Al-Qaeda's media strategies.

• Author: Lynch, Marc

We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media .... [W]e are in a media battle for the hearts and minds of our umma.

--Ayman al-Zawahiri, July 2005

THE CENTRALITY of the Arab mass media to Al-Qaeda's political strategy has long been evident. From spectacular terror attacks designed for maximal media exposure, to carefully timed videos from Osama bin Laden and his lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to the burgeoning realm of jihadi Internet forums, Al-Qaeda the organization has increasingly become indistinguishable from Al-Qaeda the media phenomenon. But the nature of Al-Qaeda's relationship with the Arab media has been poorly understood, and the wrong policy conclusions too often drawn.

For the United States to have any hope of waging a serious "war of ideas" against jihadism, it must better understand a rapidly changing battlefield--which means grasping the realities of the Arab media environment and its complex relationship with the jihad. Bin Laden and Zawahiri's grand strategy of winning over the Arab "median voter" depends on the mass media, which creates both great power and unique vulnerabilities. Al-Jazeera and other satellite television stations have unleashed powerful counter-forces and political competitors into a once-vacant arena. Indeed, the migration of the jihad onto the Internet associated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's rise to prominence directly responds to his dismay with Al-Jazeera's challenge to the jihad.

Al-Qaeda's Media Strategy

EVEN BEFORE 9/11, Al-Qaeda adapted with ruthless efficiency to the rise of satellite television and the Internet, grasping before virtually anyone else the political possibilities inherent in new media technologies. Zawahiri and Bin Laden both recognized the revolutionary significance of these developments, with Bin Laden understanding that "rhetoric and satellite propaganda can be on equal footing with unmanned bombers and cruise-missiles." (1)

Al-Qaeda, therefore, invested heavily and creatively in propaganda and media from the start. Media became even more central to its strategy after the loss of its Afghan base, when Al-Qaeda metamorphosed into the more virtual, diffuse organization that Peter Bergen memorably labeled "Al-Qaeda 2.0." The global arena of contention, the absence of a physical territory, and an environment constricted by Western and Arab counter-terrorism operations made the media the premier site of its political action.

The media have also become a vital forum for internal arguments about the jihad's direction. Arguments over doctrine and strategy that might once have been private matters, carried out face to face in secretive hideouts, are now by necessity public. The decentralized, diffuse nature of Al-Qaeda, the growing difficulty of private communications, and the goal of persuading mainstream and jihadi publics alike all force these arguments into the public sphere. Some of these arguments are tactical, as in the disputes broadcast on M-Jazeera between Zarqawi and his jihadi mentor, Abu Muhammad Maqdessi, about the taking of hostages. Still others debate doctrinal issues, such as the Quranic justification for terror or whether Muslim adversaries of the jihad can be declared non-Muslims.

Al-Qaeda's ultimate goal is to reinvigorate the Islamic umma in confrontation with the West and to direct this mobilized Muslim community in a revolutionary transformation of the international order. This means that it must target not simply the small minority of radicalized jihadists, but the "median voters" of the Arab Muslim public--not themselves necessarily Islamist, but deeply concerned about issues such as the Palestinians and Iraq, disenchanted with corrupt and authoritarian Arab regimes, and thus potentially receptive to anti-American politics. Al-Qaeda's media strategy is therefore inseparable from its political strategy, as its terrorism and rhetoric alike work toward the common goal of heightening Islamic identity and sharpening the confrontation of that identity with the West. The recent controversy over the Danish cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad, while not directed by Al-Qaeda, brilliantly served its purposes in driving both the Muslim world and the West into its desired "clash of civilizations."

The Arab Media: Double-Edged Sword

THE ARAB media's coverage of Bin Laden's videos and the Iraqi insurgency has led influential American officials to denounce it as an effective collaborator with the jihad. But the jihadists in fact find the Arab media an unreliable ally. Bin Laden himself, in a January 2004 statement, identified the Arab media as a primary source of deviation in the Muslim world: "The media people who belittle religious duties such as jihad and other rituals are atheists and renegades."

Those who make easy connections between the Arab media and Al-Qaeda often fail to recognize the incredibly rapid, even dizzying, changes in the media landscape. Prior to Al-Jazeera's launch in late 1996, the domestic Arab media was tightly controlled by states, with much of the transnational media owned by Saudis. For half a decade, Al-Jazeera dominated the media landscape. But by 2003 the Arab...