The Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) has released a short monograph, De-Legitimizing al-Qaeda: A Jihad-Realist Approach, by sociologist Paul Kamolnick, a professor at Eastern Tennessee State University. Kamolnick criticizes current US efforts to counter al-Qaeda’s messaging and recruitment strategies as ineffective, and proposes an alternative two-fold solution to marginalize and defeat al-Qaeda. However, Kamolnick’s proposed strategy is problematic for several reasons.

In the first component of his proposed strategy, Kamolnick suggests that since Islam (specifically Sunni Islam) is a religion of orthopraxy and law, American policy makers and strategists should determine how Islamic jurispru­dence, specifically discourses on jihad, “may be leveraged for, and not against, vital U.S. national security interests.” It is unclear what exactly this “leveraging” entails. But he does warn that the US government must do so in secret (deferring “open association” until a later time) so as not to taint the legitimacy of potentially helpful sharia scholars and their formulations.

These formulations should ideally come from “credentialed actors of immense statue and learning.” And these jurists would reaffirm how Islam and the sacred texts prohibit things such as killing non-combatants indiscriminately. He is particularly interested in what he calls “jihadi-realist” scholars, meaning militant Islamists (such as Sayyid Imam, aka Dr. Fadl) who have rejected terrorism as a strategy to bring about change. By “leveraging” this sort of work (how remains unclear) for “vital U.S. national security interests” the US can create a narrative (my wording, not his) that portrays the US as a country “on the side of the lawful and just” against those who violate sharia (i.e., al-Qaeda).

The truth is that there is no shortage of Muslim scholars, jurists, preachers, activists, and so on, who have condemned terrorism and al-Qaeda’s violent strategies – despite the bizarre yet common refrain in America that no one in the Muslim community has done so. The traditional rules of warfare in Islam, such as prohibitions against killing civilians or women and children, are also already commonly known among Muslims. Therefore, I’m not sure how having the US secretly “leverage” these condemnations will harm al-Qaeda. When it comes to fatwas (Islamic juridical rulings) it only takes one to justify a practice or behavior. And there have been plenty of bizarre and isolated fatwas out there justifying abhorrent behavior.

It must also be said that while sharia is important to Sunni Muslims, especially Salafi and other über devout people, Kalmonick’s emphasis on the resounding mass influence of sharia on the decisions people make, especially the youth, seems exaggerated. At the end of the day, someone bent on committing an act of violence won’t stop because someone gave a ruling that it was a sinful or bad idea. Aspiring perpetrators will either find a ruling to support them, make their own ruling, or dispense with a juridical ruling altogether and act anyway. They could even invoke a dream where the Prophet Muhammad told them to act – which is not as far fetched as it sounds.

Another issue on the topic of sharia and fatwas is that even seemingly clear-cut issues can be stretched, twisted, and overturned by using a range of well-established juridical principles. That’s why most everyone knows that killing civilians is forbidden, but al-Qaeda still manages to win some people over. For example, it is a well-established belief in Islam that suicide is forbidden. Suicide is a grave sin.

There are numerous hadiths that describe the truly horrific punishments that someone will receive in Hell if they commit suicide. We can also find countless rulings by Muslim jurists that prohibit suicide. These positions are well-known. So why do we have some Muslims committing suicide by strapping bombs to their bodies or crashing airliners into buildings for al-Qaeda? It could suggest that religio-legal justifications aren’t that important when it comes to people seeking vengeance or justice for outstanding sociopolitical grievances.

But more to the point, extremists also utilize concepts like niyya (intention), darura (necessity), and reciprocity, among others, to neutralize these prohibitions against suicide or whatever else goes against their preferred strategy or plan of action. For example, al-Qaeda might claim that a terrorist who blew himself up at a military outpost in Iraq did not commit suicide because his intention was to attack and inflict harm on the enemy. After all, the Prophet once said: “All actions are judged by intentions.”

For al-Qaeda, it only counts as suicide if the person was lost in despair and their intention was to end their life. That was not the intention though, it is argued, and thus the prohibition is nullified. Instead, the terrorist is a celebrated battlefield martyr. The core of the matter is that sharia is always the product of interpretive agents; meaning people devise the divine rules according to their own subjective human interests and goals. So I wouldn’t invest too much in the restrictive powers of Islamic law as a counter-terrorism strategy.

The second part of Kalmonick’s strategy is a radical shift in US foreign policy and military policy in order to fundamentally alter perceptions of US intentions in the Muslim world. No specifics are given. “No amount of spin or messaging matters,” he writes, “when daily life and its common-sense interpretation contradict official pretensions and pronouncements.” I can agree with this statement, but then again he doesn’t provide any specifics. And let’s get real. Given the various special-interest groups and ideological trends currently entrenched in the US political system, this part of Kamolnick’s strategy is probably even less plausible than his problematic covert sharia ideas.

Major changes in US foreign and military policies might help alleviate some of the serious grievances among Muslims that al-Qaeda invokes in its messaging against the US. And I think most scholars would agree with that. But Kamolnick does not specifically discuss what changes should be made – maybe a compelling US push to establish a two-state solution along the 1967 borders to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Nor does Kamolnick address how the memories of past events still influence the present. For example, ending the Crusades centuries ago hasn’t stopped it from being invoked (as a narrative system) at every opportunity.

Regardless, it is extremely unlikely that the US government will ever make major changes to address Muslim grievances, such as the annexation of East Jerusalem or Russian control of Chechnya. More importantly though, the intention or meaning behind any changes to US foreign policy are still entirely subject to interpretation, despite US intentions or what Kamolnick calls “common-sense interpretation.” Those interpretations, typically conveyed as narratives, can vary widely among different audiences.

