Online PSYOP campaigns are a cheap and easy way for extremists to infiltrate U.S. public discourse about the fight against terrorism. The campaigns attempt to break the political will of U.S. policymakers and persuade the public to doubt the purpose and effectiveness of their government’s policies.

Does extremist propaganda have enough breadth and resonance with Western audiences to make them  re-think their government’s actions?  The extremists must think so, because these efforts remain a critical component of their broader strategic communication.

On August 4th, Steve Corman reported about a new trend in online extremist PSYOP campaigns: deliberately misrepresenting the content of YouTube videos in order to lure pro-American viewers into watching violent attacks or extremist messages.

Extremists also encourage their followers to engage in a “media jihad” against Western audiences to promulgate an anti-war sentiment. Last year, MEMRI reported that the “Al Mohajroon” website gave specific instructions to these virtual warriors to “break [Americans’] spirits” by posting on forums and sites popular with Westerners.

Specifically they suggested posting videos and images of American soldiers committing “crimes” like killing unarmed civilians, women, or children.  They also encouraged fabricating stories about disaffected American soldiers that have turned against the war:

Obviously, you should post your contribution…as an American…You should correspond with visitors to this forum bringing to their attention the frustrating situation of their troops in Iraq…You should invent stories about American soldiers you have [allegedly] personally known…who were drafted to Iraq and then committed suicide while in service…Also, write using a sad tone, and tell them that you feel sorry for your [female] neighbor or co-worker who became addicted to alcohol or drugs…because her poor fiancé, a former soldier in Iraq, was paralyzed or [because] his legs were amputated…

Over the past several years, extremist media organizations, forums and bloggers have called on their multi-lingual readers to translate texts, videos, magazines, and statements into English. One of the more recent suggestions, was posted on al-Ekhlaas forum on Aug. 18.  It called on media organizations and individuals to provide translations of popular jihadist e-journals like Sawt al-Jihad.

There is also a growing number of extremist websites in English, created by both official media organizations of extremist groups and individuals that adhere to their ideology. Countless sites, blogs, and discussion forums seek to engage the U.S. population and manipulate their opinion. The language barrier between the United States and its adversaries in the global extremist network has practically been rendered irrelevant by the prevalence of English language Islamist media.

So what, if anything, should be done about extremist Internet content?  The Internet is famously difficult to control or regulate.  Proposals to do so are almost always controversial.

Extremist videos posted on YouTube caught the attention of U.S. lawmakers earlier this summer. On May 19, 2008, Senator Joe Lieberman wrote a letter to the chairman of Google, Inc. (which owns YouTube) asking the company to develop a method to systematically remove extremist videos from YouTube. The senator notes,  as Steve did, that “this should be a straightforward task since so many of the Islamist terrorist organizations brand their material with logos or icons identifying their provenance.”

The YouTube Team responded on their blog that same afternoon. They promptly removed 80 videos that featured explicit violence. However, they declared that in order to encourage a “healthy debate”, most of the videos identified by Sen. Lieberman would remain online. Despite their obvious affiliation with extremist groups, the videos were not considered in violation of YouTube’s policies.

Sen. Lieberman’s request sought to help counteract the threat of self-radicalization of individuals within U.S. borders, which may be fueled by readily-available extremist propaganda. In his response to Google’s actions, he stated that “no matter what their content, videos produced by terrorist organizations…should not be tolerated.”

One comment on the YouTube blog, by a user named “northshore83”, points out that the issue revolves recruitment:

If our country has designated al-Qaeda a terrorist group then how much of a difference is there between permitting them to recruit on this privately owned forum and recruiting at a privately owned building? Would you object to the al-Qaeda representatives being prevented from staging a fundraiser or recruitment meeting in your home town?

