By Brigitte L. Nacos
Two months ago, in late March, Donald Trump wrote via Twitter, “ISIS uses the internet better than almost anyone, but for all of those susceptible to ISIS propaganda, they are now being beaten badly at every level....”
The U.S. President’s assumption that the demise of the territorial Islamic State meant also the end of its online propaganda machine was wrong.
One month after Trump’s tweet, one of the pro-ISIS online channels posted a rare video of the group’s leader and self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. An assault rifle next to him in a pose reminiscent
of typical images of Osama bin Laden, al-Baghdadi praised his fighters, took credit for the catastrophic church attacks in Sri Lanka and other terror strikes in various parts of the world, and threatened a continued war against the Crusaders.
After starting as a clandestine terrorist organization in Iraq and morphing into a proto-state on the heels of gaining control over huge territories in both Iraq and Syria the Islamic State was more recently forced to transforming back into a terrorist organization. Without controlling real estate ISIS is today an expanding transnational organization with a growing presence in Africa and South and South-East Asia.
Whether the estimated thousands of remaining, undercover ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq or their comrades in Afghanistan, the Philippines, or the North African Maghreb—all of the many hubs, cells, and individuals are linked through the organization’s still potent online “Media Jihad.”
To be sure, the loss of the media center in Raqqa and the deaths of dozens of media jihadists responsible for global online and local offline propaganda reduced the daily output significantly. The glitzy online magazines a la Dabiq and Rumiyah are gone and there are no more propaganda films a la “Flames of War.” But, as Rukmini Callimachi told Judy Woodruff on PBS’s News Hour recently,
"Every single day, they are putting out content. And in fact, on Easter Sunday, the same day we had this horrific attack in Sri Lanka, the group claimed two other attacks, one in Saudi Arabia and one in Kabul, in Afghanistan. For the one in Saudi Arabia, they released a video showing the attackers pledging allegiance right before that attack. But that gives you a sense, in three different theaters, thousands of miles apart, you know, from each other, they are able to claim these attacks through their media ministry."
Whether issued directly by Media Diwan, ISIS’s department of propaganda, or by affiliated and independent media jihadists around the globe, whether on social media or on the dark web, the group’s propaganda machine continues to function; it is weakened but not defeated.
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