The Internet, al Qaeda's True Voice

January 18, 2008

By Philip Seib

Like an aging rock star who has dropped out of the public eye, Osama bin Laden wants to occasionally remind people that he’s still around. In his video appearances, his message is basically, “Hey, they haven’t caught me yet,” which cheers up his fans, but for all the parsing of his sentences and combing through his beard, hardly anything is found in his videos that helps us better understand and combat terrorism.

Meanwhile, truly significant al Qaeda media efforts remain largely unnoticed by news organizations and the public. This myopia is a characteristic of an approach to anti-terrorism that focuses on bin Laden as terror-celebrity while ignoring the deep-rooted dynamism of a global enemy. Most jihadist media products make no mention of bin Laden, but they deserve attention because they are vital to holding al Qaeda together and building its power.

Lacking a tangible homeland — other than, perhaps, outposts in the wilds of Waziristan — al Qaeda has established itself as a virtual state that communicates with its own “citizens” and cultivates an even larger audience through masterful use of the media, with heavy reliance on the Internet. For every conventional bin Laden video performance that appears on Al Jazeera and other major television outlets, there are hundreds of online videos that proselytize, recruit and train the al Qaeda constituency. Al Qaeda and its jihadist brethren use more than 4,000 Web sites. The al Qaeda production company, as-Sahab, released 16 videos during 2005 and 58 in 2006; at the current pace, it has accelerated to at least 90 a year.

You won’t get these from Netflix, but any Web user can easily find them, and the selection is wide. The Global Islamic Media Front, an al Qaeda distribution arm, last year offered “Jihad Academy,” which includes footage of attacks on U.S. troops, insurgents assembling improvised explosive devices (IEDs), prospective suicide bombers reading their last testaments, and general exhortations to join the war against the United States, Israel and other foes. Another distributor with ties to al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sunnah’s Media Podium, produced “Top 20,” a selection of IED attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, “in order to encourage the jihad and the rivalry between the mujahedeen to battle and defeat their enemy….” For this greatest hits video, criteria for selection included “the degree of security conditions while filming the operation’s site” and “precision in hitting the target.”

With the stirring music and graphic images of an action movie, these videos are designed to fortify the resolve of the al Qaeda faithful and, perhaps more important, to capture the attention of 15-year-olds in cyber cafes — the next generation of al Qaeda warriors. Once inspired by the videos, the prospective jihadist might turn to a Web posting such as “How To Join al Qaeda,” which tells him: “You feel that you want to carry a weapon, fight, and kill the occupiers…. Set a goal: for example, assassinating the American ambassador — is it so difficult?”

As-Sahab is part of the media department bin Laden established when al Qaeda was created in 1988. The first message to emerge was that al Qaeda was a brave underdog facing the monstrous Soviet Union. Soon thereafter, al Qaeda announced its resolve to take on other purported enemies of Islam. In 1996, bin Laden issued his “Declaration of War on the United States” and used the al Qaeda media machinery to spread the call for jihad.

In Iraq, the Islamist State of Iraq set up its own media company, patterned after as-Sahab. Its products include a 19-minute video titled, “Why Do We Wage Jihad?” The as-Sahab look has also been copied by al Qaeda-related operations outside the center of the Middle East, as can be seen in video productions by the Al Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb.

This kind of media work was taken to a new level by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the self-proclaimed head of al Qaeda in Iraq who was killed by a U.S. air strike in June 2006. He first displayed his grisly flair for using media when American businessman Nicholas Berg was abducted and beheaded in Iraq in 2004, with al-Zarqawi apparently serving as executioner. The beheading was videotaped and presented on a Web site, from which it was copied to other sites and downloaded 500,000 times within 24 hours.

Later, al-Zarqawi’s “information wing” — which included his own online press secretary — released “All Religion Will Be for Allah,” a 46-minute video with scenes including a brigade of suicide-bombers-in-training. As The Washington Post reported, the video was offered on a specially designed Web page with many options for downloading, including Windows Media and RealPlayer versions for those with high-speed Internet connections, another version for those with dial-up, and one for downloading it to play on a cell phone.

A wide range of online products can be found. Even cartoons depicting children as suicide bombers are easily accessible on the Web. Al Zawra television, featuring video of sniper attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq, was broadcasting 24 hours a day by early last year. Operated by Sunni insurgents, the channel claimed to represent “all factions of resistance against the Iranian and American occupation.” Al Zawra disappeared, at least temporarily, last summer when its signal was jammed, but its clones will proliferate as more al Qaeda supporters arm themselves with cameras and other weapons.

For terrorist organizations, the Internet is preferable to satellite television because it provides unmatched opportunities to reach a global audience with their video productions. Instead of using clearinghouses to mail videos — a process that law enforcement was able to disrupt — these groups now rely on pirated video-editing software, and Web sites onto which material may be uploaded for their followers to access. These sites feature items such as the 118-page “Comprehensive Security Encyclopedia,” which was posted last year with detailed instructions about improving Internet and telephone security, purchasing weapons, handling explosives, transferring funds to jihadist groups, and other useful tips.

One of the masters of this craft was Younis Tsouli, a young Moroccan whose nom de cyber-guerre was Irhabi007. Based in England, Tsouli provided technical skills needed by al Qaeda after it was forced to leave Afghanistan and establish an online headquarters. He assisted al-Zarqawi in using the Internet as part of a war plan in Iraq. Tsouli was adroit at tasks such as hacking into servers that he then used to distribute large video files. (One of his hacking victims was the computer system of the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department.)

Arrested in London in 2005 and sent to prison by a British court in 2007, Tsouli understood the effectiveness of the Internet in reaching potential recruits for al Qaeda’s cause. The importance of this was acknowledged in the 2006 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate: “The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age, raising the likelihood of surprise attacks by unknown groups whose members and supporters may be difficult to pinpoint.”

By mid-2007, some al Qaeda-related Web sites were broadening their agendas. “Media jihad” included entering online forums with large American audiences in order to influence “the views of the weak-minded American” who “is an idiot and does not know where Iraq is.” The “weak-minded” were to be targeted with videos showing U.S. troops under fire and with false messages purportedly from American soldiers and their families lamenting their involvement in the Iraq war. At the same time, Web forums for Islamist audiences featured information gleaned from Western news reports, such as poll results showing lack of public support for the war, and occasionally information about weapons systems that had been published in news stories.

Beyond the material directly addressing warfare, such Web sites devote some of their content to ideological and cultural issues that are at the heart of efforts to win the support of young Muslims. Given the belief that this will be a long war, appealing to prospective jihadists is seen as crucial to al Qaeda’s eventual success.

The danger of these messages is heightened by the inadequacy of the responses to them. Even a flawed argument has appeal when it is allowed to stand in an intellectual vacuum. That must be recognized and acted upon in a sophisticated, comprehensive way by moderate Muslims and non-Muslims who don’t believe that prolonged conflict is inevitable.

That means providing a steady stream of videos and other materials through the new media that so many members of the al Qaeda audience use. This counter-programming should not feature defensive, pro-American content, but rather should concentrate on undermining al Qaeda’s purported nobility, perhaps with reminders of how many Muslims have died in al Qaeda-instigated terrorist attacks and insurgent warfare.

Bin Laden will undoubtedly pop up in another video before long. Note what he says, but then look to the always expanding reservoir of jihadist media to see what al Qaeda is really up to.

Philip Seib is professor of Journalism and Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. He is the editor of 2007's New Media and the New Middle East and is author of The Al Jazeera Effect: How the New Global Media Are Reshaping World Politics, which will be published in 2008.