Removing videos that simply propagate an ideology walks a fine constitutional line.  However, YouTube is a private organization that is not bound by constitutional restrictions, and it is unlikely that those posting the material in question are even U.S. citizens. Since the promoters of the ideology advocate violence against YouTube’s home country, Sen. Lieberman’s request seems to many to be simple common sense.

Finding extremists online and removing their websites and postings is another contentious issue. Some go as far as accusing U.S.-based extremist bloggers of treason, claiming that they are actively propagating an ideology that promotes the destruction of America.  Yet the hosts of many of these extremist websites are either unaware of their content, or are unwilling to remove them due to the volume of sites they support and legal protections of free speech.

U.S. government officials have been lukewarm to the idea of trying to stamp-out extremist messages online.  Following the Lieberman – YouTube dialogue, a Washington Post article quoted a senior U.S. counterterrorism official as saying “Yes, we could go around shutting down Web sites, but it doesn’t really work as a strategic weapon against al-Qaeda,” because as soon as one site is shut down another pops up.

So, are Americans falling for the bait? The effectiveness of these extremist PSYOP campaigns is difficult to assess. The number of hits on a particular YouTube video may be an indication of popularity, yet it does not distinguish Americans from other viewers, and it says nothing about the impact of the message. Although minimizing the presence of extremist PSYOPs online might be a good idea, it should not displace another priority: Creating a counter-media strategy that can deconstruct extremist ideology and reduce demand for it on the Internet.

Ars Technica reported yesterday on a letter sent by Congressman Brad Miller to the Inspector General of the Director of National Intelligence.  Miller, who is Chairman of a House subcommittee on technology oversight, sounded the alarm over a current initiative called “Railhead,” which is designed to upgrade the central database that contains information on suspected terrorists. Miller claims that the upgrade process is flawed, and if allowed to continue will actually decrease performance relative to the existing TIDE system.

TIDE is used to do things like generate the government’s “no-fly” list. Like the movie Brazil, in which a fly dropping into a printer morphs the name of an air-conditioning repairman into that of a wanted terrorist, the TIDE system has been excoriated for generating an unacceptable number of false positives–including some that flagged U.S. Air Marshalls as potential terrorists.

But that’s not the worst of it.  According to Miller’s letter, the TIDE system is composed of data spread across 463 different tables, 295  of them undocumented.  Users in the government rely on Structured Query Language (SQL) to extract information from the database.

I’m sure that to most COMOPS Journal readers that sounds like a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo.  So to illustrate just what it means, here is an example of a SQL query that would be used to combine information from (or “join”) three tables, in this case to find records with missing information:

select * from (bdg left join res on bdg.bid = res.bid) left join dom on res.rid = dom.rid where dom.rid is NULL and res.rid is not NULL;

Again, that is to combine data from just three tables.

Now imagine the poor CIA analyst trying to write a statement to get information out of six or ten tables, when s/he may not even know the variable names (in the examle res.id, bdg.bid) in some of them.  It’s no wonder that Miller quotes CIA Chief Information Officer Al Tarasiuk as saying:

The thing the worries me most is that we have buried, in some database, some piece of information that a person might need access to [but] doesn’t have the access or the data is not available to them somehow.

The upgrade process is described as “incremental” and will actually result in a reduction of current capabilities of the TIDE system.  Given the complexity of TIDE that may be unavoidable.  Yet even the revisions for partial functionality have been trouble-plagued.  In one test, Railhead “passed 148 tasks, but did not complete 26 others and failed 42 tasks,” according to Miller’s letter.

Ars Technica reports that

The NCTC fired back Friday in a statement, calling Miller’s description “inconsistent with the facts” and complaining that his subcommittee “has had no interaction with the NCTC or the Intelligence Community on the Railhead Program.”

Maybe, but the number of tables in a database is a pretty straightforward fact, and one would think that the CIO of the CIA qualifies as a member of the “intelligence community.”  You can collect all the information  you want, but unless it’s backed up by sound management practices it never becomes knowledge.