For example, if the US withdraws from a country (e.g. Iraq) under the pretense that the mission was accomplished and it has no interest in occupying the country, al-Qaeda disseminates a narrative that the US withdrawal was a “retreat” and a victory for the mujahideen over the “Crusaders.” This is the business of narrative, and human beings, regardless of religion, love and live by their stories. And do not think for a second that “leveraging” condemnations of al-Qaeda by some credentialed Muslim jurists or “jihadi-realists” won’t fall victim to al-Qaeda’s narratives either. Sayyid Imam, aka Dr. Fadl, was dismissed by Zawahiri and other extremists as a sell-out and someone who gave into torture in prison. Extremists discredit and condemn Muslim scholars and jurists who oppose them as hypocrites, apostates, heretics, Zionist agents, even as the “magicians of the Pharaoh,” every day. And this sort of rhetoric existed long before al-Qaeda ever took shape in Afghanistan.

In the final evaluation, I did not find anything that is particularly new or plausible in Professor Kamolnick’s approach to dealing with al-Qaeda’s messaging and recruitment strategies. In fact, I fear that his dismissal of the importance of narrative and counter-narrative strategies would set the US back in this ongoing struggle and make his own strategy suggestions all the more untenable.

Related posts:

1. Has al-Qaeda Become a Toxic Brand? by Steven R. Corman In business marketing, branding means creating...
2. Yes, Extremists are Paying Attention by Chris Lundry Last year, my colleagues Steven Corman, Jeffrey...
3. Another Bombing in Indonesia, Another Struggle over Framing by Chris Lundry On Sunday, September 25, a lone suicide...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I recently traveled to Tunisia where I visited the ancient holy city of Kairouan. Elections for the constituent assembly to produce a new Tunisian constitution are less than two weeks away and there is a lot of discussion taking place about the nature of Tunisian identity and the role of Islam in Tunisian society. Islamists, both mainstream and radical, obviously envision a prominent role for Islam. However, my experiences in Kairouan, as well as other cities in Tunisia, gave me a tangible sense of the complexities involved and left me with the impression that Islamists, particularly the hardliners, face an uphill battle. Our colleague Mark R. Woodward has previously noted contested approaches to Islam in public life in Indonesia, albeit in very different cultural and historical circumstances.

Regionally, Kairouan is regarded as the fourth holiest city in Islam and the “spiritual capital” of the Maghreb (although folks in Fez, Morocco, may disagree). At the center of the city is the Grand Mosque of Uqba. It was originally constructed by the Umayyad Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi al-Fihri in 670 CE, but the present structure dates from the 9^th century when it was remodeled by the Aghlabid dynasty. It is considered an architectural masterpiece and highly influential on Islamic art throughout the region. What is most interesting though is how the mosque reflects or symbolizes in so many ways the multi-layered complexities of contemporary Tunisian identity.

Interior of the Grand Mosque

As was common at the time, empires often used precious building materials from previous structures and ruins to construct their own monuments and facilities. The construction of the Grand Mosque of Uqba in Kairouan was no different. Before the Arab conquest, Tunisia was the imperial domain of the Byzantines, the Romans, the Phoenicians (remember mighty Hannibal of Carthage?), and, of course, the native Berber tribes. When the Grand Mosque was constructed, it utilized building materials from prior Byzantine, Roman, and Phoenician structures. Those elements are still very much visible today and add to the unique architectural charm of the mosque.

Legend says that there are 600 pillars in the mosque and every single one is unique. I’ve read that the actual number is closer to 414 pillars, but the claim about every pillar being unique appears true. There are pillars from each of the different periods of Tunisia’s long history. In one corner of the mosque, I observed two pillars beside each other that one would never find in the holy cities of Saudi Arabia. On one pillar, perhaps from an earlier mosque or the pre-Aghlabid structure of the Grand Mosque, there are Qur’anic inscriptions carved into the stone. Just a step away there is another pillar, perhaps from an earlier Byzantine structure, featuring a large cross. It may surprise some to see such a clear and unhidden symbol of Christianity on the actual pillars of the holiest mosque in the country, but this is Tunisia.

Elsewhere, at the base of the enormous square minaret that overlooks the marble courtyard of the mosque, there are bricks featuring Latin inscriptions. I was quite interested to see that the stones had not been stashed in a dark corner, or chiseled away over the centuries. Here is a photograph I took of the bricks below:

Latin inscriptions

It is worth noting too, that as I toured the courtyard of the holy mosque, prayers were underway in the enclosed masalah, and my female colleague was not required to cover her hair. Later on, when we visited the el-Ghriba synagogue in the Jewish quarter of Djerba, she was required to wear a head scarf and I was asked to don a yarmulke. Such is Tunisia. I myself visited dozens of mosques in Egypt, including al-Azhar and Sayyidna Husayn, and I found Tunisian sensibilities around holy places far more relaxed and tolerant of others.

Like the Grand Mosque of Uqba, contemporary Tunisian identity is multi-layered and rich in history and lineage. Tunisians simply cannot be characterized in simple terms or labels, such as “Arab” and “Muslim.” The Tunisian identity (if I may speak of “the” identity) is a rich amalgamation of Mediterranean, Arab-Berber, African, Muslim-Christian-Jewish, Maghrebi, and Francophone cultural trends. One should not over-emphasize any sense of mutual kinship with “fellow Arab” or “fellow Muslim” states. Indeed, even the founder of the Islamist party Ennahda, Rached Ghannouchi, has written often of the uniqueness of Tunisia’s cultural heritage by utilizing the concept of al-khususiyah at-tunisiyah (“Tunisian specificity”). The Grand Mosque, down to its bricks and mortar, is a wonderful and telling symbol of this complexity. At the same time, as with Tunisian identity itself in the wake of the January 14th revolution, the mosque has become a contested symbol.

