Paris attack mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud
New Delhi:
The Paris attacks may have thrust ISIS into headlines around the world, but they face a renewed backlash in what has been a core area of strength: the online space.
So far, their virtual presence has played a powerful role in creating a perception of invincibility, dread, and has acted as a gateway to lure recruits from all over the world.
But now governments around the world are stepping up attempts to contain what has come to be known as the virtual Caliphate.
In India for instance, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday while describing ISIS as "one of the best users of the Internet", sought enhanced capabilities to ensure protection from disruptive cyber attacks.
Moreover, ISIS also faces the wrath of the secretive hackers collective, Anonymous, which in a widely circulated video threatened to shut ISIS down, at least in the online domain.
So far, they claim to have shut down around 8,000 pro-ISIS sites and social media handles.
But its unclear how much of an impact this will have.
Quilliam Foundation, a London-based group that studies radicalisation looked at ISIS' online presence through 3 months this year, and found that the intensity of their online propaganda content is far more than is known.
Charlie Winter, Senior Researcher at Quilliam told NDTV that he was "very surprised that within the space of 30 days we counted over 1,000 separate units of ISIS propaganda. So photo essays, videos, magazines, even songs with their own kind of music videos. This is a huge amount of material which is being produced and they are clearly spending huge amount of resources on doing it. There are the separate provinces of Islamic State, from West Africa to Khorasan province, as they call it and each of these provinces has its own media office and each of them is responsible for creating photo essays, videos, creating written statements."
Also, Quillam found that ISIS has changed its tactics: devoting more material - at least half of what they studied - extolling the virtues of Islamic State.
"So whether that is showing of prisons, whether that is showing of roads being cleaned, the judicial system, education, hospitals; the more bizarre things like fishing trips, children playing at fair grounds, all of this paints a comprehensive picture of civilian life in Islamic State and that is indicative of the fact that they are civilian Jihadist organization as well as a military one", he said.
These images have a better shelf life online than the more easily traced and banned execution videos, as well as conveying to potential recruits that ISIS is not just a military organisation, but also has administrative capabilities.
The messaging, some say is significant given the reverse exodus from ISIS territories of those who made the trip but were turned off by the squalid realities they encountered, such as the severe shortages of essentials. That parallel reality of food queues, or brutal Taliban style execution of women are rare to capture, given the brutal restrictions on reporting inside ISIS territory. As and when they do make their way out, they rarely get the same play as pro-ISIS propaganda.
Even so, ISIS' increasing military setbacks, and now the intense air assault on its territories is only likely to see an increase in those looking for a way out.
As Iyad Al Baghdadi, a self-described Arab Spring activist told us "there has been news shared recently about ISIS executing hundreds of their own soldiers because they wanted to leave. Either they wanted to leave or they didn't want to fight anymore. So it definitely happens, and I don't want to reveal too much but there are cases which I am following, personal cases, basically individual people who were radicalized, they went to join ISIS and they are basically trying to run away, they are trying to escape but there is now way for them out."
In the end, experts say that punitive action against ISIS' online accounts will only partly work. The only way to win the virtual war, is to match ISIS' propaganda blitz with a strong counter-narrative.
As Charlie Winter says, "negative measures like censorship and suspension, they are good but they won't ever work to resolve the problem that we are facing. At best, they can disrupt and that's very important.
But in order to actually resolve the issue there needs to be much more competition from the other side. Right now we are facing a serious asymmetry of passion where you have jihadists who wake up in the morning, they live and breathe Islamic State propaganda, they want to identify potential candidates, and they want to bring them into the echo chamber. There is not the same sort of thing in place on the other side of it, on the counter side of it."
So far, their virtual presence has played a powerful role in creating a perception of invincibility, dread, and has acted as a gateway to lure recruits from all over the world.
But now governments around the world are stepping up attempts to contain what has come to be known as the virtual Caliphate.
In India for instance, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday while describing ISIS as "one of the best users of the Internet", sought enhanced capabilities to ensure protection from disruptive cyber attacks.
Moreover, ISIS also faces the wrath of the secretive hackers collective, Anonymous, which in a widely circulated video threatened to shut ISIS down, at least in the online domain.
So far, they claim to have shut down around 8,000 pro-ISIS sites and social media handles.
But its unclear how much of an impact this will have.
Quilliam Foundation, a London-based group that studies radicalisation looked at ISIS' online presence through 3 months this year, and found that the intensity of their online propaganda content is far more than is known.
Charlie Winter, Senior Researcher at Quilliam told NDTV that he was "very surprised that within the space of 30 days we counted over 1,000 separate units of ISIS propaganda. So photo essays, videos, magazines, even songs with their own kind of music videos. This is a huge amount of material which is being produced and they are clearly spending huge amount of resources on doing it. There are the separate provinces of Islamic State, from West Africa to Khorasan province, as they call it and each of these provinces has its own media office and each of them is responsible for creating photo essays, videos, creating written statements."
Also, Quillam found that ISIS has changed its tactics: devoting more material - at least half of what they studied - extolling the virtues of Islamic State.
"So whether that is showing of prisons, whether that is showing of roads being cleaned, the judicial system, education, hospitals; the more bizarre things like fishing trips, children playing at fair grounds, all of this paints a comprehensive picture of civilian life in Islamic State and that is indicative of the fact that they are civilian Jihadist organization as well as a military one", he said.
These images have a better shelf life online than the more easily traced and banned execution videos, as well as conveying to potential recruits that ISIS is not just a military organisation, but also has administrative capabilities.
The messaging, some say is significant given the reverse exodus from ISIS territories of those who made the trip but were turned off by the squalid realities they encountered, such as the severe shortages of essentials. That parallel reality of food queues, or brutal Taliban style execution of women are rare to capture, given the brutal restrictions on reporting inside ISIS territory. As and when they do make their way out, they rarely get the same play as pro-ISIS propaganda.
Even so, ISIS' increasing military setbacks, and now the intense air assault on its territories is only likely to see an increase in those looking for a way out.
As Iyad Al Baghdadi, a self-described Arab Spring activist told us "there has been news shared recently about ISIS executing hundreds of their own soldiers because they wanted to leave. Either they wanted to leave or they didn't want to fight anymore. So it definitely happens, and I don't want to reveal too much but there are cases which I am following, personal cases, basically individual people who were radicalized, they went to join ISIS and they are basically trying to run away, they are trying to escape but there is now way for them out."
In the end, experts say that punitive action against ISIS' online accounts will only partly work. The only way to win the virtual war, is to match ISIS' propaganda blitz with a strong counter-narrative.
As Charlie Winter says, "negative measures like censorship and suspension, they are good but they won't ever work to resolve the problem that we are facing. At best, they can disrupt and that's very important.
But in order to actually resolve the issue there needs to be much more competition from the other side. Right now we are facing a serious asymmetry of passion where you have jihadists who wake up in the morning, they live and breathe Islamic State propaganda, they want to identify potential candidates, and they want to bring them into the echo chamber. There is not the same sort of thing in place on the other side of it, on the counter side of it."
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