The ICU’s reign didn’t last long. The Ethiopian army, assisted by the American military, acted swiftly and quickly crumbled the ICU, which fragmented into a more virulent form.
Al-Shabaab was the youth wing of the ICU—its name translates as “the youth.” Like most younger generations in militant organizations, its members pushed for a degree of violence that far surpassed that of their forefathers. Shabaab emerged from the ICU’s ashes and undertook a vicious campaign against the Ethiopians and Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. Shabaab’s run over the past decade is unique not for its terrorism, its cause, or its actions, but because it used social media to propel its brand better than other al-Qaeda franchises, despite hailing from a country with few computers connected to the internet.
When people imagine Somalia, they recall images of starving children, burning buildings, and warlord gun jeeps—absolute deprivation, medieval times in the modern day. Somali refugees fled the country’s civil war in the early 1990s. These asylum seekers scattered among new communities in Europe and North America, hoping for a better life. The Somali diaspora grew in the 1990s, just as the internet was rapidly expanding. Somalis abroad wanted news from their clans back home, and soon diaspora websites sprouted, connecting clansmen from Mogadishu to Minneapolis.
With their home country in tatters, Somali refugees became the economic lifeline for those left behind. A million Somalis outside the country were sending an estimated $1.5 billion per year into Somalia by 2014. Making these fund transfers required telecommunications. Technology adoption in Africa rarely follows the pattern of the rest of the world. The continent’s development at times is so behind, it’ll skip some advancements entirely—say, landline telephones—and adopt an invention two or three generations ahead. Somalia, ravaged by war and completely ungoverned, has led the continent in cell phone and money transfer companies. Today, Somalis gripped in violence or starving from famine might nevertheless be able to talk to a fellow clansman half a world away and receive mobile money in an instant—a strange twist.3
For many Africans, their first connection to global telecommunications was not mediated simply through a computer connected to the internet, but through a mobile phone social media platform. When searching for information, an African might say, “I’ll look it up on Facebook,” rather than the common Western internet shorthand, “Google it.” Somalis started off not on a computer terminal or a laptop, experimenting with a search engine, but with a cell phone, collaborating with their kin and tribe on Twitter and Facebook.
Al-Shabaab’s online path in terrorism mirrors the strange technological trajectory of Somalia. Despite their long-standing ties to al-Qaeda, during the early 2000s few terrorist operatives scattered among the ICU and later al-Shabaab could plug into al-Qaeda’s internet forums. With internet penetration hovering at less than 2 percent, only elites tethered to urban infrastructure could even access the World Wide Web.
In 2007, as I prepared for a research trip studying al-Qaeda’s operations in Kenya and Somalia, a colleague asked me if I’d check into terrorist use of the internet in the Horn of Africa. “I think these guys [Africans] are all over the forums,” he said. This assessment was completely off base. I found only a couple of internet hookups when I arrived in Lamu, Kenya, the last major coastal town before the Somalia border and a short boat ride from where al-Qaeda operatives openly resided. Internet connections were painfully slow, and when I attempted to check email, I could
hardly log on, as the connection’s entire bandwidth was being used to make bootleg CDs of American music. Prospective terrorists in Africa at the time largely weren’t networking on the internet.
Shabaab followed the terrorist internet playbook, but the results weren’t the same, because it was late to the game. Shabaab’s media wing, al-Kataib Media Foundation, produced videos and raised its profile further with support from al-Qaeda’s al-Sahab Media Foundation. But Shabaab’s websites and videos came online just as global counterterrorists began shutting down terrorist platforms. Luckily for Shabaab, social media lowered the technical challenges to accessing global communities, and it took advantage of the opportunity.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq took YouTube to another level through videos, and now al-Shabaab brought terrorist dialogue to peak effectiveness with Twitter. @HSMPress became Shabaab’s Twitter handle on December 7, 2011, and within days, thousands were following the account. In 140 characters, Shabaab reached its followers, the Somali diaspora, global terrorist sympathizers, and even its enemies.