Among the resurgent religious parties in post-revolution Tunisia, the Islamist-Salafist group Ansar al-Shariah is among the most hard-line and vocal. The group recently established a media wing called al-Qayrawan Media Foundation (QMF). As you may have guessed, the word “Qayrawan” is a variant transliteration of Kairouan. For Ansar al-Shariah, the Grand Mosque of Uqba is a symbol of a strictly Arab-Muslim identity and its aspirations for a Tunisian government that will impose their vision of “shariah” on society. The image at top left is a poster from the QMF promoting a lecture by an extremist shaykh, Abu al-Mundhir al-Shaqiti. Note the Grand Mosque. Below it, an image of myself at the Grand Mosque in September.

The fact that the hardline Islamists have laid claim to the Grand Mosque of Uqba in Kairouan is obviously not surprising. As already noted, it is among the most venerable Muslim cities in the region, if not the world. However, if the hardline Islamists seek to impose a narrow understanding of Tunisian identity, they will have to overlook the very foundations of the Grand Mosque itself.  The unique history and culture of Tunisia seems to me fertile territory for a vibrant pluralistic society, one in which the Islamists have their due place at the table, but fail to dictate a vision of the future to the exclusion of others. While conditions remain bleak and troubling in Egypt, as recent violence involving the Coptic minority has shown, Tunisia seems set on a different course and there is optimism for the future.

* Jeffry R. Halverson is an Islamic studies scholar and an Assistant Research Professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. He is the author of Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam (Palgrave Macmillan 2010), Searching for a King: Muslim Nonviolence and the Future of Islam (Potomac 2012), and co-author of Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism (Palgrave Macmillan 2011).

Related posts:

1. Yes, Extremists are Paying Attention by Chris Lundry Last year, my colleagues Steven Corman, Jeffrey...
2. Seeing the Syrian Conflict through Narrative By Jeffry R. Halverson Unlike the protests of the Arab...
3. Implicit Master Narratives in Extremist Website Launch by Jeffry R. Halverson If you’ve read our book Master...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

As details pour in regarding this past weekend’s daring raid in which U.S. Navy SEALs  killed elusive al-Qaeda leader and world’s most wanted terrorist Osama Bin Laden, the exact details of the events keep changing slightly. The New York Times titled an article covering a recent revision to the sequence of events and details about the operation as “White House Corrects Bin Laden Narrative”.

I would argue, however, the “Bin Laden Narrative” that matters most is not the play-by-play account of what happened, and in what sequence, in that Abbottabad compound. (In fact, I wouldn’t even call that sequence of events a “narrative” in order to avoid confusion about that term.)  While the details of who was shot first and where are important, the bigger narrative concern is what happens now that Osama bin Laden has been killed. And, my interest here in this piece is not an operational question, i.e. will Ayman al-Zawahiri take over as the leader of al-Qaeda or will another figure assert leadership of the terrorist network. No, my concern here is: How will the U.S. (collectively both the government and the populace) frame, conceive and think about the contemporary world order now that the number-one-most-wanted-terrorist story has come to an end.

In an earlier post I noted that narrative is more than simply the recounting of events. Stories and events are crucial parts of narrative: They are parts of the system that is narrative. And, systems are more than just assemblages of their parts. Systems have emergent properties, and in the case of narrative, one of those properties is sense-making.

Narrative, fundamentally, is a method of making sense of a body of information that includes actors (entities that act, not Denzel Washington or Natalie Portman), actions/events,  settings and even stories. Sometimes a narrative is a system comprised of actual events, real actors, and a collection of stories told about them. Other times, a narrative is a fictional construction. The factual and fictional domains can also overlap and influence on another. America is famously a world leader in generating moving image narratives (films and television), so I use examples from that art form in what follows.

As Americans, we tend to organize the world in the most simplistic of narrative structures, the binary. In a binary narrative there is one protagonist who is understood as the good guy.*  This is usually “us” or “America” or our hero-du-jour, be it John Wayne, Tom Cruise, General MacArthur, President Abraham Lincoln, or James Bond (never mind that he’s English). The hero represents all that is good and right about us. The good guy is opposed by the antagonist “bad guy.”

The original Star Wars film offers a readily accessible example of how the binary offers a simple and air-tight understanding of a world. In a galaxy far away, a young man (Luke Skywalker on behalf of “The Republic”) enters into battle with an archetypal enemy (Darth Vader, dressed ominously in black and leading the forces of the evil “Empire”). Understanding this world is simple. There are those allied with Luke and the Republic and there are those allied with Vader and the Empire. It is a black and white world.

Our predilection for formulaic, familiar and always-resolved narratives is evident in the overwhelming popularity of police and medical “procedurals” on American television. While these shows might appear on the surface to be more complicated than the binary just described, at base they are just that.

In most police procedurals (think the CSI franchise, the Law and Order franchise, and the host of newer shows like Castle or the newly remade Hawaii Five-0.), the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are clearly delineated. The police (and prosecutors) represent the forces of good, normative American society opposing a criminal element—classical bad guys whether they are on-screen shooting at police or the off-screen subject of a mystery investigation.

In the medical procedurals (think House or Crossing Jordan as well as the reality-based medical/crime crossover shows like, Dr. G: Medical Examiner and Forensic Files), the intelligent and committed medical practitioners battle their enemy, disease or mystery, and the disease’s ever-present ally of the ticking clock.  All of these shows, whether fictional or reality-based, share the common traits of a clear protagonist (individual or group), a clear antagonist (criminal or disease) and, most importantly for what I see as the dominant form of narrative in the American psyche, a clear resolution.

So, what does all this have to do with Osama Bin Laden? For more than 10 years, Osama bin Laden has been the Darth Vader leading an evil empire of al-Qaeda, Taliban and miscellaneous Islamist extremists. The antagonist umbrella even covered Iraq and Saddam Hussein for a period of time (before the lack of narrative coherence finally separated Iraq from the bin Laden/al-Qaeda menace). The binary narrative structure in which the U.S. fights bin Laden and his allies actually simplifies a complex geo-political landscape into a format already familiar to the American public—the Cold War.

