Counter-narratives and Info Ops: Debating Jihadi YouTube Videos

[Ron Humphrey]

but it seems like the best counter-narrative is and always has been right in front of any and all who experience the supposed "great fight " by the islamic insurgents/freedom fighters. When rather then bringing about any of their supposedly better lives they instead turn life-givers into life takers.

Look at the history,

Somolia- where many of those countries who would give inordinate amounts of money and services to help them dig out of their miserable condition have instead become those who have to dedicate armed forces and military equipment to assist with fighting gangs and fighters who attack anyone they can in order to gain more control for themselves not the populace they live among.

Naval ships from multiple countries where one can see them bearing food , medical assistance, etc to countries without those fighters but instead must come armed to the teeth to deal with the pirates in the Somali area . Where is that helping their country?

Yemen - Same story these fighters will try to say they come wearing a badge of honor fighting a good fight yet the only thing they actually bring is the destruction which must ultimately come from the very actions they take.

IRAQ - The SURGE very much exemplifies what happens when a populace realizes exactly what the fighters have to offer and instead chose to side with those who would help them to work for a better life in which they have a voice in their future. Not guaranteed to be perfect but undeniably better then anything AQ and/or others had to offer.

Afghanistan- Much the same throughout their history the people have been in continual search for a path towards individual freedom as can be seen by the fact that they as a general rule will fight any and all they percieve to threaten their family/tribal structures- regardless of whether they can win or not. Herein lies the greatest difference between the past and current battle. They will all at some point recognize that the NATO/ISAF forces only seek to allow them the opportunity to choose their own future without the torture and violence crushing of dissent that the Taliban have historically shown they have to offer.

The list could go on and on but hopefully it at least expresses the point I'm trying to make.

[Erich G. Simmers]

but it seems like the best counter-narrative is and always has been right in front of any and all who experience the supposed "great fight " by the islamic insurgents/freedom fighters. When rather then bringing about any of their supposedly better lives they instead turn life-givers into life takers.

First, I would urge some caution on framing this discussion in "Islamic insurgent" vs. would-be life-givers/sometimes life-takers. In all your examples, religion is secondary to actual political control. Insurgents may claim that it is a contest between "Islam" and "the West," but the actual realities are very different.

Look at the history,

Somolia- where many of those countries who would give inordinate amounts of money and services to help them dig out of their miserable condition have instead become those who have to dedicate armed forces and military equipment to assist with fighting gangs and fighters who attack anyone they can in order to gain more control for themselves not the populace they live among.

Naval ships from multiple countries where one can see them bearing food , medical assistance, etc to countries without those fighters but instead must come armed to the teeth to deal with the pirates in the Somali area . Where is that helping their country?

This example isn't so much about message as it is control of the country. Aid isn't being applied, because the government is very weak. Al-Shabaab with support from Hizb al Islam owns most of Mogadishu and has strengthened its positions since Ethiopia's withdrawal. Much of the 'public discourse'--if it can be called that--is happening between "Islamist" factions as they jockey for control of the country. I put scare quotes around "Islamist," because the religious issues are at the very least secondary concerns in what is a contest for political control of the country. They aren't choosing between life-giving and life-taking; they are fighting to be in charge--in this case, between "Islamist" factions. Refusal, misuse, etc. of aid is not because they aren't getting a message but because control is not established. Given this environment, the only thing unreasonable is that anyone should expect aid to be effective.

Yemen - Same story these fighters will try to say they come wearing a badge of honor fighting a good fight yet the only thing they actually bring is the destruction which must ultimately come from the very actions they take.

There are other factors besides religion that make this a ripe place for radicalization: extremely poverty, limited resources including water, and ethnic divisions. Plus, there are safe havens for radical groups.

IRAQ - The SURGE very much exemplifies what happens when a populace realizes exactly what the fighters have to offer and instead chose to side with those who would help them to work for a better life in which they have a voice in their future. Not guaranteed to be perfect but undeniably better then anything AQ and/or others had to offer.

Again, I would say this has more to do with local choosing between governance rather than any Islamic vs. Western life-giver/taker divide.

Afghanistan- Much the same throughout their history the people have been in continual search for a path towards individual freedom as can be seen by the fact that they as a general rule will fight any and all they percieve to threaten their family/tribal structures- regardless of whether they can win or not. Herein lies the greatest difference between the past and current battle. They will all at some point recognize that the NATO/ISAF forces only seek to allow them the opportunity to choose their own future without the torture and violence crushing of dissent that the Taliban have historically shown they have to offer.

