Counterterrorism Blog

This morning, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point released the second issue of its Sentinel journal, including my new piece on "Al-Qaida's MySpace"--which tracks a growing number of case studies in which users on extremist Internet forums such as Al-Ekhlaas have been vanishing off the forums, only to suddenly re-appear later as suicide bombers in the service of Al-Qaida in Iraq. The report includes both testimonials gathered from the forums themselves, and never-before-seen evidence uncovered during the British investigation of "Irhaby 007" (a.k.a. Younis Tsouli). Tsouli's former headquarters on the web--the Muntada al-Ansar forum--was a major center for such online terrorist recruiting. In August 2005, a senior Muntada al-Ansar administrator broke the “good news” to fellow users about a “meeting of Ansar forum members” inside Iraq:

“This story is fascinating and emotional because it is closely linked to… the Ansar forum… One of our brothers who was a member on the Ansar forum and was originally from a country adjacent to Iraq decided to leave and fight in the cause of Allah. Allah made it possible for him to meet with an additional five brothers from other countries who had all come to fight in the cause of Allah… Later, after talking with one another, they all realized that they were fellow users on the Ansar forum, and that made them very happy. They began crying and their love for Allah increased… I also inform you that one of the brothers who is a member on the Ansar forum will soon rejoin his beloved comrades in the land of jihad and martyrdom, the land of Mesopotamia, and he will also participate in a suicide operation.”

When Muntada al-Ansar users were successful in brokering connections with Al-Qaida in Iraq through Irhaby 007, they became ecstatic, proclaiming, "Praise be to Allah, We are going to go in over there at the time when the Sheikh Osama has given the official attestation to the amir ab[u] mouss[ab al-Zarqawi]... The timing couldn’t be better for us!!! … it is serious, we have taken the bags [and] we can’t go back.”

In the piece, I go on to warn that, "in the same way that traditional terrorist training camps once served as beacons for would-be jihadists, online support forums such as Muntada al-Ansar and al-Ekhlaas now operate as black holes in cyberspace, drawing in and indoctrinating sympathetic recruits, teaching them basic military skills and providing a web of social contacts that bridges directly into the ranks of Al Qaeda. Rather than simply using the web as a weapon to destroy the infrastructure of their enemies, Al Qaeda is using it instead as a logistical tool to revolutionize the process of terrorist enlistment and training... This is the hidden dark side of online social networking--as a virtual factory for the production of suicide bombers."

To read the complete text, visit the CTC's Sentinel website.

Separately, one of my expert reports commissioned by New Scotland Yard during the investigation of Younis Tsouli is now available on the NEFA Foundation website. The report tracks the close relationship between Tsouli (a.k.a. Irhaby 007) and Al-Qaida in Iraq, including Tsouli's attempts to build Al-Qaida its own official Internet website.