PropagandaoftheDeed 2008 - RUSIPropagandaoftheDeed 2008 UnderstandingthePhenomenon...

The Royal United Services Institute Whitehall Report 3-08

Propaganda of the Deed 2008Understanding the Phenomenon

Neville Bolt, David Betz & Jaz Azari

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First Published 2008© The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies

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Aftermath of suicide attack in Baghdad. Photo by Kevin Bromley/US DoD

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The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views ofRUSI or any other institution with which the authors are associated.

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be forwarded to: Dr Terence McNamee,Royal United Services Institute, Whitehall, London, SW1A 2ET, United Kingdom, or via email [email protected]

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Neville Bolt is a former television producer and journalist with the BBC, ITV and CanadianBroadcasting Corporation, where he specialised in conflict zones. He subsequently created anddirected political communications campaigns with Amnesty International, the Anti-ApartheidMovement, and the Labour Party. He is a member of the Insurgency Research Group in theDepartment of War Studies, King’s College London. His PhD research is on the Propagandaof the Deed in contemporary conflict.

David Betz is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London,where he heads the Insurgency Research Group and is Academic Director of the on-linemaster’s degree, War in the Modern World. He has written widely on issues of the conduct ofcontemporary warfare, insurgency and counter-insurgency, informationwarfare and the Revolution in Military Affairs.

Jaz Azari is currently completing the MA War Studies degree at King’s College London.She is also a member of the Insurgency Research Group. Prior to studying at King’sMs Azari was a Research Analyst for the US Marine Corps Center for Advanced OperationalCulture Learning.

The authors wish to thank Dr John Mackinlay and Dr Dominick Donald who read andcommented on drafts of this report.

About the Authors

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Introduction 1

1. Propaganda of the Deed 2008: Overview and Background 1

2. Propaganda of the Deed 2008: A New Perspective – a New Problem 2

3. POTD and Counter-Insurgency: Towards a Solution 15

4. Conclusion: TheWay Forward and Recommendations 19

Annex A 21

Contents

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Introduction

The Propaganda of the Deed (POTD) is a lit-tle understood phenomenon. In the publicimagination it reads simply as terrorism. Itsviolence seduces some but horrifies andalienates the majority. In the world of policy-making it remains largely divorced from itstheoretical context. It belongs to a landscapeof violence aimed at states, eliciting a policeor military response. Recent manifestationsof POTD in New York (2001), Madrid (2004)and London (2005), together with dailyatrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, havebrought the deed to the fore of public con-sciousness throughout the world. Theyunderline the urgency of penetrating thisphenomenon in 2008.

1. Propaganda of the Deed 2008:Overview and Background

A landmark conference in January 2008organised by the Insurgency Research Groupof King’s College London aimed to re-evaluate POTD’s theoretical heritage in thecontext of contemporary insurgency andcounter-insurgency analysis, and to identifynew value-added frameworks to advanceunderstanding. This article explores a newdefinition of Propaganda of the Deed rele-vant to today’s fast-changing political land-scape where social and political agendas areinterpreted and shaped by global media,particularly television. It further looks athow an innovative counter-insurgencyapproach might respond to this new concep-

tualisation of POTD. The importance of syn-thesising perspectives from academics andpolicy-makers derives from the failure of anysingle discipline to explain POTD adequately.This phenomenon of collective violenceremains for some rooted in nineteenth cen-tury revolutionary theory; for others it isalmost completely ignored. Current researchreveals an unacceptable knowledge gap inthis area. In the long term everyone suffersby this neglect.

The West is turning away from ‘terror-ism’ as a way of explaining the post-9/11security era. Four years after the invasion ofIraq, government officials in Whitehall are

Propaganda of the Deed is no wanton act ofcriminal violence. For the purposes of thispaper, it is a term depicting an act of violencewhose signal and/or extreme nature isintended to create an ideological impact dis-

proportionate to the act itself. In the wordsof anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, the nineteenthcentury ‘father of terrorism’: ‘we mustspread our principles, not with words butwith deeds, for this is the most popular, the

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using the word ‘insurgency’ with less cautionthan before. In terms of doctrine, after yearsof eschewing the subject the United States isnow ahead of the game having completed itsnew counter-insurgency doctrine under thestewardship of Generals (COIN) Petraeusand Mattis in 2006/7.