A classic binary narrative structure, the Cold War narrative neatly divided the world into good and evil, protagonist and antagonist, and made understanding simple. With the demise of the Soviet Union, that binary narrative structure was disrupted until the advent of bin Laden. While both President Obama and President Bush have repeatedly asserted that the U.S. is not at war with Islam or the Arab people, neither would have had to say this if the binary narrative that offers only two options (you’re with us or you’re against us) had not been dominating the American psyche.

Iraq was a sub-plot, one that we tried to force-fit into the fairly simple binary narrative pattern of protagonist vs. antagonist. The lack of unity in accepting the Iraq campaign illustrates that it did not cohere with the overall narrative system. This is a good illustration of the narrative comprehension process. Data is received (actions, events, actors) and a template (such as the binary structure here described) is applied. If the data fit the template, a concise comprehension is achieved. If they don’t fit, back to the drawing board. The situation in Iraq has never conveniently fit the binary template, which gave rise to the considerable contention, confusion and lack of understanding surrounding that ongoing episode.

With clear resolution being one of the hallmarks of the binary structure (House cures the disease, Benson and Stabler catch their criminal, Luke Skywalker defeats Darth Vader), what happens to our narrative understanding of the world now that resolution of this narrative is at hand?  With bin Laden dead, does the narrative end and the credits roll?  Hardly.

The geo-political landscape is just as complicated and unsuited to a binary narrative today as it was a week ago (not to mention 10 years ago). It seems to me that we have two options. We can take the “24 approach” and simply discover a new antagonist. This path elevates Ayman al-Zawahiri (or perhaps, as our friend Jarret Brachman suggests, Abu Yahya al-Libi) into the antagonist role. Then we could continue comprehending the contemporary moment as one of conflict between the U.S. and al-Zawahiri (or whatever new figurehead represents the evil empire of Al Qaeda, Taliban, AQAP, AQLIM, etc.).

Alternatively, we could jettison the binary narrative structure, its simplicity of conflict and its obvious path to resolution. Perhaps it is time that our mainstream culture and mainstream media recognize what our troops on the ground in Afghanistan already know and deal with everyday. There is no simple us vs. them arrangement in Afghanistan, or across the Middle East. Pakistan seems to be playing both sides of the fence. The Taliban is only one of at least five different insurgent groups in Afghanistan contesting the American presence. The Arab Spring has displaced leaders like Egypt’s Mubarak (who by virtue of the binary structure became an ally but who is now revealed as a less-than-savory bedfellow), and has left only questions in the wake of the uprisings. I’m not saying there isn’t evil in the world that needs to be opposed by American will and American military might. But I am saying that in the complicated geo-political and socio-cultural landscapes we face, an overly simplistic and binary organization of people, events and actions into some sort of uber-narrative structure is problematic and unhelpful.

The considerable gnashing of teeth occurring right now over Pakistani complicity or incompetence in bin Laden’s concealment illustrates the flaws of the binary that has dominated American culture. Why?  Because we had assigned to Pakistan the ally role in our binary narrative. Discovering the archetype of evil residing in relative comfort 60 miles from the capital of an ally does not comport with a simplistic understanding of “us vs. them”. Politicians across the political spectrum are grand-standing and calling for investigation in the $4 billion of foreign aid provided to Pakistan annually, claiming, essentially, some sort of breach of contract.

The reality is twofold. As a single nation-state entity, Pakistan has multiple interests (deter India, collect U.S. aid, limit anarchy in the northwest, deter further extremist attacks inside Pakistan, assert Pakistani sovereignty, develop relations with Russia and China, etc). As a fractured, barely functional government, different factions exercise different agendas and thus the government may not act in a consistent manner. This reality means that elements in Pakistan might have known of bin Laden’s presence and some may have aided him, but it does not mean that Pakistan is secretly a member of bin Laden’s evil empire. It also means that Pakistan is not always a stalwart ally. Complicated.

What to do then? We live in a complex world and it is time for our mode of understanding to embrace that complexity rather than try to over-simplify. Rather than imposing one, dominant and over-arching narrative to explain all things, we should embrace the systemic (recognize that sub-components of narrative such as stories, actors, events, settings may play different roles in multiple smaller narrative systems), multi-layered (rather than one dominant explanation that all components fit under, recognize that narratives exist in parallel and at multiple levels) and intersecting qualities of narrative.

These qualities are increasingly apparent in popular culture in the field of transmedia storytelling. Stories that share some common elements are told across a variety of media platforms. The recent glut of comic book hero movies exemplifies the trend. Spiderman begins as a comic book (one with multiple titles, no less), then movies and video games (and an animated television series with an oh-so-catchy theme song, lest we forget) proliferate.

The stories told on these different platforms sometimes integrate, and sometimes contradict. Add in fan-generated fiction from fan sites, and the system of stories, actions, events, actors and settings proliferates in a complex and tangled web. Yet, despite contradictions, the Spiderman universe remains eminently understandable. Complementary (and complimentary) stories add to Spidey’s heroism, while contradictory stories can be held at the same time by the reader/viewer. These add nuance and multiple facets to characters and situations without compromising understanding. This is precisely because these seemingly contradictory elements are part of smaller narrative systems that are flexibly interlinked into a broader system, rather than components being force-fit into a single, simplistic, binary narrative structure.

From cowboys vs. Indians to Axis vs. Allies to the Cold War, American culture has been fond of its simple, binary narratives. This same, familiar pattern has been applied to America’s conflict with terrorism and Islamist extremism, but now with bin Laden’s death perhaps we can put an end to this detrimental over-simplification. Again taking a cue from pop culture, our political communication can embrace the complexity of narrative structure that the culture is clearly capable of managing, and drive towards a more nuanced understanding of the complicated world around us.

