Chapter 14: The Information Warfare Arsenal and Tactics of Terrorists and Rogues

---

OVERVIEW

The information warfare arsenal and tactics of terrorist and rogues have become increasingly transnational as the networked organizational form has expanded. When terrorism’s mentors were the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, they imposed their own rigid hierarchical structure on terrorist groups. Now that terrorism is increasingly substrate, or semidetached, networking and interconnectivity are necessary to find allies and influence others, as well as to effect command and control.

As discussed in Chapter 13, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have facilitated this, and have also enabled multiple leaders to operate parallel to one another in different countries. It, therefore, might be said that a shift is taking place from absolute hierarchies to hydra-headed networks, which are less easy to decapitate. An analogy, using the Palestinian example, may be that the more networked form of Hamas is replacing the hierarchical structure of the PLO. In many ways the Afghan War was a seminal event in promoting the networked form in that it showed that fluidly organized groups, driven in this case by a religious imperative, could defeat an experienced hierarchically structured army.

Geographical dispersion, both physical and in cyberspace, provides extra security. A rigid hierarchical structure is more easily penetrated and neutralized. Israel’s admission that it had not yet found a way to deal with Hamas’s decentralized and internationalized command and control structure, which uses encrypted Internet messages, suggests it has had difficulty in this matter. An investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into terrorist activity in the United States indicated that part of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s command and control system was located in Tampa, Florida. Likewise, Hamas allegedly has some of its fundraising infrastructure in London and the USA, and publishes its main Arabic journal, Filistin al Muslima, in London.

Islamist terrorists may be said to fit the network ideal. Many supportive expatriate communities are based in sympathetic or neutral states enabling political activists and terrorists to operate within the safe haven that modern democracies provide.

Note 

It is not the intention here that the term “Islamists” should refer only to terrorist organizations, but rather to those Muslim militants who believe that Islam is incomplete without its own state, one in which Shariah provides the system of governance, and who campaign for its imposition.

Among Islamists, it is the Jihadists (religious warriors) who are of particular interest in this chapter. The followers of Hasan al Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Abdul Ala Maududi, the organizations they founded, Ikhwan al Muslimoon and Jamaat Islami, and the ideological off-shoots these have spawned, give rise to the “Jihadist” ideology. And, although the concept of Jihad may be interpreted on different levels, it often incorporates violence when applied to Islamists.

Note 

The ultimate experience is, of course, Jihad, which for Islamists means armed battles against communists (Afghanistan) or Zionists (Palestine) or, for the radicals, against renegades and the impious.

Jihad in the modern Islamist sense knows no political space or state; its space is that of the Umma, the community of Muslims, wherever they may be. An example of the networked form amongst such Islamist organizations is that of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, the GIA. Allegedly responsible for a bombing campaign in France, it appears to have had a command and control center in Britain for some years prior to the expulsion of some members by the British authorities. At the same time, sympathizers were also safe-housing some of its weapons and explosives in Belgium.

Algerian terrorists have been able to communicate with their sympathizers and members by use of the Internet and have used the services of Muslim news agencies, which republish their postings. Foremost amongst them is MSANEWS. On their site were published communiqués from the GIA, Front Islamique de Salut (FIS), and many other Islamists.

Note 

The MSANEWS also posts articles and communiqués from non-Islamist Muslim and non-Muslim sources, claiming that it has condemned terrorism, and that it no longer reposts communiqués of organizations that advocate terrorism.

The site of the Campaign for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), the Saudi opposition group, also contains postings from groups not directly connected with it, as do London-net@Muslimsonline and the pro-Iranian Muslimedia International, which, like other sites, reposts interviews with Osama bin Laden, the exiled and wanted dead or alive Saudi terrorist leader (see sidebar, “Bin Laden Uses Web to Plan”). As with some other Islamists groups, Muslimedia International also promotes antisemitism and Holocaust denial and provides links with the American Holocaust denier, Michael Hoffman II, and his Campaign for Radical Truth in History, thereby highlighting the interconnectivity possibilities between totally different ideologies sharing a perceived common enemy.