The new UK doctrine ‘CounteringInsurgency: A Guide for Commanders’ willbe published soon. It codifies a Britishapproach to countering insurgency anddescribes how this has evolved from pastexperiences. In many respects the intellectualcentre of gravity of COIN research whichwas somewhat more vigorous in the UKprior to the Iraq War has shifted to theUnited States where it is centred on a tightgroup of soldier-scholars, many of whomworked on the new doctrine. But on bothsides of the Atlantic, officials and doctrinewriters know that the 2006/7 insurgencydoctrines lack the context of a national struc-ture to address insurgency and that the mili-tary are but one aspect of a wider campaign.1

The Insurgency Research Groupbrought together experts from the academic,journalistic, security, and government policydisciplines to pool their distinctive insights.Unattributed quotes in the paper are fromparticipants in the meeting. A list of partici-pants is attached as an annex.

Conclusions• POTD is more than an operational

technique intended to produce ‘shockand awe’ through the force multiplyingeffect of fear

• POTD does not equate to a single act ofterror – it is not an event, it is part of aprocess of narrative construction, rein-forcement and confirmation throughdeeds

• Analysis of POTD must move from themilitary to the political domain

• POTD is a symbolic and rhetorical toolfor insurgents in a repertoire of ‘politi-cal marketing’ – it encourages the for-mation of sympathetic support-com-munities

• Technology shortens timelinesbetween event and broadcast, reducing‘thinking time’ for media and statesalike – this hands the advantage toinsurgents

• POTD has shifted from territorial to‘virtual’ theatres of operation

• Counter-insurgency must harmonisemulti-tiered messages within a coher-ent and consistent strategic narrative

2. Propaganda of the Deed 2008:A New Perspective – a New Problem

1 Sarah Sewall’s introduction to US Army and USMC, Counter Insurgency Field Manual (University of Chicago Press,2007)


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most potent, and the most irresistible formof propaganda’.2 For Bakunin ‘the desire fordestruction is at the same time a creativedesire’.3 For the average ‘man on the street’that is a difficult idea to grasp. It flies in theface of common sense and gut instinct. It ismore natural to react to carnage and destruc-tion as pathological outrage. The closer itapproaches, threatening the safety of familyand friends, the more viscerally repugnant,indeed the more morally reprehensible itbecomes. After all how can anyone with ajust grievance fail to argue his/her casethrough rational processes and tried and test-ed institutions? Perhaps the average personcan explain away the targeted assassination ofan oppressive political leader. But the indis-criminate blow-out from a bomb in a publicplace, that is different. And even if we cancountenance that ingrained injustices justifyextreme methods, where are, and who drawsthe boundaries between the rational and irra-tional within a regime of violence once ittakes hold? For the academic and policy-maker, this becomes a minefield of conun-dra.

Propaganda of the Deed is fraught withcontradictions. Indiscriminate violenceagainst civilians is a technique of war intend-ed to cause ‘shock and awe’; it is deployed bynon-state and state actors alike. Yet historical-ly it is viewed as the tool of the underdog,under-resourced and denied a voice in thepolitical arena. By universal agreement it isan act of terror. Yet POTD is persuasive andseductive, some argue through the siren callof violence itself. To dismiss it with unduehaste as mere pathology is to overlook itsundisputed success in knitting together oftendisparate groups within a common, rationalcause. It is also to deny its capacity to draw in

its wake constructed stories and memoriesthat pass from generation to generation.These galvanise activist groups, before offer-ing an internally legitimate narrative for theirsocial movement. Nevertheless at its heart sitvarious tensions.