]]> http://comops.org/journal/2008/08/26/terror-database-a-giant-mess/feed/ http://comops.org/journal/2008/08/22/you-got-it-wrong-congressman/ http://comops.org/journal/2008/08/22/you-got-it-wrong-congressman/#comments Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:27:36 +0000 editor http://comops.org/journal/?p=325 by Steven R. Corman

About a month ago, I wrote a post critical of a vote in the House of Representatives on an amendment offered by Rep. Hoekstra to H.R. 5959 to deny DHS and NCTC the ability to expend any funds in their efforts to discourage use of words like “jihad” in U.S. strategic communication.

Since my own Congressman, Harry Mitchell of Arizona’s 5th District, voted in favor of the amendment, I wrote him to register my displeasure with his vote.  The other day I received the following reply:

Dear Dr. Corman:

Thank you for contacting me in opposition to H.Amdt. 1114, an amendment to H.R. 5959, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.

I agree that we should seek to avoid empowering terrorists and others who mean to do our country harm.

As you know, H.Amdt. 1114, would amend the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009, H.R. 5959, to require that none of the funds authorized to be appropriated by that bill may be used to prohibit or discourage the use of the words or phrases “jihadist”, “jihad”, “Islamo-fascism”, “caliphate”, “Islamist”, or “Islamic terrorist” by or within the intelligence community or the Federal Government.

I believe that U.S. citizens conducting intelligence work should enjoy the same freedom of speech in communicating with each other as their fellow citizens enjoy in communicating with their professional colleagues, provided such communication does not pose a risk to our national security.

The House agreed to this amendment by a bipartisan vote of 249 to 180.

Again, thank you for taking the time to write to me about this issue.  Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if you have additional comments or concerns.

If you would like to receive email updates about how I am working on behalf of Arizona’s 5th Congressional District, I invite you to sign up for my newsletter at http://www.mitchell.house.gov.

Sincerely,

Harry E. Mitchell

Member of Congress

I debated whether to post that response and this comment on it because I generally support Congressman Mitchell, and I don’t relish criticizing him.  What convinced me to go ahead was the justification given for the vote, which just doesn’t make any sense and shouldn’t be allowed to pass unchallenged.

The Congressman begins by saying that government employees should be able to use the stated words as long as “such communication does not pose a risk to our national security.”  In my original message to him, I explained how using these words supports al-Qaeda’s communication strategy.  That poses a risk to our national security.

Since he doesn’t seem to believe me, perhaps he will believe Richard Barnett, Coordinator of the al-Qaida/Taliban Monitoring Team of the United Nations Security Council.  He just published an important report called Seven Years After 9/11: Al-Qaeda’s Strengths and Vulnerabilities.

Barnett says al-Qaeda is weakened but still dangerous because it continues to provide a rallying point for disaffected people around the world.  It does this because it positions itself as a heroic defender of Islam, i.e. a jihadist entity. He concludes the report with a section on how we should address their continuing appeal:

Its opponents should therefore avoid intentionally or unintentionally saying or doing anything that appears to support its claims, from the use of terms to describe Al-Qaida to the introduction of policies that would appear to confirm its argument that the Muslim world is under attack. [my emphasis]

Next, the Congressman casts this as a freedom of speech issue.  But Supreme Court rulings limit the scope of government employees’ rights, saying that their interests in free expression

must not be outweighed by any injury that the speech could cause to the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.

Basically, the amendment makes it impossible for the government to have a communication strategy with respect to the labeling of Islamic extremists, so it unequivocally impairs the efficiency of public services performed through affected employees.  Free speech is simply not a salient issue here.

Finally, I disagree with the assertion that this was a bipartisan vote.  I’m not sure how one can make such a claim when 98% of Republicans voted for it and 76% of Democrats voted against it.

Every element of the above justification for this vote is faulty.  The amendment supports continued use of words that help al-Qaeda frame itself as a defender of the faith, helping to empower it and causing a risk to our national security.  There is no legitimate free speech right that outweighs these harms.  There was no bipartisan consensus to the contrary.  You got it wrong, Congressman.

