A Theory of ISIS by Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

Author:Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786801708
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)

Remixing Violence

In the years after the events of 9/11, Al Qaeda had overseen the asymptotic decentralisation of its operations and the capacitation of a number of new franchises around the world. From roughly 2007 onwards, the combined effect of these strategies started birthing a post-modern type of terrorism – in effect one that was already post-Al Qaeda. This new mode featured a number of traits, chief among which was a widened and facilitated private resort to terrorism, self-radicalisation on a heroic-punitive mode, a symbiosis of physical and symbolic violence moving from the battlefield to the virtual battlespace and organisational professionalisation anchored in an active and innovative use of information technology. The successfully Uberised bottling of the new terrorism by Al Qaeda was, however, only the start of its story in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The rapid succession of individual high-profile and mediatised attacks inspired by Al Qaeda – as illustrated by cases involving David Coleman Headley in Chicago in 2008, Nidal Malik Hassan in Fort Hood in November 2009, Omar Faruk Abdulmuttalab in Amsterdam in December 2009, Colleen LaRose in Pennsylvania in March 2010, Anders Breivik in Oslo in July 2011, Mohamed Merah in France in March 2012 and Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Boston in April 2013 – paved the way for a second generation exemplified by Chérif and Said Kouachi in Paris in January 2014, and many more that followed in subsequent years. The rise of those latter-day, variously-Al Qaeda-influenced terrorists was now accompanied, indeed facilitated, by a spider-net communication campaign designed by IS that would impact directly upon and mould a new brand of globalised insurgents.

In the summer of 2014, IS embarked on a media blitzkrieg. The project constituted a fully fledged component of its battle plan and functioned in a way that revolutionised communication by violent, armed non-state actors. Earlier generations of terrorist groups addressed communication matters after their operations. A message would be sent or a telephone call placed ex post facto to a news agency to claim an operation or formulate demands. Al Qaeda changed this approach by working upstream and pre-recording video ‘wills’ of its operators conducting the suicide attacks, which it then released to media outlets (Al Jazeera mainly) or uploaded online. IS took that logic to the next level by conceiving of communication as an integral, in situ component of its war, not merely to make demands or to inform but to strike the minds and expand.1 The architecture put in place to that effect was large, complex and multifaceted. The group combined official releases with messages put out independently by its operators. This allowed it to ensure wall-to-wall, expanded coverage of its actions and, in so doing, generate an impression of omnipresence. Operations by the group were systematically recorded on video and published online, either near-simultaneously with their performance (in one instance – the killing of a married couple of police officers in their home by an IS sympathiser in France in June 2016 – the video was posted on Facebook by the killer while he was still on the premises) or shortly thereafter.

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