Taliban and Jihadist Terrorist Use of Strategic Communication

Abstract

For Taliban and Jihadist terrorists, strategic communication is a vital part of their asymmetrical war fighting campaign. As long as the Eastern Bloc existed, military conflicts were largely determined by the policy of the United States and the Soviet Union, and were therefore part of the larger East-West conflict. Since this symmetricalglobal conflict was decided in favor of the West, numerous asymmetrical conflicts have erupted around the globe. Terrorist actions, like the attack in Mumbai, India in November 2008, have become a worldwide menace. In particular, Islamic jihadist terrorism has spread beyond the borders of the regions in which it originated and has taken on a global dimension. The terrorist use of airliners as massive flying bombs in the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 was a sad climax in this new dimension of asymmetrical conflicts. To offset this threat requires knowledge of what motivates, feeds, and sanctions jihadist terrorists and their followers. Research and analysis of the root causes and underlying conditions, motivators, and enablers of terrorism—including the propaganda strategies of terrorists—are vital to shaping appropriate countermeasures to the threat from Islamist terrorism. The complex set of interactions and dependencies between media and terrorism still need to be investigated more fully. In particular, further research is needed into the ways that terrorists utilize the Internet. One way to begin this investigation—and the approach this paper takes—is to study the communication techniques that jihadists use according to the elements that are used to generate a strategic communication management plan. The theoretical terrorist communication plan described in this essay shows that jihadist terrorists know how to apply strategic communication management techniques in disseminating their messages. The mass media, and especially the Internet, have become the key enablers and the main strategic communication assets for terrorists and have ensured them a favorable communication asymmetry. With these assets, terrorists