Bruce Gregory has just released a new essay at Small Wars Journal that should be of interest to COMOPS Journal readers.  In it he identifies five lessons learned from recent experiences in U.S. Public Diplomacy:

• Abandon message influence approaches
• Drop the “war on terror” language
• Leverage civil society
• Emphasize net-centric perspectives
• Rethink media strategy

The teaser for the piece notes unheeded calls in our own National Defense Strategy documents from 2002 and 2008 for improved public diplomacy.  Let me point out that we’re also ignoring similar calls from the Defense Science Board reports in both 2004 and 2008 for changes in the organization of the whole U.S. strategic communication enterprise.

It is hard to think of any explanation for this other than  willful ignorance of these issues at the highest levels.  So I think we need to add one more lesson learned to Bruce’s list:

• Care about whether or not you have good strategic communication

UPDATE

Bruce points out in an e-mail that his essay talks about “lessons from” rather than “lessons learned,” as I have it in the title.   He’s right of course; the lessons have not been learned.  A Freudian slip revealing wishful thinking on my part, I guess.

Matt Armstrong recently posted  an essay on the Smith-Mundt Act that has been getting a lot of attention.  In it he claims that the Act has outlived its usefulness, and I am on record as agreeing with him. Sharon Weinberger over at Danger Room has just finished posting a three part critique of Matt’s paper.  Her response is thoughtful and impassioned, the kind of discussion we should be having about this important but under-discussed issue.

As a way of furthering that discussion, I’d like to point out three ways that I think Sharon’s critique misses the mark by either underplaying or overplaying important distinctions, and one distinction that Matt’s essay may underplay too.  Since part III of Sharon’s critique focuses more on public diplomacy than Smith-Mundt, I’ll stick to part I and part II.

Constraints vs. Efforts

One underplayed distinction in Sharon’s critique is between removing a constraint and mounting an effort.  She agrees with Matt that there is little distinction between foreign and domestic audiences, but says this does not justify removing the constraints on government communication:

In effect, Armstrong asserts what I find to be the scariest of all worlds: a U.S. government bureaucracy that focuses not only on propagandizing abroad, but propagandizing at home. “The territory of the United States is not neutral territory,” Matt writes, in one of several scary statements in the essay.

It’s worth noting that we already have a scary government propaganda bureaucracy called the White House Office of Presidential Communications.  It routinely operates on listeners at home and abroad, and its propaganda accomplishments are well known.  Given this, changing one old law hardly risks unleashing a propaganda pandemic against which Americans have no immune response.

I have personally heard people in the DoD worry about whether, for example, they could legally distribute a leaflet in Afghanistan because of the danger that it might be posted on the Internet and be viewed by citizens back home.  Mitigating this worry is not the same thing as launching a PSYOP campaign on U.S. citizens.  We could find a way to both remove the constraint and prevent abuse.

Structures vs. Practices

A second, and related, distinction that Sharon underplays is between structures and practices.  Matt’s argument is about the constraining legal structures imposed by Smith-Mundt, how these are perverse given the original intent, and their unrealism given present day conditions.  Kevin Dooley and I have further made the argument that these constraints make the strategic communication landscape unnecessarily complicated in cases, like counterterrorism, where few would question the propriety of government efforts to influence the discussion.

Sharon’s concerns seem to be more about practices than structures.  For example, she worries about military public affairs officers giving misinformation to cover up problems and failures.  That’s a valid worry, but misinformation can be given whether or not we maintain a legal myth that foreign audiences can be walled off from domestic ones.  Practices are a separate issue, and they’re one reason why Matt is right to call for a comprehensive

critical examination on the purpose, management, and methodology of global, not just international, government information activities, education and cultural exchange programs, including reviewing how they are monitored and evaluated by Congress and the American public.