@HSMPress’s tweets pushed sharp barbs with a British dialect. Shabaab’s Twitter operator was haunting, challenging, and engaging, providing the group’s worldwide supporters with battlefield updates noting its successes. These tweets were different from al-Qaeda’s pontifications, though. Tweets were in English, not Arabic, the pithy jabs of punks, not prophets. Posts spat out ideology in talking points, not scripture. They engaged everyone: fanboys, friends, and foes.
“Update: Last night’s attack on #Taabto lasted an hour & resulted in the deaths of 3 #KDF soldiers. An ammunition store was also set ablaze.” The tweet linked to photos of dead Burundian peacekeepers believed to be killed during the fighting. When not detailing battlefield successes, Shabaab’s Twitter handle reached out to potential recruits and donors through narratives of Somali nationalism or Islamic duty.
The Kenyans fighting Shabaab from the south took to Twitter in response. An account under the control of Major Emmanuel Chirchir fired back at al-Shabaab, creating the first international terrorist-versus-counterterrorist Twitter battle. The Kenyan army knew that Shabaab moved weapons and supplies via donkey caravans. Major Chirchir’s tweets about restricting donkey sales to Shabaab noted that “any large concentration and movement of loaded donkeys will be considered as Al-Shabaab activity.”4
Shortly after, Shabaab responded with wit. “Your eccentric battle strategy has got animal right groups quite concerned, Major.”5
Shabaab’s tweets had an appeal unlike standard terrorist missives. It felt real, as if someone was listening to what was being said rather than strictly blasting propaganda. Shabaab’s account directly communicated to supporters who could join in the conversation in real time, adding to the community appeal and allure of Shabaab.
In January 2013, the @HSMPress Twitter handle vanished after posting photos of the dead French soldier but quickly reemerged under a similar name. The new account’s followers were down, but Shabaab was not out of the Twitter fight. Later, in September of that same year, Shabaab live-tweeted its massacre of innocent, unarmed civilians at the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi.
“The Mujahideen entered #Westgate mall today at around noon and are still inside the mall, fighting the #Kenyan Kuffar inside their own turf.” @HSM_Press1 broadcast the attack in real time. Twitter was not simply a means of broadcasting the attack but was now an operational platform for coordinating violence. Shabaab’s shock troops in Kenya relayed updates and pictures from inside the shopping center directly to Shabaab’s leadership. Meanwhile, Shabaab’s pronouncements provided a competing message to the news broadcast by the mainstream media.
Westgate foreshadowed a coming trend: terrorists using social media applications not just for propaganda but for operational coordination. In the weeks after the heinous attack, Twitter took a beating in the press. Officials and pundits wanted to know how the social media application could allow terrorists to proliferate, radicalize, recruit, and attack innocent civilians. Twitter remained steadfast in protecting direct communications, but it soon closed down some accounts. The Shabaab-connected Twitter accounts I monitored began disappearing. But it was too late; the damage had been done. Al-Shabaab’s exploitation of Twitter for all terrorist activity provided a social media playbook for terrorists worldwide.
When times are good and terrorist groups pontificate on social media, recruits join in droves. But when victories are elusive, terrorist groups find themselves under attack online from those who once supported them. In 2012, social media began turning on al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda. When Ayman al-Zawahiri took command after bin Laden’s death, he knew he needed a quick win. Al-Shabaab offered its allegiance in February 2012, and al-Zawahiri accepted. Previously, bin Laden and his former secretary based in Somalia, Harun Fazul, had avoided formal ties with al-Shabaab. Still chastened by the failures of al-Qaeda’s 1992 misadventure—which took place before Zawahiri joined the organization—bin Laden understood that jihad in Africa brought unanticipated pitfalls. Fazul, perched in the Horn of Africa for more than a decade, thought that al-Shabaab’s young, violent boys lacked the ideological understanding to officially be part of the terror group. For al-Qaeda, Somalia provided a better safe haven than al-Shabaab made a good partner. Soon Zawahiri learned why bin Laden and Fazul had hesitated in accepting Shabaab publicly into the fold.