____________________

* it is almost always a guy or a team that collectively constitutes the good team. Female-lead fictional narratives tend towards structures other than the binary.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A new “strategic framework” for U.S. Public Diplomacy has at long last been released. Oddly, it is a slide show rather than a paper, but perhaps that’s because it is to be the basis for a briefing today. My colleague Phil Seib has already expressed disappointment in the new proposal:

It is so lacking in imagination, so narrow in its scope, and so insufficient in its appraisal of the tasks facing U.S. public diplomats that it is impossible to understand why its preparation took so many months.

One particular way in which this is true is the plan’s conception of narrative.

The number one objective in the strategy is to “shape the narrative.” Its authors reckon that we are not dealing effectively with new media, that inaccurate information shapes our story before we have a chance to do the shaping ourselves, and that too little information is available to audiences around the world. Accordingly it specifies the following tactics (paraphrasing):

• Rapidly respond to inaccurate information and shape stories through engagement with international media
• Expand platforms for shaping dialogue, communicating our perspectives and countering misinformation
• Use new modes of communication

The slides say these goals are the first phase of developing a more detailed plan, which will be taken up by working groups. Fair enough.  But the framework will guide the way the working groups think about the problem, and the guidance seems to be based in an outdated message influence model of strategic communication that fails to take account of the rugged landscape on which U.S. public diplomacy operates.

First, the framework clearly conceives the narrative problem as one of inaccurate information. But this misses the point; narratives are not about facts, they are about how facts are framed and interpreted. Extremists work tirelessly to tie U.S. actions in the Middle East to a master narrative of the crusades. The facts of the crusades are not really in dispute. Western/Christian powers aimed to seize lands from the Arab/Muslim people–especially Jerusalem–and in doing so served their economic and political interests.

Many facts of present day U.S. actions in the Middle East resonate with this account. We provide military and economic support to Israel, which is determined to keep Jerusalem out of the hands of the Arabs. We have recently invaded an Arab country and maintain a large number of troops in the region for the purposes of protecting our interests. Our leader said in 2001 that we were on a crusade. Our soldiers have bible references inscribed on their weapons. I have first-hand reports that active duty military personnel are wearing this patch on their uniforms in Iraq, and maybe Afghanistan too. None of these facts are inaccurate.

The U.S. offers a couple of counter-narratives against the crusader portrayal. One is that we are involved in a fight between Good (represented by us) and Evil (represented by violent extremists). But one can imagine crusaders saying something similar, and the extremists simply argue that these roles are reversed.

We also say we are trying to bring democracy and freedom to the lands where we are fighting (something reiterated in the new framework). But extremist ideologues like Abu Yahiya al-Libi, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, and Abu Bakr Basyir argue forcefully that democracy is a form of polytheism that is part of the crusader plot to weaken the foundations of Islam.  Thus they turn our “gift of democracy” narrative against us.

Second, “shaping the narrative” is the wrong concept to use in the new strategic framework. It imagines that we can take an existing narrative and gradually use messages to alter its form. But in the case of the crusader narrative this is more akin to shaping a balloon. We press in one place and the balloon expands in another place to compensate. When we let go of the spot where pressure is being applied the balloon snaps back to its original shape. This happens because, as we have argued, the communication system has taken on a great deal of inertia such that new messages are readily assimilated to the existing structure.

A better goal would be to try to disrupt the existing narrative system–to pop the balloon–so a new narrative could be formed where our messages could get some purchase. With respect to the crusader narrative, a significant disruption would be some kind of breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would demonstrate that we are no longer complicit in the long-term project of the crusades. Needless to say, that is a tough nut to crack. But such is the nature of the challenge, and this or something like it is the only realistic way of changing the narrative.

Finally, the strategic framework seems to rely heavily on the idea of mastering the means of transmitting messages. It calls for better application of the tools of marketing, better utilization of new media platforms and social networking technologies, and better coordinated communication efforts. None of these are bad ideas in themselves. But they imply that the main problem is that we are not good enough at sending messages through newly available channels. If we could only do this better we would be more successful at shaping narratives. Yet in the absence of a more fundamental change in our communication strategy it is unlikely to do much good. Indeed it could make things worse if we more efficiently deliver messages that can be assimilated to the crusader narrative.

The narrative gap in the new stragegic framework lies in its assumptions that the problems are inaccurate information, lack of  shaping efforts, and inadequate use of media channels. In reailty the problems are that existing facts resonate better in the target audience with a crusader narrative than the alternatives we are offering, that the communication system is locked in a pattern of iterpretation that favors the extremists, and that just doing a better job of sending messages will do nothing to change things.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Hi there.  Long time, no blog.  That’s in part because I was attending a conference entitled Strategic Communication for Combating Terrorism sponsored by the NATO Center of Excellence for Defense Against Terrorism in Ankara, Turkey.  The workshop featured 15 experts on strategic communication, including fellow blogger Matt Armstrong of MountainRunner.

Considering that we did not coordinate our subject matter in advance, there was a remarkable amount of  convergence among the presentations.  I summarize six main themes here for your reading enjoyment, as a way of documenting the current thinking on the main problems of strategic communication against terrorism.

Engagement

The strongest theme had to do with engagement.  Speakers stressed the importance of increased engagement with strategically important audiences and communication channels.  The four aspects of this theme were:

• The need to view strategic communication as a two way process of communication.  This contradicts the traditional view that communication is a one-way process of transmission and highlights the importance of strategic listening and dialog, and resonates with our white paper on 21st century strategic communication.
• The importance of personal contact between NATO personnel and target audiences and populations, so as to better understand their views, interpretations, and culture.
• The need for NATO communicators to improve familiarity and engagement with the New Media.
• The critical factor of engagement with policy formulation, treating policy as an aspect of strategic communication rather than the traditional system that treats strategic communication as a way to “sell” policy that is often unpopular with strategic audiences.

