ISIS

by Jessica Stern

  Furthermore, the affiliates had served mostly local interests prior to joining al Qaeda. While each leader made an oath of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, and after his death to Zawahiri, membership in the world’s elite jihadist network had not visibly resulted in a substantial change to their priorities.

  The very first affiliate, al Qaeda in Iraq, was a disaster almost from the start. Its leader, Zarqawi, was bullheaded and brutal, favoring the ideological approach known as takfirism, which refers to the practice of deeming someone to be a nonbeliever in Islam based on specific actions or practices. The concept had been around for a long time in various forms, but Zarqawi took the practice to new heights (in terms of who might be targeted) and new lows (in terms of requiring evidence of guilt). In his mind, there were any number of reasons one might be deemed to have left the fold—such as following the Shi’a branch of Islam, or by inconveniencing AQI in almost any way—and he used it as a pretext for wanton murder. (A more complete discussion of takfir may be found in the appendix.)26

  Al Qaeda’s efforts to rein in Zarqawi’s excesses,27 which it felt were hurting the image of jihadists everywhere, were only partially successful, winning some grudging concessions but forming the foundation of a deeper frustration that would linger after Zarqawi’s death in 2006.

  As more and more affiliates entered the system, al Qaeda faced new and different organizational challenges. AQAP was better behaved, but its successful English-language media operations threatened to overshadow its operations such that at one point, a plan was floated to make its highly visible English-speaking provocateur, Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen, into the affiliate’s actual leader. The proposal was nixed by bin Laden.28

  AQIM had significant internal tensions, in part thanks to the popular Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a legendary but fiery figure, who balked at the chain of command that placed him under the affiliate’s leadership. Belmokhtar broke with AQIM and eventually made his own pledge directly to Zawahiri, although his organization has not been recognized as an affiliate to date.29

  The Islamic State in Iraq, the successor group to al Qaeda in Iraq, was similarly beset with strife and a long grudge over differing tactics that had festered since the Zarqawi days. In late 2011, it had sought to expand its reach by sending operatives to Syria, who then formed Jabhat al Nusra, a new fighting organization that soon took on a life of its own. In 2013 it changed its name to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and tried to reestablish its dominance over al Nusra, only to be rebuked by the latter’s leadership and later by al Qaeda Central.30

  The rift would set the stage for the worst crisis in al Qaeda’s history, the rise of ISIS, but the problem would be dramatically foreshadowed in Somalia, where social media pulled back the veil on internal strife within al Shabab and pointed toward a revolution in jihadi culture.

  AN AMERICAN HERALD OF CHANGE

  Al Shabab was a splinter from a Somali Islamist group, the Islamic Courts Union, and it thrived after its parent perished, in large part because of the charisma and brutality of its emir, Ahmed Godane.31

  Al Shabab quickly earned a reputation for attracting foreign fighters, especially Westerners. Many of these were from Somali diaspora communities in Minnesota, but a young Syrian-Irish-American from Alabama had become the insurgent group’s public face. Omar Hammami had catapulted to fame of a sort in an al Shabab propaganda video titled “Ambush at Bardale,” in which he and other American recruits rapped in English about jihad to the delight of radicals.32

  In March 2012, Hammami posted a video to YouTube claiming that al Shabab wanted to kill him and asking for help from “the Muslims,” a plea essentially directed at the leadership of al Qaeda Central. The dispute, it later emerged, had several dimensions, including Hammami’s objections to corruption within Godane’s regime, poor treatment of foreign fighters, and the American’s quixotic view that jihadist groups should immediately declare a caliphate then fight to defend it, a perspective parallel to the thinking of the leaders in the Iraqi affiliate of al Qaeda. He also audaciously accused al Shabab of assassinating al Qaeda emissaries and allies in Somalia, charges that were later supported by other evidence.33

  To promote his “help me” video, Hammami took to social media. Although he opened a number of accounts, some private and others public, he was most successful on Twitter. Using the handle @abumamerican and posing as his own “PR rep” at first, he tried to engage Western terrorism analysts, with an eye toward drawing media attention to his plight.34

  Hammami’s rebellion was part of a broader fitna within al Shabab that involved leaders with long-standing ties to al Qaeda. But none of them had been able to appeal to Zawahiri and receive any sort of response, a command-and-control logjam that grew more and more conspicuous as weeks of infighting dragged into months. Hammami’s theory was that news coverage would eventually find its way back to al Qaeda Central and prompt a reply. He waited, but only silence followed.

