Leaders of the coalition fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are set to meet in Kuwait on Monday to discuss how to counter the group’s effective use of social media to recruit new members and spread its ideology.
Richard Stengel, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, and Gen. John Allen, special envoy to the coalition, will lead the U.S. delegation at the meeting, which will include representatives from Bahrain, Egypt, France, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Britain and the United Arab Emirates, the State Department said.
The meeting comes amid heightened concern about the group’s successes in recruiting new members and inspiring like-minded individuals in Western countries to conduct “lone wolf” attacks like the one in Ottawa on Wednesday that killed a Canadian Army soldier.
The Islamic State’s social media campaign includes online magazines, recruiting videos featuring narration in American-accented English and even a jihadi version of the popular video game “Grand Theft Auto.”
These and other means of communication not only allow the group to inspire like-minded individuals in the West to commit acts of terrorism, but they also provide a steady stream of recruits, who have entered the country through Turkey — a flow that coalition countries have worked hard to stop.
A June report for the Soufan Group, a strategic intelligence firm, noted that the 12,000 foreigners who have traveled to Syria to fight with militant organizations such as the Islamic State are a bigger group than those who went to Afghanistan to fight for al Qaeda, the Taliban and their precursor groups.
Though most fighters are from other Arab countries, about 2,500 are from Western countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most members of the European Union, the report said.
Another study published Friday in the Guardian noted that 23 British subjects have been killed fighting with the extremist group in Syria and Iraq, an average of one every three weeks.
The Pentagon considers the group’s ideology one of its key strengths, describing it as the group’s “center of gravity,” and has made disrupting Islamic State information operations a priority.
“We’re all mindful of this capability that they have and we’re trying to defeat it,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said Friday.
But other countries, notably Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar, have drawn criticism for not being as active at countering the group’s extremist message. And in the U.S., the Obama administration has drawn criticism for insisting the Islamic State’s ideology is not based on Islam.
“I think every country coming will be asked to do more,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday. “Some have started to take steps. There are muftis in many of these countries who have spoken out. There are governments that have taken steps. There are media outlets that have done a little bit. But this is a nascent effort and there’s a lot more that needs to happen to effectively communicate with the public in these countries.”
