July 26, 2021 • 30 mins
“There is actually still a lot of pro ISIS material on Instagram” – Anne Craanen, Tech against Terrorism.
The power of the internet is open to everyone – terrorists included. This time our expert panel – including Anne Craanen and Omar Mohammed who, as the ‘Mosul Eye’, risked his life using social media to tell the world about the brutal occupation of Mosul - lift the lid on Daesh’s skilful use of the web and social media. We also hear from journalist Marc Marginedas, held hostage by the infamous “Beatles” as yet another part of the group’s deadly propaganda machine.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Adnan Sawah (00:00):
Before we begin, this is a podcast about terrorism, which
means we do talk about acts of terror and extreme
violence, sometimes in quite a lot of detail, so you
might find some of the following material upsetting. Hello, I'm
Adnan Sawah. This is Taking Apart Terror. If you happen
(00:22):
to have been walking down a particular Barcelona street in
December 2013, you might have wondered what this crowd was
all about?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
(foreign language) .
Adnan Sawah (00:34):
And if you'd stopped and maybe listened to the speakers,
or if you didn't understand Spanish, had a look at
the banners being held by his friends and family, you
would've discovered that it was a rally to call for the
safe return of journalist, Marc Marginedas, who was kidnapped by
Daish in Syria that September.
Marc Marginedas (00:52):
Being kidnapped, it prevents the family from actually mourning. If you're killed,
I mean, you mourn and you turn the page and
that's it. But when you're kidnapped, there is no rest.
Adnan Sawah (01:03):
The kidnapping, and worse, of Western hostages was just one
part of the Daish media campaign, one way in which
they made sure that the world was taking notice of
them. And that's what we're talking about today. How does
this group communicate? What messages are they trying to send?
Or, as we've asked this time, do terrorists use apps?
(01:28):
I'm joined by three people who are extremely well placed
to give us some answers to these questions. Firstly, two
of our regular panelists, Dr. Shiraz Maher is Director of
the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's
College, London. Hi, Shiraz.
Shiraz Maher (01:43):
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Adnan Sawah (01:44):
Historian Omar Mohammed, who, as the Mosul Eye, kept the
world informed of what was really happening in his home
city during its occupation by Daish and who is still
working for its recovery. Welcome Omar.
Omar Mohammed (01:57):
Hello again, Adnan.
Adnan Sawah (01:58):
And our specialist guest this time is Anne Craanen from
Tech Against Terrorism, who is also the policy leader on terrorismanalytics.
org, which archives propaganda, as well as alerting social media
outlets to terrorist content on their site. Anne, thank you
for joining us.
Anne Craanen (02:15):
Hi, Adnan. Thanks very much for having me on.
Adnan Sawah (02:17):
Omar, I'm going to start with you because I cannot
imagine that there is anyone who's got more of an
insight into the way Daish uses media, especially social media,
because that's how you took them on. Can you tell
me what that was like?
Omar Mohammed (02:31):
The battleground was Facebook between Mosul Eye and Daish. You
would see when we would post something against Daish, one
post would get the same comment from 2000 users to make
it difficult for the people to read it because people
would be scared if they touch this post as they
see the comments of Daish supporters. And most of the names,
(02:55):
they were actually Western names. Most of them have no
profile photos. What they do is they have a text
with a link with a hashtag. The hashtag, in itself,
is one of the weapons that Daish used and they
just put it in the comments, thousands of comments in
less than a minute. I don't know where did they
(03:16):
get all of these people from. The way that Mosul
Eye managed this is by filtering the words. So we managed
to get keywords and then we filter these keywords so
when there's a comment from Daish supporters, it will be
hidden, it will not show up, and this way we
(03:37):
could manage the damage that they would make on the
post. There is a centralized channel of command in Daish,
especially when it comes to the media.
Adnan Sawah (03:46):
So, Anne, we've called this episode, Do Terrorists Use Apps?
And from what Omar is saying, and we probably knew
this, of course they do.
Anne Craanen (03:54):
I would say though, that terrorists' use of the Internet or
IS's of the Internet goes beyond just social media or apps.
It's actually the Internet as a whole that gets utilized.
So the platforms we all know
still being used. But what we have seen is as
these companies have taken action and really taken an ISIS
(04:14):
content offline to a great extent, migration has happened to
smaller tech companies, for example, content stores, more niche platforms
that might be less accessible. And because of these companies
being smaller, unfortunately the content is more likely to stay
online because content doesn't always get moderated.
Adnan Sawah (04:33):
And what a funnel for these people to send their
message to us. What is their brand? What is Daish's
personality? What are they trying to present to the world?
Anne Craanen (04:42):
In terms of the ISIS brand, I think the official
media outlets really, I think, want to convey that they
are a transnational organization, a global organization. I think that
has shifted since the peak of IS, the focus on
the different provinces of ISIS. And because the official media
outlets always reports on all of these provinces collectively, the
(05:06):
amount of propaganda or their output, it is still a
lot. And I think that is what makes it quite
frustrating when mainstream media is, " ISIS is defeated in Sub-
Saharan Africa," I would say that it's almost, well, beginning
or spiraling, really.
Adnan Sawah (05:20):
Shiraz, Anne is talking about brand Daish and this idea
that they want to tell the world that they are
everywhere. But what about some of their other messaging, things like
putting out these horrific videos of hostages being beheaded. What are
they trying to say with those?
Shiraz Maher (05:35):
I think the strategy of publicizing the ultra violence, on
the one hand, it was to intimidate their opponents. And
you could see that with the remarkable speed by which Daish
was able to take over Mosul. People didn't want to
be captured by this organization because everyone knew what fate
would await you. And you could see that in the
(05:57):
extremely dramatic moment when Daish captured the Jordanian pilot, Muath Kasaesbah,
who crash landed into their territory, and Daish put him in
a cage and then burnt him alive. And I know
Omar is here with us and participating in this podcast,
but that makes the activism that individuals like him all
(06:21):
the more remarkable and brave. More broadly, ISIS was trying
to create new history. They say, " Look, the old order
is being overturned," and therefore it's sought a strategy, in
my opinion, of deliberate provocation, " We're going to attack a
symbol of your civilization. Christmas markets in Germany. We're going
(06:41):
to attack churches." So it's designed to create maximum offense
to drive the civilizational wedge between proof and falsehood.