  Hammami’s presence on Twitter had a cascading effect, drawing out al Shabab loyalists who proceeded to attack and threaten him over the social media service. In a second wave, Hammami’s supporters within Somalia signed up and set about to discredit and expose Godane’s maneuvers against the dissidents in daily Twitter fights. Infighting was nothing new to al Qaeda and its progeny, but the public spectacle was unprecedented, and it further stoked the flames of discontent. Much of the sniping took place in Hammami’s absence. He spent his time hiding in the forests of Somalia, occasionally emerging to recharge his phone and fire off a new volley of provocations.

  While Hammami was an important catalyst, he was not the only jihadi taking his grievances to social media. In the years since September 11, al Qaeda had taken to the Internet, in part to offset its lagging communications from senior leadership, but mostly because everyone else was using the Internet.

  The terrorist group had generally kept up with the technology of the day, but in the realm of social media, it was slightly slower to adopt the latest trends. The center of gravity for jihadist extremists online had settled onto password-protected message boards, highly structured discussion forums that were carefully moderated by activists who were members of al Qaeda, or very closely aligned with such (see Chapter 6).35

  The arrangement had numerous advantages, mostly revolving around control. Because the forums were moderated by people with legitimate terrorist connections, they were an important vehicle for authenticating official statements from al Qaeda and its affiliates, making false claims almost unheard-of.

  The moderators could also clamp down on anyone who was sowing dissent and even ban them altogether if they could not be brought to heel. At the time, this seemed like a secondary benefit, but it soon became apparent that it was a crucial control mechanism for the post-9/11 al Qaeda.

  During the terrorist heyday of the 1990s, al Qaeda was able to indoctrinate and manage recruits within its training camps and by virtue of the secrecy of its operations. Insiders were compartmentalized, and casual supporters were kept at a distance (except when it was time to pass the collection plate). When the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan fractured this infrastructure, the forums offered a method for achieving a similar effect remotely, albeit much less effectively.

  Before it renamed itself ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq had experimented with the idea of trying to launch viral content from the forums, including soliciting online bayah and seeking popular affirmation for its leadership, but the efforts fell flat, mainly because of the moderated format and the strength of al Qaeda Central’s control.36

  Hammami had tried his appeal in the forums but was categorically rejected. The moderators, fearing the effects of infighting might discredit al Shabab, censored any attempt to distribute his messages and grievances, and later suppressed similar attempts by more senior Shabab allies with more established reputations.37

  But in early 2013, al Qaeda in Iraq announced that it was reabsorbing the Syrian al Qaeda affiliate, al Nusra, into a new controlling entity, th
e Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, or ISIS. Al Nusra was having none of it and invoked the authority of Zawahiri in rejecting the bold power play.

  Chaos broke out on the jihadist forums, and people started to take sides. One very prominent forum member, a widely admired jihadi analyst known as Abdullah bin Mohammed, began to criticize ISIS on the forums, accusing it of committing crimes against other jihadi groups and insinuating that it had been infiltrated by external evildoers who were now steering it down a dark path.38

  After much drama, bin Mohammed was banished from the forums. But he found a new home on Twitter, where he quickly amassed tens and eventually hundreds of thousands of followers, including many who followed him from the forums.39 In this new wilderness, no moderator held the power to silence dissent and his audience was vastly bigger, including people with a casual interest in jihadism as well as hard-core operatives. Other forum celebrities soon followed his example. Dirty laundry was aired, debates were held right out in the open, and support could be quantified in follower counts and retweets. It was very nearly democratic.

