The Media and Mind Games

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Chapter 7

The New Media, Terrorism, and the Shaping of Global Opinion

in Laden’s dramatic television appearance on October 7, 2001, as recounted in ,chapter 4 provided stunning confirmation of just how sophisticated terrorist communications in the twenty-first century have become. In contrast to the jerky, often amateurish videos or the older

Super 8 film recordings typical of even the more communications-savvy terrorists of the past, bin Laden’s prerecorded statement was remarkable for both its excellent quality and its perfect timing. Professionally produced, shot, and edited, the clip was masterfully packaged and queued to go on air as soon as the anticipated U.S. air strikes commenced that fateful Sunday.1

For bin Laden and his followers—and no less for other terrorists around the globe—the weapons of terrorism were no longer simply the guns and bombs that they always have used. Those new weapons included the minicam and videotape; editing suite and attendant production facilities; professionally produced and mass-marketed CD-ROMs and DVDs; and, most critically, the laptop and desktop computers, CD burners and e-mail accounts, and Internet and World Wide Web access that have defined the information revolution today.

Accordingly, the art of terrorist communication has evolved to a point at which the terrorists themselves can now control the entire production process: determining the content, context, and medium over which their message is projected and targeting precisely the audience (narrowcasting) or multiple audiences (broadcasting)2 they seek to reach. The implications of this development are enormous, challenging the monopoly on mass communication of the terrorist message that has long been exercised by commercial and state-owned broadcasting outlets. Hence, much like previous information revolutions—such as the invention of the rotary press in the mid-nineteenth century and the advances in television equipment that made possible the reporting of events in real time in the 1960s—that also profoundly affected terrorist and insurgent external communications, a new information revolution has occurred to empower these movements with the ability to shape and disseminate their own message in their own way, enabling them to completely bypass traditional, established media outlets. As Tina Brown, the doyenne of postmodern media, observed, the “conjunction of 21st-century Internet speed and 12th-century fanaticism has turned our world into a tinderbox.”3

Violence as Communication

One of the enduring axioms of terrorism is that it is designed to generate publicity and attract attention to the terrorists and their cause. Terrorism, as was discussed in , is widely seen as a violent act that ischapter 6 conceived specifically to attract attention and then, through the publicity it generates, to communicate a message. The terrorist must parlay this illumination (e.g., publicity) into a more effective vehicle of elucidation4 (propaganda). The centrality of propaganda to this communications process and its importance to terrorist and5 guerrilla alike are self-evident. As a 1991 RAND study on this subject observed:6

Propaganda grants authority to its makers. In the first place, simply by demonstrating its ability to disseminate information that the government has banned, a guerrilla group proves that it is a viable force. Second, once a group has the people’s ears and eyes it can manipulate their minds, causing them to act as they might not otherwise; or if it does not work as effectively as this, its messages at least command the attention of those who read, hear or see them. In words and pictures, those whose plans are hidden from public view can portray themselves any way they please. Furthermore, if appearing to play a particular role can win support, propaganda will help these guerrillas to become in fact the powerful forces that they claim to be.7

Through propaganda, terrorists seek to communicate a particular message to a particular target audience.

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Through propaganda, terrorists seek to communicate a particular message to a particular target audience. The exact purpose of these communications can vary, depending on the message and the target audience(s) to whom it is directed. It can be didactic—designed to inform, educate, solicit support (whether material, financial, or spiritual), and ultimately rally the masses behind the terrorists or insurgents. It can be a vehicle for recruitment—meant to win new converts to the cause or replenish the ranks of depleted fighters. But it can also be deliberately coercive—conceived to promote or ensure compliance through threat or blandishment. Furthermore, its intents can transcend mere tactical coercion and seek to intimidate strategically—that is, to undermine popular confidence in government and leadership, and thereby attempt to paralyze opponents with fear by trumpeting the terrorists’ ability to strike at will while underscoring the inability of the government and security forces to provide effective defense or protection. Finally, it can serve an entirely internal function—what has been termed “auto propaganda”—when communications are directed toward members of the terrorist group in order to strengthen morale, dampen dissent, or justify and legitimate or explain particularly controversial decisions or operations.8

In sum, propaganda is directed toward a committed audience to strengthen resolve or toward an uncommitted audience to win sympathy and support. It can be variously focused on the terrorists’ or insurgents’ actual or would-be constituents, the public at large, the enemy government, its bureaucratic minions and security forces, or even inwardly on the underground fighters themselves as a means to promote and enhance internal cohesion and morale.

The terrorist of the past used three principal means of facilitating this communications process:

clandestine, rebel radio stations; underground newspapers, posters, flyers, and other publications; and, conventional, commercial, or state-owned mass media (e.g., television, radio, and the press)

Each of the above had its own attractions and limitations, dependent primarily on the degree of direct control and influence it provided the terrorist or insurgent group over a particular audience. For instance, the two means over which terrorists had the most control—their own clandestine radio stations and newspapers and other periodicals and publications—also generally had the most limited impact. They had either inherent technical and geographical constraints that inhibited reception and restricted the listening audience or publication problems that made mass production and wide distribution difficult, if not impossible.

The now totally anachronistic multimedia efforts of one of the Cold War era’s more sophisticated Marxist-Leninist insurgent-cum-terrorist movements of the time, El Salvador’s FMLN (Farabundo Marti Liberation Front) is a case in point. Its flagship newspaper, (We will win) had a limited press run and thus aVenceremos fairly narrow readership. Its usefulness, accordingly, was confined to reinforcing or guiding the political activities of already committed FMLN activists and supporters. Its clandestine radio station of the same name was hardly9 more technically sophisticated or expansive in audience reach. Broadcasting over standard shortwave band radio transmission, with varying audio quality and mostly only to a loyal, nearby listening audience, ensured that the impact of Radio Venceremos was perennially both localized and limited. Even less impressive were the10 external communications capabilities of the FMLN’s U.S.-backed, anticommunist counterparts in neighboring Nicaragua. Radio Quince de Septiembre (Radio Fifteenth of September), the putative voice of the United States–backed Nicaraguan Contras (Nicaraguan Democratic Front), for example, was then bluntly described by one contemporary U.S. government observer as a “joke because of its basic broadcasting technology, amateurish copy, and numerically inconsequential listening audience.”11

Given the constrained communications resources available to terrorists only one or two generations ago, it is not surprising that emphasis was often given to exploiting traditional mass media. But because of the limitations over control discussed in , this was always at best a Hobson’s choice: gaining exposure but onlychapter 6 partially serving the terrorists’ wider communication needs. By the mid-1980s, moreover, the latent romanticism of the underground fighter that at times had surfaced in some reporting was rapidly ebbing. In addition, the opportunities for terrorist exploitation were diminishing as new guidelines were imposed and more stringent self-policing was practiced in response to the wave of criticism leveled at the media. Finally, for many terrorist12 and insurgent groups there was no escaping the fundamental bias toward the status quo evidenced by most commercial, and especially Western and state-owned, media. So long as editorial power was vested ultimately in the proestablishment, capitalist elite, many revolutionaries concluded, their message would always be diluted, misconstrued, or seized upon for its “entertainment” value rather than its didactic purposes.13

Then, in the 1990s, the advent of three new technological developments afforded terrorists the opportunity to

break the stranglehold over mass communications hitherto enjoyed by commercial and state-owned media.

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break the stranglehold over mass communications hitherto enjoyed by commercial and state-owned media. These were

the Internet, affordable, if not extraordinarily cheap, video production and duplication processes, and private, terrorist-owned television stations.

Terrorist and Insurgent Use of the Internet

Few technological innovations have had the impact of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Beyond any doubt, in a comparatively short span of time, they have revolutionized communications, enabling the rapid—often in real time—pervasive, and most important, inexpensive exchange of information worldwide. In terms of political activism, they have been something of a godsend, providing an effective way for groups to promote what some observers call a “global dialectic,” a situation in which awakening, awareness, activism, and radicalism can be stimulated at a local level and then mobilized into a wider process of dissent and protest. “Groups of any size,14 from two to millions,” Dorothy E. Denning, of the Naval Postgraduate School, points out, “can reach each other and use the Net to promote an agenda. Their members and followers can come from any geographical region on the Net, and they can attempt to influence foreign policy anywhere in the world.” That sort of reach is one15 dramatic advantage that the Internet provides; speed is another. As a human rights activist working for an East Timor refugee NGO (nongovernmental organization) explained in a 1996 interview:

Using “old” communications, vital information could take weeks before it reached us. Often we had to wait for the first refugees to arrive. Then their accounts were written down and sent by mail. It could take days and weeks before they reached Australia or the USA. So, when the “news” of a massacre finally arrived at the newsdesk, the so called news was already old. With the arrival of new media and in particular, the Internet, this whole process might take just a few hours.16

Indeed, as is described below, a variety of terrorist and insurgent groups were quick to exploit this feature as a means of mobilizing international support and pressure, and actively enlisting international humanitarian relief organizations and other NGOs on their behalf.

In addition to ubiquity and timeliness, the Internet has other advantages. It can circumvent government censorship, messages can be sent anonymously and also quickly and almost effortlessly, and it is an especially cost-effective means of mass communication. It also enables terrorists to undertake what Denning has termed17 “perception management.” In other words, they can use it to portray themselves and their actions in precisely18 the positive light and flattering context they wish—unencumbered by the filter, editing, screening, censorship, and spin of established media. The Internet also facilitates terrorist engagement in what has been referred to as19 “information laundering,” taking an interesting or provocative video clip or sound bite, or both, and featuring them, focusing on them, and creating an “Internet buzz” about them in the hope that they will move into the mainstream press. Finally, the Internet carries with it new and significantly enhanced fund-raising capabilities for otherwise20 illegal, underground entities. Financial contributions, in essence, are now “just a click away,” with many sites providing banking details for cash transfers. In this respect, the Internet has proved to be an especially21 beneficial communications medium for terrorists—a key means for both external propaganda and internal command and control and information purposes.