When adopted by non-state protago-nists, POTD can summon support to correctdeep-rooted grievance: when applied by gov-ernments, it usually undermines state legiti-macy revealing a bankruptcy in the state’sremit to guarantee law and order. It becomesthe last resort of failing authority. This longoverdue attempt to re-conceptualise this phe-nomenon in a twenty-first century context,to search for a more nuanced understandingof motivation, cause and effect coincideswith fresh developments in the security envi-ronment.

How shall we recognise Propaganda ofthe Deed when we see it? ‘How does POTDmanifest itself – by size of ‘bang’, number ofvictims, significance of target, frequency ofoccurrence? The time between the bulletleaving the gun and killing the president? Ora suicide bomb blowing up civilianbystanders when no group claims responsi-bility? Or even the same Al-Qa’ida groupaiming four aircraft in the same half hour atfour separate targets? Or can it unfold across7 days like the Easter Rising of the IrishRepublican Brotherhood (IRB), the precursorof the IRA?’ 4

The POTD event is usually conveyed tothe television-viewing public as a disembod-ied occurrence, a one-off, albeit anotherhourly, daily or weekly one-off. Sometimesthere are many one-offs in a short period oftime. British audiences grew familiar inrecent decades with Provisional IRA bomb-ing campaigns. But this designation ‘cam-

2 ‘Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis’ (1870) <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1870/letter-frenchman.htm>, accessed on 18 February 2008. See also Paul Brousse (who probably coined theterm POTD in an article of that name published in the August 1877 Bulletin of the Jura Federation).3 (1842) ‘La Reaction en Allemagne, fragment, par un Français’.4 Neville Bolt, ‘Propaganda of the Deed and the Irish Republican Brotherhood: from the politics of “shock and awe”to the “imagined political community”’ RUSI Journal (Vol. 153, No 1, 2008), pp. 1–2.

Propaganda of the Deed 2008

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paign’ explained little, other than to suggest acluster of bomb attacks played a part in someassumed systematic plan, the logic of whichmight only be divined post facto. Whatremained unexplained was the relationshipbetween individual acts and symbolic deeds.

A visual metaphor might be appropri-ate at this point. Let us assume each act is anisland. And islands come in many shapes andsizes, witness the Isle of Wight, Ireland, larg-er still Australia. But so far they have littlecoherence or relationship to one another. Yetif we talk of an archipelago, namely a groupof islands, like Greece or even more diffuse,Indonesia, then there is some context ofattached meaning that unites these disparateislands or events. If a POTD event is morethan a lone island, but actually lies within anarchipelago, then what connects and makessense of it and all its neighbours? What is thenarrative that runs through the collective?

This paper discusses 1) the historical per-spective: whether POTD has emerged as atransformed phenomenon over the past 150years; 2) insurgent violence as a symbolic lan-guage: whether the deed is a brutally nihilis-tic counterpoint to persuasive verbal propa-ganda, or just one of many symbolic tech-niques within one all-encompassing propa-ganda spectrum; 3) media in a shrinkingworld: how global television and new infor-mation technologies have elevated POTD toa new level of potency, and 4) the stateresponse: whether there is any adequate andappropriate counter-deed, or counter-narra-tive to resist its progress. It also offers 5) con-clusions and recommendations: a definitionof POTD relevant to 2008, and a counterin-surgency analysis appropriate to a complexand growing threat. This report aims toexplore a definition of Propaganda of theDeed which reflects the changing dynamicsof contemporary insurgency.