Bin Laden Uses Web To Plan

Osama bin Laden and other Muslim extremists are using the Internet to plan more terrorist activities against the United States and its allies. Recently, U.S. law enforcement officials and other experts disclosed details of how extremists hide maps and photographs of terrorist targets in sports chat rooms, on pornographic bulletin boards and other popular Web sites. Instructions for terrorist activities also are posted on the sites, which the officials declined to name. To a greater and greater degree, terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and bin Laden’s al Qaeda group, are using computerized files, e-mail, and encryption to support their operations. According to various unnamed officials and investigators, the messages are scrambled using free encryption programs set up by groups that advocate privacy on the Internet. It’s something the intelligence, law-enforcement, and military communities are really struggling to deal with. The operational details and future targets, in many cases, are hidden in plain view on the Internet. Only the members of the terrorist organizations, knowing the hidden signals, are able to extract the information.

An Islamist site that particularly aims its message to the outside world is that of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the Islamic Liberation Party. Imperial College, London hosted their first UK-based site, but following complaints to the college authorities, the site was closed down. They now post in their own name as Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and as Khilafah, providing Internet-based access to their hard copy material, literature, and their regional activities. Al-Muhajiroun (the Emigrants) whose UK leader, Omar Bakri Mohammed, was the founding leader of Hizb-ut-Tahrir in Britain, and from which he split claiming differences with the Middle-East-based leadership, also provides details of its activities, as well as lists of its hardcopy publications and contacts. In 1998, Mohammed reported the communiqués of Osama bin Laden, for whom he claims to act as a spokesman. As a consequence of his endorsement of the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi, his postings are no longer carried by MSANEWS.

Hamas and its supporters and sympathizers have been among the most prolific users of the Internet. MSANEWS provides a list of Internet resources about Hamas including copies of its covenant, its official communiqués (at Assabeel On-line), and communiqués of its military wing, the Izz al-Din Al-Kassam Brigades. Information about Hamas, in fact, may also be accessed in various different ways: via MSANEWS, the Palestine site, and the Islamic Association for Palestine. Hamas’ own site, which posts in Arabic, is the Palestine Information Centre.

Religious luminaries from one country sometimes act as the higher legal and moral authority in another country. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawri of the Egyptian Ikhwan al-Muslimoon (Muslim Brotherhood) lives in Qatar and serves as the Imam (religious leader) for the Palestinian Hamas. Sheikh Ibn Qatada, a Jordanian Palestinian living in London, serves as the Imam for the Algerian GIA. Sheikh Abu Hamza, an Egyptian national and former Afghan Jihad volunteer, serves as a propagandist for the Algerian GIA and Imam for the Yemeni Jihad group, but lives in London. Now, their messages of guidance and support find an outlet most frequently via ICTs.

Although some commentators have argued that modern cultural forces, such as ICTs, serve to undermine Islamisation in Muslim society, it is equally easy to argue that they provide a new and growing medium by which Islamism is disseminated. Even if they do not reach the poorer sections of Muslim society, they certainly reach many educated expatriate communities, among whom they find support. The growing number of advertisements, on the Internet and in Muslim papers and journals, for conferences to discuss the use of the Internet to promote Islam, or Islamism, supports the thesis that many activists and religious teachers see these developments as positive ones to be recommended and encouraged.

Combining religious injunctions with strategic commands is a noticeable feature of such Islamist leaders and their groups. Calls to carry out Jihad are frequently cloaked in religious and pseudo-religious language, but the implication is clear for the target audience. Thus, for example, Osama bin Laden’s Ladenese Epistle, which was originally faxed to his London contact, Khalid al Fawaz, and then posted to MSANEWS in August 1996 by the London-based Saudi dissident groups CDLR and MIRA, is recognized as providing general guidance for anti-American terrorism.

For example, bin Laden’s Ladenese Epistle reads:

The sons of the land of the two Holy Places had come out to fight against the Russian in Afghanistan, the Serb in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and today they are fighting in Chechenia and—by the Permission of Allah—they have been made victorious over your partner, the Russians. By the command of Allah, they are also fighting in Tajakistan.

I say: Since the sons of the land of the two Holy Places feel and strongly believe that fighting (Jihad) against the Kuffar in every part of the world, is absolutely essential; then they would be even more enthusiastic, more powerful and larger in number upon fighting on their own land.

The Nida’ul Islam site, based in Australia, promotes an uncompromising message of both Jihad and of suicide terrorism. A recent posting, The Islamic Legitimacy of the Martyrdom Operations, states that martyrdom is forbidden in Islam, but cites approvingly those martyrs who willingly gave their lives for Muslim causes and then transposes these causes to contemporary issues. It attempts to demonstrate with quotes from the Quran and the Sunnah that Islamic bombing assaults and martyrdom attacks are legitimate and fall within the framework of Islam.