Media Landscape

Many speakers addressed the radical changes in the media landscape over the last decade that have changed the role of the traditional media and created many new types of media. These changes represent an increase in the overall importance of the media and a growing need for engagement with the full spectrum of media channels. Adapting to the new landscape is critical to the success of NATO strategic communication efforts.

New media has been a hot topic in strategic communication for some time.  Next week I will be speaking at a conference entitled Legitimising the Discourses of Radicalisation:  Political Violence in the New Media Ecology sponsored by the University of Warwick International Security Initiative.  I will endeavor to post a report on the discussion there.

Complexity

Numerous speakers noted the revolutionary increase in the complexity of 21st Century strategic communication systems due to factors like globalization and the burgeoning media landscape already mentioned.  These changes not only make the strategic communication system more complicated but provide opponents with the ability to adopt more complex and agile organizational forms.

Control

In the past best strategic communication practices were concerned with control of messages.  But new realities create a system with levels of uncertainty that make control impossible (another theme in the white paper linked above).  Treating 21st century systems as simple and controllable when they are not leads to negative outcomes and strategic communication failures.  This presents a significant challenge for NATO communicators because their practices and systems were developed in the last century, when control-based communication was more practical, and are proving slow to change.

Narrative

Many speakers discussed the growing importance of narrative in strategic communication, which forms an important basis for interpretation of action by strategically important audiences.  NATO nations are doing a poor job of making their narratives clear, and are taking actions that contradict their narratives, thus undermining their credibility.  At the same time they must do a better job of understanding and countering the narratives of their opponents.

Narrative appears to be an ascending topic in strategic communication.  On my UK trip next week I will also be attending a conference devoted to the subject in London called Reframing the Nation: Media Publics and Strategic Narratives, sponsored by the Open University.

Organizational Inertia

Inertia in the command systems of NATO and its member nations inhibits the change mandated by the five foregoing themes.  While there is widespread agreement among theorists and operators that strategic communication practices must evolve to meet new challenges, political and organizational structures of the status quo work against these changes, keeping the alliance in an underperforming posture that reproduces outdated practices.  This is perhaps the keystone problem in NATO strategic communication, because it inhibits adaptation to the new realities discussed at the workshop.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The Advanced Research and Assessment Group of the Defense Academy of the United Kingdom has just released a new primer on Strategic Communication.  The executive summary says:

This paper attempts to address a perceived gap in UK defence thinking which currently has little documentation, on the emerging and cross governmental art of Strategic Communication. After defining the term this paper attempts to locate its utility within the defence community, considering its relationship with Media and Information Operations. The paper notes that at its core, Strategic Communication can only be successful when three processes are clearly understood: the role of strategic communication in campaigning, the actual cognitive process of communication and the empirical analysis of target audiences. The dangers of over-reliance upon polling are considered concurrently. The paper concludes with the place of Strategic Communication within UK military operations, the need for robust measurements of effectiveness and a short assessment of the challenges of emerging and new media.

The text of the report has many things that will be of interest to COMOPS Journal readers, including a recognition that in some scenarios that “military instrument” (which I take to be the “kinetic” part) will take a back seat to the exercise of soft power via strategic communication.

Speaking of strategic communication, the report wades into the troubled waters of defining that term:

In the US, strategic communication is often regarded as being 80% actions and 20% words. A presumption exists that Strategic Communication is aimed at external audiences. This is incorrect; Strategic Communication is as important to internal audiences as it is to external ones. Strategic Communication is a cross governmental, strategic activity in which the military is but one participant. It should however be an intrinsic part of the overall campaign plan. It typically over-arches traditional civilian public diplomacy activities6 and traditional military effects.

Thus the UK primer finds itself in disagreement with US thinking about the extent to which strategic communication is about verbal messages and whether strategic communication encompass public diplomacy or vice versa.

In other highlights, the report

• Makes insightful use of some principles from our soapbox in arguing for a more realistic, complex systems view of the communication process.
• Argues that “narratives are the foundation of all strategy.”
• Explores key asymmetries in the message landscape.
• Places strategic communication at the “heart of operations.”

If there is one drawback to the report, it is that the “target audience analysis” section seems to fall back from the complex systems view advocated earlier in the report to a more traditional OODA-loop concept of how communication campaigns should be executed.  As we have argued elsewhere, a more evolutionary approach would be more befitting of the rugged landscape described in the earlier parts of the primer.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Matt Armstrong of the MountainRunner blog probably knows more about the Smith-Mundt Act than any other living human, and he’s not even a lawyer.

He has just published an “interim version” (?) of an essay on Smith-Mundt over at Small Wars Journal.  It begins with the (very good) question “how can a guy in cave out propagandize the country that created public relations and the Internet?” Partial answer: The Smith-Mundt Act.

The essay is loaded with historical details about the Act, why it was created, and why it persists.  It also contains an analysis of why it has outlived its usefulness and needs to be rethought.

His argument resonates with one we made in a white paper published earlier this year.  The Act is a prime example of a constraint that the Good Guys place on themselves, making their strategic communication landscape dysfunctionally complex.  So I commend Matt’s essay to COMOPS Journal readers.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Today the CSC has released a new white paper that is a companion piece to our Pragmatic Complexity paper from last year. This paper applies another idea from complexity theory, Kauffman’s Rugged Landscape Model, to the problem of finding the right message. The link and executive summary are below.

Strategic Communication on a Rugged Landscape: Principles for Finding the Right Message

For approximately the last decade, the United States has been moving to centralize and more tightly control its messages. Accelerating this trend, U.S. strategic communication efforts under the current administration follow the dictum that effectiveness equals control of a singular message. The problems with this approach were described in a previous CSC white paper. But there is also a more basic issue: How do we know when we have the best message? Is there only one best message? A control-oriented approach to these questions means that the optimal message or combination of messages will probably never be found in the “war of ideas” with terrorist groups and hostile governments.