Adnan Sawah (06:51):
Provocation and causing maximum offense. There are few things more
provocative than stealing and torturing a human being. So kidnapping
and publicly threatening, and sometimes killing hostages, became a well
used weapon in the Daish armory. Marc Marginedas was a
veteran war correspondent working for the Spanish publication, El Periódico,
(07:14):
when he was snatched in Hama in Western Syria in
September 2013. He was initially held in a bombed out
hospital in Aleppo in solitary confinement. Amongst the other things
going through his mind at that time, what did he
think his captors thought about him?
Marc Marginedas (07:32):
They hated me deeply. I try to tell them, " Listen,
I don't care about who you are. I don't care
about the militias. I don't care about who is fighting
to win this war. Basically, what I came here for is
to tell my readers on the outside world the suffering
of civilians." They didn't listen to me, of course. They
were actually beating and torturing people and using electro shocks
(07:56):
just outside my room. There were two guards who would
enter my room and they did everything they had to
inspire fear. For instance, I mean, they wouldn't touch me.
They would take me blindfolded to the restroom, holding a
bar that I knew they were using when they were
beating prisoners in the corridor. So it's very scary. You're
(08:19):
touching instruments of torture and, basically, they're trying to tell you, "
Yes, you might end up like them." But remember, for instance,
in the cell, there was a calendar of somebody who
had been writing days. And all of a sudden after, I don't remember,
maybe 40 days, this calendar stopped. So I imagined, I
(08:41):
said to myself, " Oh, this guy has been released. So
if this guy has been released, I could be released,
as well." What my mind refused to accept is that
from time to time I could hear the shots from the outside. People were
being shot in that hospital. At that moment my captors were
actually deciding who I really was, if I was a spy
(09:03):
or if I was a journalist? Had they thought that I
was a spy, I would've ended like many other prisoners
in that prison, shot and buried somewhere. Basically, you keep
saying to yourself, " As long as I am alive, there
is hope." There was one moment when I thought that
(09:25):
all hope was lost. We were getting ready to be
transferred from Aleppo to Raqqa. We spent three days roaming
in the desert. It was very tense because they repeated
to us many times the prayer that a Muslim needs
to say before he dies. So we were being handcuffed
(09:48):
in pairs, and I remember I was being handcuffed to
a French hostage, and I said to that French hostage, "[foreign language 00
54]. This is going to be very difficult. We're not going to make it."
Adnan Sawah (10:00):
Anne, you've been working on websites that are actually owned
by terrorist organizations. Is that right?
Anne Craanen (10:11):
Yeah, it is. And that makes it even more difficult
because usually when we, as an organization, reach out to
tech companies and say, " Hey, we found terrorist content on
your platforms," then usually we get the response saying, " We'll
take it down." But with these websites, evidently we're not going to
ask an ISIS admin to be, " Hey, can you take
that down?" So it really complicates things. And it's these pro-
(10:32):
ISIS or supporter generated websites that really do have loads
of archives of ISIS content. These websites get promoted in
other channels, as well. So we call this co- citation
where, basically, it pops up on different tech platforms and,
again, it draws attention to these websites. And at the
moment at Tech Against Terrorism, we're leading an initiative to
(10:52):
come up with a strategy on how to deal with
this, because we're going to have to talk to infrastructure
providers and also get governments to acknowledge this and realize
the issue is not just tech companies, but it's also
terrorists are creative and ISIS is very much leading this field.
Omar Mohammed (11:08):
That's the problem of the Daish media, Adnan, is not that just
they are creative, it's that can we control the technology
that is enabling Daish or not? I remember that I analyzed
the attacks on the WordPress website, for example. You would
see that the map of the unusual access to the
(11:30):
site, it's almost from everywhere. Of course, they are using
VPNs, they are using all of the available technology. If
we cannot control it, Daish will always find an opportunity.
And, by the way, I am also following their propaganda
on websites. It's not even a Dark Web. It's the
normal websites, but you need to know how to get
(11:52):
access to it and there is a full website of Daish
with full contents of terrorism.
Adnan Sawah (11:58):
Anne?
Anne Craanen (11:59):
I agree with Omar. It lives on the normal web.
ISIS content is not just on the Dark Web. They
are so good adapting to moderation and we've seen that
they use, what we think, mirror platforms, which is, basically,
a platform that where, if you upload a video, it
will generate a link on 30 different content stores. So
you then have 30 URLs that 30 tech companies need
(12:22):
to deal with if you want that video to be
taken offline altogether. What is interesting to see is that
content moderation avoidance technique that IS employs is sanitizing their
content. So, for example, there's a lot of Salus' content on Instagram
that appears not to be Salafi Jihadi, but then when
you look at the network of people behind that, there
is actually still a lot of pro- IS material on
(12:44):
Instagram. Actually this morning, we found a particular piece of
content, which is a call for designers, developers, translators, editors,
media creators, and also, importantly, people with OpSec experience. So
this would be operational security. So to make sure that
if their propaganda does get out, that they make sure
that it lives on as long as they can. So
(13:05):
they give tips on how to avoid content moderation, tips
on how to stay private. And this is the complexity
that we're dealing with.
Adnan Sawah (13:14):
Sure. As we've talked a bit about what Daish was
trying to say to you, it's enemies. But this wasn't
all about intimidation was it? Who else were they talking to?
Shiraz Maher (13:22):
A lot of their messaging was aimed at other Muslims
telling them, " Come and be part of this new (foreign language)
. Come and be part of this new state." And
so there was a quite deliberate attempt to disseminate these
extremely glossy, well produced, almost filmic, pieces of propaganda. These
(13:42):
videos featured children, these videos featured soft focus images of
kids playing on the banks of the Euphrates and it
was a world away from the blood and gore that
we sometimes associate with this. I'm thinking already of a
particularly dramatic piece of propaganda that the group disseminated called
Eid Greetings from the Land of the Khilafah. This is designed
(14:04):
to resonate emotionally with Muslims. But then once the cameraman
leaves the mosque, he's meeting different foreign fighters who are
there in Raqqa telling you about how incredible it is
to experience Eid in the caliphate. So you have that
on the one level and this is the officially produced and sanctioned
propaganda. But the other side was also supremely important, which
(14:25):
is from 2013 onwards, you have this flood of foreign
fighters from the West, traveling to Syria and Iraq, who
are all maintaining Twitter accounts, Instagram accounts, and so on.
