Jihadist Propaganda, Offline Strategic Communications in Modern Warfare

JIHADIST PROPAGANDA, OFFLINE STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS IN MODERN WARFARE CHARLIE WINTER, HAID HAID JUNE 2018 POLICY PAPER 2018-3 CONTENTS * SUMMARY * KEY POINTS * 1 INTRODUCTION * 2 SECTION I: PRODUCTION OF PUBLIC DISCOURSE * 1 THE ISLAMIC STATE IN IRAQ AND AL-SHAM * 5 HAY’AT TAHRIR AL-SHAM * 10 SECTION II: RESTRICTION OF PUBLIC DISCOURSE * 10 THE ISLAMIC STATE IN IRAQ AND AL-SHAM * 12 HAY’AT TAHRIR AL-SHAM * 13 CONCLUSION * 15 ENDNOTES * 18 ABOUT THE AUTHORS © The Middle East Institute * 18 ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE The Middle East Institute 1319 18th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20036 CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP/Getty Images SUMMARY Insurgent strategic communication has rarely posed as great a threat to regional and international security as it does today in Syria, where jihadists are using it to aggressively advance their short- and long-term interests. Using a qualitative mixed-methods approach incorporating semi-structured interviews with activists and journalists operating inside Syria and in-depth, longitudinal content analysis, this paper compares and contrasts the in- theater outreach strategies of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, tracking how each has used propaganda and censorship to entrench its rule over local constituents in recent years. It demonstrates that, notwithstanding the fact that both organizations share the same ideology, there are significant tactical and strategic disparities between their respective approaches toward public diplomacy, disparities that run right to the heart of what drives their enmity for each other. KEY POINTS * Both groups see the information space as a decisive insurgent battlefield, and have developed institutionalized systems that synergize media production and performative communication. * While ISIS invests more into production, HTS’s approach is lower-key, less obvious, and could prove to be much more difficult to disrupt. * In terms of propaganda delivery, the organizations are similar: they share tactics and infrastructural approaches, especially when it comes to education, mosques, and spectacles. * ISIS’s media infrastructure is significantly more sophisticated than that of HTS, which prefers to leverage proxy outreach officials to propagandize on its behalf. * Both groups use censorship to manage the flow of outside information. Whereas ISIS does so indiscriminately, HTS is more targeted, and, in many ways, more effective. Syria, longitudinal propaganda research INTRODUCTION and in-depth content analysis, we examine how each organization used ropaganda has long been strategic communication operations to central to revolutionary warfare. further their respective insurgent aims. PHowever, never has it been used more aggressively and effectively The paper proceeds as follows: than it is today. In Syria in particular, in- first, we focus on communication theater propaganda has come to be of infrastructure and delivery, contrasting foundational importance to non-state ISIS’s once-sophisticated and extensive actors operating across the political network of propaganda kiosks and spectrum. Few groups have been as recruitment centers with HTS’s own adept at offline outreach as ISIS and Hay’at institutionalization efforts, which have Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), each of which used tended to be subtler, more rudimentary propaganda and offline public diplomacy and, arguably, more effective. The to systematically entrench itself within second section explores how both the local body politic, whenever and groups worked to restrict the flow of wherever conditions allowed. information in their heartland territories between 2013 and 2018. We conclude Understanding how and why the paper with a discussion of the these organizations use strategic strategic principles that underpin each communication is a necessary step organization’s understanding of and toward stabilizing Syria, yet the issue approach toward offensive and defensive remains under-researched, with most strategic communication, noting that it is analysis of jihadist communication imprudent to assume similarities based operations focusing on propaganda on ideological inclination alone. disseminated over the Internet, and how its online consumption contributes to the radicalization of would-be foreign fighters and terrorists. With this paper, we hope to help correct this imbalance in the research. Comparing and evaluating the in-theater communication operations of ISIS and HTS, we shed light on an aspect of the Syrian war about which little information is publicly available. Using a qualitative mixed- methods approach incorporating semi- structured interviews with activists and journalists operating inside