Daily Times

Lately, the revelation of the tattooed terrorists killed near Peshawar at the village of Pawakai has raised speculations, but as the norm prevails, such speculations are grounded in conspiracy theories. Albeit at times there is an element of truth to conspiracy theories, however, this one was not just out of context but out of the question too.

Refraining from dwelling on and dissecting the nature of such theories and postulations, it is discreetly in line with justice to the facts and the audience of the news that any event with uncertain aspects should be backed up with probable hypotheses or with verified facts. Ultimately, an event must be reported in a manner that would not be detrimental to the national interest, especially the security interests of the state. A pivotal objective of the militants in Pakistan is to keep the local populace bewildered, as this deters the possibility of losing them (entirely) to the state apparatus of Pakistan. And that certainly served well with the inclusion of foreign recruits by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) (via the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) in the Peshawar Airport attack to instil confusion in the public about who the perpetrators of the crime were. While terrorists as always are (primarily) concerned with their tactical objectives — despite the failure they had met as a consequence of a timely response from the security forces — yet they wish to ensure that the confusion remains so as to not entirely lose the hearts and minds (of the naïve public) in the long run.

However, the ambit of this discourse is to rely on hindsight and address the propaganda mechanism that goes into the recruitment of foreign militants by the TTP and their affiliates, since prevention can be an efficacious intervention in clamping down on the threat. Some of the terrorists killed in Pawakai were from foreign backgrounds, Dagestan to be precise. Although not presuming with any certainty, the modus operandi of recruitment for the attackers — whether were they influenced by frequenting propaganda content over the virtual web (i.e. self-radicalised) or by coming in direct contact with someone from the militants’ network in Dagestan — the undeniable influence of social media at the helm of conflict remains undisputed.

The use of social media, usually sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Dailymotion, etc, by the TTP and their affiliates offer lucrative incentives in the form of recruitments at home and abroad. The medium provides an unregulated, uninterrupted and easy-cum-open access for terrorists to upload their propaganda content. That is usually in the form of videos, either containing the depiction of their ground assaults (being glorified) in the form of suicide attacks, insurgent attacks, or summary executions of the personnel from the armed forces or those civilians suspected of providing intelligence against such networks, etc. At other times, these videos contain persuasive messages and interviews of the figureheads of militant groups in order to persuade and motivate the viewers to join or perpetuate the message further over similar networks.

According to a report of the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management, the number of (identified) content floated by terrorists and militant groups globally over the internet numbers around 50,000 sites. This includes websites, forums, blogs, social networking sites, video sites and virtual world sites. Other content ranges in bizarre numbers, such as an images number of 1,000,000 and videos 15,000 respectively, out of which 50 percent of videos are about IED attacks.

There is no method as such to identify or ascertain how much of that content is Pakistan-specific in terms of inciting, recruiting or radicalising the youth in Pakistan or meant internationally in order to attract recruits to Pakistan from abroad. This is because some of the content is either available with English subtitles or narrated in other foreign languages, such as German, Arabic, Pashto and English.

Despite the claims of social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube exercising a declared policy of self-regulation, the efforts are barely congruous with it. The amount of content available over the years on YouTube is tremendous and has been multiplying, despite the fact that some of the content is removed if not all, and the same applies to Facebook. Most of the content that is reported by users is not always removed, irrespective of the fact that the content uploaded violates the anti-violence terms of these websites. The control mechanism certainly lacks the desired and swift response.

A fact too conspicuous to disregard unambiguously calls for an urgent intervention. Delaying it could keep the conflict constant or perhaps exacerbate it. A well-calculated strategy with synchronised moves can address the problem. The very first step integral to this intervention is ‘monitoring’. The social media corporations require to bring up a mechanism to monitor such content uploaded on their sites. Despite being a ponderous task, the filtration of uploaded content (as priority) from hot-zone regions (such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan) can facilitate detection of such undesirable content. Moreover, developing a team of international personnel from across the globe (perhaps in major regions, especially by major companies such as YouTube, Facebook, Dailymotion and Twitter or by seeking third party services) can be utilised to monitor and filter such content. Furthermore, promoting cooperation with respective governments — where insurgency and terrorism have become an internationally acknowledged security threat to a country’s stability — by installing a mutually agreed mechanism of information and intelligence-sharing with state institutions and vice versa in order to clamp down on terrorist content and ensure its removal. All major social media corporations also need to devise a mutual policy document, enabling them to share information and intelligence with countries facing the threat of terrorism, so that unanimous action can be generated from almost all social media stakeholders with respective states soliciting cooperation.

Pakistan, in a similar context, needs to cover a great distance, especially the elite civil and military security apparatus comprising of ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) and FIA (Federal Investigation Agency). It is to build upon their prowess over the web and convince the government to establish a mechanism of cooperation with giants of the social media to stifle the propaganda campaign of Pakistan-specific terrorists (from either the TTP or other territorial groups) over the web. It will be an effort that shall allow Pakistan to not just enhance cooperation with (secondary) stakeholders internationally but also take on the adversary beyond gun battles and violent confrontations in the world of the web.

The writer is certified in Conflict Analysis, Negotiation & Conflict Management from the United States Institute of Peace. He writes on socio-political, psychological and security related issues and can be reached at usama.nizamani@gmail.com