The Cyber Phenomenon of the Islamic State - Brigadier-General Bren and Mr. Levy

“The Islamic State is expert in communications and instilling fear. There is no real reason to be afraid of them.”

Major-General (res.) Amos Yadlin, former chief of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate and Executive Director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), in 2014.[2]

“The terror group known as ISIL must be degraded, and ultimately destroyed.”

President Barack Obama addressing the UN General Assembly, 2014.[3]

In 2014, Western and Arab nations led by the United States and the United Kingdom committed to combat and defeat the terror group the Islamic State or ISIL (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). These allies even sought out a new partnership with Iran, an arch- rival, to defeat their common enemy. On the sidelines of the 2014 UN General Assembly, the British prime minister and the president of Iran met for the first time in the thirty five years since the Islamic Revolution to discuss strengthening common ties against IS.[4] The New York Times reported that American forces attacked the Islamic State from the air while Iranian forces maneuvered against the group from the ground.

Only four years earlier, US President Barack Obama fulfilled his campaign promise to remove American forces from Iraq and pledged to avoid future military entanglements in the Middle East. While the Syrian civil war claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions, the United States and other Western nations essentially stood by and did nothing. But now, the United States was leading a new coalition of Western nations and Arab allies to combat a terror organization from those very same lands from which the Americans only recently withdrew.

What brought Western nations to engage in a new Middle Eastern fight that could take, according to both the British PM and the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, many years and the presence of tens of thousands of ground troops? How is it that in such a short time a terror organization, whose existence was only recently discovered, whose members number less than 40,000, which employs elementary weapons and pickup trucks, came to be considered a threat to the United States and other Western nations? What brought these states to ally with and even strengthen those very countries deemed, only a decade earlier, the ‘Axis of Evil,’ principal among them Iran?

The answer lies in the Islamic State’s sophisticated, innovative and coordinated use of modern channels of communication in cyberspace. The Islamic State succeeds in frightening the West as no other terror organization has before because it is the first to successfully take advantage of modern platforms while demonstrating the patience and stamina to achieve its revolutionary goals of restoring the Muslim Caliphate. The West not only struggles to understand the basic ideological foundations of the Islamic State, it fails to understand how the organization takes advantage of 21st century technologies. The West’s unfamiliarity with the Islamic State’s aims and means not only leads to unnecessary fear, it hampers efforts to counter the Islamic State and perhaps, paradoxically, even strengthens the terror organization.

This paper reviews the ideological and theological foundations of the Islamic State and examines how the Islamic State deftly utilizes modern cyberspace to further its global ambitions. By understanding the sources of the Islamic State’s strength, principally in the cyber realm, Western states can be better equipped to more accurately comprehend the scope of threat posed by the Islamic State threat and better prepare themselves to counter the terror group’s activities.

The Islamic State Phenomenon

The Islamic State is an extremist Sunni terror organization founded on a defined and ordered theology. Contrary to popular belief, this organization did not emerge recently or from nowhere. It holds deep roots in extremist Sunni thought and terror groups. Islamic State leadership worked for years to hone its strategy and tactics before it formally declared the establishment of a new Caliphate in June 2014. Today, the Islamic State fights for a global Muslim revolution, what it calls the ‘Rise of the Ummah (the community of Muslims)’ to re- establish the Islamic sovereignty and build a model fundamentalist Islamic society. The Islamic State inspires Muslims around the world who feel persecuted and suppressed to join its holy cause of world domination under the flag of Islam.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi founded the organization Jama’at al- Tawhid wal-Jihad (the Organization of Monotheism and Jihad) in 1999 in Jordan with the initial goal of overturning the Hashemite Kingdom. Following the American-led campaign in Afghanistan and the beginning of the Global War on Terror, Zarqawi moved his operations to Iraq. During the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi committed his loosely networked organization to fighting the coalition forces who invaded to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime. In 2004, the organization swore allegiance to the Al Qaeda group and became known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike on June 8, 2008 and was replaced by Abu Ayoub al- Misri, who also killed in a joint American-Iraqi action in April 2010. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took over from al-Misri in 2010.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi shifted the organization’s strategy and operating principles. Moving away from traditional guerilla-type terror activities, al-Baghdadi sought to seize and control land in Iraq and build the foundations of a fundamentalist Islamic society, a restored Islamic Caliphate. He committed to governing these areas under strict Islamic rule while fighting to expand his territorial reach. In light of this new focus, the organization changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and later the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to reflect its new strategic aims. ISIL split from Al Qaeda in 2014 following disagreements between central Al Qaeda leaders and field commanders. In June 2014, ISIL simplified its name to the Islamic State, demonstrating its growing ambitions to establish an independent Islamic Caliphate and to inspire worldwide Muslims to join its cause.