The Historical PerspectivePropaganda of the Deed is an evolvingprocess in the trajectory of insurgency move-ments. Each seeks for better or worse torationalise violence and terror through doc-trine. For historical sociologists terror is acomponent of political persuasion initiallyemployed by the French Revolutionary state.The shift to ‘non-state terror’ or ‘terror frombelow’ places it firmly within the progressionof modernism.5 Each subsequent sub-stategroup, each context would leave its indeliblemark. Viewed against the longue durée, POTDdeveloped from its initial unsystematic,nonetheless effective targeting of state politi-cal figure-heads. This became the house stylefor various nineteenth-century anarchist andsocialist theorists and practitioners whofavoured the route of instilling ‘shock andawe’: bombs brought terror to populationsand death to state representatives. Violencemight mobilise the masses, but it could sure-ly cause the state to collapse as state agencies’over-reaction, fighting force with force,undermined its popular legitimacy. That wasthe strategy for small groups or even individ-ual action. In the Easter Rising of 1916, theIRB redefined the violent act temporally,employing it as a device for coalescing groupidentity around timeless nostalgia for a ‘fic-tional’ or ‘imagined’ past and romanticisednationalism. Resolution of grievance couldbe vested in the community’s utopian future.In this long game, if today’s heroes failed tooverthrow the order of the day, then theirchildren would finish off the job in years tocome.6

Later, Maoist insurgency adopted a sys-tematic and doctrinal approach to convertingthen mobilising local, territorially definedpopulations to subvert the state. This wouldin the latter half of the twentieth centurygive way to the notion of the post-Maoist‘virtual battlefield’. Initially deterritorialisedgroups like the PLO learned how to seize

5 Fred Halliday (2004) ‘Terrorism in Historical Perspective’ (www.opendemocracy.net) accessed 21/4/2008.6 Bolt (2008), op. cit.


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advantage of a stateless population with anemerging political or nationalist identity andthus mark out a new terrain. Global televi-sion audiences grew with the consumerboom of the 1960s and 70s, enjoying a front-row seat to exciting news ‘spectacle’ deliv-ered into the home. The recognition of thereach and power of this new human massprompted more recent insurgent groups toreach out across sovereign borders with littleambition for nation-state dominance. Theypreferred the route of global identity politicsand transnational power. Such feelings ofcommon identity would converge aroundlandmarks and milestones which gainedpower in the viewer’s imagination. Thesesymbols condensed the shared grievancesand aspirations, often outrages and tragediesof people previously unknown to each other.This insurgent ambition could only properlybe reflected in the area where the individual’spersonal cognitive space fused with the virtu-al ground created by the technological ‘uni-verse’ of like-minded television viewers,internet- and telephone-users.

What has actually changed? The bombor bullet remains thus far the operationaltechnique of choice, although the deed mayyet go nuclear, biological, chemical, or mostlikely, radiological. Each incident staged inEuropean or American capitals a century agoinitially played out to local publics beforebeing transmitted with short delays throughnational and international press, then ampli-fying into popular fiction. The impact wasoften one of shock. The killing of numerousheads of state including US PresidentMcKinley, Russia’s Tsar Alexander II, KingUmberto of Italy and France’s PresidentCarnot was no mean achievement for revolu-tionaries. Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia only

narrowly escaped the assassin’s bullet. Indeedthe death of his predecessor McKinleyprompted President Theodore Roosevelt tolaunch his own ‘War on Terror’ to avenge a‘crime against the human race’.7 Yet if thebomb and the bullet remain the operationaltechnique of choice, can we say the events of11 September 2001 were of such enormity,originality and significance that they mark awatershed? Can we legitimately talk of apost-9/11 era? Or are we witnessing morecomplex underlying changes still?

Political violence has reached its apogeein the explosion of liberalised media, and thesymbiotic relationship with global TV.However it goes further still, since the imagenever dies in the digital medium of the inter-net. Two key elements make this possible:the visual image and violence. Theorists havelong understood that the visual image faroutlives the spoken argument. Moreoverwith the passage of time visual images gainpotency as the more the audience reflects onthem, the more meaning they acquire.8

Insurgent planners and TV news editorsrecognise that violence sells: ‘if it bleeds, itleads’. Both depend on viewer loyalty to fur-ther their aims: television to command view-ers’ subscriptions or licence fees, or potentialas a market for advertisers, insurgents to wincontrol of states or states-of-mind. Today thepolitically sensitive populations of theMiddle Eastern and wider Muslim world area growth market for broadcasters. Over 700satellite-stations compete for the Arab mar-ket of nearly 300 million people,9 a ‘noisy’marketplace hosting some 280 Arabic-lan-guage satellite channels.10 A new ‘War ofIdeas’ plays itself out via images and wordsthat are mediated, if not ‘mediatised’ (active-ly moulded by media) across global televi-

