The Terrorist Group is Defeated and Routed. But Its Backup Plan Survives (wired.co.uk) 27
The terrorist group is defeated and routed. But its backup plan survives. From a report: It all began on October 27, 2019. Rumour was, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, was dead. Nothing was confirmed, but already the jihadist world online was thrumming with excitement and trepidation. "I was walking through an airport," Moustafa Ayad tells me. "Jet-lagged out of my mind." A deputy director of the counter-extremism think tank Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Ayad tries to stay on top of the constant struggles and skirmishes, retreats and resurgences between Isis and their many enemies online. That day, as he scrolled through his phone, a blitz of Isis propaganda stared back at him. The digital Jihad was raising a dirge to Baghdadi on Twitter. Flitting from account to pro-Isis account, Ayad noticed something strange. Some accounts carried short, discreet links, not within their tweets, but nestled in their biographies. He clicked.
The link, he realised, was not quite like any other he'd ever followed before. On his phone, Ayad saw folder after folder of meticulously catalogued terrorist content. "I thought it was a joke," Ayad says. "Some kind of scam." In the echoing marbled expanse of Dubai International Airport, on public Wi-Fi, in a Starbucks queue, he had stumbled upon a gigantic, sprawling cache of Isis material. He clicked on a PowerPoint presentation, one of countless now in front of him. "Al Qaeda Airlines", it said: a case study of the mechanics of hijacking planes, making your own chloroform, and the cell structure needed to organise a coordinated terrorist attack. Just then, a dim tannoy announced his flight. Over the weeks that followed, Ayad and his colleagues at the ISD began their journey through the cache. At first glance, the cache looks like a bunch of files on DropBox -- its colour palette an on-brand Isis black-and-white, with a roster of ordinary folders. But the first thing you notice is the size. Its 4,000 folders hold over a terabyte and a half of multimedia multilingual content, spanning Arabic, English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Bangla, Turkish, and Pashto. "It's a blueprint for terrorism, complete with footnotes" Ayad tells me. "It's everything anyone with an inclination for violence would need to carry out an attack."
The cache's content is a blend of the official products of Isis itself with those of often more obscure precursors, such as the Tawhid wal-Jihad Group, who fought coalition forces in Iraq, and the umbrella organisation of other insurgent groups, Majlis Shura al-Mujahidin. A small amount of it -- just a few per cent by size -- captures in screeds and sermons the ideas of key ideologues of Isis itself. The key personality in the "Fatwas over the Airwaves" folder, for instance, is Turki al Banali, a Bahraini cleric-turned-recruiter who in each episode desperately gives the core concepts of Salafi Jihadism an Isis-friendly spin. Much of the stash, however, simply portrays daily life within Isis, back when the terrorist group still controlled a chunk of territory sitting astride Syria and Iraq. There are school curricula covering the six core subjects that, some estimates believe, were once taught to 130,000 children: English, PE, Arabic, Koranic Studies, Geography & History and a subject called "'ideology", a course of indoctrination in Isis's party lines expounding on the death and destruction awaiting all those who strayed outside of them. It is a mix of the banal and the horrifying -- conjugating verbs and killing the infidels, where early readers learn that "S is for sniper" and "G is for grenade".
The link, he realised, was not quite like any other he'd ever followed before. On his phone, Ayad saw folder after folder of meticulously catalogued terrorist content. "I thought it was a joke," Ayad says. "Some kind of scam." In the echoing marbled expanse of Dubai International Airport, on public Wi-Fi, in a Starbucks queue, he had stumbled upon a gigantic, sprawling cache of Isis material. He clicked on a PowerPoint presentation, one of countless now in front of him. "Al Qaeda Airlines", it said: a case study of the mechanics of hijacking planes, making your own chloroform, and the cell structure needed to organise a coordinated terrorist attack. Just then, a dim tannoy announced his flight. Over the weeks that followed, Ayad and his colleagues at the ISD began their journey through the cache. At first glance, the cache looks like a bunch of files on DropBox -- its colour palette an on-brand Isis black-and-white, with a roster of ordinary folders. But the first thing you notice is the size. Its 4,000 folders hold over a terabyte and a half of multimedia multilingual content, spanning Arabic, English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Bangla, Turkish, and Pashto. "It's a blueprint for terrorism, complete with footnotes" Ayad tells me. "It's everything anyone with an inclination for violence would need to carry out an attack."