Whatever the Taliban represent, Afghans are making a choice between two sides offering their brand of law and order. At the recent MCA Dinner, David Kilcullen laid this out very well. I won't recount the whole talk, but the Taliban have been able to deliver a message that they are less corrupt and offer a swift if brutal justice. Again, that message is enabled because ISAF and the Afghan government need to do a better job delivering on the promise of good governance than the Taliban is doing. Again, religion--in my view--is secondary.

The list could go on and on but hopefully it at least expresses the point I'm trying to make.

The global discourse on US involvement in the world will go on no matter whether we are engaged in military invention or not. The US will be presented as a bogey-man, and there will be legitimate grievances against the US. Choosing to not address them is dangerous in my view.

What I want to debate is how to go about counteracting that message. If that means disengagement in favor of local actors debating and/or fighting it out among themselves, that is a valid option. However, there is no denying we have interests in these regions and, as such, have a stake in the local political discourse. Do we cut our losses?

More important than the local discourse are the global networks of insurgent groups that use media such as YouTube to support the political aspect of their missions. How do we go about disrupting that flow of information? Do we take a "CT"-esque approach using lawfare and denial of service to close down these sites as they pop up? Or do we engage in the discourse? Personally, I think we should acknowledge the limitations of the former and do much more of the latter in terms of trusted local partners.

[Ron Humphrey]

But for starters I agree with pretty much everything you stated. And Had I not "Framed" my statements the way I did would you have had the opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak, in pointing out that in all of the examples religion is a secondary if not tertiary problem.

If your narratives don't tell it like you see it your not really giving your audience a chance to make that same determination for themselves in correcting your mistatements

Once they (audience) start telling you Thats not what its about then you'll know your on the right track

[Erich G. Simmers]

But for starters I agree with pretty much everything you stated. And Had I not "Framed" my statements the way I did would you have had the opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak, in pointing out that in all of the examples religion is a secondary if not tertiary problem.

If your narratives don't tell it like you see it your not really giving your audience a chance to make that same determination for themselves in correcting your mistatements

Once they (audience) start telling you Thats not what its about then you'll know your on the right track

Thank you for your thoughts. I suspect we are not far apart in terms of ideas about controlling information, IO, etc.

It's a very good idea I think to frame this issue in terms of IO. Technical woo-woo about disrupting computers aside, this is very much an issue of information dissemination.

I think it's a very good idea to remove this information whenever possible, wherever it is found. It's not that the material will somehow cease to exist, but containing it within a narrative that explains what's wrong with it is an important contextual difference. In this instance the truth is poison to these people & their process. Real knowledge is a counter-weapon to their goals. It's not that the people seeking answers and solutions to their problems are somehow overly biased against alternatives that don't involve logically deficient fantasies about death & virgins. They really are not, but if they mistakenly see that as their only alternative because it's the only one given then they will be vulnerable to the exploitation being attempted by people seeking to weaponize their vulnerabilities.

Disrupting the activities of extremists helps to marginalize both their abilities and the acceptability of their message. This is an enemy that lives to create strife, and efforts to reduce those abilities are worth taking.

I think it's a mistake to wrap online stuff up in it's own special context, these are really all just ways of communicating information. I can talk at length about making computers do bad things, but once you get past the button pushing you must look at the goals and the reasons for these things. From what I've seen, that's when you start talking about information, knowledge, and life offline.

I concur with a lot of what Mr. Simmers has said. I also don't think it's very easy to make this type of information just go away. However between chasing these people down online & offline (I consider the latter more important too), using their propaganda against them becomes important.

In a historical context it's simply ludicrous for them to expect a triumph of their bad ideas. That just doesn't happen, and at best increases in the dissemination of knowledge and information all about how broken they are can serve to accelerate their failure much better than it can be used to enable any victories.

These people are enraptured with violence, utterly stuck ideologically, & don't know what to do with themselves even when they do manage short term wins. Iran is a great example of the revolutionary immobilization that goes with jihad. Thirty years down the road from their revolution, and what do they have to show for it? Well not very much as it turns out. That's in large part because outside of blazing guns to effectively put themselves in power they're inept. This is a rather common failing of revolutionaries, jihadist or otherwise.

It's important to differentiate between making computers do bad things (that which they were not designed, or intended to do), and using them to do bad things. The former activity in many ways has the exact sort of limitations that have been noted in the conversation so far. The latter I think of as literally everything else. That because it's about the doing of other activities. When building a house, pretty rapidly you're going to get tired of talking about what drill to use, & will want to talk about the house itself. The whole `cyber' thing is like that drill, it's just a tool. Granted I may be able to unplug it from across the world, but there needs to be some reason for that before it becomes worth bothering to do. The drill is also not an end unto itself, but the house sure is. COIN cares about the house, cyber is just another power tool.

