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Daesh has weaponised the Net and using it well to feed terror

Trump is not likely to reverse his decision on troop withdrawals. But Daesh's battlespace is digital as much as physical.

In December 2018, US President Donald Trump declared victory over Daesh, tweeting that "Daesh  is largely defeated and other local countries, including Turkey, should be able to easily take care of whatever remains. We're coming home!" And in the first three months of this year, Trump said or tweeted 16 times that Daesh was either completely defeated or soon would be.
But the United States government appears to disagree. In August, the three lead inspectors general from the Department of Defense, Department of State, and the US Agency for International Development submitted a joint report to Congress reviewing Operation Inherent Resolve, the US campaign to defeat Daesh in Syria and Iraq, over the period from April 1 through June 30 of this year. They concluded that, "Despite the loss of physical territory, thousands of Daesh fighters remain in Iraq and Syria and are carrying out attacks and working to rebuild their capabilities."
The Daesh resurgence is partly the result of Trump's December 2018 decisions to withdraw all US troops from Syria and halve the number in Afghanistan, which prompted Secretary of Defense James Mattis to resign and made America's regional security partners less able to conduct counterterrorism operations. In Iraq, Daesh is regrouping and building clandestine terrorist cells in key areas of Baghdad, Ninewa, and Al Anbar provinces, and in the Middle Euphrates River Valley. In Syria, the group is mounting strong counteroffensives in Al Raqqah and Homs province, and is aggressively seeking to establish a safe-haven zone.
Trump is not likely to reverse his decision on troop withdrawals. But Daesh's battlespace is digital as much as physical. And in that regard at least, the Trump administration must strengthen America's capacity to wage war effectively. When Daesh attacked the Iraqi city of Mosul during the height of the group's insurgency in 2014, millions of people watched in real time on Arabic Twitter. They included the city's Iraqi defenders, who became increasingly demoralised and fled.
Similarly, the resurgent Daesh 2.0 uses press releases and social-media to spread its influence worldwide and recruit foreign fighters, sympathisers, and financial backers. In April 2019, for example, the group released a video of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who claimed responsibility for the deadly Easter Sunday bomb attacks in Sri Lanka. Daesh's global media operation also produces Soldiers Harvest II, an upgraded weekly publication covering the group's military operations.
Americans and publics around the world must finally understand that the war against Daesh and other terrorist groups is a new and different kind of conflict that will not be "won" once and for all. Support for Daesh, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and the like reflects multiple social, economic, and demographic factors, from corruption to climate change. The fight against these groups must therefore take place in many different arenas, starting with the domestic politics of the countries in which they operate.
This struggle must also take place online, as the US military well knows. In 2016, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff published a paper that focused on how to win the "battle for the narrative." It opened with the quote: "It's easier to kill a bad man than a bad idea." With that in mind, US Cyber Command will be transformed into an information warfare operations command by 2028, with the goal of integrating cyber, electronic warfare, and information operations.
But 2028 is almost a decade away, and Daesh won't wait. Moreover, this fight is too important to leave only to the soldiers. Regrettably, the Trump administration has gutted the US State Department's Global Engagement Center, which originally countered terrorist propaganda and is now tasked with fighting global disinformation. Fortunately, Congress has pushed back; the State Department needs to be a full partner in developing a strong and credible counter-narrative, which requires much more nuance and range than traditional counter-propaganda.
Furthermore, other countries fighting Daesh must ensure that they have similar capabilities and can collaborate with allies both diplomatically and militarily. Information wars are contests between different ways of seeing and understanding the world, and they require new capabilities and expertise that extend well beyond traditional communications.
Finally, national and global media outlets face a quandary. On one hand, stories about Daesh press releases and interviews raise the visibility, and to some extent the attractiveness, of it and similar groups. On the other hand, the significant decline in US media coverage of Daesh over the past few years strengthens the public perception that it is no longer a threat. Publicity is the lifeblood of all terrorist groups; they use attacks to raise awareness of their cause and to attract the support of the disaffected. Moreover, digital technologies allow Daesh to control parts of the virtual landscape in a way it rarely can on the ground, enabling it to regroup and find new ways to mount physical attacks.
Daesh's recent media resurgence is thus the precursor to the group's physical revival. That is why the information war against Daesh should never stop.
-Project Syndicate
Anne-Marie Slaughter, former director of policy planning in the US State Department, is CEO of the think tank New America. Asha C. Castleberry is professor of foreign policy and national security at George Washington University