And what that means is that if I were a
young man in his early 20s from Yorkshire, who is
(14:46):
watching what's happening at that time in the Middle East,
and I'm thinking, " Gosh, ISIS seems exciting," I could find
another 20 something from Yorkshire who's made the journey and
speak peer to peer. We tend to think of these
guys who join ideological movements as being highly ideological actors
in and of themselves. They're not. They're young boys and girls
(15:08):
who were asking their fellow peers questions like, " Mate, how
did you break it to your mom once you got
to Syria? What did you say to your uncle? Can
you get hair gel out there? Should I bring lots
of gel with me?" The point is, by being able
to maintain a social media presence, particularly on mainstream platforms,
(15:28):
what the fighters who had already gone were able to
do was to lower the barriers to participation in incredibly
high risk activism. You were normalizing the extraordinary. And that
was an incredibly powerful thing in motivating others to go
out there.
Adnan Sawah (15:45):
This message, this normalization of the extraordinary, seems to have
been pretty effective. It enticed thousands of people from around
the world to Syria and Iraq to join the cause.
When his captors delivered Marc Marginedas to a house by
the Euphrates in Raqqa, the good news was that he
was no longer alone. He was with other Western hostages,
(16:07):
including aid worker, David Haines; US journalist, James Foley, and
the photographer, John Cantlie. But the bad news was they
had other housemates
this Daish message. It was John Cantlie who christened them,
The Beatles. The leader of the group became known as
Jihadi John, one of Daish's most brutal executioners. And for
(16:31):
Marc, living with The Beatles, was almost unbearable.
Marc Marginedas (16:38):
They kept coming on a daily basis, torturing us physically
and psychologically. I'm meaning that, for instance, they would punish
a hostage, I mean, for nothing. People would be forced
to stand up the entire night handcuffed. They would put
us on camera so as long as there was electricity, they
could surveil our movements. We were forced to sleep handcuffed
(17:02):
to one of (inaudible) in captivity. They tried to
create problems amongst us. And, for instance, I remember one
day they came, they chose a hostage, they brought the
leaflets of the dinner and they told him, " You choose
four of your colleagues. They will be allowed to eat
(17:22):
with you and the rest will watch." And we were starving.
Adnan Sawah (17:26):
Eventually though, it seemed like the situation had shifted.
Marc Marginedas (17:29):
I remember Jihadi John entering the room and saying, " Marcus,
Marcus, are you ready to go?" It crossed my mind
that I would be the first one to be shot but, at
the same time, Jihadi John asked everybody to write a
letter that I would just bring out to the outside world.
If I was going to be shot why asking the
rest of the crowd a letter? They asked me to go to
(17:50):
the shower. They cut my beard because my beard was
very long. And when I was put together in the
car, I think Jihadi John was in my right side,
even though it was very clear that I was going to be released, he wanted
to inspire fear. So he put a gun in my
head. I think it was, as John Cantlie pointed out
(18:13):
in a very intelligent way, he said to me, " Learning
Islam with these people is like learning Christianity with Ku Klux
Klan." But you had to (inaudible) . They were crazy.
They were psychopaths who got pleasure out of other people's
suffering. The Islamic State was, basically, Nazism under the name
(18:34):
of Allah and the Holy Qur'an.
Adnan Sawah (18:35):
" Learning about Islam with these people is like learning
Christianity with the Ku Klux Klan." Jihadi John beheaded David
Haines and James Foley on camera and sent those videos
around the world. John Cantlie wasn't killed then, but no
one knows what has happened to him. He has not
been seen since 2016. Anne, what do we do about
(19:04):
this, especially when it comes to using social media, which
everybody's got, but it's really hard to regulate it?
Anne Craanen (19:10):
That is what makes this so difficult because the Internet works for
all of us and it also works for terrorist organizations.
So how do we then counter terrorist use of the Internet
whilst not disrupting the Internet for everyone else, which is
a really difficult problem that we're trying to work on?
Obviously, it's such a complex problem that I think you
need multiple solutions. And I think, on the one hand,
we need some make sure that we build resilience against
(19:34):
terrorist propaganda, not just IS propaganda. I think also during
COVID 19, we've seen increasingly younger children even being attracted
to propaganda. And that is just a really dangerous trend.
So I think digital literacy campaigns are one potential solution.
I think counter narratives are another. There is actually a
(19:55):
very good counter narrative campaign on Instagram that, for example,
then shows videos of people who've joined IS, who were
disappointed with joining Is, and then try and dissuade other people
from joining. And one initiative by Tech Against Terrorism is
also to say the extreme content, so official content by
designated organizations such as Daish, it needs to be taken
(20:16):
offline. And what we do is that through the terrorist
content analytics platform, we alert tech companies with terrorist content
when we find it on their platforms. The majority of
tech companies, I think, there's a willingness to act.
Adnan Sawah (20:28):
Shiraz, from what Anne's been saying, Daish spend a lot
of time and energy on their communications. This is a
real priority for them, isn't it?
Shiraz Maher (20:36):
I'll give you one marker by which we can almost
identify just how important media dissemination has been to Daish.
If you recall, when the group was losing all of
its territory, it retreated and retreated to one final pocket,
which was Baghuz. Baghuz is in Syria and it was the last
(20:56):
territorial holding of Daish. It's completely besieged and a standoff takes
place for several days. And the situation inside Baghuz is
incredibly desperate. Food is obviously very scarce. They're also being
bombarded so there's lots of casualties. Just a deeply, deeply
desperate situation. Even at that point, the Daish prioritized the filming
(21:23):
of the life inside Baghuz and then to have smuggled
that footage out because there was no Internet reception. Even
in that hugely desperate moment of this last stand, " Get a
thumb drive out with this video content on it so
that it can be disseminated to our supporters and followers." It
was a message of defiance, a message of steadfast resolve, "
(21:44):
You may be beating us in the temple sense but,
look, God is with us, and the fact that we've
lost our empire, well, that's just the test from God
and we're going to stand firm and we'll be back."