The first group to successfully harness the power of the Internet was arguably the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), known more familiarly simply as the Zapatistas. The group, it should be emphasized,22 is a terrorist organization but an insurgent movement. Nonetheless, its effective exploitation of the Internet atnot the beginning of the 1990s was subsequently emulated by other insurgent movements and terrorist groups alike. As the Zapatistas themselves boasted in a Web posting accessed in June 2005:

The international circulation through the Net of the struggles of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico has become one of the most successful examples of the use of computer communications by grassroots social movements. That circulation has not only brought support to the Zapatistas from throughout Mexico and the rest of the World, but it has sparked a world wide discussion of the meaning and implications of the Zapatista rebellion for many other confrontations with contemporary capitalist economic and political policies.23

The EZLN’s insurrection commenced on New Year’s Day 1994 in Mexico’s rural and southernmost state, Chiapas. The government responded as it had countless times in the past: deploying military and police force to

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Chiapas. The government responded as it had countless times in the past: deploying military and police force to suppress the rebellion and hunt down the EZLN guerrillas. And, like countless peasant uprisings before it, the Zapatistas’ revolt was likely to go mostly unnoticed by a world preoccupied with more pressing matters than the grievances of a couple of hundred landless indigenous Indians and mestizos in a long-impoverished and largely inconsequential corner of the country. As it turned out, the Zapatistas were not to be so easily brushed aside. In24 addition to repulsing initial government efforts to dislodge them from the five towns and one city they occupied, the Zapatistas quickly demonstrated an unusual flair for external communications. Their leader, the articulate25 and charismatic, ski mask–clad, pipe-smoking spokesman for the group who reportedly was a former philosophy professor at Mexico City’s Autonomous Metropolitan University named Rafael Sebasti n Guill n Vicente, andá é who adopted the more alluring nom de guerre of Subcomandante Marcos, pursued a novel tactic. By appealing26 directly to Mexican civil society and specifically to local, national, and international peace activists, human rights groups, humanitarian relief organizations, and other nongovernment entities to support the Zapatistas’ struggle, the EZLN created a powerful communal force to effectively lobby the Mexican government and challenge its historical stranglehold over Chiapas. Mobilization of, and through, the Internet thus created connections with other indigenous peoples, as well as with a variety of civil society groups that together pressed the government to implement the fundamental socioeconomic and political reforms that the Zapatistas demanded. Its two to four thousand–strong fighters were thus aided by literally tens of thousands of supporters and sympathizers scattered across the globe. The EZLN also encouraged these newfound national, regional, and international allies to travel to Chiapas to observe and monitor the conflict and act as a bulwark against government abuses and human rights violations. “This was not at all a conventional way to mount an insurrection,” a 1998 RAND Corporation analysis observed.

Over the next fifteen months or so, the Zapatistas’ mobilization strategy proved pivotal in halting government efforts to defeat the rebellion. Legend has it that, using a laptop computer that he carried in a backpack, Subcomandante Marcos plugged into the cigarette lighter socket of a Jeep or a truck and simply dialed up to log on to the Internet, enabling him to dispatch messages in real time to activists and supporters in Mexico City, the United States, Canada, and Europe. However, as Thomas Olesen concluded in his book, International

, “there is no evidence as such that either the EZLN or Subcomandante Marcos [had] direct access toZapatismo the Internet through modem or cellular phones.” Marcos, however , was nonetheless able to27 indirectly communicate quickly and effectively to reach a larger national and international audience than pre–Internet era insurgents could ever have hoped. Indeed, the group’s communication strategy was critical in blunting a major28 1995 government offensive. “Information flooded out of the conflict zone,” one account of the information counteroffensive reported. “The smallest of details, the slightest harassment of the civilian population, was spread to thousands of sympathisers and journalists all over the world. The result saw demonstrations and protests against the army offensive and concerned reports from human rights groups.”29

Through their pioneering use of electronic “floodgate” tools and other denial-of-service measures, as well as30 the forging of effective connections with activists, supporters, and sympathizers around the world, the Zapatistas were able to orchestrate a campaign of e-mail and fax bombardment directed at Mexico’s president at the time, Ernesto Zedillo, and his minister of the interior, Esteban Moctezuma, which successively halted the offensive. “Before, we used faxes and telephones and it took forever,” one sympathetic peace activist gushed. “Now the information arrives [with the snap of a finger]. The feedback is instantaneous.” So successful were the31 Zapatistas’ mobilization efforts that in January 1995, President Zedillo proclaimed a truce and agreed to enter negotiations with the EZLN. As Mexico’s foreign minister, Jose Angel Gurr a, later reflected: “Chiapas … is aí place where there has not been a shot fired in the last fifteen months.… The shots lasted ten days and ever since the war has been a war of ink, of written word, a war on the Internet.” Indeed, when Mexican security32 forces raided a collection of EZLN safe houses in Mexico City and Veracruz, they reportedly discovered “as many computer diskettes as bullets.” For Marcos, the message and significance of the Zapatistas’ Internet33 strategy was clear. “This is a new type of warfare,” he declared in an interview published in a British Internet magazine in 1996. The Zapatistas used Internet-based “collective manifestations” that they themselves34 variously called or described as “electronic civil disobedience,” “net strikes,” and “mail bombs.” As one observer of the EZLN’s networking phenomenon explains, “The idea of these computer-mediated actions is to go beyond the sending of emails to figures such as politicians. The purpose, instead, is disruptive: for example, to flood mailboxes and overwork websites to the extent that they break down or become defunct for periods of time.” A35 1998 Internet posting by the “New York Zapatistas” advocated “electronic civil disobedience,” describing it as

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systems of communication upon which Mexican government officials and their supporters depend.… We therefore urge that the following tactics be used against governmental, financial, and corporate sites responsible for the ongoing genocide in Chiapas. 1) Phone Zaps: Repeated calling to disrupt normal operations. 2) Fax Jams: Repeated faxing to overload fax machines. 3) Email Jams: Massive emailing to overload email inboxes and servers. 4) Virtual Sit-Ins: trespassing and blockading of web sites.36

Although it is impossible to detect a direct causal connection between the Zapatistas’ success and the spread of Internet usage to other insurgent and terrorist groups, it is clear that around this time they began to awake to the power of electronic communications and their distinct advantage over other, older propaganda vehicles. Among the first were the LTTE (Tamil Tigers). The group established TamilNet.com in 1995, and its success37 subsequently spawned several additional sites, including www.eelam.com, www.eelam.net,38 www.eelamweb.com, www.tamiltigers.net, www.cantam.com, and www.canadatamils.net. These servers were39 based in India, the United Kingdom, Norway, Canada, and Australia, among other places—all countries with sizable, existing Tamil migr communities. Like the Zapatistas, the Tigers’ initial presence on the Internet wasé é motivated by a desire to present an alternative news and information source to the Sri Lankan state-controlled media. The Sri Lankan government’s imposition of press censorship coupled with the announcement of a new,40 major military offensive was what had specifically prompted the creation of TamilNet. As a Tiger spokesperson explained: “We all knew what would happen if the government started a large scale offensive in the heavily populated Jaffna region. At the same time, the Sri Lankan government and its media were engaged in a massive stream of propaganda trying to justify the war against the People of Tamil Eelam.”41

The site was conceived to mobilize the support of the 450,000-member Tamil diaspora by providing them with breaking news from Eelam, the historical Tamil homeland in the north and northeast of Sri Lanka, where the fighting between the rebels and Sri Lanka Armed Forces had mostly occurred. Like the Zapatistas, the Tiger42 site also sought to link up with international humanitarian relief organizations and various Tamil and non-Tamil NGOs. A 2005 survey of www.eelam.com’s home page, for example, revealed links to topics such as the tsunami that devastated parts of Sri Lanka’s coast in December 2004 and attendant LTTE-sponsored relief efforts (“Tsunami Disaster Relief: Please Contact Your Nearest Tamils Rehabilitation Organisations Office”).43 Home pages for other Tiger sites encouraged readers to “link to us” and provided instructions on how to do so. Like that of most other terrorist and insurgent organizations’ sites, the Tiger’s Web presence was primarily information-oriented, with navigational bars that provided background and history about the Tamil people and44 the LTTE’s struggle. These sites often also contained a map of the historical Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka; a history tab with further information on the Tamil people’s long struggle for self-determination; a biography of the Tiger’s founder and leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran; audio buttons through which recordings of “VOT: Voice of the Tigers” could be downloaded and listened to; LTTE press releases; daily news clips and links to other news sources; and a gallery of photographs of alleged atrocities inflicted by the Sri Lankan military on Tamil civilians. Features included profiles of the LTTE’s feared women fighters, “freedom poems,” and even an interactive online quiz. Finally, as on many other terrorist sites, merchandising—serving the dual purposes of fund-raising and morale boosting cum solidarity building—occupied a prominent place on the site. A variety of terrorist kitsch, including flags, calendars, videos, books, and pamphlets, was available for sale.45

TamilNet scored a huge public relations coup in the summer of 1996 when it convincingly refuted Sri Lankan army claims of having repulsed a Tiger attack on an important base at Mullaitivu at the cost of only about seventy government casualties. With credible reports from LTTE cadres coming directly from the scene via satellite telephone, TamilNet posted dispatches and stories that painted a completely different picture. Not only had the camp been captured, but more than a thousand Sri Lankan soldiers had already been killed in the failednot assault. As one analyst of terrorist websites at that time had observed:

It’s not unusual that two parties in a war have vastly differing stories. As it turned out, the Tamil Tigers were more accurate. A week later, the Sri Lankan Army admitted to losing the camp. Twelve hundred soldiers were also lost. This was a major breakthrough for TamilNet and the alternative news channels. Newspapers such as the

and the began quoting bulletins from the LTTE statements andWashington Post International Herald Tribune were extremely suspicious of the official Sri Lankan Army news dispatches.46

Not surprisingly, the success of the Tiger websites prompted determined government attempts to shut them down. One such effort in November 1997, however, backfired completely and resulted instead in47

denial-of-service attacks presumably launched by the Tigers against Sri Lankan diplomatic facilities worldwide in