"Erich," please.

I am a little torn myself on this distinction. I will admit that everyone has a tendency to see incremental change as something radical new. However, globalization (in particular the Internet) has enabled "superempowered" individuals (see John Robb, et. al.).

For example, consider that Dove World Outreach Church that planned to burn the Qu'ran, which was set to happen literally down the road from my office at University of Florida. The cost to entry was very little: YouTube, Facebook, etc. From that little church, they reached millions and were able threatened our position in Afghanistan and the Muslim world significantly enough to warrant comment from GEN Petraeus and the highest levels of the Obama administration. Outrage and threats of violence came from all over the world, and some of my students were frightened enough to talk about leaving Gainesville.

A single bad actor can match, if not exceed, the "information operations" capability of the United States. Look at Julian Assange. He is not some unique individual; thousands upon thousands have his skills. All the law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the world combined lack the resources to monitor everyone who could replace him should he go to jail. More importantly, these people are amateurs.

This fact is exactly why it is a mistake to say "this is just IO, same as always." Whatever overlap in theory and doctrine, there needs to be a different mindset acknowledging that globalization has enabled bad actors in ways that very few have a full understanding.

[anonamatic]

Thank you for your thoughts. I suspect we are not far apart in terms of ideas about controlling information, IO, etc.



"Erich," please.

I am a little torn myself on this distinction. I will admit that everyone has a tendency to see incremental change as something radical new. However, globalization (in particular the Internet) has enabled "superempowered" individuals (see John Robb, et. al.).

For example, consider that Dove World Outreach Church that planned to burn the Qu'ran, which was set to happen literally down the road from my office at University of Florida. The cost to entry was very little: YouTube, Facebook, etc. From that little church, they reached millions and were able threatened our position in Afghanistan and the Muslim world significantly enough to warrant comment from GEN Petraeus and the highest levels of the Obama administration. Outrage and threats of violence came from all over the world, and some of my students were frightened enough to talk about leaving Gainesville.

I'm familiar with the concept, it's somewhat easier to find examples of it than actually act in that manner. However it's entirely possible to do it depending on ones goals, methods, level of effort, & timing.

A single bad actor can match, if not exceed, the "information operations" capability of the United States. Look at Julian Assange. He is not some unique individual; thousands upon thousands have his skills. All the law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the world combined lack the resources to monitor everyone who could replace him should he go to jail. More importantly, these people are amateurs.

This fact is exactly why it is a mistake to say "this is just IO, same as always." Whatever overlap in theory and doctrine, there needs to be a different mindset acknowledging that globalization has enabled bad actors in ways that very few have a full understanding.

I've known Julian since 1991 and am one of his peers in most respects. I diverge in opinion with both the harm he's done to the US, and to a lot of the strategy he's used with Wikileaks too. We've argued about it over the years, but up until he went completely off the rails with the Manning material I at least thought he was trying to head in the right direction. That direction changed a great deal. In prior discussions about potentially harmful leaks he'd asserted that he'd at least consider higher levels of discretion than he's since taken. He has something of a blind spot to consequences sadly enough in my opinion, and unfortunately has a bit too much `moth to a flame' instincts going on for anyones good.

That said, the whole `collateral murder' presentation was very propagandistic as well as openly deceitful. It took me a while to be able to do a thorough analysis without going to the site directly, but eventually it all ended up fully quoted elsewhere. The damage and dishonesty with that, as well as with the spin on the other stolen materials, well it's just damnable evil to me, more so because I know all about the more odious aspects of Julian's personality that others have observed.

Your observation that there is a great deal of the amateur to go with this is very accurate. It's true in the case of Wikileaks, but also in other instances where globalized IO has come from unexpected quarters. The impacts of these things are very hard to quantify. Information pressure, characterized by differences from whatever repressive dogma that's served as conventional wisdom in regions where leaders treat citizenry badly is quite the common complaint of quasi-failed states. The Taliban hopes rather vainly that if maybe they burn all those schools they can somehow keep that pesky internet away, and it's just not going to work for them. The result is there's them, and other piles of repressive nuts in nasty parts of the world who're all hating life more than they have in the past.

Information pressure means that when crazy bandit gangs roam the Sudan, it not only makes news, but more people can actually find the place on a map. More people have maps too, there's an ocean of information out there, as well as ideas that are new to people to go with the new devices.