Omar Mohammed (21:57):
Just to agree with Shiraz, it's during the battle of
Mosul. I mean, while Daish was being defeated on the
ground with heavy bombings, yet you still get, not only
just a normal drone footage. No, it's a well moderated,
well organized, well shot drone footage of their suicide bombers,
(22:19):
of their so- called battles inside Mosul. They were making
sure that these messages get out, get public. And it
tells us a lot about the way Daish sees itself and
the way Daish also generated this concept of, " We are
(22:40):
here to stay." Especially during the battle of Mosul, they
were planting seeds for something yet to come.
Adnan Sawah (22:51):
This is an organization that clearly understands the power of
controlling their own narrative. They stop at nothing to get
their message across, including using the lives and the horrific
deaths of hostages. But the pleas of the crowd gathered
on that Spanish street were eventually answered. In March 2014,
almost six months after being kidnapped. Marc Marginedas stepped onto
(23:14):
the tarmac of Barcelona Airport.
Marc Marginedas (23:17):
(foreign language) .
Adnan Sawah (23:22):
Jihadi John, whose real name was Mohammed Emwazi, was killed
by a US drone in 2015. Marc says that right
up to the end of their bizarre house share, John
tried to persuade him to convert to Islam. He didn't,
although he remains deeply altered by his experience in other
ways. One thing though, hasn't been affected.
Marc Marginedas (23:48):
It hasn't changed my vision about Islam. I have so
many Muslim friends and, in general terms, I think my
Muslim friends are far less selfish with much more sense
of community than my European friends. I pray on a daily
basis. I still pray in Arabic. I still pray my Christian
(24:11):
prayers. It helps me to deal with my life and
to understand that there is also a purpose in everything.
Before being captured our family relations were not bad, but
there were pretty nonexistent. We would only gather for Christmas
and basic holidays and that was it. And I remember I said
(24:32):
to myself ... My sister, I'm sure that she was going to
be so horrified and everything would be dealt with by
my newspaper and my boss. And I actually was totally
wrong. Actually, my sister had a very, very strong role
in my release. One of the reasons of this captivity is
(24:55):
that the relationship with my family has become very good.
Adnan Sawah (25:01):
Marc has made a documentary about his kidnapping going back
to Raqqa for the first time since his release. Was
it traumatic seeing that place again?
Marc Marginedas (25:09):
Sorry if I disappoint you, but I wasn't shocked. Places are not
good or bad. It's people who make them good or
bad. I mean, we are war journalists and we do
deal with death on a daily basis. I mean, of
course, the kidnapping has affected me, but I wouldn't say
it has traumatized me to the point of looking for
(25:32):
another job. I had many demands of people offering a
lot of money, proposing a film or things like this.
I always said, " No. I'm a journalist. I'm doing this
because it's a global coalition." I feel there's a purpose
about that. But you stop being a journalist and you become the
story, and I don't want that.
Adnan Sawah (25:57):
So, Anne, they do these terrible things. They flood the
Internet with their messaging. Is it all really about just frightening
people? And, more importantly, are they winning this propaganda war?
Anne Craanen (26:07):
Excellent question. There is no agreed upon definition of terrorism,
but I think they all mention fear, and I think
fear mongering is essential to Daish. I think though, it
sometimes depends, I think, on the local context because I
would say that groups in Sub- Saharan Africa that are
actually like claiming territory, that is a goal in itself,
as well. So I think sometimes there's a focus on saying, "
(26:28):
Is it just about propaganda? Is it just about fear mongering
or do they have also political aims?" And I would definitely say that
it is both. Are they winning? I think, no, even
though an enormous amount of foreign fighters joined IS, the
majority of people did not. And I think also if
we look at the amount of content that is what
(26:49):
we consider normal content on the Internet, that is also
more than terrorist content.
Adnan Sawah (26:55):
Daish did bring this aspect of warfare. And where they
are putting their messages out, people like you, Omar, are
putting your messages out. So this digital fight is really
interesting in terms of how to understand this organization. So
the final question is what is the message that they
want to get out now?
Omar Mohammed (27:12):
They are focusing on two things
war and the war has many battles. They lost one.
They say, " We will win the other." They are trying
to protect their image among their supporters, who they were
promised by Daish itself that, " We are undefeatable." And the
(27:33):
second is, when they were focusing on recording videos in
high quality during such battles, intense battles, they are now
using it. They are saying, " Look what the West did
to you. The West has destroyed you. Daish brought peace and
the West brought destruction." That's the narrative that they are
trying to push right now.
Adnan Sawah (27:54):
Shiraz, do you agree with that? Are Daish trying to
just elongate their existence? What's the message that they're sending
out now.
Shiraz Maher (28:02):
It's existence hasn't ceased. It continues to exist in some
form. It does remain an insurgency capable of pulling off
bloody attacks. The movement has always said that, " Media is
half of Jihad." And so whilst the movement exists in
any shape or form, you will continue to see some
degree of propaganda presence and digital presence just as they
(28:27):
maintain their presence in that media space to try and
whitewash some of their crimes. It will need people like
Omar and others to keep reminding people of the grotesque
crimes against humanity that this organization perpetrated.
Omar Mohammed (28:43):
So also, the future battle against Daish, not the military
one, the intellectual battle, is much more difficult than the
one that took place in 2016/ 2017. The question is, are
we prepared intellectually? In our understanding, they know how to
(29:04):
manipulate the narratives. We will never be able to control
the technology, but we can, at least, control how the
narrative is being produced. And that comes from getting more
voices from cities like Raqqa. Mosul, other cities, were completely
destroyed by terrorism to make them more visible, to put
(29:27):
the narrative in the perspective of the people who suffered.
I am one of them and I can easily look
into the eyes of Daish and tell them what they did.
Adnan Sawah (29:41):
I'd like to thank Anne Craane, Shiraz Maher, Omar Mohammed
and Marc Marginedas for all their extraordinary insights into the way
terror talks and the kinds of things it tries to
say. Marc's documentary, Return to Raqqa, comes out this year.
