Category: Academic Publication

The Salafi-Jihadi Online Ecosystem in 2022 – Swarmcast 2.0

Published by EICTP, July 2022

EICTP_Swarmcast2_FINALDownload

The relationship of Web 1.0 to the Web of tomorrow is roughly the equivalence of Pong to The Matrix

Darcy DiNucci, 1999

This paper adopts the progressive approach to Terrorism Studies, which focuses on an evidence-based analysis, in this case examining the purpose, strategy and tactics of the Media Mujahidin. It examines the recent evolution of the Salafi-Jihadi information ecosystem including the adoption of Web3 and the emergence of the Salafi-Jihadi Swarmcast 2.0.

The paper demonstrates:

  1. The emergence of Web3 significantly (if not completely) undermines the current approaches to disrupt the online activity of the Salafi-Jihadi movement.
  • The Salafi-Jihadi movement and specifically al-Dawlat al-Islamiyah (IS) have already adopted Web3 technologies.
  • The Web3 technology currently in use already represents a significant circumvention of existing tactics and techniques intended to disrupt their online activity. From EthLink and IPFS pinning, to the integration of onion links which underpin the strategy to deliver a resilient surface web distribution infrastructure, Web3 is already in use.
  • With the advent of Web3, the current approaches to content removal may be a necessary clean-up of Web2.0, but no longer represent a viable strategy to disrupt the activity of the Media Mujahidin.
  • The multiplatform communication paradigm (MCP) adopted as part of the Salafi-Jihadi Swarmcast 2.0 has created a network of significant resilience, vastly outstripping that short period which was seen when the Salafi-Jihadi movement was heavily reliant on Twitter in multiple languages.
  • Social media users on average use 7 platforms in each month. Adopting a multiplatform strategy provides the Salafi-Jihadi movement with multiple entry points to reach their target audience.
  • While the core of the Salafi-Jihadi movement communicates through Telegram, the existence of multiple platforms mitigates against the disruption on any single platform, as users can redirect their attention elsewhere.
  • Platforms which act as the primary ‘beacons’ within the Swarmcast2.0 are Telegram, Rocket, and Matrix, while many second-tier networks exist across the so-called tech giants and comparative newcomers.
  • The current ‘success narrative’ produced by the Transatlantic orthodoxy of Terrorism Studies (OTS), has overstated the effectiveness of contemporary disruption efforts. 
  • The OTS refrain that accessing Salafi-Jihadi content requires having access to Telegram or an old Jihadi forum, is not supported by the available evidence.
  • An evidence-based approach contradicts the claims that Salafi-Jihadi groups have been forced off tech giants such as Facebook and Twitter onto smaller platforms.
    • Despite the significant resource and effort expended by larger platforms, Salafi-Jihadi networks and content are easily identifiable on all four of the biggest social media platforms, i.e., Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and WhatsApp
    • Twitter has strong name recognition amongst policymakers and OTS researchers. However, due to the changes in the tech landscape, some of the so-called ‘smaller’ or ‘niche’ platforms used by the Salafi-Jihadi movement, now have significantly bigger userbases than Twitter.

Conclusion

  • A Web3 enabled Swarmcast2.0 has arrived. Swarmcast2.0 is much more dynamic, secure, encrypted, decentralised, and resilient than the original version which emerged by 2014.
  • Swarmcast2.0 circumvents or renders obsolete many of the current tactics intended to disrupt the online activity of the Media Mujahidin.
  • The need for a strategic level approach to disruption, and collaborative strategies, are increasingly pressing and can no longer be held back by the comfort and reassuring rhetoric of the OTS ‘success narrative’.
  • The future of disruption efforts requires a Web3 strategy. The risk posed by relying on Web 2.0 disruption approaches in an increasingly Web3 world, approaches the equivalence, to lean on Darcy DiNucci’s analogy, of planning to play Pong but finding yourself in The Matrix.

