IS is far ahead of the US intelligence services: Abdel Bari Atwan

Author of 'Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate', says in an interview that IS has very clever, experienced people who are supervising the media

The issue that everyone is raising in the light of Islamic State’s rapid expansion is greater US/Western engagement in terms of boots on the ground. Is this advisable given past failures?

The important thing to note is that despite something like 4,000 air sorties by the US and Arab coalition, IS has been able to bring two-thirds of Syria and about half of Iraq under its control within a year. Then we were told that the Iraqi army would capture Mosul before Ramadan, and IS managed to derail that plan. The US was gambling on the fact that the Iraqi army was strong enough to fight and that there was no need for boots on the ground. But IS has outfoxed the US and Iraqi governments. So now, the thinking is that without boots on the ground there is no solution to the IS. That doesn’t mean that this strategy will succeed. In fact, IS would like greater US involvement in order to repeat the previous defeat. It’s another challenge for the US and could be extremely costly.

But shouldn’t the West also strengthen its technological capabilities to combat the hugely successful digital campaign that IS is waging?

First, IS has very clever, experienced people who are supervising the media. Many of them are graduates of leading US and European technical universities. They are far ahead of the US intelligence services. If you look at their YouTube videos, they are like slick Hollywood productions. Second, where Al Qaeda used to rely on Al Jazeera to spread its message, these people are fully independent. They get something like 94,000 tweets and thousands of hits on their Facebook page every day. IS cyber operatives have created incredibly sophisticated layers of security and encryption that are impossible to crack. There are also so many accounts on Twitter, ask.fm, and so on that it is impossible to close them all down because they just start new ones. IS is much more brazen than Al Qaeda was — it even uses Skype to phone potential recruits! So while the West might spend more money on technology, it is expertise and insider knowledge that would be required to defeat the Cyber Caliphate.
 

 

Abdel Bari Atwan

Now that the Taliban in Afghanistan is positioning itself as the more “moderate” face of jihad, does it make sense for the US to engage with it more closely at a diplomatic level?

I believe contact with the Taliban is already taking place under the table. The US has recognised that Taliban will be in power once its troops finally leave Afghanistan. The Taliban has also learnt its lesson. The main obstacle between the two was Osama bin Laden because Mullah Omar was committed to him. Within Al Qaeda, too, there is a transformation as a political organisation. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the head of Al-Nusra, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, said two things. One, that Syria was not going to be a springboard to fight the West. Two, it would not target minorities. It’s a dual message to the West that it was willing to integrate with it to fight IS. In fact, unlike IS, Al-Nusra does not accept foreign fighters in its ranks.

The other issue in the mix is the emerging US-Iran nuclear deal. How do you think it will impact the geopolitics of this region?

The whole region is in disarray because of the Shia-Sunni clashes and that will definitely reshape the geopolitics of the future. Right now, as the Turkish prime minister recently acknowledged, there’s a new kind of Sykes-Picot conspiracy going on to divide the region on sectarian lines. Basically, to create space for ethnic minorities there will be something like 10 states out of Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. If this is true, I don’t believe the Gulf and Saudi Arabia will be immune to the divisions. In fact, Saudi Arabia is particularly vulnerable.

As you say in your book, prejudice against and disaffection among Muslim youth in the West is proving fertile ground for IS’ message. What’s the threat perception for India, which has a large Muslim population?

I don’t believe India can be immune but there is one obstacle for IS and that is the fact that India is a prosperous democracy. Of course, IS doesn’t need to address the whole Muslim community in India, only a fraction and that is easy to find. So, the Indian government should be aware of the threat IS can pose. What you need is a cultural and theological counter-attack. After all, this is also a war of ideas and ideology. India isn’t on the IS radar, there are too many countries to cross first, but that is for the time being.

Some analysts say the IS threat will play itself out. You predict 30 years of turmoil. Why?

IS has three advantages that other terrorist organisations don’t. One, it is financially self-sufficient with revenues of $5 billion to $7 billion. It has built these reserves by looting money in Iraq plus its control over eleven oil fields. That alone gave it revenues of about $3 billion. Now, it has seized gas fields near Palmyra in Syria. Two, it is self-sufficient in military hardware after it captured stocks in Iraq and Syria that basically consists of sophisticated arms from the US and other countries. Third, IS is not a “guest” of anybody, it is a sovereign entity because it controls huge amounts of territory and rules over more than six million people. You can dismiss Al Qaeda because of its dependence on the Taliban. But nobody can dismiss IS, unless you do so by military means.