This paper addresses this issue by applying the concept of rugged landscapes to the problem of finding the right message(s) in strategic communication. The current U.S. approach assumes that the landscape is simple, consisting of a single, modular solution that can be optimized by a controlled, systematic search. However, the situation is more accurately described as a complex, rugged landscape, with multiple integral solutions. This means the optimal solution can only be found by an evolutionary approach using multiple, diverse search methods.

Treating a rugged landscape as simple leads to inappropriate search strategies that virtually guarantee suboptimal performance. To improve its chances of success in the search for the right message(s), we recommend that the United States reform its current control oriented strategies by applying four principles:

1. Leap before You Look: Abandon systematic search methods in favor of techniques based on random jumps and multi-variable optimization.
2. Use the Force: Accept, expect, and seek to exploit interdependencies in the communication system.
3. Simplify Structure: Take steps to reduce legal and organizational interdependencies that make the landscape more complex.
4. Accept Downside Risk: Promote changes in an organizational culture that is reluctant to tolerate the temporary performance decreases that are inherent in complex landscape searches.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Just over two weeks ago, a new report from the State Department entitled “U.S. National Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication” surfaced. The plan includes prescriptions for messages, methods, and organizational changes to improve the performance of the United States in its “War of Ideas” with violent extremist groups, especially those in the Muslim world. It is said to be the first time such a strategy has been documented.

Reaction to the plan so far has been largely negative .While Carolyn Walters called the plan a “step forward,” J. Michael Waller, who broke the story about the new strategy, said

This professor has given the strategy a quick read, and would grade it a gentleman’s “C” (In graduate school, anything below a B- is failure, so the strategy isn’t really ready for prime time. I’m trying to be charitable.)

Another blogger said of the plan: “It might be better than nothing, but not much,” and John Brown concluded “it would be an illusion to think this document is going to reverse public opinion.”

In my view the plan contains many worthwhile elements, but it is also fraught with contradictions, remains too focused on the traditional tools of public relations, and views the strategic communication environment as less complex than it really is.

Principles

One important principle in evaluating the strategy is that of credibility. Any effort to deliver persuasive messages depends on the credibility of the source. The key dimensions of credibility are trustworthiness, competence, and goodwill. These are perceptions that must be cultivated, and it is widely recognized that in recent years the United States has not done a very good job tending the crop.

Other important principles flow from our pragmatic complexity perspective. It holds that U.S. strategic communication is based on an outdated message influence model that emphasizes tight control of messages and their repetition through mass media channels. This old model views success as the default outcome: Well-designed messages will tend to get through and have their effect unless something like noise or distortion interferes.

In contrast, the pragmatic complexity perspective views strategic communication as an activity of a complex system, which is not subject to any one communicator’s control. Meaning emerges in a complicated dialog with audiences, and this means messages will probably not have their envisioned effects. In such an environment control and repetition must be replaced with strategic experimentation.

Analysis

In some ways the new U.S. strategy is responsive to credibility-related concerns. In a report last year we recommended that the U.S. government (1) recognize, accept, and adjust for low credibility in the short term, (2) involve sympathetic Muslims, especially those in the United States, in an effort to find more persuasive sources and messages, (3) concentrate on degrading the credibility of opponents, and (4) when directly claiming ownership of a message, use lower level officers or trusted third-parties to convey it. To its credit, the new strategy does include specific plans for reaching out to sympathetic Muslim communities, sending U.S. Muslims abroad, and helping key audiences envision the kind of backward society extremists would create for their would-be followers.

Unfortunately, the plan contains no explicit recognition of the compromised credibility of the U.S. government in the Muslim world. It aims to “broaden the reach of strategic communication by including all USG officials, high-profile Americans, the business sector and the education sector,” but focuses most of its language on “high level” government officials like ambassadors. This indicates that the U.S. government has not yet faced up to the reality of its impaired status as a source, and intends for its most visible representatives to own the messages. This does not bode well for success.

The report also draws heavily on ideas from the old message influence model of communication. This is especially evident in its reliance on traditional mass media channels. It calls for “proactive media booking” in order for “senior USG officials abroad to project American viewpoints.” Incredibly, the section entitled “modernizing communications” focuses diligently on un-modern media appearances, while stating as an afterthought that “all agencies and embassies must also increase use of new technologies.”

It does not say so outright, but the report implicitly assumes that the planned communication is going to work. Yet contradictions evident in some of the selected messages make this seem unlikely right out of the gate. For instance the report emphasizes the practice of a “diplomacy of deeds” that seeks to “underscore our commitment to freedom, human rights and the dignity and equality of every human being.” Yet as former State Department official Price Floyd points out,

I don’t know how you come out and talk about all the stuff you do, for human rights, to support democracy. . . . When people hear that, they stop and say, “What about Abu Ghraib? What about Guantanamo?”

The promotion of democracy is a pillar of the strategy, yet messages about democratic ideals will circulate in an environment in which competitors like Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi will seize on them to preach that “democracy is a religion of heresy.”

This is perhaps the most serious shortcoming of the strategy: It assumes that transmitting messages is enough, and that if we deliver them often enough and skillfully enough, they will stick. This posture is dangerous because it prevents us from believing that the messages could fail and/or be perversely interpreted. What will we do when that happens? The strategy is silent on that question. There must be more emphasis on contingency planning and experimental variation of messages to find the ones that work.

To be fair, the plan contains many good ideas, especially those dealing with engaging strategic audiences like women, children, and non-extremists in the Muslim world. Many of its messages, like “people of all faiths do not want to live in the type of society the violent extremists seek,” are excellent places to start. But to be effective as an overall strategy, the plan needs to better recognize and adjust for the limitations imposed by our degraded credibility and be more realistic about the complicated environment in which we communicate.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In recent Congressional hearings on U.S. attempts to win popular support in the Arab world, the continuing controversy surrounding al Hurra dominated the discussion. al Hurra, a television network financed to broadcast pro-U.S. messages throughout the Middle East, was created in 2003 to counter the perceived negative influences of al Jazeera on U.S. policies and actions in the region. The issues raised during these hearings are important ones for understanding the failures of U.S. public diplomacy efforts in the Middle East, but the debate over free speech versus censorship misses the salient strategic communication point.