Introduction

The Salafi-Jihadi movement has to date maintained a persistent presence for its networks and content despite the pressure from governmental organisations, the efforts of the tech sector and active attacks from other online groups including cyber-divisions of Shia militia groups.[1] The Salafi-Jihadi movement has achieved the persistent presence because “the movement can leverage collective behaviours across multiple platforms to maintain a persistent presence for their content”.[2] This is the Swarmcast, which combines the speed of dissemination, the agility of users and the resilience of network structures. In many ways the Media Mujahidin and supporters of Salafi-Jihadi groups more broadly have been early adopters of technologies and platforms within their multiplatform communication paradigm (MCP) which have enabled them to remain many steps ahead of disruption efforts.[3]

For over 20 years, the activity of the Media Mujahidin has been in state of constant evolution as their multiplatform zeitgeist has continued to reconfigure.[4] Having been pioneers in using electronic communication, the Media Mujahidin are an established side of any real-life conflict and became of greater importance with the wars in Afghanistan 2001 and Iraq, 2003. As of now, Salafi-Jihadi groups have already fully embraced many of the characteristics of Web3, including decentralisation, in a self-governing distributed and robust multi-server, and multiplatform network.

While the Media Mujahidin have been forging ahead, exploiting new technologies and approaches, many researchers and ‘embedded academics’ in the transatlantic orthodoxy of Terrorism Studies, have perpetuated a ‘success narrative’ about the online efforts against Salafi-Jihadi groups.[5] This ‘success narrative’ in many ways echoes elements of the wider War on Terror since 2014,  in which  attempts to demonstrate policy success and announcing the decline, collapse, defeat, and demise of Salafi-Jihadi groups has taken centre stage. Unfortunately, the extent to which the Transatlantic orthodoxy of terrorism studies has defined these groups as defeated, has little to do with their continued ability, willingness, and theological drivers to wage their particular form of Jihad.[6] Salafi-Jihadi groups remain undeterred by the Western claims of success against them.[7]

While the digital environment has gone through significant changes, much of OTS research has focused on the same old places from the early Web 2.0 era[NP1] [AF2] , with any change in tactics made by the Media Mujahidin being ascribed to the success of Western pressure. One will often hear OTS pundits and researchers use a version of the supposed truism that IS presence ‘it is not like it used to be’ implying or explicitly claiming success of disruption. And indeed, it is not like it used to be. However, this is primarily because the tech landscape has changed significantly, including the usability and accessibility of platforms, and the Media Mujahidin have evolved their tactics to maximise the impact of their efforts in this changing tech landscape.

In an OTS context, the phrase is often used as part of the success narrative to hark back to a short-lived era when the Media Mujahidin heavily relied on Twitter, with the implication, in the OTS mindset, that the situation is much better now. Some OTS researchers have even claimed that accessing Salafi-Jihadi material is limited to Telegram or an old Jihadi forum. However, the contemporary reality is that the Swarmcast2.0 is much more dynamic, secure, encrypted, decentralised, and resilient than it was in 2014. It is also using platforms with a much greater reach than 2014. Ultimately, like almost everything about the way we use technology and access the web in 2022, it is not like it used to be. That change, however, is not necessarily the result of Western success against Salafi-Jihadi groups, nor has it become harder for the Media Mujahidin to operate in any strategically meaningful sense.

The paper is divided in four parts.

Part 1 tests the orthodox success narrative about Salafi-Jihadi groups being driven onto smaller platforms.

Part 2. Introduces the conceptual underpinning of Swarmcast2.0, both through the Swarm metaphor and the concept of Web3.

Part 3 examines how Swarmcast 2.0 thrives in practice by examining the contemporary digital environment, and the three contemporary distribution pillars which contribute to the multiplatform zeitgeist.

Part 4 provides concrete evidence of the steps the Media Mujahidin have taken with Web3.

[1] Fisher, A., et al. “Mapping the jihadist information ecosystem: Towards the 3rd generation of disruption capability.” Policy Brief, Royal United Services Institute, London (2019)

[2] Fisher, Ali. “Swarmcast: How Jihadist Networks Maintain a Persistent Online Presence.” Perspectives on Terrorism, vol. 9, no. 3.

Ali Fisher, Netwar in Cyberia: decoding the media mujahidin, paper 5, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, 2018,

Ali Fisher, Nico Prucha, Follow the White Rabbit – Tracking IS Online and Insights into What Jihadists Share, in Marone, Francesco (ed.) Digital Jihad: Online Communication and Violent Extremism. Ledizioni, (2019).