That's it for this edition of Taking Apart Terror. Find
us wherever you get your podcasts and follow or subscribe
(30:04):
so you get every episode, including the next one, when
we look at the role of women in extremism and
we ask, " Does terrorism have agenda?" I'm Adnan Sawah. Until
the next time. Goodbye.
Before we begin, this is a podcast about terrorism, which
means we do talk about acts of terror and extreme
violence, sometimes in quite a lot of detail, so you
might find some of the following material upsetting. Hello, I'm
Adnan Sawah. This is Taking Apart Terror. If you happen
(00:22):
to have been walking down a particular Barcelona street in
December 2013, you might have wondered what this crowd was
all about?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
(foreign language) .
Adnan Sawah (00:34):
And if you'd stopped and maybe listened to the speakers,
or if you didn't understand Spanish, had a look at
the banners being held by his friends and family, you
would've discovered that it was a rally to call for the
safe return of journalist, Marc Marginedas, who was kidnapped by
Daish in Syria that September.
Marc Marginedas (00:52):
Being kidnapped, it prevents the family from actually mourning. If you're killed,
I mean, you mourn and you turn the page and
that's it. But when you're kidnapped, there is no rest.
Adnan Sawah (01:03):
The kidnapping, and worse, of Western hostages was just one
part of the Daish media campaign, one way in which
they made sure that the world was taking notice of
them. And that's what we're talking about today. How does
this group communicate? What messages are they trying to send?
Or, as we've asked this time, do terrorists use apps?
(01:28):
I'm joined by three people who are extremely well placed
to give us some answers to these questions. Firstly, two
of our regular panelists, Dr. Shiraz Maher is Director of
the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's
College, London. Hi, Shiraz.
Shiraz Maher (01:43):
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Adnan Sawah (01:44):
Historian Omar Mohammed, who, as the Mosul Eye, kept the
world informed of what was really happening in his home
city during its occupation by Daish and who is still
working for its recovery. Welcome Omar.
Omar Mohammed (01:57):
Hello again, Adnan.
Adnan Sawah (01:58):
And our specialist guest this time is Anne Craanen from
Tech Against Terrorism, who is also the policy leader on terrorismanalytics.
org, which archives propaganda, as well as alerting social media
outlets to terrorist content on their site. Anne, thank you
for joining us.
Anne Craanen (02:15):
Hi, Adnan. Thanks very much for having me on.
Adnan Sawah (02:17):
Omar, I'm going to start with you because I cannot
imagine that there is anyone who's got more of an
insight into the way Daish uses media, especially social media,
because that's how you took them on. Can you tell
me what that was like?
Omar Mohammed (02:31):
The battleground was Facebook between Mosul Eye and Daish. You
would see when we would post something against Daish, one
post would get the same comment from 2000 users to make
it difficult for the people to read it because people
would be scared if they touch this post as they
see the comments of Daish supporters. And most of the names,
(02:55):
they were actually Western names. Most of them have no
profile photos. What they do is they have a text
with a link with a hashtag. The hashtag, in itself,
is one of the weapons that Daish used and they
just put it in the comments, thousands of comments in
less than a minute. I don't know where did they
(03:16):
get all of these people from. The way that Mosul
Eye managed this is by filtering the words. So we managed
to get keywords and then we filter these keywords so
when there's a comment from Daish supporters, it will be
hidden, it will not show up, and this way we
(03:37):
could manage the damage that they would make on the
post. There is a centralized channel of command in Daish,
especially when it comes to the media.
Adnan Sawah (03:46):
So, Anne, we've called this episode, Do Terrorists Use Apps?
And from what Omar is saying, and we probably knew
this, of course they do.
Anne Craanen (03:54):
I would say though, that terrorists' use of the Internet or
IS's of the Internet goes beyond just social media or apps.
It's actually the Internet as a whole that gets utilized.
So the platforms we all know
still being used. But what we have seen is as
these companies have taken action and really taken an ISIS
(04:14):
content offline to a great extent, migration has happened to
smaller tech companies, for example, content stores, more niche platforms
that might be less accessible. And because of these companies
being smaller, unfortunately the content is more likely to stay
online because content doesn't always get moderated.
Adnan Sawah (04:33):
And what a funnel for these people to send their
message to us. What is their brand? What is Daish's
personality? What are they trying to present to the world?
Anne Craanen (04:42):
In terms of the ISIS brand, I think the official
media outlets really, I think, want to convey that they
are a transnational organization, a global organization. I think that
has shifted since the peak of IS, the focus on
the different provinces of ISIS. And because the official media
outlets always reports on all of these provinces collectively, the
(05:06):
amount of propaganda or their output, it is still a
lot. And I think that is what makes it quite
frustrating when mainstream media is, " ISIS is defeated in Sub-
Saharan Africa," I would say that it's almost, well, beginning
or spiraling, really.
Adnan Sawah (05:20):
Shiraz, Anne is talking about brand Daish and this idea
that they want to tell the world that they are
everywhere. But what about some of their other messaging, things like
putting out these horrific videos of hostages being beheaded. What are
they trying to say with those?
Shiraz Maher (05:35):
I think the strategy of publicizing the ultra violence, on
the one hand, it was to intimidate their opponents. And
you could see that with the remarkable speed by which Daish
was able to take over Mosul. People didn't want to
be captured by this organization because everyone knew what fate
would await you. And you could see that in the
(05:57):
extremely dramatic moment when Daish captured the Jordanian pilot, Muath Kasaesbah,
who crash landed into their territory, and Daish put him in
a cage and then burnt him alive. And I know
Omar is here with us and participating in this podcast,
but that makes the activism that individuals like him all
(06:21):
the more remarkable and brave. More broadly, ISIS was trying
to create new history. They say, " Look, the old order
is being overturned," and therefore it's sought a strategy, in
my opinion, of deliberate provocation, " We're going to attack a
symbol of your civilization. Christmas markets in Germany. We're going
(06:41):
to attack churches." So it's designed to create maximum offense
to drive the civilizational wedge between proof and falsehood.