7 Rick Coolsaet, ‘Anarchist Outrages’ Le Monde Diplomatique (September 2004).8 Mason (1989), cited in O’Shaughnessy Politics and Propaganda: Weapons of Mass Seduction (Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, 2004).9 Mamoun Fandy, (Un)Civil War of Words: Media and Politics in the Arab World (Westport & London: Praeger SecurityInternational, 2007), p 1.10 Jeremy M Sharp, ‘CRS Report for Congress: The Middle East Television Network: An Overview’Washington DC:Congressional Research Service, 2005), p. 4.


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sion, internet, and increasingly mobiletelephony networks. A ‘complex of socialrelations, power discourses’ infuses these‘mediatised conflicts’.11

That Western states find themselvesengaged in a battle of ideas not weapons isstill, for many, surprising. In the aftermath ofthe New York and Washington assaults, the9/11 Commission still failed to grasp: ‘Howcan a man in a cave outcommunicate theworld’s leading communications society?’12

Both the current and former secretaries ofdefence have voiced the same incredulity:

Robert Gates: …public relations was invented inthe United States, yet we are miserable at com-municating to the rest of the world what we areabout as a society and a culture, about freedomand democracy, about our policies and our goals.It is just plain embarrassing that Al-Qa’ida is bet-ter at communicating its message on the internetthan America’.13

Donald Rumsfeld: Our enemies have skilfullyadapted to fighting wars in today’s media age, butfor the most part we, our country, our govern-ment, has not adapted. Consider that the violentextremists have established media relations com-mittees – these are terrorists and they have mediarelations committees that meet and talk aboutstrategy, not with bullets but with words. They’veproven to be highly successful at manipulatingthe opinion elites of the world. They plan anddesign their headline-grabbing attacks usingevery means of communication to intimidate andbreak the collective will of free people.14

Yet in the bombing of the Twin Towers(2001), Osama bin Laden understood all toowell that deeds were key to information suc-cess: ‘These young men … said in deeds in

New York and Washington, speeches thatovershadowed all other speeches madeeverywhere else in the world.’15 His convic-tion was rapidly borne out by the increasednumber of websites for disaffected Muslimsin 9/11’s aftermath. One survey of the websuggested how persuasive POTD could be.Of 1,500 Islamic websites in 2000, 150 mightbe termed jihadi. By 2005 those 150 hadgrown to 4,000.16 Al-Qa’ida’s leadershipinstinctively grasps the nature of the contem-porary operating environment. Bin Laden isa master propagandist who has provenextremely good at the purposeful shaping ofthe beliefs of others. ‘It is obvious’, he said,‘that the media war in this century is one ofthe strongest methods, in fact its ratio mayreach 90 per cent of the total preparation forthe battles.’ In fact, Bin Laden is not the firstto recognise this development which hasbeen a long time coming. The media guruMarshall McLuhan said it in a more sophisti-cated manner forty years ago when hedescribed the Cold War as a state of continu-ing hostility waged largely by non-militarymeans, most importantly propaganda andpolitical agitation. The Cold War, he said,was a

…war of icons… the eroding of the collectivecountenance of one’s rivals. Ink and photo aresupplanting soldiery and tanks. The pen dailybecomes mightier than the sword… [The ColdWar] is really an electric battle of informationand of images that goes far deeper and is moreobsessional than the old hot wars of industrialhardware. The ‘hot wars’ of the past usedweapons that knocked off the enemy, one by one.Even ideological warfare in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries proceeded by persuading