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denial-of-service attacks presumably launched by the Tigers against Sri Lankan diplomatic facilities worldwide in retaliation. The embassies in Seoul, Ottawa, and Washington, D.C., were reportedly the worst affected, with48 e-mail unavailable at each for at least a week.49

By 2006, almost without exception, every major (and many minor) terrorist and insurgent groups had their own websites. As a researcher at the U.S. government’s Foreign Broadcast and Information Service (FBIS), now50 known as the Open Source Center (OSC), had commented as long ago as 2000, “These days, if you’re not on the web, you don’t exist.” Indeed, according to perhaps the preeminent expert in the field of terrorist51 communication and the Internet, Gabriel Weimann, in 1998 fewer than half of the thirty groups that the U.S. State Department designates as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) had websites, but by the end of the following year, nearly all of them did. The presence of terrorist groups on the Internet increased dramatically over the52 next four years, so that by 2003 Weimann had identified 2,600 such sites. Two years later, this number had53 nearly doubled (to 4,300), and by 2013, Weimann was tracking nearly 10,000 sites.54 55

Despite the multiplicity and diversity of terrorist websites, they share a number of key characteristics. These sites are often notable for their colorful, well-designed, and visually arresting graphic content. In this respect, they seem intended particularly to appeal to a computer-savvy, media-saturated, video game–addicted generation. Most of the sites chart the terrorist group’s history, its aims and objectives, and the depredations inflicted by an enemy state(s) or people(s) on the constituency it purports to represent. The sites also often contain biographies of the group’s leadership, its founders, and key personalities; up-to-date news and accompanying feature stories; speeches, ideological treatises, and especially the organization’s communiqu s and other important statements.é Ethnonationalist/separatist movements will also generally have maps of the contested territory they claim to represent or be fighting for. Virtually without exception, all sites studiously avoid focusing on or drawing any attention to either the violence or death and destruction that they are responsible for. Instead, issues such as freedom of expression and the plight of imprisoned comrades are highlighted. In the case of the more56 sophisticated organizations, such as the LTTE and Hezbollah, multiple sites are maintained in different languages. Arab and Islamic groups, Basque and Irish national-separatist movements, religious cults, Marxist-Leninist and Maoist movements, European neo-Nazi groups, and al-Qaeda and its many affiliates and franchises could all be found on the Web. Nonetheless, Arab and Islamic groups are regarded by57 knowledgeable observers to have long had the largest presence. “That Internet usage by Islamists is growing is58 obvious,” an article published in 1999 opined. “What is also obvious is that they will use it to promote their views, advance the strategies of the ‘global Islamic movement’ and organize their activities, which experience has shown are sometimes inimical to western security, and in a wider sense might also seek to subvert the security of the state.”59

Middle East Arab terrorist organizations in particular are regarded as having been most prominently on the “cutting edge of organizational networking”; demonstrating an ability to harness information technology for offensive operations, as well as having proven adept in emulating the more typical propaganda, fund-raising, and recruiting purposes of other groups.60

Perhaps the preeminent group in this respect, and one of the first to harness fully the communications power of the Web, is Hezbollah. The group has often maintained as many as twenty different sites, in three different61 languages: English, French, and Arabic. Each site has a different purpose, orientation, and intended audience.62 The movement’s Central Press Office and main Web page site, for instance, in the past could be accessed directly at www.hizbollah.org (it is no longer accessible). It had the requisite background account of the struggle63 and history of the organization that is found on other terrorist and insurgent sites, as well as tabs presenting “statements on the resistance,” “political declarations,” press clips and releases, special focuses on the “occupied zone” (e.g., Israel) and on “hostages and wounded,” as well as “speeches of the S.G.”—that is, the movement’s secretary general and spiritual leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah, in fact, also maintains his own64 dedicated site containing postings in French, English, and Arabic. Readers were encouraged to contact the65 66 website and post their own views and opinions on the anti-Zionist struggle and alleged crimes committed by Israel and its armed forces. This feature is apparently especially valued by Hezbollah. According to a group67 spokesman: “The service is very important for the morale of the resistance fighters. They are always very happy to know that people around the world are backing them.” Hezbollah in 2001 claimed that it was receiving forty68 thousand visitors to its sites per month.69

A more circuitous route was required in 2005 to find the Hezbollah Central Press Office site at http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/300/320/324/324.2/hizballah, which today is actually more easily found. While it70 is not dissimilar to the previous iteration, it does more obviously reflect the movement’s redoubled bid for political legitimacy outside Lebanon. For instance, the home page still features the same long statement titled71

“Hizballah— [my emphasis],” which describes the group’s background and history, with ansocial radicals

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“Hizballah— [my emphasis],” which describes the group’s background and history, with ansocial radicals emphasis on its social welfare and political activities. Resistance, much less the movement’s terrorist legacy and continuing armed operations, is prominently absent. The series of links to other Hezbollah documents, institutions, and sites that it offers includes such ostensibly benign topics as

the movement’s 1996 electoral platform, a 1997 message Hezbollah received from Pope John Paul II, the Emdad Committee for Islamic Charity, Al Manar TV, and the Al Jarha Association (“Getting by with a Little Help from a Friend: Beirut’s al-Jarha Association Helps Wounded Resistance Fighters Build Themselves”).

The “Hizbullah: Views and Concepts” section is similarly anodyne, addressing issues such as “Hizbullah and Dialogue,” “Hizbullah and the Political System in Lebanon,” and, of course, “Hizbullah and Human Rights,” among other subjects.

Other prominent Hezbollah websites include www.moqawama.org, which is still accessible and specifically focuses on attacks against Israeli targets, and www.almanar.com.lb ( is Arabic for “the Beacon”), themanar movement’s television and radio station, which continues to post news reports, video clips, and other pro-Hezbollah panegyrics in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish. Hezbollah also used the Internet and its72 television station, as well as other media outlets to promote and sell a video game called that itsSpecial Force Central Internet Bureau claims to have labored for “two long years” to create (access to the site is now blocked). “Pursue your enemy from position to position,” one spot on al-Manar beckoned prospective purchasers. “Take73

part in making victory.” That Hezbollah intuitively understood the market for such a game is evidenced by the74 claim that some ten thousand copies were reportedly sold in Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Germany, and Australia during the eight weeks following its release in March 2003. An advertisement75 for the game, easily located on the Internet in June 2005, explained:

“SPECIAL FORCE” IS BASED ON REALITY, MEANING THAT THE GAME IS BASED ON EVENTS THAT TOOK PLACE IN A LAND CALLED LEBANON. LEBANON WAS INVADED BY “ISRAEL” IN 1978 & 1982, AND WAS FORCED TO WITHDRAW AND DID WITHDRAW IN THE YEAR 2000. AFTER THAT WE DECIDED TO PRODUCE A GAME THAT WILL BE EDUCATIONAL FOR OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS AND FOR ALL FREEDOM LOVERS OF THIS WORLD OF OURS.

“Special Force game,” it concludes, “will render you a partner of the resistance.” Features included a training76 simulation, where players could hone their shooting skills by firing at targets of then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and then minister of defense and former IDF chief of staff Shaul Mofaz. The qualification medal for excellent marksmanship that follows is then awarded by a simulated Sheikh Nasrallah. The game’s main attraction, however, was doubtless the assaults on IDF positions and tanks that test a player’s skill at avoiding land mines and snipers, and shooting down attack helicopters to accomplish the mission. “Thank you,” stated the registration card that comes with . “The Designers of ‘Special Force’ are very Proud to provide youSpecial Force with this special product which embodies objectively the defeat of the Israeli enemy and the heroic actions taken by the heroes of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon.” As Bilal Zain, a member of the game’s design team,77 explained, through the medium of entertainment sought to convey Hezbollah’s “values, conceptsSpecial Force and ideas.” Accordingly, instructions for play were available in Arabic, English, French, and Farsi. “Be a Partner78 in the Victory …,” the liner notes on the video case state. “Fight, Resist, Destroy Your Enemy in the Game of Force and Victory.”79

The Palestinian group Hamas has had a similarly strong presence on the Internet. Although its original website did refer to the group by name (www.hamas.org), like Hezbollah, Hamas also relied on another, more generic, moniker—in this case, “Palestinian Information Center.” In the past, additional links have been80 provided through such general information sites as the Ohio-based MSANews (originating at Ohio State University) and from groups such as the Islamic Association for Palestine. Observers often cited the81 professionalism, excellent content, and clean and fluid English and Arabic prose found on the site. Indeed, for these reasons, Israeli authorities regarded the website as a very effective communications vehicle for the group. In the past, the site has very adroitly featured interviews with the father of Muhammad al-Dura, the82

twelve-year-old Palestinian boy who was allegedly shot to death shortly after the al-Aqsa Intifada began in October 2000 at an Israeli–Palestinian border crossing as the father vainly attempted to shield him from the

bullets flying around them, along with photographs of wounded Palestinian babies in hospital and other83

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bullets flying around them, along with photographs of wounded Palestinian babies in hospital and other83 depictions of IDF mistreatment of Palestinian youths. The site also posted copies of the Hamas Covenant in84 what was reported to be an excellent, verbatim English translation, various communiqu s of attacks andé messages from Hamas’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, and a daily account or running diary of the wing’s operations. A more nefarious purpose was reported by observers of terrorist Internet usage: the85 reported communication of operational instructions through steganography—the clandestine concealment of messages and other information embedded in images and other visual displays —and other activities meant to86 facilitate terrorist activities, including fund-raising and logistical and other support.87

Hamas’s presence on the Internet was also maintained through sites such as IntifadaOnline.com, which was88 active from 1988 until about a decade ago and purported to “bring … you the Palestinian side of the story. We89 also advise you on how to help.” Its home page once contained the familiar image of Muhammad al-Dura, wounded Palestinian babies in the hospital, Palestinian children being beaten and dragged through the street by IDF soldiers, IDF troops restraining a Palestinian teenager in a choke hold, and the ubiquitous image of a youthful Palestinian demonstrator facing an Israeli tank. Scrolling farther down the page revealed photographs of Palestinian martyrs—including suicide bombers—and additional images of Palestinian babies injured in Israeli violence. The site featured the compelling image of a Palestinian youth hurling a stone at an IDF tank, thus90 deliberately evoking the enduring memory of the lone Chinese pro-democracy demonstrator who faced down a Chinese tank at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Under the headline “Justice, Freedom, and Peace,” alongside banners the color of the Palestinian national flag, additional links were provided to translations in twenty-two languages—including Arabic, Danish, Dutch, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Urdu. Links were provided to websites providing additional news91 and information on the Palestinian struggle, poetry, and the websites of mainstream established news media, such as the BBC and CNN. Navigational bars also direct viewers to

stories and pictures, explanations such as “Why Intifada?” other news items about the Intifada, a discussion of the nefarious “silencing of the Intifada,” and information on how to “be part of Intifada.”