Adnan Sawah (06:51):
Provocation and causing maximum offense. There are few things more
provocative than stealing and torturing a human being. So kidnapping
and publicly threatening, and sometimes killing hostages, became a well
used weapon in the Daish armory. Marc Marginedas was a
veteran war correspondent working for the Spanish publication, El Periódico,
(07:14):
when he was snatched in Hama in Western Syria in
September 2013. He was initially held in a bombed out
hospital in Aleppo in solitary confinement. Amongst the other things
going through his mind at that time, what did he
think his captors thought about him?
Marc Marginedas (07:32):
They hated me deeply. I try to tell them, " Listen,
I don't care about who you are. I don't care
about the militias. I don't care about who is fighting
to win this war. Basically, what I came here for is
to tell my readers on the outside world the suffering
of civilians." They didn't listen to me, of course. They
were actually beating and torturing people and using electro shocks
(07:56):
just outside my room. There were two guards who would
enter my room and they did everything they had to
inspire fear. For instance, I mean, they wouldn't touch me.
They would take me blindfolded to the restroom, holding a
bar that I knew they were using when they were
beating prisoners in the corridor. So it's very scary. You're
(08:19):
touching instruments of torture and, basically, they're trying to tell you, "
Yes, you might end up like them." But remember, for instance,
in the cell, there was a calendar of somebody who
had been writing days. And all of a sudden after, I don't remember,
maybe 40 days, this calendar stopped. So I imagined, I
(08:41):
said to myself, " Oh, this guy has been released. So
if this guy has been released, I could be released,
as well." What my mind refused to accept is that
from time to time I could hear the shots from the outside. People were
being shot in that hospital. At that moment my captors were
actually deciding who I really was, if I was a spy
(09:03):
or if I was a journalist? Had they thought that I
was a spy, I would've ended like many other prisoners
in that prison, shot and buried somewhere. Basically, you keep
saying to yourself, " As long as I am alive, there
is hope." There was one moment when I thought that
(09:25):
all hope was lost. We were getting ready to be
transferred from Aleppo to Raqqa. We spent three days roaming
in the desert. It was very tense because they repeated
to us many times the prayer that a Muslim needs
to say before he dies. So we were being handcuffed
(09:48):
in pairs, and I remember I was being handcuffed to
a French hostage, and I said to that French hostage, "[foreign language 00
54]. This is going to be very difficult. We're not going to make it."
Adnan Sawah (10:00):
Anne, you've been working on websites that are actually owned
by terrorist organizations. Is that right?
Anne Craanen (10:11):
Yeah, it is. And that makes it even more difficult
because usually when we, as an organization, reach out to
tech companies and say, " Hey, we found terrorist content on
your platforms," then usually we get the response saying, " We'll
take it down." But with these websites, evidently we're not going to
ask an ISIS admin to be, " Hey, can you take
that down?" So it really complicates things. And it's these pro-
(10:32):
ISIS or supporter generated websites that really do have loads
of archives of ISIS content. These websites get promoted in
other channels, as well. So we call this co- citation
where, basically, it pops up on different tech platforms and,
again, it draws attention to these websites. And at the
moment at Tech Against Terrorism, we're leading an initiative to
(10:52):
come up with a strategy on how to deal with
this, because we're going to have to talk to infrastructure
providers and also get governments to acknowledge this and realize
the issue is not just tech companies, but it's also
terrorists are creative and ISIS is very much leading this field.
Omar Mohammed (11:08):
That's the problem of the Daish media, Adnan, is not that just
they are creative, it's that can we control the technology
that is enabling Daish or not? I remember that I analyzed
the attacks on the WordPress website, for example. You would
see that the map of the unusual access to the
(11:30):
site, it's almost from everywhere. Of course, they are using
VPNs, they are using all of the available technology. If
we cannot control it, Daish will always find an opportunity.
And, by the way, I am also following their propaganda
on websites. It's not even a Dark Web. It's the
normal websites, but you need to know how to get
(11:52):
access to it and there is a full website of Daish
with full contents of terrorism.
Adnan Sawah (11:58):
Anne?
Anne Craanen (11:59):
I agree with Omar. It lives on the normal web.
ISIS content is not just on the Dark Web. They
are so good adapting to moderation and we've seen that
they use, what we think, mirror platforms, which is, basically,
a platform that where, if you upload a video, it
will generate a link on 30 different content stores. So
you then have 30 URLs that 30 tech companies need
(12:22):
to deal with if you want that video to be
taken offline altogether. What is interesting to see is that
content moderation avoidance technique that IS employs is sanitizing their
content. So, for example, there's a lot of Salus' content on Instagram
that appears not to be Salafi Jihadi, but then when
you look at the network of people behind that, there
is actually still a lot of pro- IS material on
(12:44):
Instagram. Actually this morning, we found a particular piece of
content, which is a call for designers, developers, translators, editors,
media creators, and also, importantly, people with OpSec experience. So
this would be operational security. So to make sure that
if their propaganda does get out, that they make sure
that it lives on as long as they can. So
(13:05):
they give tips on how to avoid content moderation, tips
on how to stay private. And this is the complexity
that we're dealing with.
Adnan Sawah (13:14):
Sure. As we've talked a bit about what Daish was
trying to say to you, it's enemies. But this wasn't
all about intimidation was it? Who else were they talking to?
Shiraz Maher (13:22):
A lot of their messaging was aimed at other Muslims
telling them, " Come and be part of this new (foreign language)
. Come and be part of this new state." And
so there was a quite deliberate attempt to disseminate these
extremely glossy, well produced, almost filmic, pieces of propaganda. These
(13:42):
videos featured children, these videos featured soft focus images of
kids playing on the banks of the Euphrates and it
was a world away from the blood and gore that
we sometimes associate with this. I'm thinking already of a
particularly dramatic piece of propaganda that the group disseminated called
Eid Greetings from the Land of the Khilafah. This is designed
(14:04):
to resonate emotionally with Muslims. But then once the cameraman
leaves the mosque, he's meeting different foreign fighters who are
there in Raqqa telling you about how incredible it is
to experience Eid in the caliphate. So you have that
on the one level and this is the officially produced and sanctioned
propaganda. But the other side was also supremely important, which
(14:25):
is from 2013 onwards, you have this flood of foreign
fighters from the West, traveling to Syria and Iraq, who
are all maintaining Twitter accounts, Instagram accounts, and so on.