The Islamic State views its operations in three geographical spheres of influence. Within the first sphere, the nucleus of the organization in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, the Islamic State consolidates its control and develops the political and social model that inspires future expansion. The Islamic State primarily focuses its expansion into the second circle, the Muslim states perceived to have gone astray from the true ways of Islam. The third circle is the non-Muslim world, particularly the West. Although the West is not the priority target for expansion, as shown later in the article, one should make no mistake that the Islamic State is waiting to exert its influence in Western countries.

While this ideology of spheres of influence is found at the heart of many different Islamic terror groups from Al Qaeda to Hezbollah, the Islamic State has proven the most successful to deploy cutting- edge twenty-first century technologies to penetrate and make waves in all of three of those spheres simultaneously.

The Cyber Dimension

For centuries, chants and the beat of war drums over battlefields accompanied the advance of conquering armies. Today, technology and the evolution of the internet herald a new era of warfare in which the personal computer, the mobile cellular device and social networks play central and critical roles in the implementation and realization of military strategy.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, researchers identified that terror organizations used the internet for five principal purposes: propaganda and psychological warfare, recruiting members, raising funds, information gathering, and executing operations. In the early 2000s, terror groups operated quietly and used traditional technologies such as e-mail, web sites and online forums.[5]

When the Web 2.0 revolution[6] arrived, the traditional rules for online terror changed dramatically. The Islamic State fully grasped the enormous potential presented by the rise of social networks, high-speed internet, mobile devices, and the globalization of the web. Al Qaeda was among the first terror organizations to successfully employ internet technologies, particularly as a means of communication, command, control, and instruction. The Islamic State surpassed Al Qaeda both in scope and sophistication in its utilization of cutting-edge technologies for both outreach and military operations.

Propaganda 2.0

Propaganda, the use of mass communications tools to influence public behavior, has existed for thousands of years. Successful propaganda repeatedly transmits a single message across many distribution channels over an extended period of time to amplify the message’s exposure. Eventually, the message enters the subconscious. The centrality of propaganda to the rise of the two major totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, is well known. The ideological foundations of these regimes demanded the creation of a sense of a collective, unifying and all-encompassing national narrative and creed. The success of these regimes in their rise to power was largely due to the successful employment of the modern technology of the time: cinema and radio. Complemented by mass rallies and symbols that created a visual and ideologically idiosyncratic language, the regime's ideology spread through all aspects of life.

Like the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, the Islamic State thoroughly understands the significance of modern communications tools and their potential to influence human activity. The Islamic State created a modern, sophisticated and well-coordinated online propaganda campaign that embraces all modern internet channels and social networks (such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube), for the distribution and promotion of its Jihad brand all over the world.

One needs to look no further than the evolution from al- Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq to al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State to understand how the Islamic State surpassed other groups in its use of technology for propaganda.

In September 2004, al-Zarqawi kidnapped and beheaded two Americans and one Briton. The videos of the execution were posted to internet sites and quickly discovered by global television networks, who broadcast the story and the gruesome videos widely. The story garnered attention for about a week, but was quickly eclipsed by other news and atrocities.

A decade later in 2014, al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State re-enacted similar scenes. One after another, the Islamic State filmed the executions of American photographer James Foley, American journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid worker David Haines, and uses British journalist John Cantlie for propaganda videos. Each execution video features repeated and striking motifs –the victims wore orange jumpsuits (reminiscent of the prisoners held by American forces at Guantanamo Bay) and stood before a black flag with the Islamic State logo. The gruesome videos led Western leaders to call for decisive action against the Islamic State. So, one must ask the question, why would similar tactics used in 2004 and in 2014 be treated differently by the West?