The last link encouraged visitors to participate in demonstrations, write letters to their elected officials and newspapers, and boycott Israeli goods. Instructions were also given on how to add Hamas links and banners to one’s own site.92

Until the summer of 2002, an affiliated Hamas site, www.qassam.net, actively solicited donations for the explicit purpose of purchasing AK-47 assault rifles, dynamite, and bullets with which “to assist the cause of jihad and resistance until the [Israeli] occupation is eliminated and Muslim Palestine is liberated.” Donations in the amount of US$3 for bullets, US$100 per kilogram of dynamite, US$2,000 for an AK-47, and US$12,000 for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher were reportedly suggested. Prospective donors were invited to contact an address on a website that provided instructions for transferring money to a Gaza-based bank account. The name on the account and the account number were said to change every forty-eight to seventy-two hours. A message addressed to the would-be donor stated: “Dear Donor: Please tell us the field in which you prefer your money to be spent on such as: martyrdom attacks; buying weapons for the mujahadeen; training the youth; or inventing and developing missiles, mortars [and] explosives.”93

Hamas reportedly maintained some twenty active sites at the end of 2004. Among them was a site in Arabic,94 www.sabiroon.net, extolling terrorist operations, including suicide bombings; another for a radio station associated with Hamas (al-Aqsa Voice), at www.aqsavoice.com; and one featuring the movement’s children’s magazine, , at www.al-fateh.net. Like Hezbollah, for a time Hamas also maintained a dedicated site foral-Fateh 95 its leader, Abd al Aziz al Rantisi (www.rantisi.net), who succeeded Sheikh Yasin following his assassination in March 2004. The site for Rantisi, who was killed shortly after Yasin, was hosted by an American server. It could96 not be accessed as of June 2005. The PIJ, Hamas’s counterpart, has a considerably less extensive presence on the Internet—but at the time still maintained six sites.97

In addition, Muslim—but non-Arabic and non–Middle Eastern—sites have also had an active presence on the Internet. The most sophisticated have been websites of various radical Pakistani organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), Harakat ul Mujahideen (Movement of Warriors), Harakat al-Ansar (Movement of the Partisans), and the London-based Hizb ut Tahrir (Party of Liberation), which itself has98

maintained upward of twenty different sites. According to the aforementioned FBIS analysts, Hizb ut Tahrir had a

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maintained upward of twenty different sites. According to the aforementioned FBIS analysts, Hizb ut Tahrir had a “bigger presence on the Web than in life.” Nonetheless, the multiplicity of its sites and the sophistication of its Web design and content have made it an important resource on radical Islamic ideology. Although the majority of the Pakistani-based groups once had relatively anemic and poorly designed sites (e.g., Hizb ul Mujahideen, Harakat al-Ansar), Lashkar-e-Taiba was always an exception. Its Web designers were not only proficient but also capable of posting content in multiple languages—English, Arabic, and Urdu. Audio links on the site provided99 connections to Radio al-Jihad and Mercaz al-Dawa. Fund-raising was a prominent feature on the Web for100 Lashkar and other groups, with banking details and instructions provided for direct deposits into the group’s account. An entreaty on the site described how the group’s holy warriors were engaged in fighting the101 “oppressive Hindu Army in the snow covered valleys, mountains and jungles of Kashmir. These Mujadhideen best deserve your charity.” The site was visceral in its enmity toward what its authors defined as Islam’s102 triumvirate of most-hated opponents: India, the United States, and Israel. According to Jessica Stern, in the103 past one of Lashkar’s sites included a “list of purported Jews working for the Clinton administration,” listing staff such as Robert Nash, who was then director of presidential personnel (a non-Jewish African American), and George Tenet, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (a Greek American).104

Finally, the generic websites for radical Islamic ideology maintained more than a decade ago out of London and other places in the United Kingdom provided an additional vehicle for the dissemination of propaganda and solicitation of philanthropic contributions. Principal among these were www.azzam.com and www.kawkaz.com, which later became www.kavkaz.com and www.kavkazcenter.com. Azzam.com’s real sponsor is unknown. It105 was posted in the name of Azzam Publications, a reference to Abdullah Azzam, the aforementioned theologian and propagandist who became bin Laden’s mentor in the early 1980s and was assassinated in 1989. The106 azzam.com site was openly dedicated to global jihad and actively solicited contributions for the Taliban and Chechen guerrillas fighting against Russian forces. A message in early 2001 stated how an “Appeal for cash donations” to the Taliban “is especially urgent.” It suggested a minimum US$20,000 contribution and provided advice on how to deliver it personally to the Taliban consul general in Karachi, Pakistan. This site also had107 long served as a mouthpiece for bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Indeed, azzam.com postings in 2002 urged Muslims108 to come to Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight against the “Jewish-backed American Crusaders.” It also provided these would-be recruits with useful practical travel information on how to unobtrusively leave one’s job and how to avoid arousing suspicion from employers, diplomats issuing visas, and inquisitive border and immigration officials.109

The kawkaz website was similarly devoted to fund-raising for both the Taliban and the Chechens—as well as encouraging volunteers to travel to Afghanistan and Chechnya to fight for Islam. The goal of raising US$10 million per month for the Taliban was once encouraged. As large sums had already been successfully raised for the Chechens, the aforementioned FBIS analysts did not regard this pretension as entirely “unrealistic.” The site contained translations in some sixteen different languages and was sophisticated in design and message. According to the FBIS analysts, the Chechen site provided an “example par excellence of where we are in a new era of propaganda.” It has continued to operate as www.kavkaz.org.uk and www.kavkazcenter.com, under the110 banner “News—Facts—Analysis,” with postings in three languages (Russian, English, and Turkish). Its main focus was on Chechnya and Chechen mujahideen issues, and in 2005 and 2006 also presented information and news about the insurgency in Iraq. Other tabs linked to a photo gallery, videos, sections titled “Analysis,” “Talking Points,” “Chat,” and opportunities for cooperation. Among the postings on its home page were articles such as “Russians turn Chechen orphans into zombies” and “21 invaders, collaborators eliminated in Chechnya.” Online polls also asked readers whether the alleged 2005 energy crisis in Moscow is the result of: (a) an “Act of sabotage,” (b) “Technical problems,” or (c) “Human error.” In addition, there were links to at least six other sites, including www.kavkaz.tv, www.kavkazcenter.com, www.kavkazcenter.net, and www.kavkazcenter.info. As one111 U.S. government observer of the terrorism Internet phenomenon noted in the context of the kavkaz sites, “Never in history has there been an opportunity where propaganda is so effective.”112

Al-Qaeda, in fact, was unique among all terrorist groups in this respect: from the start, its leadership seems to have intuitively grasped the enormous communicative potential of the Internet and sought to harness this power both to further the movement’s strategic aims and to facilitate its tactical operations. The priority that al-Qaeda accorded to external communications is evidenced by its pre-9/11 organizational structure. One of the original four al-Qaeda operational committees was specifically charged with media and publicity (the others were responsible for military operations, finance and business, and fatwa and Islamic study). Egyptian computer113

experts who had fought alongside bin Laden in Afghanistan against the Red Army during the late 1980s were

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1. 2. 3.

experts who had fought alongside bin Laden in Afghanistan against the Red Army during the late 1980s were reportedly specifically recruited to create the extensive network of websites, e-mail capabilities, and electronic bulletin boards.114

The Internet has thus long facilitated three critical functions for al-Qaeda:

Propaganda for recruitment and fund-raising, and to shape public opinion in the Muslim world Terrorist training and instruction Operational planning for attacks through both e-mail communication and the access it provides to an array of useful open source information

Each assumed great importance in the immediate post-9/11 era and the loss of Afghanistan as a physical sanctuary. For al-Qaeda, the Internet became something of a virtual sanctuary, providing an effective, expeditious, and anonymous means through which the movement can continue to communicate with its fighters, followers, sympathizers, and supporters worldwide. For example, before 9/11, al-Qaeda had only one website: www.alneda.com. In 2005, the movement was present on more than fifty different sites. “The more websites,115 the better it is for us,” a jihadist statement posted on azzam.com in 2002 proclaimed. “We must make the Internet our tool.”116

Initially, as already stated, www.alneda.com fulfilled this requirement. The site, which was published in the117 Arabic language only (as indeed are all the hard-core jihadist sites), emphasized three core messages that remain the basic staple of al-Qaeda and other jihadi websites today:

First, that the West is implacably hostile to Islam; Second, that the only way to address this threat and the only language that the West understands is violence; Third, that jihad, therefore, is the only option.118

In support of these arguments, the theory of jihad was elaborated on in great theological and legalistic detail. The obligation of all Muslims both to protect and to spread Islam by the sword was a particular focus of online treatises. In addition, summaries of news affecting the Islamic struggle against the West, al-Qaeda’s own accounts of ongoing fighting and skirmishing with American and allied forces both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, and suggested readings—including books by authors approved by al-Qaeda theoreticians—could be found on the site. Lengthy justifications for the 9/11 attacks were also posted. Video clips and other messages extolling119 the operation were featured, accompanied by Islamic juridical arguments sanctioning the killing of innocents. Like other terrorist sites, poems glorified the sacrifices of al-Qaeda martyrs and waxed eloquent on the unrelenting defensive struggle being fought against Islam’s enemies.