From the perspective of some critics in the U.S., the problem is that the al Hurra network often features speeches by Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, as well as “other terrorist groups.” Their broadcasts included a 30-minute speech in December by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah as well as coverage of the Iranian conference denying the Holocaust. Speaking in defense of those broadcasts, the al Hurra executive replied that the station also features the live broadcasts of the speeches of President Bush, a frank retort that led to laughter on both sides of the hearing chamber.

There are other communication problems that plague al Hurra. Chief among them is that the senior executives aren’t fluent in Arabic, meaning that they often don’t know what is being said in the broadcasts. Nor are there enough State Department Arabic speakers to place in Middle Eastern posts to monitor the network. Radio Free Europe promoted U.S. values and policies in many languages using native speakers and popular resistance leaders throughout the Cold War. But al Hurra suffers from a lack of native speakers willing to support U.S. policies and a plethora of resistance leaders—read terrorists, insurgents, duly elected but anti-U.S. speakers—to make their case.

Joaquin F. Blaya, a senior al Hurra executive, in an interview with a New York Times reporter, indicated that “al Hurra would lose all credibility if it did not give air time to people who disagree with American policy.” He continued by pointing out that “it was ironic that the government was seeking to promote American values like democracy and a free press while at the same time trying to censor what is shown in the station. That’s the difference between a free media and propaganda,” he said.

Al Hurra represents a major U.S. public diplomacy initiative in the Middle East. The controversies surrounding what its producers choose to broadcast must be understood and informed by a more informed theoretical framework that moves the discussion away from free speech and censorship to how influence functions in the reception of those broadcasts by various audiences in the U.S. and throughout the Middle East.

Principles

From a U.S. legal perspective, the case of al Hurra is one that pits concerns over censorship against the Constitutional guarantees of free speech and freedom of the press. In this regard Robert E. Drechsel writes: “the Supreme Court has found censorship to be an especially intolerable restriction on freedom of expression. The term censorship might encompass almost any restriction on the dissemination or content of expression, but most fundamentally it means prior restraint—any government scheme for screening either who may speak or the content of what people wish to say before the utterance. Although the Court has never held prior restraint to be inherently unconstitutional, it has emphasized that “any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity” (Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan 1963, p. 70).

But from a pragmatic communication theory perspective on propaganda, the issue is less one of prior restraint and more one of the actual effectiveness of a message strategy deployed to influence audiences. Free speech refers to the legal right to speak; propaganda is the means used to achieve influence.

Recent scholarship recognizes the power of mass communication to shape audiences’ perceptions but blurs the distinctions between what public diplomacy expert John Brown calls “moralist and neutralist” views on propaganda. Similarly, Nancy Snow, a former State Department spokesperson, has written extensively on the idea of propaganda as “the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.” Both of these perspectives provide tools to critically analyze propaganda, but are deficient in their appreciation of the role of audiences in determining the credibility and value of messages they know are designed to influence them.

Viewed this way, the intended audience’s interpretation of whether the views expressed help or harm a strategic goal is a more salient communication policy issue than whether the information is true, partially true, or untrue. Moralists may object—and rightly so—but neutralists recognize that ideas and information deployed for the purposes of influence are never without partiality or partisanship. An audience-centered perspective on locally-empowered interpretations of message that embraces the neutralist view of propaganda fits the model of pragmatic complexity.

Analysis

Put simply, if the expressed public diplomacy goal of al Hurra is to gain influence capable of generating support for U.S. values and policies in the region, the measure of its effectiveness is a rise in those levels of support. Clearly, according to a recent Pew Research report, that has not happened.

Trying to “control the message” by controlling the content of the al Hurra broadcasts is a flawed approach to improving the effectiveness of this U.S. propaganda tool. As the model of pragmatic complexity demonstrates, a simplistic message-based strategy does not recognize that success depends on the local reception and interpretation of those broadcasts, and that the credibility of the messenger—in this case, the network—strongly influences those interpretations. Because the U.S. suffers from historically low status and credibility in the region, restrictions on broadcasts to only those that reflect a positive spin on U.S. policies is doomed to failure.

One tenet of the American Civil Liberties Union is that the correction for the form of propaganda known as “hate speech” is not to restrict that speech, but instead to encourage more speech. This principle accords with pragmatic complexity, as it recognizes that multiple messages emerging from a diverse array of sources reinforce the value of democratic processes. It also empowers those who have felt marginalized and silenced to add their voices to the mix. One goal of the U.S. public diplomacy strategy is to encourage citizens in the Middle East who are favorable to our values and policies to speak out, and al Hurra affords that opportunity while at the same time providing space for opposing views. Given these facts, attempts to restrict broadcasts to only those that support U.S. policies is inevitably counter-productive. Ambiguity in public diplomacy, not uniform and linear message strategy, must inform future efforts to understand and deploy resources.

The lack of Arabic language fluency remains a critical flaw in the communication preparedness and policies of the U.S. government, and the Department of State should provide language experts to this region of the world (not simply for the purpose of monitoring al Hurra). But whether these experts are available or not, we must rely on strategic communication strategies that do not further diminish our credibility. That requires a shift in our thinking. We need to open channels of communication, not close them.

Further Reading

• Jowett, G. S. and O’Donnell, V. (1999). Propaganda and Persuasion, 3^rd Ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• Kosar, K. R. (2005, February). Public Relations and Propaganda: Restrictions on Executive Branch Activities, CRS Report RL32750.
• Linebarger, P. M. (1948). Psychological Warfare. Washington, D.C., Infantry Journal Press.
• Brown, J. H. (2006). “Two Ways of Looking at Propaganda”

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.