northern 1 ISIS evidently recognized the power SECTION I: of physical presence, and that the act MANUFACTURING of media dissemination could itself become a form of propaganda. With PUBLIC that in mind, its consumed propaganda DISCOURSE was always a supporting act to its performative counterpart, a way for it to fight, in its own words, “on an internal ISLAMIC STATE IN IRAQ front to bring the truth” to the population AND AL-SHAM over which it ruled. Between 2013 and 2018, ISIS deployed The most crucial physical components of both consumed and performative its propaganda activism were the nuqtah propaganda in Syria. The former i’lamiyyah (literally, media point)—a consisted of audio-visual media caliphate-wide institution that facilitated products, everything that was in-theater propaganda dissemination— broadcast and distributed in-theater the Center for Proselytization and through its bespoke communication Mosques, and the Ministry for Education. infrastructure—documentaries, current Regarding the nuqat i’lamiyyah affairs features, radio programs, (media points), a March 2016 article photograph reports, newspapers, in ISIS’s official newspaper, al-Naba’, magazines, operation claims, theological provides some revealing information. literature, infographics, posters, Established in places that were “lacking billboards and so on. The latter— in communications mechanisms,” media performative propaganda—relied on points were intended to “present the direct interpersonal engagement and media in all of its forms to the ordinary was primarily delivered by outreach people” and serve as a “coupling link” officials working on the ground in Syria. between the ISIS organization and its This latter form of propaganda involved civilian constituents. At one and the constant face-to-face interaction same time, media points delivered between representatives of ISIS and news updates on ISIS’s war effort and its civilian constituents, and, while it projected its utopian narrative. Wherever was most obviously encapsulated they were, they screened propaganda in public spectacles like executions films, and served as satellite publishing and amputations, it appeared in more houses, radio listening points, and benign contexts, too, from town fairs and digital distribution centers., Attendance mosque gatherings to school lessons was assured by blatant intimidation, as and competitions. well as the host population’s desire to appear loyal. What’s more, they were not limited to towns and cities—mobile 2 kiosks were also rigged up so that week enlistment drive. First, they the caliphate’s audio-visual output are shown distributing leaflets in could reach even the remotest areas mudbrick villages. Next, there is an of Iraq and Syria. account of their da’wah and Shariah courses, which are shown to have In Raqqa, which was the symbolic put particular focus on the education seat of the caliphate until 2017, and recruitment of children: young activists asserted that there were boys are depicted being coached “many [media points] in the city in tahfidh—learning the Quran by and its environs.” According to the rote—as well as being taught how aforementioned al-Naba’ article, to write. The narrator explains that each kiosk “provide[d] a full media there are similar courses on offer archive in a number of languages, for women and girls, something from English, French and Kurdish to that had, he claims, resulted in Turkish, Farsi and Bangla, and so on.” mothers signing their own children The same article went on to claim up to volunteer for military and even that ISIS’s media officials in the city suicide operations. The campaign intended to set up a new “kiosk in concludes with a sight familiar to every neighborhood and on every ISIS, a da’wah caravan party, at which important street.” villagers are shown rapturously The media point initiative was pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al- complemented by ISIS’s Center Baghdadi before tucking into boiled for Proselytization and Mosques, sweets and bursting into song. This a caliphate-wide outreach unit is just one example of the Center’s that was dedicated to in-theater in-theater recruitment drives—as recruitment operations. Concerned many other propaganda videos with enlisting both civilians and and photograph reports attest, they soldiers to the group’s ideology, happened continuously across ISIS’s the center worked doggedly across territories between 2013 and 2018. Iraq and Syria between 2013 and Operating alongside these efforts was 2018 to entice locals to its cause. the Ministry for Education, which for a The scope and sophistication of time presided over public schooling its activities were encapsulated in in parts of Syria that were controlled a May 2016 video from northern by ISIS. After its sweeping victories Syria, which followed a team of its

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