Ahmed Godane, leader of al-Shabaab, pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2012 and in so doing began the long unraveling of the Somali terror group. Godane issued the pledge without consensus from all of Shabaab’s leaders. A schism in al-Shabaab soon appeared. Clans broke from the group. Shabaab fractured and retreated into interior Somalia, and a threatened Godane began killing off rivals. Throughout this period, al-Qaeda’s foot soldiers hiding among Shabaab fell one by one to airstrikes. Fazul, a top wanted global terrorist and confidant of bin Laden’s who had a legendary track record for evading counterterrorists, suddenly died at a Mogadishu checkpoint, presumably one he’d driven through many times.
In Somalia, rumors swirled that Godane had tipped off counterterrorists to help them kill old al-Qaeda hands—terrorists were killing terrorists. And on Twitter, Godane’s power grab brought backlash he never expected. Shabaab, once a master of Twitter, would now become its victim. Those fleeing Shabaab’s ranks were embraced by Shabaab’s enemies, and on Twitter, unlike terrorist forums, nothing short of death could moderate their speech. Remember Omar Hammami, the American-born terrorist? He talked back to Godane during this schism. When he went on the run from Shabaab’s assassins, I connected with him on Twitter, and our conversations became a social media weapon against the terrorist group he’d once promoted.
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Terrorists want to talk for a reason. Most of what Americans see or hear regarding al-Qaeda is just propaganda—some truth mixed with exaggerations and falsehoods. Bin Laden’s long speeches, Zarqawi’s impassioned machine gun videos from the front lines in Iraq—they’re all staged, prepared promotions designed to motivate lost Muslim boys to travel to a fantasy jihad where they’d give their life for no real purpose.
On social media, though, those in the West studying al-Qaeda were able to peek into the lives of real-life terrorists. The vast majority of terrorists on Twitter hoped to tell their story and promote themselves under bin Laden’s banner. Jihadi boys and their leaders principally served their egos as much as their faith. If there weren’t martyrdom videos, there wouldn’t be too many suicide bombers: no reason to die in a far-off land if no one knows about it.
Hammami and his small band of minions talked for a different reason. They were in trouble.
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Rapport building comes first. That’s what you learn at FBI interviewing and interrogation training at Quantico. Talk to them as a peer; place your body in an open position, mirroring the subject’s body movements. Show interest in their life and well-being; help them relax so as to prepare for the real questions that you truly want answered. Only after building rapport d
o you go for the goods.
Good interviewers, whether they be special agents or journalists, know what information they want before they start the conversation. When the subject is comfortable, their guard a little down or a bit more trusting than they should be, that’s when the real questions come out or, better yet, the subject reveals key points without prompting. I didn’t want to engage Hammami; I wanted Hammami to talk to me. I didn’t have the luxury of seeing him and chatting, mirroring him physically to ease his apprehension. Instead, I had to rely on 140 characters to grab his attention, build rapport, and nudge him along.
Before engaging Omar on Twitter that night in Boston, I slipped a piece of paper out of my office printer. I outlined my goals for publicly chatting with him, sketching out three objectives. I’d watched other counterterror analysts and pundits try to chat with terrorists online, and they seemed to strengthen rather than weaken their opponents. Most sought to tell terrorists that their “ideology is bad” or engaged in theological debates regarding Islam. For terrorists who’ve traveled abroad and devoted their lives to pursuing an extremist ideology, these discussions provided public sparring with infidels, where the terrorists could showcase their Islamic mastery, affirm their faith, and grow their brand. But Omar was a publicly disavowed American foreign fighter on the run from his own terrorist group; I sought something different from him.
First, Omar needed to keep talking: the more he talked, the more he illuminated himself, the terrorists around him, and future foreign fighters contemplating travel. Each tweet provided information that would reveal his true location, friends and foes, strengths and weaknesses. Armed with that data, I’d write summaries of his activities. My posts on his adventures had caused him to engage me; I hadn’t engaged him. I wanted to continue this trend; I knew his desire for attention would be his undoing.