How has Al-Qaeda’s digital media “recovered” over the past two decades?
Welcome to this week’s episode of Al Marsad, covering the period from September 16 to 22, 2024. The most prominent headlines are:
- Al-Qaeda fighters in Mali temporarily take control of the international airport; what if the scene is repeated in nearby countries?
- How has Al-Qaeda’s digital media “recovered” over the past two decades? Researcher Mustafa Ayyad Calls for changing combat methods
Guest of the week, Dr. Gina Vail Gina Vale Lecturer at the University of Southampton in the UK. Dr Gina specialises in criminology and terrorism with a focus on women and youth. She has recently published a book The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State “The Forgotten Women of the Islamic State.”
The explosion of the “Peugeot”
Pager explosion in elements Hezbollah In Lebanon on September 17 and 18, it drew remarkable responses from jihadists from Al-Qaeda to ISIS to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its opponents.
Almost every opponent of Hezbollah was “happy” about this wave of explosions. The event was not controversial, or at least did not create as much controversy as the position on Hamas due to its Iranian relationship. In this event, the jihadists make a clear distinction between Iran, the enemy that sponsors Hezbollah, and Iran, the ally that supports Hamas. The decisive element in this distinction was the behavior of Iran and Hezbollah in Syria in particular.
Thus, jihadists of all stripes considered what happened to the party to be deserved given its role in killing Syrians since 2011. They published jokes and commented on videos transmitted from Lebanon with the word “entertainment.”
Others considered that the bombings revealed the “truth” of the party in that it “triumphed” for its members with a response they saw as more severe than its response to the bombing of the people of Gaza.
Few considered the “schadenfreude” inappropriate, especially since children were killed in these explosions.
In response to this, the Al-Nazi’at Foundation, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda’s media, published a pamphlet entitled “Evidence of the Permissibility of Rejoicing over the Destruction of the Iranian Party.”
From London, Hani Al-Sabai wrote: “Yes, it is permissible to show schadenfreude, joy, and happiness over the misfortunes of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran, and its Shiite offspring in Yemen and Iraq; as a punishment in accordance with their crimes against the Sunnis in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.”
When Al-Sabai was asked about the children, he said: “The schadenfreude here is limited to the leaders of the Lat Party… As for their children, there is an obvious indication that they are not the ones being schadenfreude.”
Supporters and opponents of HTS alike were “happy” at what happened. Journalist Ahmed Zeidan wrote on Telegram: “Anyone who asks us to be silent and not to gloat… should know that today in Taftanaz we are burying a martyred nurse, a martyred boy, in addition to 8 wounded civilians, including children, in a barbaric and savage bombing last night,” carried out by Hezbollah or Iran.
Abu Mahmoud Al-Falastini also wrote: “I could not understand who was disturbed by the joy of oppressed peoples when a calamity befell their archenemy? … Perhaps their disturbing was due to defending their choices and escaping the complex of alliance with a criminal.”
And so did the organization’s opponents. Under hashtags like “#We_Will_Not_Forget,” they posted photos of candy distribution and photos of massacres against Syrians in which Hezbollah participated.
But it seems that some tried to portray the regime opponents’ enthusiasm for the bombings as joy for Israel, and a photo was circulated showing the revolution’s flag and the Israeli flag in a row. The opposition “From Idlib” page commented on Telegram: “Our joy at the strikes against the Shiites… in Lebanon does not mean at all that we support the Zionist entity. (Hashtag) #Iranian_and_Zionist_Enemy.”
Nusra Front storms Bamako airport
On September 17, fighters from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims in West Africa launched a coordinated attack on several targets in the Malian capital, Bamako, most notably the international airport.
According to the newspaper French Le MondeThe attack began at dawn in the village of Flagi, a two-hour drive south of Bamako. The village is home to a gendarmerie training school and the headquarters of elite rapid intervention units.
In the afternoon, the attack began at Modibo Keita International Airport in Bamako. According to the newspaper, the attack on the gendarmerie headquarters was intended to paralyze them so that they would not deter the attack on the airport, which includes a commercial wing and an air base run by the Malian Air Force and a unit of Russian Wagner mercenaries. By evening, the army had regained control of the airport after the attackers had killed more than 70 people.
Al Zallaqah Foundation The Nusra Front published photos and videos documenting the attack. Among the audio recordings it published was an audio message from one of the “infiltrators” named Abu Hudhayfah al-Bambari, in which he claimed responsibility for the attack and warned against suppressing the “Fulani people” in particular, an ethnic group spread across Africa, especially the Sahel.