And what that means is that if I were a
young man in his early 20s from Yorkshire, who is
(14:46):
watching what's happening at that time in the Middle East,
and I'm thinking, " Gosh, ISIS seems exciting," I could find
another 20 something from Yorkshire who's made the journey and
speak peer to peer. We tend to think of these
guys who join ideological movements as being highly ideological actors
in and of themselves. They're not. They're young boys and girls
(15:08):
who were asking their fellow peers questions like, " Mate, how
did you break it to your mom once you got
to Syria? What did you say to your uncle? Can
you get hair gel out there? Should I bring lots
of gel with me?" The point is, by being able
to maintain a social media presence, particularly on mainstream platforms,
(15:28):
what the fighters who had already gone were able to
do was to lower the barriers to participation in incredibly
high risk activism. You were normalizing the extraordinary. And that
was an incredibly powerful thing in motivating others to go
out there.
Adnan Sawah (15:45):
This message, this normalization of the extraordinary, seems to have
been pretty effective. It enticed thousands of people from around
the world to Syria and Iraq to join the cause.
When his captors delivered Marc Marginedas to a house by
the Euphrates in Raqqa, the good news was that he
was no longer alone. He was with other Western hostages,
(16:07):
including aid worker, David Haines; US journalist, James Foley, and
the photographer, John Cantlie. But the bad news was they
had other housemates
this Daish message. It was John Cantlie who christened them,
The Beatles. The leader of the group became known as
Jihadi John, one of Daish's most brutal executioners. And for
(16:31):
Marc, living with The Beatles, was almost unbearable.
Marc Marginedas (16:38):
They kept coming on a daily basis, torturing us physically
and psychologically. I'm meaning that, for instance, they would punish
a hostage, I mean, for nothing. People would be forced
to stand up the entire night handcuffed. They would put
us on camera so as long as there was electricity, they
could surveil our movements. We were forced to sleep handcuffed
(17:02):
to one of (inaudible) in captivity. They tried to
create problems amongst us. And, for instance, I remember one
day they came, they chose a hostage, they brought the
leaflets of the dinner and they told him, " You choose
four of your colleagues. They will be allowed to eat
(17:22):
with you and the rest will watch." And we were starving.
Adnan Sawah (17:26):
Eventually though, it seemed like the situation had shifted.
Marc Marginedas (17:29):
I remember Jihadi John entering the room and saying, " Marcus,
Marcus, are you ready to go?" It crossed my mind
that I would be the first one to be shot but, at
the same time, Jihadi John asked everybody to write a
letter that I would just bring out to the outside world.
If I was going to be shot why asking the
rest of the crowd a letter? They asked me to go to
(17:50):
the shower. They cut my beard because my beard was
very long. And when I was put together in the
car, I think Jihadi John was in my right side,
even though it was very clear that I was going to be released, he wanted
to inspire fear. So he put a gun in my
head. I think it was, as John Cantlie pointed out
(18:13):
in a very intelligent way, he said to me, " Learning
Islam with these people is like learning Christianity with Ku Klux
Klan." But you had to (inaudible) . They were crazy.
They were psychopaths who got pleasure out of other people's
suffering. The Islamic State was, basically, Nazism under the name
(18:34):
of Allah and the Holy Qur'an.
Adnan Sawah (18:35):
" Learning about Islam with these people is like learning
Christianity with the Ku Klux Klan." Jihadi John beheaded David
Haines and James Foley on camera and sent those videos
around the world. John Cantlie wasn't killed then, but no
one knows what has happened to him. He has not
been seen since 2016. Anne, what do we do about
(19:04):
this, especially when it comes to using social media, which
everybody's got, but it's really hard to regulate it?
Anne Craanen (19:10):
That is what makes this so difficult because the Internet works for
all of us and it also works for terrorist organizations.
So how do we then counter terrorist use of the Internet
whilst not disrupting the Internet for everyone else, which is
a really difficult problem that we're trying to work on?
Obviously, it's such a complex problem that I think you
need multiple solutions. And I think, on the one hand,
we need some make sure that we build resilience against
(19:34):
terrorist propaganda, not just IS propaganda. I think also during
COVID 19, we've seen increasingly younger children even being attracted
to propaganda. And that is just a really dangerous trend.
So I think digital literacy campaigns are one potential solution.
I think counter narratives are another. There is actually a
(19:55):
very good counter narrative campaign on Instagram that, for example,
then shows videos of people who've joined IS, who were
disappointed with joining Is, and then try and dissuade other people
from joining. And one initiative by Tech Against Terrorism is
also to say the extreme content, so official content by
designated organizations such as Daish, it needs to be taken
(20:16):
offline. And what we do is that through the terrorist
content analytics platform, we alert tech companies with terrorist content
when we find it on their platforms. The majority of
tech companies, I think, there's a willingness to act.
Adnan Sawah (20:28):
Shiraz, from what Anne's been saying, Daish spend a lot
of time and energy on their communications. This is a
real priority for them, isn't it?
Shiraz Maher (20:36):
I'll give you one marker by which we can almost
identify just how important media dissemination has been to Daish.
If you recall, when the group was losing all of
its territory, it retreated and retreated to one final pocket,
which was Baghuz. Baghuz is in Syria and it was the last
(20:56):
territorial holding of Daish. It's completely besieged and a standoff takes
place for several days. And the situation inside Baghuz is
incredibly desperate. Food is obviously very scarce. They're also being
bombarded so there's lots of casualties. Just a deeply, deeply
desperate situation. Even at that point, the Daish prioritized the filming
(21:23):
of the life inside Baghuz and then to have smuggled
that footage out because there was no Internet reception. Even
in that hugely desperate moment of this last stand, " Get a
thumb drive out with this video content on it so
that it can be disseminated to our supporters and followers." It
was a message of defiance, a message of steadfast resolve, "
(21:44):
You may be beating us in the temple sense but,
look, God is with us, and the fact that we've
lost our empire, well, that's just the test from God
and we're going to stand firm and we'll be back."