Truths vs. Interpretations

The third distinction is one that Sharon overplays, that between truths and interpretations.  She says that if we do anything differently

the change, in my view, should be to to do away with the notion of “strategic communication,” not to bolster it.

But the idea that we could have unstrategic communication is misguided.  It presumes that there is a clear difference between giving information and trying to strategically influence what people believe. This functionalist view that the main role of mass media is to objectively inform the public was popular in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  It’s no coincidence that this is when the Smith-Mundt Act, with its admonition to “tell the truth,” was passed.

A more contemporary view is that all “truths” are really just interpretations.  The mass media offer meanings from which the audience picks and chooses in constructing its own idea of what is true.  If you accept this social construction view of the media you can’t separate information and influence because they are essentially the same thing.

There are plenty of examples of this in Sharon’s own blog, Danger Room.  One is the framing created by the very name of the blog.  Another is a post from yesterday on New York City’s security measures.  It not only tells us what things are being done but invites us to interpret the system as a Panopticon.

If a Predator drone blows up a house in Afghanistan and kills a family whose father is a Bad Guy, the basic facts will probably not be much in dispute.  What is more at issue is how the facts are interpreted: Was it the intentional murder of innocent people or a legitimate strike against a dangerous terrorist?  If a suicide bomber kills innocent Muslim bystanders while attacking an American patrol, is that apostasy or collateral damage?  In both cases, which interpretation comes to be accepted is important.  That is what strategic communication tries to influence, and in my view it would be foolish to let our opponents do all the framing.

Legalities vs. Ethics

If we can fault Matt’s essay for anything, it is perhaps taking a somewhat legalistic approach to Smith-Mundt, i.e. arguing that its re-examination

must be based on a proper understanding of Congressional intent when it passed a comprehensive bill of greater impact than anything being considered today.

I don’t think we should worry too much about last-century legislative intent to protect private media interests and reign-in suspected pinkos in the State Department.  As Sharon’s posts emphasize, we also have to guard against an “anything goes” culture when it comes to influence efforts (Matt would surely agree).  What we need is a loosening of antiquated legal constraints coupled with standards of practice that allow us to ethically compete with the framings of our enemies.

As was reported last week, on August 6 Abbu Bakar Bashir announced his resignation as Amir of the Islamist organization Majelis Mujahid Indonesia or Indonesian Council of Jihad Fighters (MMI). His announcement, only days before the organization’s general convention, came as something of a surprise. It may lead some to believe that there is serious dissension with in the ranks of Indonesian Muslim radicals, and that the movement is in decline.

Such conclusions would be incorrect and are little more than wishful thinking. Bashir’s resignation stemmed from a disagreement about the theological nature of leadership not about the goals or methods of its struggle. He resigned his position as Amir of MMI because he feels that the organization is not Islamic enough. While the title Amir (or Emir) has been in use for centuries it is basically secular. MMI elects its Amir, who is responsible to the organization’s executive board. Bashir believes that he should be the “Imam” and that he is responsible only to God.

With his resignation, Bashir has not so much “stepped down” as he has “moved on” and freed himself of perceived restrictions on his freedom of action imposed by the organization.  He remains a highly charismatic figure. He has hinted that he will form a new organization and that he will continue to work with his former comrades in MII for the establishment of Shari’ah as the basis of the Indonesian State.

Bashir utterly rejects all democratic possesses. But ironically there are rumors that he will run for president in 2009 to force a showdown on the question of Indonesia’s future. This would present the country with an unambiguous choice between a religiously pluralistic democratic state and a Sunni Muslim theocracy as models of governance. Such a contest would also be a betrayal of Bashir’s oft stated anti-democratic convictions.

MMI is an umbrella organization, not a political party or social movement. It is a loose coalition of groups united only by the goal of establishing Shari’ah as the basis of local, regional and national governance. While Bashir was the group’s best known—and certainly most articulate—spokesman his departure does not mean that radical Islam has been weakened significantly.