During the period immediately following the 9/11 attacks, when al-Qaeda suffered a series of stunning reverses, culminating in the loss of Afghanistan as a base, alneda.com also performed an invaluable morale-boosting purpose by trying to lift the spirits of al-Qaeda fighters and shore up support among its sympathizers. According to British journalist Paul Eedle, a February 2002 Internet posting contained the names and home phone numbers of eighty-four al-Qaeda fighters being held by Pakistani authorities “presumably with the aim that sympathizers would contact their families and let them know that they were alive.”120

The alneda.com site was also used to call Muslims’ attention to the alleged control, suppression, and censorship of information about the jihadist struggle by the West and established media outlets. “The U.S. enemy, unable to gain the upper hand over the mujahadeen on the battlefield,” one June 2002 statement explained, “has since Sept. 11 been trying to gag the world media. The more the United States tries to stifle freedom of expression, the more determined we will become to break the silence. America will lose the media war, too.” Another, titled “America Nears the Abyss,” compared the damage wrought to the U.S. economy by121 the 9/11 attacks to the struggle prosecuted by the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s that, it maintained, had set in motion the chain of events that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of communism. The same fate, it predicted, would befall the United States, and it cited the weakening American dollar, the parlous state of the U.S. stock market, and the erosion of confidence both at home and abroad in the American economy. Indeed, as previously noted, bin Laden long argued that the United States was poised on122 the verge of financial ruin and total collapse much as the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) once was—with the force of Islam ensuring America’s demise much as it achieved that of the Soviet Union two decades ago. When bin Laden addressed his fighters as they fled Afghanistan in December 2001, he struck the

same defiant note. “America is in retreat by the grace of God Almighty and economic attrition is continuing up to

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same defiant note. “America is in retreat by the grace of God Almighty and economic attrition is continuing up to today,” he declared. “But it needs further blows. The young men need to seek out the nodes of the American economy and strike the enemy’s nodes.”123

The alneda.com site continued to function sporadically throughout 2002, repeatedly moving from one Internet service provider to another to circumvent the efforts of the United States and other governments to shut it down completely. In its death throes that summer, it shifted during one eight-week period from a provider in Malaysia to one in Texas and then to one in Michigan before disappearing completely. Afterward, a variety of online124 magazines maintained al-Qaeda’s presence on the Net. The first appeared shortly after 9/11 and featured a series of articles titled “In the Shadow of the Lances.” Initially written by the movement’s putative spokesman, Suleimain Abu Ghaith, the first five issues were mostly theological or ideological treatises. Typical were discussions reiterating how “America does not understand dialogue. Nor peaceful coexistence. Nor appeals, nor condemnation, nor criticism. America,” Abu Ghaith argued, “will only be stopped by blood.” In February 2003,125 however, as the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq loomed imminent, authorship of the series abruptly changed from Abu Ghaith, the theoretician and philosopher, to Saif al-Adel, the warrior. Al-Adel, one of the movement’s most senior operational commanders and a former Egyptian Army Special Forces officer who joined al-Qaeda as a result of the 1998 merger with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad, implored jihadists to descend upon Iraq—not to support Saddam Hussein but to defend Muslims against this latest instance of U.S. and Western aggression. He also dispensed detailed, practical advice on guerrilla operations and urban warfare tactics with which to engage—and ultimately defeat—the invading American and British forces in Iraq. The virtues of guerrilla126 warfare were again lavishly extolled in a posting that appeared on alneda.com on April 9, 2003. Clearly written sometime after American forces had entered Baghdad, it cited prominent historical cases where numerically smaller and less powerful forces using guerrilla tactics had successfully challenged larger, better-equipped adversaries. Under the caption “Guerrilla Warfare Is the Most Powerful Weapon Muslims Have, and It Is the Best Method to Continue the Conflict with the Crusader Enemy,” the statement foreshadowed the prolonged insurgency in Iraq, presciently explaining how

with guerilla warfare, the Americans were defeated in Vietnam and the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan. This is the method that expelled the direct Crusader colonialism from most of the Muslim lands, with Algeria the most well known. We still see how this method stopped Jewish immigration to Palestine, and caused reverse immigration of Jews from Palestine. The successful attempts of dealing defeat to invaders using guerilla warfare were many, and we will not expound on them. However, these attempts have proven that the most effective method for the materially weak against the strong is guerrilla warfare.127

This mixture of ideology and propaganda alongside practical guidance on guerrilla warfare and related terrorist operations came to typify al-Qaeda’s Internet profile in the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks. With respect to the former, a new Internet magazine named (Voice of Jihad) appeared in128 Sawt al-Jihad

February 2004, published by al-Qaeda’s Saudi organization. Its message was less one of attacking U.S. and other Western targets than the importance of mobilizing Muslim public opinion and support of jihad.129 Nonetheless, according to the late Israeli analyst Reuven Paz, an editorial titled “Belief First: They Are the Heretics, the Blood of Each of Them Is the Blood of a Dog” implicitly justified the slaughter of Americans. “My fighting brother,” its author, Sheikh Naser al-Najdi, wrote,

kill the heretic; kill whoever his blood is the blood of a dog; kill those that Almighty Allah has ordered you to kill.… Bush son of Bush.… a dog son of a dog … his blood is that of a dog.… Shut your mouth and speak with your other mouth—the mouth of the defender against his attacker.130

In Islam, dogs are considered to be among the most impure creatures, and true believers are forbidden to even touch one. Thus, the equating of President Bush with a dog is meant to be especially damning.

With respect to practical guidance, another online publication, also published by the al-Qaeda organization in Saudi Arabia, ’ (Camp of the Sword) sought to provide operational information. Its first issue,Mu askar al-Battar published in January 2004, explained how “in order to join the great training camps you don’t have to travel to other lands. Alone, in your home or with a group of your brothers, you too can begin to execute the training program. You can all join the Al-Battar Training Camp.” The power of this particular communications vehicle131 appears to have been demonstrated by the influence that the March 2004 edition had on subsequent patterns of terrorist activities in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Reportedly written by Abdul Azziz al-Moqrin, the reputed132 commander of al-Qaeda’s operations on the Arabian Peninsula until he was killed by Saudi security forces in

May 2005, it singled out economic targets, especially those connected with the region’s oil industry, as priorities

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May 2005, it singled out economic targets, especially those connected with the region’s oil industry, as priorities for attack. “The purpose of these targets,” Moqrin wrote,

is to destabilize the situation and not allow the economic recovery such as hitting oil wells and pipelines that will scare foreign companies from working there and stealing Muslim treasures. Another purpose is to have foreign investment withdrawn from local markets. Some of the benefits of those operations are the effect it has on the economic powers like the one that had happened recently in Madrid where the whole European economy was affected.133

In the weeks that followed, al-Moqrin’s strategy seemed to bear fruit. The U.S. State Department, for instance, advised American citizens to leave Saudi Arabia. After the murder in April 2004 of five expatriate workers at a petrochemical complex in the Saudi industrial city of Yanbu, foreign companies there were reported to have evacuated employees from the country. These fears acquired new urgency with the attack in May on a134 housing complex in Khobar, where twenty-two foreigners were killed, and the execution by beheading in June of an American defense contractor, Paul M. Johnson Jr.135

This same targeting guidance also explains the spate of kidnappings and tragically similar executions of foreign contractors, diplomats, and aid workers in Iraq that commenced within a week of its release. The first victim was Mohammed Rifat, a Canadian, who was seized on April 8, 2004. During the following three months, more than sixty others were kidnapped. Although the majority were eventually released, five hostages were brutally murdered—most often by beheading, with the act itself filmed and posted on jihadi websites. Among136 the dead was a young Jewish American businessman, Nicholas Berg. Al-Moqrin had deemed as a special priority “assassinating Jewish businessmen and teach lessons to those who cooperate with them [ ].” Indeed,sic al-Moqrin provided additional “practical examples” of how his targeting guidance should be implemented. The preferred hierarchy of targets was:

“American and Israeli Jews first, the British Jews and then French Jews and so on.” “Christians: Their importance is as follows: Americans, British, Spanish, Australians, Canadians, Italians.”

Within these categories, there were further distinctions:

“Businessmen, bankers, and economists, because money is very important in this age” “Diplomats, politicians, scholars, analysts, and diplomatic missions” “Scientists, associates and experts”; “Military commander and soldiers”; and “Tourists and entertainment missions and anybody that was warned by mujahideen not to go to step in the lands of Moslems.”137

Indeed, the changing nature of terrorism in the twenty-first century was perhaps best exemplified by the items recovered by Saudi security forces during a raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Riyadh used by a cell in al-Moqrin’s network just weeks later. In addition to the traditional terrorist arsenal of AK-47 assault rifles, explosives, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, and thousands of rounds of ammunition that the authorities expected to find, they also discovered an array of electronic consumer goods, including video cameras, laptop computers, CD burners, and the requisite high-speed Internet connection. According to CNN investigative journalist Henry Schuster, the videos “had been part of an al Qaeda media blitz on the Web that also included two online magazines full of editorials and news digests, along with advice on how to handle a kidnapping or field-strip an AK-47 assault rifle. The videos mixed old appearances by bin Laden with slick graphics and suicide bombers’ on-camera last wills and testaments. They premiered on the Internet, one after the other, and were aimed at recruiting Saudi youth.”138

The insurgency in Iraq between 2003 and 2010 arguably became the cynosure of this process of effective, mass audience, cutting-edge communications. According to analysts at the Alexandria, Virginia–based IntelCenter, within a couple of years more than a dozen terrorist and insurgent groups—both indigenous Iraqi insurgent organizations and foreign jihadists fighting there—were producing their own compelling videos. They139 were either sold in DVD format at souks and bazaars throughout Iraq or posted either in part or in whole on the Internet. The films variously

depicted scenes of insurgents using roadside bombs to ambush U.S. military forces on patrol in Humvees or firing handheld surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) at U.S. military aircraft flying overhead; imparted practical, tactical advice to insurgents (e.g., advising insurgents “to vacate the area no later than 10