11 Simon Cottle, Mediatised Conflict: Developments in Media and Conflict Studies (Maidenhead and New York: OpenUniversity Press, 2006), p. 28.12 Richard Holbrooke cited in ‘The 9/11 Commission’ (New York & London: WW Norton & Co., 2004), p. 377.13 Landon Lecture delivered at Kansas State University on 26 November 2007 <http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1199>.14 Donald Rumsfeld, ‘New Realities in the Media Age’, speech delivered at The Council on Foreign Relations on 17February 2006 <http://www.cfr.org/publication/9900/>.15 The Times, 14 December 2001.16 B Raman, ‘From internet to Islamnet: Net-Centric Counter-Terrorism’ no. 1584, South Asia Analysis Group (22 October2005), <www.saag.org/papers16/paper1584.html> last accessed 21/07/07.


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individuals to adopt new points of view, one at atime. Electric persuasion by photo and movieworks, instead, by dunking entire populations innew imagery.17

Bin Laden is simply the contemporary com-mander who has best harnessed ‘electric per-suasion’ to warlike ends.

The Symbolic Value of POTD and theNew ProblemSo what is new, and why should policy-makers and academics concern themselveswith these changes? At the heart of this dis-cussion is the issue of whether Propagandaof the Deed sits in binary opposition toPropaganda of the Word. This means a blackand white choice between violent (explicit)and verbal (implicit) persuasion. Alter-natively, if POTD becomes merely one ofmany overlapping techniques within a spec-trum of rhetoric, what is it actually trying tosay? Is there room for considering POTD as asymbolic rather than destructive act? In thissense it becomes a magnet or lightning con-ductor, but for shared understanding.

Why Symbols Matter in the Information AgeThis is no abstract argument. Today we livein a world where individuals are relentlesslybesieged by a surfeit of information.Populations consume information throughdiverse media. Villagers may share owner-ship of a single television but neverthelessare plugged into events and lifestyles conti-nents away. Societies which lag in experienc-ing the benefits of economic developmentstill record some of the highest penetrationof mobile telephone use linking them to dis-tant diasporas, for example Somalia. Internetaccess may be uneven within countries but itstill connects the like-minded and similarly

privileged between countries. In short welive in an information age. And driving itsinformation flows are visual images, snap-shots for what will become condensed mem-ory. The more dramatic they are, the moreattention they attract, and the more long-lasting is their impact. What concerns us ishow these visual images are attached to theexplosion of the POTD spectacle.

To weigh the importance of symboliccontent as a kind of rhetoric, POTD must beconsidered anew as part of the informationage. Rhetoric resonates and persuades usingmetaphors and symbols, attaching itself todeeply held beliefs in its target audience in akind of co-production.18 Since the classicalGreeks, the art of rhetoric has recognisedthat people have a natural predisposition toidentify and use information they consider tobe true. And that truth is rooted in proof. Itmay not actually be true but the communica-tor must persuade the listener that his argu-ment is proven. This process draws on tried-and-tested techniques. Thus familiar symbolsare condensed expressions rich with meaningand experience. Their shorthand form makesthem user-friendly. They are signposts toguide a clear route of understanding throughthe world of the viewer/listener alreadyovercrowded with information. Myths drawon the power of narrative and bind the com-munity into a common understanding: oldstories can be re-shaped into new with con-temporary poignancy; while former heroescan be revitalised by their newly found rele-vance to changing political landscapes. Daysbefore his death in 1981, IRA hunger-strikerBobby Sands was visited by an Irish priestwho read him a poem by Patrick Pearse, ora-tor-leader of the 1916 Easter Rising. ‘That’sbeautiful, that’s gorgeous’ responded thedying man.19 Sands would later take his placein the Republican community’s memory of

17 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 370.18 O’Shaughnessy (2004) op. cit.19 Padraig O’Malley, Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990),p. 63.


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insurgent martyrs alongside Pearse. Nearlyseventy years before, Pearse had also died forthe same cause, but not before likening him-self to the sacrificed Jesus Christ on the cross.