There is a relationship too. One of the things I've done to try to get some grasp on this has been just using Google. Not to find stuff, but to compare by example the number of news articles about North Korea to that of those mentioning Wikileaks. It's also useful to compare conflict coverage since there's a pile of places in the world with various sized wars going on. I use googlefight.com for some things, others I use counts on news articles, and I also look at trends. They have some very nice tools for that, and it's interesting to see in some cases that nearly 100% of the internet search traffic coming from some rather distasteful locations in the world have been occupied by people looking for US Cable material. Tunisia at least is having a revolution thankfully rather than other potentially nastier outcomes.

It's safe to say the press does not understand IO or IW to a level that's worth valuing in a majority of instances. They don't understand that, or any of the myriad of other aspects of these issues. I think that contributes to the confusion & makes these issues a bit harder to work on than they otherwise might be.

[AdamG]

Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born radical cleric with ties to al-Qaeda, is using his online magazine, Inspire, to urge jihadists to steal “booty”—money and property—from people or institutions that don’t believe in his holy war. And it’s not really theft, he adds, explaining that ill-gotten wealth is really just fuel for jihad. “The reasoning behind comparing booty to hunting and wood gathering is because the property which exists in the hands of the disbelievers is not considered to be rightfully theirs,” writes al-Awlaki

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/was...dists-to-steal

[William F. Owen]

More important than the local discourse are the global networks of insurgent groups that use media such as YouTube to support the political aspect of their missions. How do we go about disrupting that flow of information? Do we take a "CT"-esque approach using lawfare and denial of service to close down these sites as they pop up? Or do we engage in the discourse? Personally, I think we should acknowledge the limitations of the former and do much more of the latter in terms of trusted local partners.

Why discourse? This isn't a debate. You don't have a discourse with drug dealers do you?

Why not just do what harms them most within the constraints of the policy? Break their will. Make their life misery. Harass them.

Are they worth it and can you can change the law to allow it is another question.

[Dayuhan]

Why discourse? This isn't a debate. You don't have a discourse with drug dealers do you?

No, but we do have discourse with the drug users that keep the drug dealers in business: a fair bit of effort (mostly ineffectual but still there) goes into education and persuasion aimed at getting people not to start using drugs and to persuade users to stop. Similarly we aim information at potential insurgents and insurgent supporters in an effort to get them to withdraw support and leave the insurgent exposed. Not an answer in itself, but useful as one tactic among many, and though we've done it badly often enough that's no reason not to try and do it better.

[William F. Owen]

Similarly we aim information at potential insurgents and insurgent supporters in an effort to get them to withdraw support and leave the insurgent exposed. Not an answer in itself, but useful as one tactic among many, and though we've done it badly often enough that's no reason not to try and do it better.

Concur, but that is part of the normal political dialogue within any society, the same way as "don't smoke" is part of normal health education. Part of a normal political dialogue is the denigration of violence, as part of the political process.

You are not aiming to furnish them with information on which to make "informed choices". You are saying "cross the line and we'll f**k you up!" - so "sell drugs and we'll lock you away." I see this as no more than simply and clearly stating a policy.

[Dayuhan]

Concur, but that is part of the normal political dialogue within any society, the same way as "don't smoke" is part of normal health education. Part of a normal political dialogue is the denigration of violence, as part of the political process.

Of course it's part of the normal political process... not just the denigration of violence but pointing out the advantages of non-violent options for achieving the same goals (assuming any exist, though in many insurgent-affected societies they don't). Why should we remove normal parts of the political process from our toolbox?

You are not aiming to furnish them with information on which to make "informed choices". You are saying "cross the line and we'll f**k you up!" - so "sell drugs and we'll lock you away." I see this as no more than simply and clearly stating a policy.

Then the insurgent slides up and whispers in their ear "see, all they can do is threaten you, we understand your problems and your grievances and we can help you snuff those arrogant threatening A-holes". Threats can be seen as a challenge, and sometimes people aren't intimidated. You might recall an old saying about how you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar...

[William F. Owen]

Of course it's part of the normal political process... not just the denigration of violence but pointing out the advantages of non-violent options for achieving the same goals (assuming any exist, though in many insurgent-affected societies they don't). Why should we remove normal parts of the political process from our toolbox?

I would not. As you say it's "normal." I'd just do nothing. Normal is already there.

Then the insurgent slides up and whispers in their ear "see, all they can do is threaten you, we understand your problems and your grievances and we can help you snuff those arrogant threatening A-holes". Threats can be seen as a challenge, and sometimes people aren't intimidated.

..but that assumes that the insurgent has the bones of a legitimate grievance. In the case of the UK, if some young Muslim thinks the UK should leave Afghanistan, nothing the UK Government can say will stop him opting for violence, if he wishes, except the concept of sanction and/or retribution.