I.S. BECOMING ‘ONLINE CALIPHATE’
Experts fear it will use the Internet to make comeback after Iraq, Syria defeats
THE Islamic State (IS) group may soon be defeated in Iraq and Syria, but a “virtual caliphate” could be harder to conquer, experts and officials have warned.
The jihadist propaganda machine will continue to exist in hidden corners of the dark web, inciting sympathisers to action.
“Defeating IS on the physical battlefield is not enough,” General Joseph Votel, the top commander for United States military forces in the Middle East, warned earlier this year.
“Following even a decisive defeat in Iraq and Syria, IS will likely retreat to a virtual safe haven — a virtual caliphate — from which it will continue to coordinate and inspire external attacks as well as build a support base until the group has the capability to reclaim physical territory.”
Votel described this online network as “a distorted version of the historic Islamic caliphate: it is a stratified community of Muslims, who are led by a caliph (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi), aspire to participate in a state-governed by syariah, and are located in the global territory of cyberspace”.
IS’s loss of almost all its territory in Iraq and in Syria had damaged its online communication efforts, following a boom in propaganda operations in 20142015. But it had not put an end to it completely.
The IS “news agency” and propaganda machine Amaq continued to claim responsibility for attacks and incite violence.
Recently, it claimed that Stephen Paddock, the gunman who massacred 58 people in Las Vegas, was an IS “soldier” — an assertion met with scepticism.
Researcher Charlie Winter, who wrote a report on IS’s web presence for British think tank Quilliam, said the group would work to persuade followers that the idea of an online caliphate was more important than physical presence.
“Terrorists are hiding in the deep web using encryption. There will always be a safe place for them on the Internet regardless of what politicians say.”
Under pressure from public authorities, Internet providers were beginning to put in place measures and procedures to disrupt IS’s exploitation of the web.
“But despite the increased vigilance of authorities and social networks, IS has demonstrated significant resilience due to its flexibilty and ability to adapt when facing the suppression of online jihadist content,” according to French researchers Laurence Binder and Raphael Gluck.
“It manages to still disseminate sufficiently to reach a pool of sympathisers and recruits.” AFP