ji·had·ica

Ikhlaas Speaks Out, but Questions Remain

Scott Sanford September 15, 2009

The Ikhaas forum that recently resurfaced just issued an explanation for its reappearance, only to close down again shortly afterwards. Site administrators claimed they kept the website down for the past year in order to “prevent the crusaders from entering and manipulating it.” They decided to go public again in commemoration of 9/11, but there was poor cooperation between the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) and the Fajr Media Center, who “produced dirty lies against our beloved site.”

The statement insisted that the site was not fabricated. Instead it counterattacked, stating, “It is not possible to guarantee the honor of the Fajr Media Center and the Global Islamic Media Front because they … initiated a campaign against our beloved site.”

The statement concluded saying that Ikhlaas would remain “concealed” until Fajr and the GIMF can confirm their honor, but it stated that the Ikhlaas “network” is prepared to call upon “the brothers” to “expel the crusaders from our lands.”

The authenticity of the Ikhlaas statement is difficult to assess. If someone else does control the site, this message is just another aspect of a well-orchestrated IO campaign designed to disrupt the jihadi message. However, if the Ikhlaas administrators, along with Fajr and the GIMF, really did botch the Ikhlaas return, then incompetence rules and a jihadi media war may be brewing. Either way, the future is not bright for jihadi media.

Annual Jihadi Cyberbattle Sees Return of Ikhlas

Thomas Hegghammer September 11, 2009

Like last year, this year’s 9/11 anniversary is the occasion of a major cyberbattle over jihadi forums. At least three of the top jihadi discussion forums – Faloja, Shouraa, Shumukh – have been down for the past couple of days, and I bet my left arm they have been hacked for the occasion. Other big forums such as Ana Muslim and Ansar were reportedly down for a while (though I didn’t see it and they are back up again now). Minor forums such as Tamkin, Madad al-Suyuf and al-Tahaddi seem to have been untouched.

The other fascinating development, which must be connected in some way to the former, is that the good old Ikhlas forum is back up again after an absence of – guess what – a year.  The old passwords are still working. The return of Ikhlas is being presented by the administrators as “Usama bin Ladin’s Ramadan gift to the Umma”. The online jihadi community is suspicious, and people are warning against using Ikhlas. Frankly, I would be suspicious too – something fishy is going on.

Naturally, Haganah is on the ball and I am counting on Aaron to solve this mystery for us.

PS: You will see that for once I have included direct links to all the forums. It is my departure gift to our readers as I leave the stage for a while.

Falluja Analytics

Scott Sanford May 11, 2009

[Editor’s note: I am pleased to introduce another new contributor, Scott Sanford, who is a graduate student at George Washington University specialising in jihadism in the levant. Scott has guest blogged for Jihadica in the past, but now he is joining us on a more regular basis.]

 

“What is the Secret of the Falluja Forum’s Success?” This was the intriguing title of a recent post on Falluja presenting a detailed analysis of the web traffic to the forum itself. The contributor, named “Song of Terror”, broke the article into two parts: the first supplying the web analytic data and the second providing strategies and further analysis.  While he claimed that jihadi propaganda efforts on the Internet are successful, the data does in fact not support his analysis.

Using data from Alexa.com, Song of Terror started by asserting that Fallujah is the most “successful” jihadi forum.  Fallujah’s “Daily Reach”, the percent of global Internet users visiting Al-faloja.info, was up 42% from 0.00163% three months ago to 0.0022% on 27 April 2009.  A majority of Fallujah’s users, 36.5%, were in Iraq.  Algeria held the second spot with 9.1% followed by Egypt with 8.2%.  Al-faloja.info’s traffic rank was 220 in Iraq, 759 in Georgia, and 821 in the Palestinian Territories.