Omar Mohammed (21:57):
Just to agree with Shiraz, it's during the battle of
Mosul. I mean, while Daish was being defeated on the
ground with heavy bombings, yet you still get, not only
just a normal drone footage. No, it's a well moderated,
well organized, well shot drone footage of their suicide bombers,
(22:19):
of their so- called battles inside Mosul. They were making
sure that these messages get out, get public. And it
tells us a lot about the way Daish sees itself and
the way Daish also generated this concept of, " We are
(22:40):
here to stay." Especially during the battle of Mosul, they
were planting seeds for something yet to come.
Adnan Sawah (22:51):
This is an organization that clearly understands the power of
controlling their own narrative. They stop at nothing to get
their message across, including using the lives and the horrific
deaths of hostages. But the pleas of the crowd gathered
on that Spanish street were eventually answered. In March 2014,
almost six months after being kidnapped. Marc Marginedas stepped onto
(23:14):
the tarmac of Barcelona Airport.
Marc Marginedas (23:17):
(foreign language) .
Adnan Sawah (23:22):
Jihadi John, whose real name was Mohammed Emwazi, was killed
by a US drone in 2015. Marc says that right
up to the end of their bizarre house share, John
tried to persuade him to convert to Islam. He didn't,
although he remains deeply altered by his experience in other
ways. One thing though, hasn't been affected.
Marc Marginedas (23:48):
It hasn't changed my vision about Islam. I have so
many Muslim friends and, in general terms, I think my
Muslim friends are far less selfish with much more sense
of community than my European friends. I pray on a daily
basis. I still pray in Arabic. I still pray my Christian
(24:11):
prayers. It helps me to deal with my life and
to understand that there is also a purpose in everything.
Before being captured our family relations were not bad, but
there were pretty nonexistent. We would only gather for Christmas
and basic holidays and that was it. And I remember I said
(24:32):
to myself ... My sister, I'm sure that she was going to
be so horrified and everything would be dealt with by
my newspaper and my boss. And I actually was totally
wrong. Actually, my sister had a very, very strong role
in my release. One of the reasons of this captivity is
(24:55):
that the relationship with my family has become very good.
Adnan Sawah (25:01):
Marc has made a documentary about his kidnapping going back
to Raqqa for the first time since his release. Was
it traumatic seeing that place again?
Marc Marginedas (25:09):
Sorry if I disappoint you, but I wasn't shocked. Places are not
good or bad. It's people who make them good or
bad. I mean, we are war journalists and we do
deal with death on a daily basis. I mean, of
course, the kidnapping has affected me, but I wouldn't say
it has traumatized me to the point of looking for
(25:32):
another job. I had many demands of people offering a
lot of money, proposing a film or things like this.
I always said, " No. I'm a journalist. I'm doing this
because it's a global coalition." I feel there's a purpose
about that. But you stop being a journalist and you become the
story, and I don't want that.
Adnan Sawah (25:57):
So, Anne, they do these terrible things. They flood the
Internet with their messaging. Is it all really about just frightening
people? And, more importantly, are they winning this propaganda war?
Anne Craanen (26:07):
Excellent question. There is no agreed upon definition of terrorism,
but I think they all mention fear, and I think
fear mongering is essential to Daish. I think though, it
sometimes depends, I think, on the local context because I
would say that groups in Sub- Saharan Africa that are
actually like claiming territory, that is a goal in itself,
as well. So I think sometimes there's a focus on saying, "
(26:28):
Is it just about propaganda? Is it just about fear mongering
or do they have also political aims?" And I would definitely say that
it is both. Are they winning? I think, no, even
though an enormous amount of foreign fighters joined IS, the
majority of people did not. And I think also if
we look at the amount of content that is what
(26:49):
we consider normal content on the Internet, that is also
more than terrorist content.
Adnan Sawah (26:55):
Daish did bring this aspect of warfare. And where they
are putting their messages out, people like you, Omar, are
putting your messages out. So this digital fight is really
interesting in terms of how to understand this organization. So
the final question is what is the message that they
want to get out now?
Omar Mohammed (27:12):
They are focusing on two things
war and the war has many battles. They lost one.
They say, " We will win the other." They are trying
to protect their image among their supporters, who they were
promised by Daish itself that, " We are undefeatable." And the
(27:33):
second is, when they were focusing on recording videos in
high quality during such battles, intense battles, they are now
using it. They are saying, " Look what the West did
to you. The West has destroyed you. Daish brought peace and
the West brought destruction." That's the narrative that they are
trying to push right now.
Adnan Sawah (27:54):
Shiraz, do you agree with that? Are Daish trying to
just elongate their existence? What's the message that they're sending
out now.
Shiraz Maher (28:02):
It's existence hasn't ceased. It continues to exist in some
form. It does remain an insurgency capable of pulling off
bloody attacks. The movement has always said that, " Media is
half of Jihad." And so whilst the movement exists in
any shape or form, you will continue to see some
degree of propaganda presence and digital presence just as they
(28:27):
maintain their presence in that media space to try and
whitewash some of their crimes. It will need people like
Omar and others to keep reminding people of the grotesque
crimes against humanity that this organization perpetrated.
Omar Mohammed (28:43):
So also, the future battle against Daish, not the military
one, the intellectual battle, is much more difficult than the
one that took place in 2016/ 2017. The question is, are
we prepared intellectually? In our understanding, they know how to
(29:04):
manipulate the narratives. We will never be able to control
the technology, but we can, at least, control how the
narrative is being produced. And that comes from getting more
voices from cities like Raqqa. Mosul, other cities, were completely
destroyed by terrorism to make them more visible, to put
(29:27):
the narrative in the perspective of the people who suffered.
I am one of them and I can easily look
into the eyes of Daish and tell them what they did.
Adnan Sawah (29:41):
I'd like to thank Anne Craane, Shiraz Maher, Omar Mohammed
and Marc Marginedas for all their extraordinary insights into the way
terror talks and the kinds of things it tries to
say. Marc's documentary, Return to Raqqa, comes out this year.
That's it for this edition of Taking Apart Terror. Find
us wherever you get your podcasts and follow or subscribe
(30:04):
so you get every episode, including the next one, when
we look at the role of women in extremism and
we ask, " Does terrorism have agenda?" I'm Adnan Sawah. Until
the next time. Goodbye.
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