  All this while, Hammami held court for terrorism analysts and traded jibes with Somali haters, occasionally going silent for long periods as he fled for his life. He began to achieve celebrity, or at least notoriety, both in the West and among jihadis. At one point, he even exchanged private messages with bin Mohammed over Twitter.40

  Al Shabab was forced to fire back at Hammami’s allegations over its official Twitter account, in addition to its many proxies who never wearied of attacking the American, even as he documented more scandals and the growing violence by al Shabab against its own ranks. The fitna began to spill back onto the forums, discrediting their legitimacy compared to the free expression available on Twitter.41

  Al Jahad, a second-tier forum, began to take up Hammami’s cause. It published an open letter to Zawahiri from a senior Shabab foreign fighter with long-standing al Qaeda ties, Ibrahim al Afghani, who begged Zawahiri to exert his authority over Godane.42 If Zawahiri tried, it never became public—another pitfall of the communications breakdown. Godane could simply ignore private communiqués or pretend he never received them, confident that al Qaeda Central would be unable to do anything about it.

  One of al Jahad’s administrators, identifying himself as Sa’eed ibn Jubayr, took to Twitter in defense of Hammami but also stepped forward as an unlikely champion for a particularly Western value.

  “Maybe jihadis are adopting freedom of speech,” he tweeted at one point in response to a comment by one of the authors. “And I don’t see anything wrong or messy with jihadis accepting open criticism from within.”43

  Hammami’s quest ended with his apparent execution at the hands of al Shabab in September 2013. Even that news broke and disseminated over social media, confirmed by both pro- and anti-Godane factions.44

  Many online jihadis honored him as a martyr and adopted his picture as a Twitter avatar in protest of his slaying. Hammami had lost the battle, and his life, but he had helped inaugurate a new era for the jihadist movement. This new paradigm was not democratic, but it was a feedback loop, in which jihadist supporters and even fighters found themselves with a new voice and a bully pulpit.

  ENTER THE ISLAMIC STATE

  ISIS had been the victim of social media criticism when Abdullah bin Mohammed turned his pariah status on the forums into Twitter celebrity, but it was quick to turn the tool to its advantage. As 2013 rolled into 2014, more and more jihadist fighters from every Syrian faction signed up for Twitter as their platform of choice.

  Many factors came into play. Aside from the question of freedom of speech, the fitna in the forums had turned ugly. The two most important arenas were al Fidaa, al Qaeda Central’s official forum, and al Shamukh, a designated forum for authenticated al Qaeda official releases.45

  The administrators of the forums had tried hard to suppress the fitna plague in their online realms, but now they themselves had been infected. Users were thrown out for expressing pro- or anti-ISIS views, and eventually the administrators—including some of al Qaeda’s inner circle of media operatives—turned on each other. Scores took to Twitter as the forums blew up. Shamukh defected entirely to ISIS, only to be wrested back in a coup by al Qaeda–loyal admins who controlled the message board’s technical features. (By September, it was swinging back toward ISIS.)46

  Tensions began to mount between ISIS and other Syrian mujahideen. After ISIS’s attempted power grab in early 2013, Zawahiri had ordered it to stay in Iraq and leave Syria to al Nusra. ISIS ignored his commands and fighting broke out between ISIS and al Nusra, later expanding to include a number of other Syria-based mujahideen groups.47

  In February 2014, Zawahri was backed into a corner. He had no leverage over ISIS, which, like many of the affiliates, was largely self-sufficient in terms of cash flow, weaponry, and terrorist expertise, and he apparently lacked either the will or the operational capacity to have ISIS’s recalcitrant emir, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, assassinated. His emissaries, including the veteran mujahid Abu Khaled al Suri, tried to mediate a settlement to stanch the flow of bad blood, to no avail.