Song of Terror reported that 19.64% of Fallujah’s visitors came from Google.com, 5.89% from Muslm.net, an Islamic forum that many militants frequent, and 5.56% from Youtube.com.  He appeared to be disappointed with Youtube.com’s third place ranking and suspected that it would increase in the next “two weeks” because “a campaign to spread Fallujah’s link via [YouTube] continues in its infancy.”  In fact, YouTube now has a new channel called FallujahTube that appears to be connected to this “campaign.”  He also recommended that others who post videos on YouTube put the Fallujah link in the video description under the user name to make it more visible to users.  He also claimed that the percentage reported for YouTube is inaccurate because other websites take videos from YouTube and post them elsewhere, which would make its percentage higher.  As for Muslm.net, he stated that due to his own personal efforts posting Fallujah links on the website since 2007, it now holds the number two spot.

In regards to Google.com, Song of Terror claimed that Fallujah’s success is due to not requiring a login, which makes Fallujah searchable on Google.  The top Google search terms leading to Fallujah were “The Fallujah Forums” written in Arabic and “al-faloja” written in English.  He also noted that “proxy without installation” written in Arabic and “filezzz rapidleech” written in English lead visitors to the Fallujah Forums for technical advice.  Indeed, a 10 May 2009 Google search of “proxy without installation” in Arabic revealed that the third link on the page connected to a Fallujah post about surfing the Internet without a proxy.

After visiting Fallujah, 14.85% of the visitors returned to Google, 5.46% returned to YouTube, 4.61% each went to Hanein.info and Muslm.net, and between 3.92% and 2.9% visited the upload sites Zshare.net, Rapidshare.com, and Archive.org.  Song of Terror noted that this is evidence that Fallujah users use the website as a means to access videos.

In the second section of the post, Song of Terror outlined eight strategies and pieces of advice:

1.      “Determine Your Goal,” which is “Winning the Battle of Hearts and Minds,” “Planting the seed of jihad in the hearts of the general Muslim population,” and “Transmitting the mujahedeen voice to the general population.”

2.      “Choose the Means of Arriving to Your Goal,” which is using the Internet.

3.      “Study the Field Data and the Means of Influence,” where he again stressed the importance of YouTube to the jihadi propaganda effort because of the supposed rising popularity of the Internet in the Middle East and because YouTube is the second most popular site in the world according to Song of Terror.  He added that Falluja should not be the primary focus of propaganda efforts because many Arab countries ban the site.

4.      Properly distribute one’s efforts to endeavors that yield the most results.

5.      Remain flexible to adjust to the different characteristics of various websites.

6.      This section dealt with security issues and Song of Terror added a link to a Fallujah post on how to use the Tor anonymity software.  He also added links to several “Crusader websites” because they “distribute mujahedeen films”.  It is unclear why he added this, but possibly, it is because jihadis could use links to videos on these sites as safe links that government censoring would not prevent.

7.      The connection between the real world and the “hypothetical world.”  Here it appears that Song of Terror was attempting to prove a connection to jihadi Internet propaganda efforts and the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq.  In making his argument, he cited reporting from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, an unidentified Rand report, and al-Qaeda in Iraq reporting about their “martyrs,” which all supposedly concluded that most foreign fighters in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia, followed by Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Algeria.  While he did not make his point explicit, it appears that he was insinuating that the movement of foreign fighters to Iraq from these Arab countries was proof of jihadi Internet propaganda success.

However, adding this point contradicts his entire argument that the Fallujah Forums are successful.  Saudi Arabia placed tenth on the country list of Al-faloja.info users with only 2.5% of the site’s visitors being of Saudi origin.  If Song of Terror’s correlation between Internet propaganda and the number of foreign fighters were correct, we would expect the number of Saudis entering Iraq to be much lower or the number of Saudi visitors on the Fallujah Forums to be much higher.  Additionally, from the countries ranked above Saudi Arabia on the country list of Fallujah users – Algeria, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Libya, the UAE, Georgia, and Jordan – we would expect more of these nationalities to enter Iraq or less of them to visit the Fallujah Forums.  It is possible that many of Fallujah’s visitors have gone to Pakistan and Afghanistan instead of Iraq, but it is reasonable to assume, with the exception of Pakistan, that the numbers and nationalities of foreign fighters entering these countries would be similar to Iraq’s experience, which still negates Song of Terror’s analysis.  Finally, according Song of Terror, nearly 50 Yemenis entered Iraq, but Yemen is not even listed on the country list of Fallujah users.  According to his analysis, we would expect Yemen to hold a much higher position on the list.  In short, his data does not add up and it does not support the theory that jihadi Internet propaganda alone determines the flow of militants to war zones.