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minutes after launching an attack, before US forces zero in on their position”) and instruction in the use of weaponry and the planning and execution of attacks; transmitted the last words of kidnapped Iraqis and foreigners about to be executed and, in many instances,140

displayed gory footage of the executions themselves;141

appealed for financial contributions; and,142

perhaps most important, solicited recruits from the Middle East, South and Central Asia, North Africa, Europe, and even North America to come to Iraq to become “lions from the martyr’s brigade.”143

These so-called mujahideen films were but one manifestation of a much broader and highly sophisticated communications strategy. The more prominent insurgent organizations then fighting in Iraq, for instance, had themselves established dedicated information offices that in essence functioned as online press agencies, issuing communiqu s, developing and posting new content for their websites (often several times a day), andé generally updating and regularly replenishing news and other features. “The Iraqi armed opposition appear to make a priority of communication,” two particularly knowledgeable observers of the insurgency in that country observed,

in ways that go far beyond the unique intention of terrorising the adversary. Combatant groups produce an astonishingly large and varied range of texts and images, which it would be wrong to reduce to their most brutal types. Besides the threatening tracts there is an impressive body of strategic analysis, cold-blooded, lucid and detailed. Similarly, the most monstrous video sequences eclipse a wealth of films, sometimes of professional quality, extending from “lectures” in classical Arabic on the manufacture of explosives to “advertising” material put out by new groups making their first public appearance.

The insurgents’ intent was to explain and legitimate their use of violence (employing theological arguments and treatises, for example, to differentiate between “illicit terrorism” and “licit terrorism,” and thereby justify their attacks); drive a wedge between the Iraqi people and the so-called collaboration authorities (e.g., the Iraqi interim government); undermine popular confidence in the ability of the Iraqi government and Iraqi security forces and the U.S. and coalition militaries to maintain order throughout the country; and, last, to facilitate communications between and among various groups in order to forge new alliances and cooperative arrangements, however tactical or short-lived.144

Finally, along with propaganda and training, al-Qaeda has also made extensive use of the Internet for intelligence-gathering purposes and targeting. The so-called Manchester Manual, the compendium of terrorist tradecraft assembled by al-Qaeda sometime during the 1990s, advises explicitly that “openly and without resorting to illegal means, it is possible to gather at least 80% of information about the enemy.” Indeed, 145 The

cites four specific instances in which KSM and the nineteen hijackers accessed9/11 Commission Report information from the Internet to plan or facilitate the 9/11 attacks. An al-Qaeda computer found by American146 military forces in Afghanistan contained architectural models of a dam in the United States and software with which to simulate various catastrophic failures, as well as programming instructions for the digital switches that operate American power, water, transport, and communications grids. In March 2005, three British al-Qaeda147 operatives were indicted by a U.S. federal court on charges of having carried out detailed reconnaissance of financial targets in lower Manhattan, Newark, and Washington, D.C. In addition to videotaping the Citigroup Center and the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, the Prudential Financial building in Newark, and the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington, D.C., the men were alleged to have amassed more than five hundred photographs of the sites—many of which had simply been downloaded from the Internet.148

Video Production and Duplication Processes

Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups have also made use of a variety of contemporary technologies to project their message—including computer CD-ROMs, DVDs, and the professionally produced digital video clips. Indeed, a two-hour al-Qaeda recruitment video that bin Laden had circulated throughout the Middle East during the summer of 2001—and that Peter Bergen argues subtly presaged the September 11 attacks—is just such an example. The video, with its graphic footage of infidels attacking Muslims in Chechnya, Kashmir, Iraq, Israel,149 Lebanon, Indonesia, and Egypt; children starving under the yoke of United Nations economic sanctions in Iraq; and, most vexatiously, the accursed presence of “Crusader” military forces in the holy land of Arabia was

subsequently converted to CD-ROM and DVD formats for ease in copying onto computers and loading onto the

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subsequently converted to CD-ROM and DVD formats for ease in copying onto computers and loading onto the World Wide Web for still wider, global dissemination. Titled The Destruction of the American Destroyer USS Cole , the DVD version, except for the misspellings, choppy English translation, and tendentious message, had a color jacket sleeve and liner notes that appeared little different from the commercial videos that one once rented or purchased at the local video store. “This tape are real life scenes that potray [ ],” the liner notes stated, “with150 sic blood and tears, the sorry state of the Muslim Nation. after [ ] revealing the illness, it goes on to discribe [ ]sic sic the cure, whils [ ] giving the glad tiding and hopes for the future as a means of encouragement to remain firmsic and be steadfast for the sake of the future generation.”151

Other video productions that either al-Qaeda or its affiliated groups have distributed in the decade following the 9/11 attacks evidenced the same sophisticated production capabilities and accomplished editing. A particularly revealing sign of their professionalism is the way that videos depicting scenes such as the repugnant execution in 2002 of the journalist Daniel Pearl or the last will and testament of Ahmed Ibrahim al-Haznawi,152 one of the September 11 hijackers, are all shot with a blue background. This technique enables an editor to insert contemporary news footage or evocative images at a later time and thereby enhance or put in a particularly powerful context the video’s message. The video clip of Daniel Pearl’s brutal execution, for153 example, is intercut simultaneously with footage in the left and right corners of the screen depicting the widely televised alleged shooting death in October 2000 of the Palestinian child Muhammad al-Dura, as well as similar scenes of Israeli Defense Force operations involving Palestinian civilians. The tape of al-Haznawi, one of the hijackers aboard the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, contained a date and place name beside his reproduced signature indicating that it was recorded in Khandahar, Afghanistan, around March 2001. Broadcast first by the Qatar-based Arab language news network al-Jazeera in mid-April 2002, the clip was similarly interspersed with contemporary footage showing Ayman al-Zawahiri lauding the 9/11 attacks as a “gift from God” with additional voice-over referring to the Arab League summit in Beirut that had been held two weeks earlier. Both videos—like much al-Qaeda propaganda of that era—are noteworthy for the154 repeated references to, and depictions of, the suffering of Muslim children, whether in Palestine, Iraq, or elsewhere. It is hard to imagine a more potent propaganda tool, recruiting vehicle, or means to justify and legitimate violence than to focus on the maltreatment and abject condition of children.

It was not surprising, therefore, to find another professionally produced al-Qaeda recruitment video circulating around the Middle East in the spring of 2002 in an effort to attract new martyrs to bin Laden’s cause. The seven-minute tape, seized from an al-Qaeda member by American authorities, reportedly opens with the image of a spinning globe with still pictures of dead men floating by and the words in Arabic: “They are the ones that say, (of their brethren slain), while they themselves sit (at ease:) ‘If only they had listened to us, they would not have been slain.’ Say: ‘Avert death from your own selves if you speak the truth.’ Think not of those who are slain in Allah’s way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord.”

This is then followed by footage of mujahideen in battle, with depictions of the fighters’ death and beneath it text reading, “Say not the martyr had died, for he is alive and happy lodged in eternal paradise.” The video goes on to show more combat scenes, followed by the images of twenty-seven martyrs shown in rapid succession with the name of each listed, where he or she is from, and where he or she died. The narrator explains that they hailed from Algeria, Chechnya, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Mecca, Medina, Morocco, Najd, Pakistan, Palestine, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, and that they perished while fighting in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, circa the early and mid-1990s. Twelve of the martyrs are then featured in a special segment accompanied by a voice-over saying, “They rejoice in the bounty provided by Allah: And with regard to those left behind who have not yet joined them (in their bliss), the martyrs glory in the fact that on them is no fear, nor have they (cause to) grieve.” The video concludes with a message of greeting from the “Black Banner Center for Islamic Information,” along with accompanying contact details and the Qur’anic invocation “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s messenger.”155

Al-Qaeda, however, cannot claim credit for having pioneered the filming of jihadi attacks for propaganda, recruitment, and marketing purposes. That distinction is often credited to the infamous Saudi Arabian-born commander of Chechen fighters known by the nom de guerre Khattab. Khattab reportedly began to film his group’s attacks on Russian military forces under the assumption that “if they killed a few Russian soldiers in an ambush along a road the impact of the strike was limited, however if the operation was filmed and then shown to the Russian people that impact was multiplied manifold.” Khattab and his men thus videotaped any assault—whether involving ambushes, roadside bombings, kidnappings, or rocket attacks—and soon had

enough footage to produce a forty-minute video titled . Khattab’s successors have continuedRussian Hell 1 156

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enough footage to produce a forty-minute video titled . Khattab’s successors have continuedRussian Hell 1 156 this policy. During the August 2005 siege of a school in Beslan, Ossetia, by Chechen terrorists, a hostage reported that one of the attackers had “constantly filmed us.”157

Social Media

Utilizing a variety of freely available social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and, Flickr, among others, terrorist and insurgent groups today have introduced an even more direct and personally intimate form of messaging. ISIS has positioned itself at the forefront of yet another revolution in terrorist communications. Indeed, since 2014, it has produced and disseminated a succession of increasingly more heinous and grisly propaganda videos of brutal executions and similar depredations that have captured the attention of a new generation of terrorist recruits. These videos, and their unrestrained exultation of violence, have attracted many more viewers than bin Laden’s and al-Zawahiri’s comparatively priggish presentations recanting complex theological treatises or imparting didactic philosophical and historical lectures. “Where158 al-Qaeda and its affiliates saw the internet as a place to disseminate material anonymously or meet in ‘dark spaces,’ ” Robert Hannigan, the director of the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British counterpart of America’s National Security Agency, notes, “ISIS has embraced the web as a noisy channel in which to promote itself, intimidate people, and radicalise new recruits.”159