  Zawahiri finally played his only remaining card, issuing a statement in February 2014 that publicly disavowed ISIS, essentially firing it from the al Qaeda affiliate network. ISIS responded quickly, assassinating al Suri before the month had ended. It was not just a divorce, ISIS meant to wage war, and it soon began fighting al Nusra and several other Islamic rebel factions within Syria.48

  The fighting was not confined to the battlefields. ISIS also mounted a systematic and devastating campaign for hearts and minds on social media, most visibly and noisily on Twitter. This propaganda program (discussed more fully in Chapters 5 and 7) had multiple purposes and multiple fronts, but its most immediate effect was to project strength and highlight al Nusra’s weakness, a perception that became increasingly concrete as ISIS gained ground against its fellow rebels over the next few months.

  But the information war was not limited to al Nusra. In March 2014, ISIS launched a Twitter hashtag campaign, with its supporters seemingly rising up as a populist mass to tweet, “We demand Sheikh Al Baghdady declare the caliphate.” In fact, the campaign, like many that would follow, was an orchestrated social media marketing effort, but as such, it was a rousing success. For some jihadi sympathizers, the idea of reviving the historical Muslim empire was exciting, and many rallied around the demand. Others were horrified, tweeting their angry objections about an idea they found heretical.49

  The caliphate trial balloon (see Chapter 7) was the first of many shots across the bow of al Qaeda Central, which had for years been playing a long game, an incremental strategy whose goal of a global caliphate was constantly off on the vanishing horizon. Al Qaeda’s affiliates, born-again insurgents, had been toying with seizing territory and attempting to govern for some time, but none had the audacity to claim the mantle of the caliphate, a concept freighted with huge religious and historical significance.

  Just days later, ISIS leaked an al Qaeda Central video featuring Adam Gadahn, an American believed to be close to Zawahiri, who had guided and professionalized the parent’s media operations in the post-9/11 era (see Chapter 5). The leak was almost certainly a direct result of the fitna on the forums, where most of al Qaeda’s media operatives were members, including some who had defected to side with ISIS.50

  In the video—which al Qaeda never officially released, perhaps intending it for an internal audience—Gadahn slammed ISIS as “extreme” and “radical” and intimated it was responsible for the “sinful attack” on al Suri. Gadahn went on to honor a number of “martyrs”—notably including Omar Hammami and Ibrahim al Afghani, who had both died at the hands of al Shabab.51 ISIS used the video’s harsh criticisms as a bludgeon against its critics and tried to make it a wedge between al Qaeda Central and al Shabab—unsuccessfully, at least in public. The few surviving Shabab dissenters were buoyed by the apparent support from Gadahn, backhanded or not.52

  The M
arch “caliphate” hashtag was a broad clue to a plan that ISIS fully intended to implement, although many were still shocked when it came to fruition.

  The official announcement came in late June 2014, at the start of Ramadan. The announcement included an official announcement of al Baghdadi’s real name and lineage, and video of his appearance in public and unmasked to deliver the Friday khutba (sermon) at a mosque in Mosul.53

  Each of these details conveniently undermined objections to al Baghdadi’s ascension that had been raised during the trial balloon in March.

  The age of terrorist focus-group testing had arrived. Instead of the jihadi elite living (sometimes literally) on the mountaintop, reading the New York Times and watching Al Jazeera to gauge the mood of the Muslim masses, the newly rechristened Islamic State had adopted a feedback loop model, polling its constituents and making shrewd calls about when to listen and who could safely be ignored.

  Offline, ISIS followed the model of a functional—if limited—government. Online, it played a different game. It amassed and empowered a “smart mob” of supporters—thousands of individuals who shared its ideology and cheered its success, all the while organizing themselves into a powerful tool to deploy against the world, harassing its enemies and enticing new recruits.

  The concept was defined by Howard Rheingold, a technologist who has written extensively about how virtual communities affect human behavior, in his 2002 book, Smart Mobs:

  Smart mobs consist of people who are able to act in concert even if they don’t know each other. The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing abilities. Their mobile devices connect them with other information devices in the environment as well as other people’s telephones.54

  The smart mob paradigm kicks in when a large group of people spontaneously begin to act in synchronized ways due to the density of connections in their technology-assisted social network, where it is possible to connect with more people at different levels of intimacy than allowed by simple physical proximity.