8.      “Strategies of Intellectual Penetration and Contradicting Psychological Conditioning.”  In this final point, Song of Terror encouraged jihadi propagandists to distribute documentary programs supportive of jihadi ideology and to learn about “psychological conditioning” by mainstream Arab satellite stations such as al-Jazeera.

Song of Terror attempted to apply some quantitative analytical reasoning to verify the success and usefulness of the Fallujah Forums and jihadi efforts at Internet propaganda.  However, the data does not support his analysis.  One might even use his data to make the exact opposite argument, that jihadi Internet propaganda has relatively little effect on radicalization and recruitment.

Document (Arabic): 05-01-2009-falujah-traffic-ranking-1
Document (Arabic): 05-11-2009-fallujahtube-2
Document (Arabic): 05-10-2009-without-a-proxy-post-4
Document (Arabic): 05-11-2009-how-to-use-tor-5

The History of the Jihadi Forums

Anne Stenersen March 4, 2009

One of the most intriguing questions about the jihadi internet is how it came into being. The early history of jihadi websites remains very poorly understood. Most of us started studying them too late, and we are too busy keeping track of present developments to examine the past.

My curiosity was therefore piqued by a recent article by ‘Mihdar’ on Midad al-Suyuf, who provides what he calls a ‘complete historical analysis’ of the jihadi forums on the web. Considering Mihdar’s record as a somewhat controversial figure – for other controversies involving Madad al-Suyuf, see here or here, the study should be taken with a grain of salt. And indeed, Mihdar is more interested in politics than in facts. He devotes a considerable part of his ‘analysis’ to lashing out at other jihadi forums, in particular criticising the policy of closing forums to registered members only. This, he argues, both restricts the flow of information (since password-protecting a forum means that you cannot enter it from public search engines, like Google), and facilitates the formation of cliques and factions among the members.

Anyway, the article does also provide a brief overview of the early history of Arab and jihadi web pages, as seen from an ’insider’. The article starts out by talking about Arabic and Islamic forums in general. He claims the first Arabic forums started around ten years ago, but they were general forums and not jihadi forums as such. Examples include al-Sahat, Ana Muslim (which he claims was “bought by Saudi intelligence” early on) and Sahab (not to be confused with al-Qaida’s media company al-Sahab). Around 2000 the page Islamway appeared, which was dominated by Egyptians. After 11 September, Islamway was shut down but other forums took its place such as al-Tajdid, al-Qala‘a, al-Islah and al-Tawhid. Of these, the only jihadi page was al-Tawhid, where Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza were believed to be writing. With regards to the others, they were political forums, but not strictly speaking jihadi.

Then, at the end of 2003, the forum al-Ansar appeared, and it was the only true jihadi forum at the time. It was preceded by a page named jehad.net, but this was shut down after its owner was arrested. Al-Ansar carried news about the Iraqi jihad in particular, distributed by a man named Abu Maysara al-Iraqi. Al-Iraqi started posting on the page in early 2004, and was the official source of information from the Iraqi jihad. In the beginning, al-Ansar was open for everyone to watch. However, in May 2004 the forum was shut down, after it had posted a video of the beheading of the American hostage Nicholas Berg. It later reappeared, but started requiring members to register. [As some of you might be aware, al-Ansar disappeared for good in 2004 or in 2005]. During the “last days of al-Ansar”, the forum al-Ikhlas was also established, founded by a young man named Muhibb al-Shaykhayn al-Tunisi.