The cache's content is a blend of the official products of Isis itself with those of often more obscure precursors, such as the Tawhid wal-Jihad Group, who fought coalition forces in Iraq, and the umbrella organisation of other insurgent groups, Majlis Shura al-Mujahidin. A small amount of it -- just a few per cent by size -- captures in screeds and sermons the ideas of key ideologues of Isis itself. The key personality in the "Fatwas over the Airwaves" folder, for instance, is Turki al Banali, a Bahraini cleric-turned-recruiter who in each episode desperately gives the core concepts of Salafi Jihadism an Isis-friendly spin. Much of the stash, however, simply portrays daily life within Isis, back when the terrorist group still controlled a chunk of territory sitting astride Syria and Iraq. There are school curricula covering the six core subjects that, some estimates believe, were once taught to 130,000 children: English, PE, Arabic, Koranic Studies, Geography & History and a subject called "'ideology", a course of indoctrination in Isis's party lines expounding on the death and destruction awaiting all those who strayed outside of them. It is a mix of the banal and the horrifying -- conjugating verbs and killing the infidels, where early readers learn that "S is for sniper" and "G is for grenade".
Which terrorist group? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The summary is incomprehensible.
Of course! It was posted by msmash. Obviously, it is a new Microsoft posting AI software in alpha testing.
And as for as to its relevance to Slashdot geek community:
making your own chloroform,
obviously the maker community.
And...that is all I got.
Re:Which terrorist group? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the matter? You lose focus after the first 140 characters?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It's a summary FFS and lately they've been overly massive cut and pastes such that you may as well RTFA. Which I did and it basically states that ISIS did a self replicating core dump to the cloud of all the information it collected on the internet about anything related to their ideology and terrorist shit. Similar groups are doing the same. The cat's out of the bag and it's really hard if not impossible for the authorities to put it back in.
Re:Which terrorist group? (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary is incomprehensible.
Daesh. Always use Daesh. They hate it. Never use the term that is identical to an Ancient Egyptian god. For those Arabic speaking Daesh "kelb" works just as well.
Punked again (Score:2)
Everything read on the internet is twooooooooooo....
Meh (Score:2)
Terrorist Group has a plan A
Terrorist Group has a plan B and possibly a plan C
The End
Should be a honeypot (Score:2)
Keep the archive up and findable, but replace key details to trip up any would-be terrorist.
Yep, 25 Celsius doesn't change (Score:2)
>> change key details
> The training, materiel handling, OTOH, doesn't go bad. Physics and chemistry still work.
Yep, "when making acetone peroxide explosive, be sure to keep the mixture above 25 Celsius at all times" is as true as it ever was.
* Having the mixture above 25 C is actually how you make sure that the terrorist blows himself up while trying to make it
** Never, ever make acetone peroxide. It's fun to make black powder. It's dangerous to make flash powder. It's crazy to make acetone perox
Re: (Score:2)
Doing it and then mixing it with the flash powder is ever crazier. Increases brisance though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All Islamic terrorists should be encouraged to try synthesizing large quantities of dioxygen diflouride (the infamous FOOF) or maybe even trioxygen diflouride (ozone flouride). I'm told the sulfur chemistry of these compounds is an area in which very little research has been done - here's your chance to make your mark, Mohammed!
So the caliphate published an encyclopedia... (Score:2)
because it knew that it might collapse. Was this meant to shorten the time before a new and more stable caliphate could take its place?
Inspired by science fiction? It wouldn't be the first time: https://www.theguardian.com/bo... [theguardian.com]
Fork it (Score:2)
Fork it, all keep the attack resources and tactical howtos, but remove anything related to motivations and strategy so that it no longer has anything to do with terrorism.
Then everyone should be happy .. except the original "owner" (isis?) who will throw a tantrum over someone having coopted their methods. Imagine the look on their faces when c
the nature of honey pots (Score:2)
i think that isis knows how to stir up shit
With Trump pulling out of Afghanistan (Score:2)
So Texas curriculum? (Score:2)
But with an Islamic bent?