The power of social networks and their centrality in our daily lives, alongside video-sharing web sites, and the birth of the “blogosphere,” freed the Islamic States from its previous dependence on mainstream news outlets and allowed these videos to spread rapidly and virally. Today, the Islamic State operates independently in all forms of the media (written, audio and video) through the internet. The Islamic State employs experts skilled in the latest production, editing, and marketing techniques. The organization stays at the cutting edge of technologies to exploit latest trends such as #hashtaghijacking[7], hacking personal mobile accounts, deploying BOT networks[8], and gamification[9]. The Islamic employs all of these means to build its legitimacy, recruit new members, raise money, and instill fear among its enemies.

Jihad: The Video Game

The Islamic State encourages new members to join its march toward the traditional Sunni apocalypse through high-quality films and video games. While remaining true to its core theology, the Islamic State creates the impression that joining the fight in Syria or acting at home is as easy and fun as taking a vacation to Disneyland.

Nowhere is this theme more evident than in the series of films produced by the Islamic State. Most prominent of these films was the “Clanging of the Swords,” a series of four hour-long films. The first three films contain apocalyptic motifs and symbols taken from the Hadith, the sacred Sunni collection of religious laws and stories about the Prophet Mohammed, that herald the coming of the Mahdi, the Muslim Messiah.[10] The films feature the black flag of the Islamic State, the organization’s online magazine Dabiq, the use of the term Ummah, and a red flag that represents the Mahdi, whose coming signals the end of the world. The clips are enriched by scenes of violence inspired by the popular video game series Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and Call of Duty.[11]

The fourth film in the “Clanging of the Swords” series takes a quantum leap from its precursors. The film presents the apocalyptic vision of the Ummah along with its achievements during the holy war toward victory. The film integrates elements inspired by the popular video game GTA IV. One scene that depicts a drive-by shooting inspired by GTA went viral on the internet in a matter of weeks. Millions all over the world viewed and shared the clip on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, WhatsApp, e-mail, underground sites and gamers’ forums.

In the beginning of July 2014, the Islamic State released a new film called Flames of War. Unlike its predecessors, the film targets non-Muslim Western audiences. Translated entirely into English, the film features an English-speaking protagonist and is more restrained in its depiction of violence and mayhem. The combat scenes appear polished and quite similar to the Call of Duty first-person shooter video game.

In mid-September 2014, the Islamic State released a video trailer for a game called Grand Theft Auto: Salil al-Sawarem [Sound of Swords]. Scenes in the promotional video clip are taken directly from the original GTA game but feature acts of jihad including an Islamic fighter shooting police officers and blowing up convoys. Jihadist fighters even shout “Allahu Akbar” while attacking a city in the United States. When describing the clip, the Islamic State said that its combatants act on the battlefield just as young gamers do while playing at home. The Egyptian media reported that the game and the video clip was meant to “raise the morale of the Mujahedeen, to train children and young people to fight the West, and to strike terror in the hearts of the enemies of the [Islamic) State.”

The Islamic State also aims to build legitimacy among skeptical Muslim populations. One of the more interesting internet campaigns of 2014 featured “the first Jihad Hipster.” A young Egyptian Islamic State recruit named Islam Yaken was filmed boasting about a beheading he had recently committed while sporting an Afro-style haircut, thick black glasses and a “hipster” look that would have made him seem cool to any Western audience. Soon pictures of the jihadi hipster sprouted all over the internet turning him into a cultural hero, with whom Western youngsters could easily identify.

In the last two years, Sunni Muslim organizations in England held “Evenings of Repentance” for young people, called “Call of Duty: Rise of the Ummah.” These evenings were promoted by video clips and posters based on graphics taken directly from the successful video game series. Currently, some of these organizations serve as the foremost representatives of the organization in its struggle for legitimacy in the British media.

The Islamic State has also used internet-based games, especially the online versions of Call of Duty and GTA, to establish contact with potential recruits and sympathizers around the world. In England in June 2014, a father claimed that his two teenage sons were tempted by the Islamic State after receiving copes of the popular video game Call of Duty: Ghosts as a present. In October 2013, a young Scot reported to police that he was asked to contribute money or join the Islamic State by an anonymous online party while playing the online version of Call of Duty: Ghosts on his Xbox console. In Australia, federal police arrested two suspected Al Qaeda members and confiscated PlayStation 3 consoles.

Western intelligence and diplomatic agencies are also striking back on these platforms. Following the Edward Snowden revelations, the West’s top intelligence agencies, including the NSA and the British GHCQ, admitted that they had penetrated game servers and online gaming communities in order to monitor potential terrorist activity. In addition, Snowden revealed that intelligence organizations, led by the CIA, cooperated daily with internet companies such as Twitter to close accounts associated with Islamic State and spread counter-information against the Islamic State. DARPA, the Pentagon’s research and development agency, financed a series of projects to better understand and influence social networks.

