Abstract
Abstract This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the Islamic State's use of images taken by drones, drawing on a dataset of ISIS propaganda images from October 2016 to December 2018. Analysing the three principal uses of drone imagery by ISIS—images of drone strikes, images of other attacks and observation—we argue that ISIS's use of drones distinguishes itself from other state and non-state uses of drones primarily by its communicative and symbolic value. While ISIS’ use of drone strikes takes place in a tactical rather than strategic setting, its employment of drones to film VBIED attacks allows them to achieve a strategic effect. After outlining ISIS’ use of drones for combat air support and to film ground (particularly VBIED) attacks, we argue, drawing on political geography, that ISIS employs drones in propaganda to stake and reinforce a claim to sovereign control of territory, performed through the flying of aircraft. The use of drone imagery, we argue, taps into long-standing visual and discursive strategies which associate vertical hierarchy and flying with mastery and control, allowing ISIS to display attributes of aerial sovereignty. This article, through an analysis of ISIS drone propaganda, provides a rare insight into non-state actors’ perception of drones and the communicative value of drone images, in addition to suggesting further avenues for the incorporation of political–geographical studies of verticality into the study of political violence and rhetoric.
Highlights
The attempt to assassinate Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro with an explosive-laden drone on 4 August 2018 seemed to vindicate the fears and warnings of drone scholars, policy makers and security practitioners who cautioned that remote-piloted aircraft (RPA) technology could be leveraged by non-state actors to inflict mass casualties or assassinate public officials
While there is a common misperception that ISIS fights in a disorganized manner and will throw whatever forces it possesses into battle without any wider plan— Barack Obama famously compared ISIS to a ‘jayvee [ junior varsity] team’, suggesting a lack of capability and sophistication in comparison to Al-Qaeda81— that is clearly not the case in respect of its mediatized use of drones
While ISIS does not directly mirror the use of MALE drones by western powers, it clearly envisions its rudimentary air force as more than a mere tactical tool, and depicts it in ways which highlight its claim to statehood and the possession of an advanced fighting capability
Summary
Citation for published item: Veilleux-Lepage, Yannick and Archambault, Emil (2020) 'Drone imagery in Islamic State propaganda : ying like a state.', International aairs., 96 (4). pp. 955-973. We argue that ISIS’ extensive use of unarmed drones, both as a means of conducting pre-attack reconnaissance and to film ground operations— the use of vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIEDs)—treats drones as an integral instrument within the ISIS propaganda machine, and as weapons within a political and strategic struggle Through this empirical study of ISIS drone propaganda, we demonstrate that drones provide violent non-state groups with a potentially effective means of carrying out violent attacks, and with a vehicle for the contestation and reconfiguration of concepts of sovereignty. We ground this argument through engagements with political geography and visual security studies, with arguments concerning the relation between air power, airborne vision and conceptions of security. We develop the argument about the use of drones both to contest and to claim attributes of sovereignty, detailing the performative, legal and visual aspects of this claim of effective sovereignty
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