ISIS has thus been remarkably effective in its use of these social media to speak to a global audience, thereby completely bypassing and thwarting the traditional media from misinterpreting or otherwise distorting its core message. A common ISIS propaganda mantra, accordingly, is, “Don’t hear about us, hear from us.” These social media platforms facilitate both ubiquitous and real-time communication between like-minded radicals with would-be recruits and potential benefactors—the previously cited phenomenon of narrowcasting. “Also called ‘niche marketing’ or ‘target marketing,’ ” Weimann explains that “narrowcasting aims media messages at specific segments of the public, defined by characteristics such as values, preferences, demographic attributes, or location.” Ease, interactivity, networking, reach, frequency, usability, stability, immediacy, publicity, and160 permanence are among benefits to terrorist groups such as ISIS, which have quickly harnessed and exploited these technologies for their nefarious purposes. “I don’t think it is far-fetched to say that the internet is a major reason why ISIS is so successful, and so worrying,” an unnamed American intelligence officer commented in a May 2016 article detailing ISIS’s mastery of digital media and technology.161

It is, accordingly, now common for ISIS foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, for instance, to individually amass thousands of followers on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. They communicate162 with their audiences, often on a daily basis—and sometimes multiple times each day—providing firsthand, immediate accounts of heroic battles and more mundane daily activities, thus making jihad accessible and comprehensible on a uniquely intimate and personal basis. These fighters invite, motivate, animate, and163 summon their digital media followers and friends and other online contacts to come to Syria and Iraq, and partake of the holy war against the apostate regimes of Bashar al-Assad and Haider al-Abadi. Blatant sectarian messages coupled with divinely ordained clarion calls to resist Persian domination and decisively affect the outcome of the eternal struggle between Sunni and Shi’a—and the latter’s Alawite satraps—provide additionally compelling incentives. Indeed, a 2014 ISIS recruitment video circulated via social media featured heavily164 armed militants with distinctive British and Australian accents trumpeting the virtues of jihad and the ineluctable religious imperative of joining the caravan of martyrs. Through these voices, the group is able to tailor its messages to specific target audiences back in these fighters’ own neighborhoods, schools, clubs, community centers, and mosques. “[W]hereas the older versions of terrorist websites effectively were waiting for visitors to165 arrive,” Weimann argues, “a social networking approach allows terrorists to reach their target audiences and virtually ‘knock on their doors.’ ”166

ISIS’s unbridled visual depictions of particularly gruesome executions and other wanton acts of violence galvanize the attention of this select audience and beseech them to join ISIS’s struggle. A new generation of167 celebrity fighters, accordingly, has been created to facilitate this process. “Ultraviolence,” as Stern and Berger term this phenomenon, “sold well with the target demographic for foreign fighters—angry, maladjusted young men whose blood stirred at images of grisly beheadings and the crucifixion of so-called apostates.” Other168 types of appeals, utilizing more traditional messages intended for more mainline religious audiences are also used by ISIS to target this entirely different demographic. Familiar historical and theological references are invoked for this particular audience’s consideration and specific solicitations are directed to the descendants of

pious families of ancient, respected, lineage and stature. ISIS propagandists also portray the organization as

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pious families of ancient, respected, lineage and stature. ISIS propagandists also portray the organization as messengers and executors of apocalyptic prophecies, promising the imminence of an inevitable clash between the forces of good and evil in an epic, decisive battle as part of a compelling narrative with which to target potential recruits. These themes both resonate with and have a very powerful effect on their intended audiences. According to Will McCants, ISIS’s eschatological arguments have infused the group with newfound169

momentum, producing an “inrush of foreign fighters to Syria, many of them seeking a role in the End-Time drama.”170

For terrorists today, the advantages of these new social media are thus as profound as they are manifold. It is therefore also not surprising to find that all of al-Qaeda’s most important affiliates—al-Shabaab; Ansar al-Sharia; the Abdullah Azzam Brigades; al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb; al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; Jabhat al-Nusra; and the Afghan Taliban, all have Twitter accounts on which they regularly tweet. In fact, during its lethal assault on Nairobi, Kenya’s Westgate shopping center in September 2013, al-Qaeda’s Somali branch, al-Shabaab, provided live, ongoing commentary of the attack over Twitter.171

Insurgent Television

Perhaps the most startling advance in terrorist communications has been the emergence of the terrorists’ own television stations. In this respect, the video production and duplication capabilities already cited that have facilitated the customization of sophisticated messages on the Internet are a product of a growing sophistication among terrorists in the television studio and the editing booth as well. Among the pioneers in this process has been Hezbollah, whose al-Manar television station, along with its news website on the Internet, has afforded this movement an unprecedented ability to shape and tailor its external communications. In this way, terrorist groups have been able to assume complete control over the content, context, footage, and voice-overs depicting their organization and its activities.

Al-Manar began broadcasting as a small terrestrial station in 1991 with limited on-air time and programming content. Within a decade, however, it was transmitting via satellite on a 24/7 basis. Al-Manar has provided172 173 eight news bulletins daily in Arabic and one each in English and French. In addition to its headquarters operations in Beirut, the station has maintained bureaus in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and correspondents stationed in Belgium, France, Iraq, Kosovo, Kuwait, Morocco, the Occupied Territories (Palestine), Russia, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, and, until a decade ago, even the United States.174 Al-Manar’s website describes the station’s mission as

motivated by the ambitions of participation in building a better future for the Arab and Muslim generations by focusing on the tolerant values of Islam and promoting the culture of dialogue and cooperation among the followers of the Heavenly religions and human civilizations. It focuses on highlighting the value of the human being as the center of the Godly messages which endeavor to save his dignity and freedom and develop the spiritual and moral dimensions of his personality [ ].sic

Al-Manar avoids cheap incitement in dealing with developments and activities, and it stresses objectively on the adoption of the fair and just causes of the whole nation [ ].sic 175

However, according to Avi Jorisch, the author of a detailed study of the station and its programming content,

Today, Hizballah [ ] continues to use al-Manar as a means of publicly offering its services to Palestinianssic fighting for the destruction of Israel and the total liberation of historic Palestine (e.g., all territory west of the Jordan River).… Accordingly, one of al-Manar’s major objectives is to inspire resistance.…

With regard to the United States, al-Manar has broadcast anti-American propaganda since its inception, often using the same propaganda methods it employs against Israel. Various programs have focused on distorting U.S. history, lambasting U.S. Middle East policy, propagating conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks, and demonizing the relationship between Washington and the “Zionist entity,” i.e., Israel. With the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, both Hizballah and al-Manar renewed their vitriol toward their old, reliable foe, the “Great Satan.”176

The station’s prime-time programming clearly reflects its biases. Shows such as (see theThe Spider’s House previous allusion to the significance of this Qur’anic verse with respect to Israel, in ) detailed Israel’schapter 5 inherent weaknesses and its inevitable defeat through the use of suicide attacks and other terrorist tactics. The

same attributes and eventuality were ascribed to the United States as a result of its occupation of Iraq. What’s

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same attributes and eventuality were ascribed to the United States as a result of its occupation of Iraq. What’s is a talk show that has hosted guests with particularly “vitriolic anti-American views.” Another show, called Next

, details the alleged depredations inflicted throughout history by Israel on the Arab world, while Terrorists My was a panegyric to Hezbollah’s fighters, extolling their victory over Israel in south LebanonBlood and the Rifle

and their heroic sacrifices. That this format is tremendously appealing is indisputable. A Gallup poll of Middle177 Eastern audience viewing preferences for news taken in March 2002 revealed that al-Manar was the fifth most popular station watched in the past week and was ranked as the third most popular station to which viewers turn to first to catch up on current world affairs. It is reportedly one of the most watched stations in the Palestine178 territories. Lebanese television officials have boasted that al-Manar is the third most popular station in that179 country, and at times of crisis with Israel, it is often the first.180

During the 1990s, Hezbollah created field units of combat camera crews that accompanied the organization’s operational units into battle to provide al-Manar with the compelling footage it required. Footage of Hezbollah181 fighters, attired in fatigues, with body armor and helmets, carrying out textbook military assaults on Israeli positions in South Lebanon and those of their South Lebanon Army (SLA) allies were a regular feature of al-Manar’s television broadcasts and Internet website from the mid-1990s until the Israeli withdrawal in May 2000. As one United Nations official explained, “For Hezbollah, 60 per cent of the success of an operation182 depends on getting some good footage.” Indeed, Hezbollah propaganda efforts, directed at Israeli audiences183 back home—and specifically at the mothers of IDF troops serving in southern Lebanon—are widely regarded as having been influential in generating public pressure on the Israeli government to withdraw from Lebanon. “By184 means of the Internet,” Ibrahim Nasser al-Din, a Hezbollah military leader, claimed, “Hezbollah has succeeded in entering the homes of Israelis, creating an important psychological breakthrough.” This quote appeared in an185 article published in a leading Israeli newspaper, which further reported how parents of IDF soldiers serving in Lebanon had regularly visited the Hezbollah site to get a version of the news unvarnished by Israeli military censors. “I regard these sites as a legitimate source of information,” one father was quoted as saying. Much as186 the efforts of Sri Lankan authorities to suppress news of military defeats backfired disastrously in public relations terms, the same occurred with Israel in 1999. Contradicting IDF reports that Hezbollah had returned the body of only one member of a team of Israeli marine commandos killed in a Hezbollah ambush, the group publicized on its website that the coffin contained the body parts of other soldiers as well. The statement generated a nasty confrontation between the commando’s families and the IDF, with accusations of cover-up and duplicity undermining trust and confidence among the Israelis in its armed forces.187

Hezbollah, however, is not the only terrorist group to use its own television for propaganda and mobilization purposes. The widespread protests unleashed throughout Europe immediately following the arrest by Turkish authorities of the Kurdish terrorist leader Abdullah Ocalan in February 1999 provided further proof of the reach and rapidity with which modern communications technology could rally the masses. Within hours of the announcement of his arrest, demonstrators swarmed onto the streets of Paris, Moscow, London, Frankfurt, Milan, Bern, Sydney, and more than a dozen other cities in response to pleas issued by the PKK over both its Internet site and its London-based television station, Med-TV. The television station, founded in 1995, appears188 to have ceased broadcasting a few years later. While it existed, Med-TV mirrored the ambitions of terrorists and insurgents throughout the globe today. “Our aim,” in the words of the station manager, Sami Abdurahman, “is to present our Kurdish brothers across the world with the objective facts.” Or, as the American statesman Hiram189 W. Johnson, would have said, “The first casualty when war comes is truth.”