Recently, the US State Department distributed a video clip similar to the Islamic State’s Flames of War that exposed the atrocities being committee by the Islamic State. While the US Department of Homeland Security issued a white paper about the dangers of internet-based games as a recruitment platform as early as 2009, this was not taken seriously by intelligence and security agencies until recently.

In addition to the internet and computer games, the Islamic State also distributes mobile applications via Google Play, the online store for the Android mobile platform. One of these mobile applications, the Dawn of Glad Tidings, magnifies the organization’s profile through social networks. The application allows the Islamic State to access the mobile user’s device data and spread information through the mobile user’s device. By utilizing such mobile applications, the Islamic State multiplies its tweets to reach hundreds of thousands around the world, making the content incredibly popular.

Jihad Tourism

The Islamic State’s propaganda and recruiting activities gave birth to a new phenomenon of Jihad tourism, or, as they call it in England, “Five-Star Jihad.” The Islamic State welcomes young potential jihadis, usually men, to visit the war-torn areas to take part in a combat adventure alongside the terror organizations. The CIA claims that over fifteen thousand foreign terrorists, from over eighty countries, are fighting in Iraq and Syria. In addition to Jihadi John from the United Kingdom, there are further examples, such as Kiwi Jihadi from New Zealand, and youngsters from Australia. Many of these young ‘tourists,’ usually educated and socially normal, return home from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq and enjoy immunity for any crimes committed because their home states hold no extradition agreements with war-torn countries. A prime example of this phenomenon is a seventeen-year-old Australian who went to fight in Syria after viewing one of the Islamic State’s online videos in June 2013, and pledged to fly the ISIS flag over Buckingham Palace.

Exporting Jihad

The Islamic State actively recruit jihadis to operate in the second and third spheres of influence via innovative technological means. The CIA claims that online recruitment may have a viral effect on those interested in jihad. There is ample evidence of this phenomenon in the West. In the United States, two American citizens in Boston inspired by the Islamic State online murdered four people at the Boston Marathon. Following his arrest, the surviving terrorist confessed to acting in response to events in the Middle East and that his actions were only a small part in the Jihadi effort. The brothers who attacked the Boston Marathon were later linked to an Islamic State cell. A worker in Oklahoma, fired from his job at a food processing plant in Oklahoma, beheaded his former colleague after seeing an Islamic State video clip. A young man attacked police in New York City with an axe. A series of murders in Canada and a shooting attack on the Canadian Parliament were also traced to the Islamic State. Whether inspired directly by Islamic State propaganda or not, the Islamic State brand appears to be infectious.

Among those joining the organization in the West are many young people who were born in the West to Muslim families. However, alongside them there is a swelling tide of Christian and Jewish converts to Islam who publish their conversion online through Islamic State propaganda. Some of them join the fighters in Iraq and Syria, while others are active in their home countries. The head of the FBI said that the American authorities know of at least twelve Americans fighting alongside the extremists in Syria and more than one hundred Americans who were arrested attempting to enter Syria. He added that all Americans who had returned from Syria after fighting alongside the extremists, are under surveillance, being investigated or under arrest. Similar concerns are reported in Britain, New Zealand, Australia and other Western countries.

Cyber and Social Networks: What the West failed to understand

Cyberspace is a dimension invented by humans based on computers (hardware and software) and communications. Independent of geographic boundaries and modern conventions of governability, cyberspace hosts a wealth of information and human activity. Cyberspace enables users to create and administer communities, exchange ideas, share information, provide social support, conduct business, create art, play games, and engage in political debate.

In recent years, cyberspace has also become a war fighting domain. Cyber war may take place solely within or be deployed in support of traditional warfare on land, air, and sea. Cyber technologies may be used at the outbreak of hostilities or as a dimension in an inter-war campaign. Both states and non-state actors may employ cyber means. Cyberspace warfare is growing and dramatically changing the nature of warfare and its challenges.

“In my opinion, cyber will, in a short while, be discovered to be a greater revolution than even gunpowder, whose influence will be more significant than that which led to the attempt to use the aerial dimension in warfare at the beginning of the twentieth century."