Under certain circumstances communi-ties become delineated, detached and politi-cised in relation to their surrounding majori-ties, as in the case of global diasporas, or inrelation to minorities in states where they arethe dominant group. This notion draws onresearch into nationalism and identity poli-tics.20 It identifies three components that cre-ate a ‘fiction’ of ‘imagined political commu-nity’: it should be ‘limited’ in its size, ‘sover-eign’ since freedom is sought through thenation-state, and a ‘community’ evoking‘comradeship…a fraternity…[going forth]willingly to die for such limited imagin-ings’.21 Whilst this may apply to territori-alised populations, deterritorialised politicalmovements with little or no apparent ambi-tion to govern states, inevitably present adilemma. The imagined community becomesincreasingly abstract, linked through symbol-ic points of mutual identity in the individ-ual’s imagination. And this imagined commu-nity increasingly finds a virtual home throughthe proliferation of global television and inthe case of Islam, of Muslim majorities andminorities linked by technology and faith.22

Olivier Roy, for instance, has traced the devel-opment of a ‘virtual Umma’, a geographical-ly disparate community linked via the inter-net which

…is the perfect place for [Muslim] individuals toexpress themselves while claiming to belong to acommunity to whose enactment they contribute,rather than being passive members of it.23

Can POTD claim to be Political Marketing?Insurgents are in the business of selling theirpolitical message. POTD is one way of get-ting noticed, attracting recruits, goading thestate, and destabilising the status quo. Non-state political groups, like nation-statesbefore them, attempt to root their legitimacyin an historical narrative which they havecarefully crafted and internalised in andthrough successive generations of actors andphases of discourse. This narrative is morethan fuzzy romance. It is the essence of theorganisation. It sets the rules of engagementfor internal struggle over ideological ortho-doxy and operational direction. Narrativeoffers coherence and consistency for sympa-thisers. How, where and when the narrativeunfolds in the future, what direction it willtake, is determined by this control. Similarlyin the corporate sector of global brands trig-ger-ready litigation lawyers protect the brandfrom incursion or hijack. Why? Because thebrand is vested with the collective meaning,philosophy, history and audience recognitionof the product or producer. Brand symbolsimbued with levels of meaning ‘capture anidea of reputation’ which becomes more sig-nificant in a world where ‘we are witnessingthe general collapse of tradition and defer-ence’.24 Political marketing and consumeradvertising are hewn from the same stonesince, as Tony Schwartz pointed out,‘(P)eople tend to read ads for products theyalready own’.25 So the consumer respondsbest to messages which ‘attach to somethingthat is already in him’.26 Schwartz himselfhad demonstrated this through his own‘Daisy spot’, a TV commercial for LyndonJohnson’s presidential campaign targeted atRepublican rival Barry Goldwater. A military

20 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London & New York: Verso, 1983), p. 7.21 See Annex A.22 Faisal Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (London: Hurst, 2005).23 Olivier Roy, Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Umma (London: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 183.24 Will Hutton, Twenty Five Visions: The Future of Brands (London: Macmillan Business/Interbrand, 2000), p. 12.25 Tony Schwartz, The Responsive Chord (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1972), p. 92.26 Ibid, p. 96.


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voice counted down as a small girl pulled thepetals off a flower, one by one. As the zero-count arrived the image of the girl gave wayto a nuclear explosion. The closing voiceoversuggested only Johnson could prevent theinevitability of this outcome. Significantlyneither Goldwater nor his policy votingrecord was ever mentioned. The controver-sial ad ran only once. But such was theimpact on TV viewers that the Republicanchallenger was permanently tarred as a war-monger. However without the residual suspi-cion in the minds of the voting population,this commercial would have found littleleverage. POTD too is a form of politicalmarketing because targets are selected fortheir easy recognition and symbolic impact,amplifying their ability to resonate meaningto an audience. In recent years this audiencehas become the global consumer of digitisedmedia.

