Prof. Gabriel Weimann writes in the Asian Tribune how terrorist groups use the Internet.  For the purposes of this discussion, Weimann does not just limit his thesis to radical Islamic groups.  There are many interesting aspects of Weimann’s article, but I want to focus on just one; the use of the Internet to recruit or indoctrinate.

Weimann notes: “The mass media, policymakers, and even security agencies have tended to focus on the exaggerated threat of cyberterrorism and paid insufficient attention to the more routine uses made of the Internet. Those uses are numerous and, from the terrorists’ perspective, invaluable.”

There have been several arrests in England and 17 arrests in Canada over self-indoctrinated jihadists, and repeatedly we’re told those allegedly involved in this form of terrorism were influenced by watching violent images and video of war.  We’ve all seen those same videos and yet I know no one who has seen any and even planned a terrorist operation.  Therefore there is much more at stake at what drives a relatively peaceful person into someone who wants to blow up the Canadian Parliament.

But on the notion of videos and scenes of carnage, Weimann notes something very interesting.

. . . most sites refrain from referring to the terrorists’ violent actions or their fatal consequences—this reticence is presumably inspired by propagandist and image-building considerations.  Two exceptions to this rule are Hezbollah and Hamas, whose sites feature updated statistical reports of their actions (”daily operations”) and tallies of both “dead martyrs” and “Israeli enemies” and “collaborators” killed.

Another obvious exception are the sites of Al Qaida, the Army of Ansar al-Sunnah, the Islamic Army of Iraq (Baathists mainly) and several other jihadi groups out of the so-called mainstream.  And when one visits any of the jihadi message boards, both public and private, users create montages of their favorite ‘martyr’ often accompanied by images of violence (one of the more simple ones seen at right).  It is also interesting to note these montages always negate to mention who the primary target of many of these attacks are, fellow Muslims.

Weimann notes “foreign journalists are also targeted” into their propoganda campaigns, as is evident by by the homepage of alhesbah.org where it lists several media organizations as members of the forum.  But the goal is to acquire sympathy for their groups to influence public opinion, and it’s a shame there is sympathy garnered through many of the deceits present in many of these sites.

Use of the Internet in psychological operations is not the main course of terrorist sites either, Weimann notes.

Terrorists, for instance, can learn from the Internet a wide variety of details about targets such as transportation facilities, nuclear power plants, public buildings, airports, and ports, and even about counterterrorism measures. Dan Verton, in his book Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyberterrorism (2003), explains that “al-Qaeda cells now operate with the assistance of large databases containing details of potential targets in the U.S. They use the Internet to collect intelligence on those targets, especially critical economic nodes, and modern software enables them to study structural weaknesses in facilities as well as predict the cascading failure effect of attacking certain systems.”

Indeed many of the terror threats we hear about in the news come from such forums, such as the one that came out last week supposedly over oil facilities in Canada, Mexico and Venezuela, though the actual targets of that threat may have been misinterpreted.

The SITE Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based terrorism research group that monitors al Qaeda’s Internet communications, has provided chilling details of a high-tech recruitment drive launched in 2003 to recruit fighters to travel to Iraq and attack U.S. and coalition forces there. Potential recruits are bombarded with religious decrees and anti-American propaganda, provided with training manuals on how to be a terrorist, and—as they are led through a maze of secret chat rooms—given specific instructions on how to make the journey to Iraq. In one particularly graphic exchange in a secret al Qaeda chat room in early September 2003 an unknown Islamic fanatic, with the user name “Redemption Is Close,” writes, “Brothers, how do I go to Iraq for Jihad? Are there any army camps and is there someone who commands there?” Four days later he gets a reply from “Merciless Terrorist.” “Dear Brother, the road is wide open for you—there are many groups, go look for someone you trust, join him, he will be the protector of the Iraqi regions and with the help of Allah you will become one of the Mujahidin.” “Redemption Is Close” then presses for more specific information on how he can wage jihad in Iraq. “Merciless Terrorist” sends him a propaganda video and instructs him to download software called Pal Talk, which enables users to speak to each other on the Internet without fear of being monitored.

It is this networking, Weimann writes, that both recruits jihadis and provides a virtual meeting place for groups to form.  We saw this precise method with the Toronto 17, where a jihadi site owner in England ended up sending propoganda videos to the cell’s ringleaders, who all met online.

Read Weimann’s full column.