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It is an undeniable fact that the issue of terrorism, both as a theoretical
area of analysis and as a practical phenomenon, has grown exponentially
in significance over the past few decades. Indeed, terrorism has for some
time stopped being a term solely discussed in academic settings and in
strategic documents, but has recently been introduced in our everyday
lexicon in ways that are far more profound than in the past. Put more
simply, in understanding the extremely intricate nature of today’s international
affairs, the analysis of the concept and praxis of terrorism no
longer belongs to an obscure area of study, and has developed into an
urgent necessity, as a means of exploring how to respond to the phenomenon
in an appropriate manner.
As the illustrative examples of the rise of al-Qaeda and Daesh and
their expanded global landscape of terrorist attacks indicate, this dual
realisation that terrorism has unequivocally become a part of our reality
and that its analysis has become more urgent than ever is particularly
true of what has been widely termed as “Islamic fundamentalist terrorism”.
Due to the kaleidoscopic interests involved in it, the multifarious
dynamics that have been at play in the region from which it has primarily
originated, and the multiplicity of its actors, methods and cause, Islamic
terrorism has come to the fore of our attention in spectacular fashion,
necessitating consistent and rigorous analysis.
8 Daesh and the terrorist threat: from the Middle East to Europe
This book is focused precisely on this area. Covering a wide range of
pertinent aspects and referring to the causal links and history behind this
strand of terrorism in various countries of the world, this book intends to
provide an in-depth look at the rise and evolution of Islamic fundamentalist
terrorism. Divided into three parts, the first one focusing on the
Middle East and Africa region, the second one on the recruiting methods,
financing and propaganda instruments used by Islamic terrorist organisations,
and the last part on the evolution of the phenomenon in a select
few European countries, it attempts to answer some of the very basic
questions surrounding this very important topic.
What are the causes behind the phenomenon? What are its principal
methods of recruiting and financing? What are the primary challenges in
designing and implementing a comprehensive strategy to tackle it? Why
has it spread in the Middle East and Africa? What explains its presence in
Europe? These are all relevant questions into which this book attempts to
offer much needed insights, aimed to aid our shared understanding concerning
the past, present and future of Islamic terrorism. What is more,
and perhaps more crucially, drawing from the analysis, it also provides a
set of conclusions with a view to assisting the reader to better comprehend
what is needed in order to minimise the future ramifications of this
strand of terrorism and severely undermine its future dynamics.

This report compares two archives of official Daesh media that were compiled four years apart. It explores the nuances of the group’s worldview and tracks how external and internal situational exigencies impacted them during its formative years as a caliphate. It finds that the organisation’s media infrastructure was about one-tenth as productive in mid-2019 as it was in mid-2015. The data also show that it was spending more time covering the pursuits of its global network in 2019 than in 2015. Finally, the data point towards a substantial thematic rearrangement in the organisation’s overarching propaganda narrative that manifested in it shifting its story away from millenarian utopianism and towards military denialism. In sum, the data indicate that by 2019 Daesh’s propagandists were far less productive and their aggregate product was more international and less focused on civilian issues. This shift points towards a new phase in the group’s political marketing trajectory, one focused more on survival than on expansion.

This report compares two archives of official Daesh media that were compiled four years apart. It explores the nuances of the group’s worldview and tracks how external and internal situational exigencies impacted them during its formative years as a caliphate. It finds that the organisation’s media infrastructure was about one tenth as productive in mid-2019 as it was in mid-2015. The data also show that it was spending more time covering the pursuits of its global network in 2019 than in 2015. Finally, the data point towards a substantial thematic rearrangement in the organisation’s overarching propaganda narrative that manifested in it shifting its story away from millenarian utopianism and towards military denialism. In sum, the data indicate that by 2019 Daesh’s propagandists were far less productive and their aggregate product was more international and less focused on civilian issues. This shift points towards a new phase in the group’s political marketing trajectory, one focused more on survival than on expansion.

Noon Briefing by Stephanie Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary General

This study is a content analysis of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)’s French-language magazine Dar al-Islam. The first seven issues of the magazine are quantitatively examined and broken down into the number of articles, images, and terms used as a means of determining how ISIS targets French-speaking individuals. This study find that ISIS focuses on religious terminology and justifications to rationalize its existence and its fight. Also, despite being a French-language magazine, a majority of the focus is on Middle Eastern groups, not Western groups. Overall, the magazine is similar, but not a carbon copy to ISIS’s English-language magazine, Dabiq.

This paper maps communication channels exploited by the Salafi-jihadist violent extremist organisations (VEOs) and their followers between March 2020 and June 2022 on The Onion Router (TOR). It argues that the true scale of digital jihadist presence on TOR has remained insignificant for years. Militant Islamists have mostly used .onion domains as backup propaganda dissemination channels, which enable content takedown policies introduced by countering violent extremism stakeholders to be circumvented. Aside from propaganda distribution, TOR attracts Salafi-jihadist VEOs and their followers for other reasons, as it facilitates anonymous communication, crowdfunding, sharing of terrorist manuals or the organisation of terrorist attacks.