Small Wars Journal

ThreatsWatch: The Fiction of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi

Tue, 12/11/2007 - 6:38am
An excellent piece by Steve Schippert and Nick Grace over at ThreatsWatch (Hat Tip ZenPundit) - The Fiction of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

Fully engaged in the Information War, al-Qaeda in Iraq continues to put forth its message in Iraq under the umbrella of a notional Islamic State of Iraq and employing an Iraqi actor to fill the fictitious shoes of its purported Iraqi leader, "Abu Omar al-Baghdadi." While al-Qaeda in Iraq is in dire straits in Iraq - as evidenced by the content of "al-Baghdadi's" latest al-Qaeda-prepared speech - its information campaign has kicked back into gear in earnest, deriding the "apostates" of the Iraqi Awakening movement (Sahawah al-Iraq or SAI) and announcing a new campaign through the end of January. The United States needs to engage in more creative means of participation in this Information War, exploiting al-Qaeda's faults and weaknesses beyond dry news releases and press conferences.

In a continuation of its PSYWAR campaign, al-Qaeda in Iraq's (AQI) strategic and operational effort to maintain battlefield morale and to consolidate its leadership of the broader insurgency, AQI's al-Furqan Media released a 46 minute long audio file (MP3) onto the Internet late Monday night. The recording features a speech by the notional emir of AQI's umbrella organization, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). An Arabic-language transcript, in Word, Adobe PDF, and Flash, was posted shortly after the appearance of the audio...

Much more at ThreatsWatch.

Comments

Schmedlap (not verified)

Sat, 12/15/2007 - 9:23am

The authors state in their first paragraph, "The United States needs to engage in more creative means of participation in this Information War, exploiting al-Qaedas faults and weaknesses beyond dry news releases and press conferences."

Then they reiterate near the end of the article, "There is more to the Information War with al-Qaeda (and others) than dry factual press releases and news conferences. We should be bold and creative enough to employ new means effectively and work in creative ways to belittle their credibility and erode what public support they maintain."

The authors do not explicitly state that they believe they are telling us something that we do not already know, but that is the impression that I get from reading this. They seem relatively well informed about the situation surrounding the whole fiction of ISI and the character of al-Baghdadi. I would hope that they also understand that just because we do not highly publicize our more creative efforts that this does not mean that we are neglecting such efforts.