Nor does Bashir’s popularity depend on his affiliation with MMI. It is rooted in a lifetime of devotion to radical Islamic causes, social networks among students and alumnae of the Islamic school (Pesantren al Mukmin Ngruki) he has led since 1972.  It also stems from his links to other Islamist organizations including the terrorist group Jammah Islamiyah and the vigilante organization Front Pembela Islam (Front for the Defense of Islam, FPI), and his ability to manipulate the Indonesian media.

Bashir was born in Jombang in East Java in 1938. This city is among Indonesia’s theological centers, as is best known as the home of the country’s most liberal Islamic movement Nadhlatul Ulama and former president Abdurahmman Wahid, who strongly opposes Bashir and everything he believes in. Bashir is an Indonesian of Hadrami (Yemini) descent. While Indonesian Arabs are no more or less inclined towards radical Ideologies than others, they are widely revered because they are commonly believed to be descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.  His Hadrami connections have also enabled him to move easily between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore where there are also significant Arab populations.

Bashir is the spiritual leader of Jamaah Islamiyah, the group responsible for the 2002 Bali Bombings in which 202 people, most of them western tourists, were killed. He has consistently stated that the bombers were not terrorists, but Mujahidin, and that the CIA hijacked the operation and used it to plant a “micro-nuclear device” responsible for the death and destruction. This and other conspiracy theories involving US and Israeli intelligence services circulate widely in Indonesia and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Bashir is also the leader of the Surakarta branch of FPI. FPI is a paramilitary organization that carries out violent attacks on bars, nightclubs, pool halls, mystical and marshal arts groups deemed to be “anti-Islamic.” Its’ most recent operation was an attack on an inter-faith rally supporting tolerance and religious freedom sponsored by mainstream Muslim and Christian groups at Indonesia’s Nation Monument in Jakarta on June first.

So Bashir’s departure from MMI does not diminish his power because it is based almost entirely on personal rather than institutional loyalties. He will continue to attract national and international attention and is entirely capable of inspiring, if not organizing acts of violence. Yet it is extremely unlikely that he or anyone resembling him will come to power at the national level. A decade of elections following the Indonesian democratic transition has shown that Bashir and other radical Islamists can organize rallies and gangs of thugs like FPI, but this does not translate into broad electoral appeal. Democracy can be messy, but remains the best safeguard against Bashir and others like him.

What would you rather have for your tax dollars? (A) A first-class military band that can play funky versions of “The Stars and Stripes” and “Hail to the Chief.”  (B) A world-class communicatively and culturally savvy diplomatic corps that can reduce tensions, build support for U. S. foreign policies, and improve our status around the globe.

If chose option A, then congratulations.  You, too, can join in the Congressional chorus now refusing to increase allocations to the State Department to fill over 1,000 vacancies. In today’s NY Times, Nicholas Kristof provides some revealing statistics:

The United States has more musicians in its military bands than it has diplomats.

This year alone, the United States Army will add about 7,000 soldiers to its total; that’s more people than in the entire American Foreign Service.

More than 1,000 American diplomatic positions are vacant because the Foreign Service is so short-staffed, but a myopic Congress is refusing to finance even modest new hiring. Some 1,100 could be hired for the cost of a single C-17 military cargo plane.

In short, the United States is hugely overinvesting in military tools and underinvesting in diplomatic tools. The result is a lopsided foreign policy that antagonizes the rest of the world and is ineffective in tackling many modern problems.

It may be that members of Congress favor DoD funding over DoS funding because weapons of mass destruction offer more bang for their buck (sorry) than do weapons of mass persuasion.  Or it may be that Congress is simply not impressed by the results of the political appointees who currently lead the diplomatic corps.