Azzam Publications, named after Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian who became a military leader in Afghanistan and who was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, has also published calls for Jihad volunteers:

“The Saudi Government does not intend to help the Muslims in Kosova and it has prevented its nationals from going there to fight. This means that the Jihad in Kosova is now a greater responsibility on Muslims with western nationalities … Redistribute this e-mail message all over the world … telephone the nearest Saudi Embassy or Consulate to protest against this crack-down and tell everyone to do so until it jams the lines of the Saudi Consulates around the world … e-mail the Saudi Embassy in Washington with messages of protest … begin to prepare yourselves to go and fight in Kosova to make up for the lack of manpower that was heading there from Saudi Arabia. Wait for the Kosova bulletin from Azzam Publications.”

Among the Far Right, the UK-based national revolutionary group, The International Third Position, illustrates graphically the adoption of ICTs to enhance a position. The group is tiny, but its foreign contacts are numerous, widespread and growing. In the space of just over one year its Final Conflict e-mail newsletter has grown in size and scope to reflect the news of, and messages from, its worldwide contacts.

Final Conflict also acts as a news agency for Holocaust deniers (in much the same way as MSANEWS does for Islamists), many of whom are also Far Right extremists. For example, the e-mail newsletter reposts communiqués from David Irving and Fredrick Toben’s Australian Adelaide Institute, which like the California-based Institute for Historical Review, attempts to provide a scholarly veneer for denial. Some invitees to a conference held by the Adelaide Institute were refused permission to visit Australia by its Department of Immigration, but the easy access to the Internet and video links facilitated conference presentations that otherwise might not have taken place.

The Far Right has also used the Internet to post bomb-making manuals that are not otherwise available in Europe. The British neo-Nazi, David Myatt, of the National Socialist Movement posted his Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution at the end of November 1997 at the Web site of Canadian Bernard Klatt in order to evade police scrutiny. The chapter headings included: Methods of Covert Direct Action, Escape and Evasion, Assassination, Terror Bombing, Sabotage, Racial War, How to Create a Revolutionary Situation, Direct Action Groups, and so on. The contents provided a detailed step-by-step guide for terrorist insurrection with advice on assassination targets, rationale for bombing and sabotage campaigns, and rules of engagement. Although he may have committed no indictable offense in Canada, Klatt was forced to close down his site in April 1998. Myatt is currently the subject of a British criminal investigation for incitement to murder and promotion of race hatred.

Police forces in Britain and France also recently investigated an international neo-Nazi network that issued death threats against French celebrities and politicians from their British-based Internet site. Herve Guttuso, the French leader of the Charlemagne Hammer Skins, was arrested in Essex at the same time as eight members were arrested in the South of France. The French members of the network were charged with making death threats, and Guttuso was the subject of a French extradition request to the British courts. According to the French Interior Ministry, police in Toulon traced the London address of the Internet site, which was being accessed about 7,000 times a month. The investigation enabled the police to identify 3,500 people sympathetic to the neo-Nazi group in various countries including Britain, Greece, Canada, America, and Poland. The investigators found that the Charlemagne group appeared to be one of the largest and best organized neo-Nazi groups yet uncovered, with a coordinated international structure and logistical centers for disseminating violent racist propaganda, based principally in Britain and America. Although the group gave a postal address in London as their center, their material was disseminated via Klatt’s FTC Net (as have been the postings of Marc Lemire, Paul Fromm, Doug Christie, The Heritage Front, and other neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups).

The British Far Right may have been slower to realize the command and control possibilities of ICTs than their U.S. or German co-ideologies, but they appear to be catching up. Although in recent years it is the violent skinhead music scene that has provided the main medium through which they promote liaison, it is clear that for some the future lies with ICTs.

In 1999, the Pentagon had to admit that there had been a major assault on its computer systems. Zionist Occupational Government (ZOG) observers have increasingly warned that the frequency and sophistication of the hack attacks will only increase as dissident groups realize that they can strike at the very heart of ZOG at the touch of a few buttons. It doesn’t matter what government specialists invent to counter the techno-terrorist, there is always a way around their antihacker programs and the more ZOG relies on computers, the more damage can be done by attacking their systems. So all you techno-terrorists out there, get working on your “hack-attacks.”

---