[3] Fisher, A., et al. “Mapping the jihadist information ecosystem: Towards the 3rd generation of disruption capability.” Policy Brief, Royal United Services Institute, London (2019)

[4] Prucha, Nico, and Ali Fisher. “Tweeting for the caliphate: Twitter as the new frontier for jihadist propaganda.” CTC Sentinel 6.6 (2013): 19-23.

Fisher, Ali; Prucha, Nico (2014, August): “The Call-up: The Roots of a Resilient and Persistent Jihadist Presence on Twitter“. CTX, 4(3), 73-88.

Jamie Bartlett and Ali Fisher, “How to beat the media mujahideen“, DEMOS Quarterly, Issue #5, Winter 2014/15

Ali Fisher, Netwar in Cyberia: decoding the media mujahidin, paper 5, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, 2018,

[5] The role of ‘embedded academics’ in the transatlantic orthodoxy of Terrorism Studies, Jackson, RDW, ‘The Case for a Critical Terrorism Studies’ (2007) http://hdl.handle.net/2160/1945

Click to access APSA-2007-Paper-final2.pdf

[6] The claims of victory over jihadi groups by the covered in depth in:
https://www.eictp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FINAL_EICTP_Expert-Paper_Jihadist-Movement.pdf 

[7] And by the continued claim of their defeat. The claims of victory over jihadi groups by the covered in depth in:
https://www.eictp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FINAL_EICTP_Expert-Paper_Jihadist-Movement.pdf  

Jihadi Reactions to COVID-19

Published by EICTP, March 2022, with Rüdiger Lohlker.

Jihadi-Reactions-to-Covid19Download

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted life all over the planet and impacted nearly every aspect of human life. With national governments thrown into confusion as how to best react to the spread of the virus while keeping up its most central functions, Islamist terrorist militias have taken advantage of the situation.

Terrorist militias around the world (be it the Islamic State, Al Qaeda in East Africa or Al Qaeda Central Command) visibly capitalized on how the pandemic affected the combat readiness of Western security forces. The Islamic State (IS) thus reacted quite early to reports of an outbreak of a disease in China both with increased military and online communication activities.

Rüdiger Lohlker and Nico Prucha examine the communicational ecosystem of jihadists in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Salafi-Jihadi Nexus: An evidence based approach of the Caliphate Library

Published by EICTP, 2022, with Pavel  Ťupek.

EICTP_ISIS-Library_FINALDownload

Terrorist groups like Al Qaeda (AQ) or the Islamic State (IS) have been pro-active in using the internet as well as traditional media formats to maintain a persistent media presence with the intention to influence their target audiences. For that purpose, they project influence based on a coherent – and thus for its target audience – credible framework. The coherent interpretation of the legacy of classical Islamic scholarship (theology, jurisprudence, and science of the Qur’an and hadith) draws on various contemporary Islamic scholars and laymen. Yet its most prominent feature is that it is embedded in medieval Salafi theology, by means of which contemporary political agenda is legitimized.

AQ has been a pioneer both in terms of bringing the fight into the field and mediatizing the fight as well as coherently explaining why to fight – and what for – to a global audience since the 1980s. AQ’s boots on the ground in Afghanistan in the 1980s meant not only an organized force to combat the occupying Red Army but also to establish – and maintain – a coherent and persistent media output.

Based on the evidence of materials collected within jihadi online networks, the Caliphate Library is a good sample of what type of writings matter to such Sunni extremist movements. The Caliphate Library is a text-only curated dataset that was set up by IS and shared within Telegram and is therefore the expression of the most modern means of communication.

The Library was curated for initiated sympathizers and an Arabic speaking audience who are aware of religious elements and who – not necessarily are first and foremost interested in IS-writings. Conveying a large dataset of theological writings electronically with the possibility of re-establishing the mechanisms to re-share this dataset in case of deletion or network disruption, is what lies at the heart of „Cyberia.“

By taking a closer look at the ISIS-Library, Ali Fisher, Nico Prucha and Pavel Ťupek meticulously examine how theological writings are appropriated and presented in modern communication networks of Islamist terrorist groups.