We need to reassess not only funding levels for a depleted DoS, but also what skill sets are required for a new era of diplomats.   Women and men who work for our interests abroad must must be communicatively and culturally savvy, new media adept, and understand fully the idea that meanings are not in how messages are designed and repeated, but instead in how they are interpreted locally.  That would mean revamping the current “echo chamber” bureaucracy and bringing into DoS people who are actually trained as 21st century communicators.

That said, I’m not holding my breath for either Congressional approval of additional funding to hire diplomats, or for a new generation of communication savvy folks to don blue suits and go forward into our less than welcoming world. One reason is what diplomats are encouraged to read.  Last week, the American Foreign Service Association Summer Reading List was released to the press.  It is an impressive list for historians of diplomacy past, but does little to improve knowledge and skills necessary for diplomacy present and future.  Unless and until those whom we trust to communicate our image abroad and contribute to a more stable political world learn to read in the skill set they will actually use, their conversations may continue to be rich in political theories and the quotations of Winston Churchill, but inadequate to the task they have before them.

And meanwhile, the band plays on . . .

In the past couple of days I have received email alerts from ESISC, an independent European group based in Brussels that describes itself as doing observation and analysis of international terrorism and related strategic issues. The emails indicate concern that the Bad Guys are planning attacks during the upcoming Ramadan (which this year exactly occupies the month of September).

The first alert from two days ago says that a forum (unnamed), which is “generally used by Al Qaeda and its affiliates” has posted

a lengthy message signed by “Baghdad Al-Khilafa” (war name) urging to perpetrate suicide attacks in Sweden during the first month of Ramadan

In their analysis of the message they say this threat must be taken seriously because it is one of a

growing number of messages hinting to a “campaign of attacks in Europe during the holy month of Ramadan” [that] have been posted on websites close to Al Qaeda.

Today I received another ESISC alert, this one focusing on year-old pictures of a training camp for suicide bombers, taken in the Pakistani FATA and sold to ABC News. According to the alert these pictures were taken from the ABC web site and reposted on an (again unnamed) extremist forum earlier this week.  The post included a call to strike Canada, Germany, the UK and the US.  ESISC sees this as worrisome in the context of the above-mentioned hints about impending Ramadan attacks.

I don’t normally pass along “warnings” like this.  The posts being referred to in the alerts can come from over-excited newbies rather than actual operatives, and even when from the latter can be puffery.  But since the ESISC people are claiming this is a pattern, I pass it along as an information item.  Maybe Will or somebody else who monitors the forums can confirm, deny, or otherwise shed some light on this.

UPDATE 8/10/08

Will from Jihadica writes:

I checked a number of forums, but there isn’t much on the topic.  Still, that doesn’t mean Ramadan is bad time to launch attacks.  In 2006, Abu Ayyub al-Masri announced that a major AQI offensive, “The Clear Conquest,” was to begin on Ramadan of that year.

One of the more interesting stories I’ve heard lately is about Heavy Metal music becoming big in the Muslim world.  Earlier this week, Mark Levine posted a guest blog on the subject at Post Global.  Levine, who is a  Professor of Middle Eastern history, culture and Islamic Studies at UC Irvine, has written a whole book on the subject.

Why are we seeing this, um, ironic phenomenon?  Levine says its because the subjects metal deals with,

death without meaning, the futility of violence, the corruption of power - correspond well to the issues confronting hundreds of millions of young Muslims today, the majority of whom live under authoritarian governments in societies torn by inequality, underdevelopment and various types of violent conflict.

What’s more, there have been heavy-handed attempts by religious authorities to stamp out the corrupting influence of rock n’ roll.  Levine cites the example of Egypt’s Grand Mufti calling for metal fans to be executed unless they repent.  As a result the metalheads tend to harbor less than charitable attitudes toward these authorities.  Let me see, where have I heard this before?