Conclusion

In the final analysis, a terrorist movement’s longevity ultimately depends on its ability to recruit new members as well as to appeal to an expanding pool of both active supporters and passive sympathizers. The role of effective communication in this process is pivotal: ensuring the continued flow of fighters into the movement, binding supporters more tightly to it, and drawing sympathizers more deeply into its orbit. “Without communication,” Schmid and de Graaf presciently argued more than thirty years ago, “there can be no terrorism.” The190 revolutions in terrorist communications described in this chapter have facilitated this process in hitherto unimaginable ways. The U.S.-born master al-Qaeda propagandist of Yemeni parents, Anwar al-Awlaqi, is just such a case in point. He has shown himself to be the Salafi-Jihadi movement’s preeminent recruiting sergeant—despite having been killed in an American drone strike in September 2011.

Al-Awlaqi first came to the attention of U.S. authorities during the investigations into the 9/11 attacks. As the

imam of a San Diego mosque in 2000 and starting in 2001 of another in Falls Church, Virginia, he was reportedly

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imam of a San Diego mosque in 2000 and starting in 2001 of another in Falls Church, Virginia, he was reportedly in contact with at least two of nineteen hijackers in both locations. In addition, al-Awlaqi’s telephone number was reportedly found in a cell phone belonging to Ramzi Binalshibh—a key figure in the planning and execution of the attacks. Al-Awlaqi left the United States in late 2002 and moved to London, where he lived for two years until191 permanently relocating to Yemen in 2004. Two years later, Yemeni authorities arrested al-Awlaqi on kidnapping charges and he was detained for eighteen months. It is not clear when the American-born cleric first formally became involved with al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, AQAP. But following his release from jail in 2007, al-Awlaqi quickly became enmeshed in its recruitment and operational activities, rapidly moving from his role as chief ideologue and propagandist to a key AQAP planner, strategist, and field commander. His fluency in English and ability to communicate in a patois accessible to youth combined with his excellent oratorical skills and charisma, provided al-Awlaqi with a platform that other radical preachers with their often halting, heavily accented English, lacked. “Jihad,” he was once famously quoted as declaring, “is becoming as American as apple pie and as British as afternoon tea.”192

Al-Awlaqi’s ability to mix Islamic history with contemporary issues served as a magnet for young Anglophone recruits lacking a firm theological grounding or command of the Arabic language. His most famous statement of jihad, titled, “44 Ways to Support Jihad,” has strong echoes of Sayyid Qutb’s writing, which al-Awlaqi boasts was seminal to his thinking and radicalization. “44 Ways” was designed as a kind of “how-to,” or DIY manual, for aspiring jihadis. “Jihad is the greatest deed in Islam,” al-Awlaqi declared,193

and the salvation of the ummah is in practicing it. In times like these, when Muslim lands are occupied by the kuffar, when the jails of tyrants are full of Muslim POWs, when the rule of the law of Allah is absent from this world and when Islam is being attacked in order to uproot it, Jihad becomes obligatory on [ ] every Muslim.sic Jihad must be practiced by the child even if the parents refuse, by the wife even if the husband objects and by the one in debt even if the lender disagrees.194

Al-Awlaqi’s messages of radicalization and violence have reportedly been linked to more than fifty persons who since 2009 have either carried out terrorist attacks or been indicted on terrorism-related charges both in the United States and elsewhere. In the aftermath of the fatal shootings of thirteen persons at Fort Hood, Texas,195 by a U.S. Army officer, Major Nidal Hasan, in November 2009, it was revealed that during the six months preceding the attack, al-Awlaqi and Hasan had exchanged at least sixteen e-mails. Although there is no evidence that al-Awlaqi actually ordered Hasan to carry out the attack, he did praise the shootings afterward. Al-Awlaqi’s196 fundamental message in the incident’s aftermath was that, due to American’s inherent evil, Muslims do not require a fatwa or need to consult an Islamic scholar to be justified in killing Americans. Al-Awlaqi has been197 credited for his effectiveness in communicating with—and radicalizing—impressionable Muslims of a variety of ages and in a number of different places in addition to Hasan. Among them have been:198

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The so-called Underwear Bomber, who attempted to explode a bomb while in flight on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on December 25, 2009.199

Faisal Shahzad. The so-called Times Square bomber, Shahzad attempted to detonate a vehicular bomb at New York City’s famed Times Square on May 1, 2010. He admitted following his arrest that he was inspired by al-Awlaqi’s online sermons encouraging jihad—although Shahzad had no direct contact with the cleric.200

Roshonara Choudry. A twenty-one-year-old student at King’s College London, Choudry stated that she was inspired by al-Awlaqi’s sermons when she attempted to stab to death British member of parliament Stephen Timms in revenge for his vote in support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.201

Farooque Ahmed. A U.S. citizen arrested in October 2011, Ahmed was charged with plotting to bomb Washington, D.C., Metrorail (subway) stations. Ahmed allegedly had in his possession a biography of al-Awlaqi and admitted listening to his online sermons. He was sentenced to twenty-three years imprisonment in April 2011.202

Abdel Hameed Shehadeh. Another U.S. citizen, Shehadeh was arrested and charged in October 2010 with attempting to travel overseas to join the Taliban. Shehadeh had allegedly developed a website based on al-Awlaqi’s that also provided hyperlinks to al-Awlaqi’s site. He also discussed al-Awlaqi’s beliefs with another person whom Shehadeh was trying to recruit for jihad.203

Zachary Chesser. Also a U.S. citizen, Chesser grew up in a Northern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. He was arrested in 2010, and after conviction was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for attempting to join

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the Somali al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Shabaab. Chesser was also charged with engaging in online propagandizing for jihad and had been in e-mail contact with al-Awlaqi. According to court documents, al-Awlaqi replied at least twice to Chesser’s e-mails.204

Mohamed Alessa and Carlos Almonte. Both men were arrested in June 2010 while attempting to fly from the United States to Somalia to join al-Shabaab. They admitted watching videos and listening to al-Awlaqi’s sermons.205

Additional terrorists, including the persons responsible for the July 7, 2005, simultaneous suicide bomb attacks on London transport; the six men who plotted to attack the U.S. Army base at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 2007 (known as “the Fort Dix Six”); and the “Toronto 18,” the eighteen men who planned a series of bombings and shootings against the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Parliament, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service headquarters, and threatened to seize and behead the Canadian prime minister, all claimed to have been inspired by al-Awlaqi’s online sermons. Then-U.S. director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper stated that al-Awlaqi was also involved in a daring 2009 plot to assassinate Prince Nayef, the Saudi Arabian official responsible for that country’s counterterrorism policy and operations; for the murder of four kidnapped tourists from South Korea who were visiting Yemen in 2009; and for a plot to assassinate the British ambassador to Yemen that year as well. And al-Awlaqi has been linked to the radicalization of Najibullah Zazi,206 whose suicide bombing plot of the New York City subway system is discussed in . Al-Awlaqi has alsochapter 5 207 been described as having “turned the web into a tool for extremist indoctrination.” His cofounding in 2010 of 208

, AQAP’s popular, colorful online magazine with Samir Khan, a U.S. citizen from North Carolina, arguablyInspire has made al-Awlaqi among the preeminent jihadi propagandists of our time. Indeed, an article that appeared in209 the summer 2010 issue of titled “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Our Mom,” figured prominently inInspire the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon.

Al-Awlaqi has thus been supremely effective in his use of both the Internet and social media to radicalize young Muslims, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. According to a 2010 report prepared210 for the U.S. Congress by the Congressional Research Service, “Social networking, now inherently part of the Internet, is likely a tool that is used in the development of contacts among radicalized individuals and recruitment into violent jihadist groups. Before he died, Anwar al-Awlaki [ ] circulated jihadist lectures online and managedsic his own popular Facebook page and blog.”211

Al-Awlaqi has also successfully employed other forms of media for his propagandistic purposes, including the aforementioned magazine as well as CDs with his sermons, books distributed online, a personal websiteInspire (that has long since been shut down), a Facebook page (also shut down), and most significantly, through his video postings on the popular website, YouTube. He maintained a blog (which was shut down repeatedly) that212 contained statements inciting violence. YouTube, however, became al-Awlaqi’s most effective method of213 communication following the closing down of his personal website and Facebook page. For all these reasons,214 al-Awlaqi has been described as the “bin Laden of the internet.” From the grave, he is considered to have215 been responsible for influencing the two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who, as previously noted, relied on the bomb-making instructions published in to build the two explosive devices concealed inInspire pressure cookers that killed three persons and injured more than two hundred fifty others at the 2013 Boston Marathon; Sayeed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the two 2015 San Bernadino shooters; and, Omar Mateen, the Afghan-born private security guard guilty of America’s worst mass killing when he killed forty-nine persons at a LGBT bar in Orlando, Florida, in May 2016.

Hence, the revolution in terrorist communications that has rapidly unfolded within the past few decades is certain to continue. Terrorist reliance on “old media” for attention and exposure via mass communication will216 continue alongside the allure of the technological innovation and the unprecedented speed and reach of the “person-to-person” power of “new media.” The implications of this phenomenon are perhaps only now beginning to be understood, given capabilities and products that are sure to become increasingly more sophisticated in quality, content, rapidity, intimacy, and transmission capacity—and more numerous and pervasive than ever. What is clear, though, is that as terrorist communications change and evolve, so will the nature of terrorism itself. While one cannot predict what new forms and dimensions terrorism will assume during the rest of the twenty-first century, this evolutionary process will not only continue, but will be abetted—and accelerated—by new communications technologies—much as has been the case over the century.

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