Finally, the Fulani have been subjected to campaigns of repression and torture by the military government in Bamako, accusing them of terrorism. Al-Zallaqa also broadcast a speech by Amadou Koufa, a Fulani who leads the Macina Brigades, a component of the Nusra group.
Al-Qaeda supporters in one of their Telegram groups rejoiced at the attack. One said of the planes disabled by Nusra’s insurgents: “These planes that used to rain lava on our people are now burning scrap.” Another commented: “These attacks used to come only from al-Shabaab (in Somalia), now they come from Nusra.”
Another commented: “I wish they would steal the planes and fly them into America. Oh God, repeat the September 11th invasion.” Hence the experts’ warning. The specialized researcher Pavel and Czech On the X platform, he described the attack as “the most effective Al Qaeda attack in years.” He warned: “Now imagine if they did the same thing in the capital of Burkina Faso.”
Digital base fingerprint
The 23rd anniversary of the September 11 attacks is an opportunity to examine al-Qaeda’s official media, especially its central media, versus ISIS’s central media. It goes without saying that ISIS’s digital media is much more “ambitious” than al-Qaeda’s.
But what has been striking over the past two decades, since the September attacks, is the ability of al-Qaeda’s media to survive and “rebuild itself” to a worrying degree.
Specialist researcher Mustafa Ayad Written on the site Institute for Strategic Dialogue The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) How Al Qaeda’s media has been able to bypass the waves of blocking and “in fact proliferate” on the Internet over the past twenty years, taking advantage of the concerned authorities’ preoccupation with confronting ISIS’s digital media.
Ayyad cites Europol’s recent campaign against ISIS platforms, individual accounts, and groups, to the point that they almost disappeared from the “dark web.” However, Al Qaeda’s media was not affected at all by this campaign. This is no exception.
Ayyad says that although “the glory days of al-Qaeda Online are over,” when the group operated 5,600 websites; every year, 900 new websites, blogs, and forums appear; the ability of al-Qaeda’s digital media to recover is worrying, and calls for new ways to combat it.
Hatch and the “Secretary-General” Dilemma
The Sham al-Karama and Shama al-Sham accounts, which oppose Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, have transmitted information that may lead to a change in the security structure of the organization, as we saw in the case of the agents.
The changes concern individuals who were “pillars” of Abu Ahmed Hudud, the organization’s general security chief “before the agents’ case.” The Sham Al-Karama account says that the official spokesman for the General Security Service, Hakim Al-Deiri, known as Diaa Al-Omar, resigned “due to problems between him and Hudud.”
Abu al-Nour al-Dairi, the ISIS file official, was also transferred from the security apparatus to the military wing. Baraa al-Amini was also “marginalized” and his “rank was broken.”
ISIS Iraq and the security breach
The account of the channel to expose the worshippers of al-Baghdadi and al-Hashemi continues to shed light on the security breach witnessed by the State of Iraq, which resulted in the killing of 14 leaders at once in an operation by the US Central Command and Iraqi forces at the end of last August.
Among those killed were the deputy governor of Iraq, Ahmed al-Ithawi, and Abu Ali al-Tunisi, for whom the US has offered a $5 million reward for information. Also among those killed was the general officer of Anbar province, Abu Mahmoud al-Issawi.
This week, the Fadhd Channel account posted a photo of Al-Issawi, saying he was known for his “suspicious relationship with agents, intelligence officers, and grain traders in the state, specifically in the Rutba-Haditha-Ramadi triangle.”
From here, the account publishes a letter addressed to the governor of the state of Iraq and the emir of the Rafidain office, “Abu Abdul Rahman (Abdul Qadir),” in which the writer complains about the “negligence” of the state’s security personnel, headed by Al-Issawi. The account comments that the letter proves “with conclusive evidence that Abu Mahmoud Al-Issawi decided not to warn the state’s soldiers and their emirs of the danger of spies.”
ISIS Azerbaijan
The latest issue of Al-Naba newspaper, issued by the Central Media Office of ISIS, featured a front-page headline about the organization’s presence in Azerbaijan.
The issue published on Thursday, September 19, included a “special” article on clashes between ISIS elements and government forces in the forests of northern Azerbaijan. Researcher Aaron Zelin He pointed out that this is not the first time we have seen ISIS images from that country; explaining that in November 2019, the organization published images of the “pledge of allegiance” of its members to the new “caliph” after the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Taliban migration
Transfer account AAfghanistan International On the X platform, the Taliban government’s passport office issued 30,000 passports in just two days, while the International Organization for Migration reported that 72,000 Afghans left the country in one week. Since 2020, when the Taliban took power, about eight million people have left Afghanistan.