I’ve seen videos of some of these bands, and to me they typically don’t look or sound much like the metal bands I’m familiar with.  Sajid and Zeeshan, for example, sound like a sort of Grungy U2, with some scratching and jazzy acoustic guitar riffs thrown in there to round-out the pastiche.  But where are the guys in all-black clothes with black fingernails and black makeup?  The on-stage guillotines?  The singers biting the heads off of live bats?  These guys obviously have a lot to learn about their genre, but relative to their context, I suppose they are radical enough.

Given the youth of the Muslim population, the counter-culture appeal of the music, and a story that puts it at odds with Islamist authorities, this seems to be a trend worth watching.

To learn more about Muslim Metal, visit Levine’s excellent web site, Heavy Metal Islam.

I recently talked to Capt. David Faggard, who is Chief of the Air Force New Media and Emerging Technologies team.  His newly-formed group is an Air Force contribution to the effort by the U.S. to catch up to their “war of ideas” opponents in the use of New Media. Though it is only his third week on the job, he has noticed what appears to be a PSYOP campaign by the Bad Guys involving YouTube.

Persons unknown are posting videos of American forces being attacked, which of course is nothing new.  The twist is that they are baiting the videos with misleading keywords that would be attractive to pro-American viewers.  Faggard explains:

So for an example, if a U.S. serviceman’s wife does a search about a military unit expecting to see pro-American videos, she would get gruesome video of a roadside bombing of Americans instead.

To see for myself, I did a YouTube search.  Based on a suggestion from Faggard, I used the keywords “kicking insurgent ass.”  The first item was what you would expect, containing footage shot by a Marine corporal in Fallujah.

The second item was titled “Insurgents Shotdown US Apache Helicopter.” After clicking-away an age-inappropriate warning from YouTube, I was greeted by several screens of Arabic graphics superimposed on a background of fire.

What followed was jerky video of black-hooded gunmen firing machine guns at an Apache attack helicopter.  After several minutes of shooting the helicopter slowly descended to the horizon, disappeared below a line of trees, and a column of black smoke appeared.  A partial list of tags for this video includes:

IRAQ best attacks clip US american air force military helicopter shot down apache helicopter 1st Battalion 64th Armor Regiment 2nd Brigade Combat Team 3rd Infantry Division Fort Stewart hellfire missile us navy seals british sas elite swat shooting

The next video had the same list of keywords, but had been removed for “terms of use violations.”  A little further down was a video entitled 4 Insurgents Get Obliterated (Graphic) Crispy Ragheads. It had also been removed, but its thumbnail contained the emblem of an extremist production company.

In all, 18 of 20 of the links returned on the first page appeared to be extremist videos.  They had an average of about 7000 views and were rated from 3 to 5 stars.  One, of a rocket attack on a U.S. base, had over 20,000 views and a 4-star rating.

Faggard said the pattern is for someone to register, post a video, then disappear, never posting from the same user name again.  And he expressed frustration at the difficulty of weeding-out these videos.  Technically, they violate YouTube’s community guidelines, which say:

Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone getting hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don’t post it.

YouTube is not a shock site. Don’t post gross-out videos of accidents, dead bodies and similar things.

However since they are hidden by deceptive keywords, the only reliable way to detect them at present is by manual inspection, reporting the videos to YouTube for removal.

This baiting of YouTube videos is another example of how the Bad Guys exploit Western resources in an inexpensive and clever way to support their strategic communication goals.  The U.S. effort to resist these tactics has been much too slow to develop.  I am also concerned that the effort is too weak.  For instance, while Faggard and his team are obviously committed to their task, they are a small team of only three people.

These videos have a distinct pattern of keywords and contain telltale graphics.  It would be a simple and fairly inexpensive matter for the military to develop algorithms to detect them automatically.  One wonders why they haven’t done so.  Also why doesn’t YouTube automatically flag as suspicious videos with pro-American keywords that are posted from, say, IP addresses in Pakistan?

While awaiting these developments, anyone who wants to help can do so by looking for these videos and reporting them to YouTube for removal.