Thus the historical overview seems to end, as the article goes on to discuss other and more internal matters, which will not be detailed here. The writer does also mention the newer and more well-known discussion forums such as al-Hisba, al-Buraq, al-Firdaws etc., but does not provide details on their history. Interestingly, he argues that none of these forums are run by intelligence agencies (contesting a common rumour, in particular with regards to al-Hisba) but that they have been corrupted by the members themselves, making free and open discussion impossible.

It is hard to judge the historical accuracy of this account, and it is apparently not complete. At FFI we only began to follow the forums closely in early 2002, so we missed the crucial formative period from 1999 to 2001.  Perhaps Reuven at E-Prism or Aaron at Haganah have some insights?

Document (Arabic): 01-04-09-madad-al-suyuf-the-jihadi-forums

Prêt à porter terrorism

Thomas Hegghammer March 2, 2009

As most Jihadica readers probably know, the jihadi internet is used for many things, but not for operational planning. I have yet to come across online discussions or instructions for concrete operations by professional militants. However, once in a while you see amateurs proposing specific operations – “prêt a porter plots” – for others to carry out.

One such bright idea was posted on Faloja yesterday by a member named Sabir, who proposes that al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula (QAP) fire Katyusha rockets from the Saudi shore of the Gulf of Aqaba toward Sharm al-Sheikh, where international leaders are meeting today to raise money for the reconstruction of Gaza.

Sabir addresses his message “to Abu Basir [Nasir al-Wuhayshi], Emir of al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula” and humbly presents “a small and simple operation for three Islamic lions from the military corps under your command.” He notes that Ras al-Shaykh Hamid on the Saudi coast is only 7-8 kilometers away from Sharm al-Shaykh, while Katyusha rockets have a range of 10-22 kilometers. One could even use medium or heavy mortar shells, which have a range of 4.9-8.2km and 10 km respectively. Having done a certain amount of background research, Sabir includes maps, satellite pictures and photographs from the area to illustrate his point. Unconcerned about Muslim collateral damage, he concedes that one might not succeed in hitting the conference venue directly, but even striking nearby will send a strong signal, as did the failed mortar attack on UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon during the latter’s visit to Baghdad in March 2007. Sabir also admits that “you may not have time to do it today, but you have plenty of time in the coming days to acquire long-range missiles”.

There have been missile plots in Saudi Arabia in the past. In January 1998, Saudi security forces intercepted a shipment of missiles on the Yemeni-Saudi border intended for an al-Qaida attack on the US consulate in Jidda (see p 708 of this article). In May 2002, guards discovered empty missile tubes from a failed attack on planes taking off from the Prince Sultan Airbase. The missiles from the latter attack had been acquired in Yemen, and they were allegedly from the same batch as those used in the Mombasa attack later the same year.

Still, Sabir’s idea is completely off the wall. Katyushas have never been found on the Arabian Peninsula, the QAP is currently holed up in Yemen, and it takes more than a few days to plan an operation like this. Moreover, as other forum members dryly note in their comments, the idea is useless the moment you post it on online for all the intelligence services in the world to see.

The posting is nevertheless interesting, first of all because it is unusually specific and shows that we cannot completely dismiss the Internet’s potential as an arena for operational brainstorming. At the same time, it illustrates the lack of military know-how of many online jihadists. In much of the forum material, there is a spectacular disconnection between intention and capability. Unfortunately, the haute couture of terrorism is prepared behind closed doors.

Document (Arabic): 03-01-09-military-plan-for-qap

Update (6 March): This post not only prompted enthusiastic comments (see below), but was also discussed on Faloja itself. We wish our new readers a warm welcome.
Document (Arabic): 03-05-09-faloja-on-jihadica

Better Know a Forum: Sign-in Page

Will McCants May 18, 2008

I have received several requests for an introduction to the world of Jihadi discussion forums, so I’ve decided to kick off a series on the subject. Today’s entry is the first page you will see when visiting a password-protected forum–the sign-in page. Rather than walk you through each component, I’ve jpeg’d the sign-in page of Ekhlaas and embedded my translations. Some of it requires explanation, but it’s better to jump in with both feet.

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