Can POTD Control the Response?Political communication aims to control thecontent of its message and the precision ofits delivery, both for efficacy and economy ofeffort. If it cannot then it is merely akin tothrowing mud at walls and hoping somesticks. Despite a paucity of policy detail, NewLabour’s ascent to power in the UK in 1997was nevertheless built on a message. Itsfocus-group strategist Philip Gould definedthe message as ‘the rationale that underpinsyour campaign…this rationale is the mostimportant thing to get right in a campaign’.27

In the case of Islamist extremist POTD, thekey to its attraction appears to be the under-pinning message of an existential threat to away of life enjoyed by Muslims. Al-Qa’ida’sstrategic narrative is very straightforward,consisting essentially of three points:• Islam is under general attack by the

West, led by the United States• The acts of Al-Qa’ida are a religiously

just and defensive response to this

attack• Good Muslims everywhere should,

therefore, support them

The genius of this narrative is its simplicityand (whatever its logical and factual merits)its resonance with sacred Islamic texts. Anyof these points may be exploded as twisted,absurd, or both; taken together they consti-tute a bogus mythology of a movementwhich is thirsty for grievances upon which torest its extremist political demands. Butmany people believe them, which serves as acase in point that strategic narratives neednot be rational to be effective. By creating anoverarching framework of simple under-standing flexible enough to be customisedaccording to local community or circum-stance, it meets an underlying need.

But in doing so it has to address two keyproblems. Firstly, consumer advertisers andpolitical focus-group pollsters have longaimed to focus their ‘attack’ on niche mar-kets and demographic sub-groups (but stillwith only limited success). This ‘more bangfor your buck’ analysis rationalises the highcost of investment and attempts to obviatetraditional waste from scatter-gun market-ing. It would appear as though Islamistextremist POTD still suffers the vagaries ofscatter-gun marketing through conventionalmass media, but that it is increasingly offsetby niche targeting through Islamist internetsites and own-controlled broadcast, or moreaccurately narrowcast outlets. Secondly, thiskind of focus facilitates refining a messagemore attuned to the demands of that partic-ular niche as an iterative process. At least,costly market researchers can gauge theresponse to products in the marketplace, andmake changes to the product if needs be. Buthow should POTD, seen as a marketing cam-paign or product launch of extreme andblunt proportions, measure its impact andfuture sales? Especially when the very imageof the deed is abhorrent to many or most,

27 Philip Gould, The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party (London: Abacus, 1998), p. 294.


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even in disaffected communities. So assum-ing Propaganda of the Deed is a rationalact, a symbolic, communicative campaign,expressing a heart-felt grievance, how can itnot only locate its audience but enlist its sup-port throughout a dynamic, iterative process?

Recent research28 analysed the effect ofsymbols and images of Islamic-related vio-lence on British Muslim groups of mixed ageand gender, in propaganda videos. Theseincluded 1) an Iranian bridegroom turninginto a suicide bomber, in a pop-promo for-mat; 2) rock-throwing Palestinian childrenmachine-gunned by a cyborg-like Israeli sol-dier, in an animation format; 3) a speech byAl-Qa’ida number two Ayman Al-Zawahiri,and; 4) the ‘martyrdom’ video of 7/7bomber Sidique Khan. Audience responsesrevealed an ‘understanding (rather than sym-pathy) of how and why such materials haveimpact’, and observed particularly amongstyoung men, the recognition that jihadi calls‘could be perceived as legitimate’.29 Thesevideos underlined the importance of themartyrdom effect of the material,30 support-ing a Populus/Times opinion poll (2006)which reported ‘13% of British Muslimsbelieve that the four suicide bombers of July7, 2005 should be regarded as “martyrs”while 7% said that attacks on UK civilianscould be justified in some circumstances’.31

This echoes the words of Daniel Pearl’sBritish executioner Omar Sheikh who wasdrawn to the cause by the sight of BosnianMuslim victims recorded on videotape.Young women who rejected the violence ofthe sample videotape footage neverthelesssympathised with the protagonists as vic-tims. Interestingly it was the genre and styleof certain videos that failed to clear the cul-tural thresholds of the focus groups ofBritish Muslims, often being the source of

amusement for their lack of sophistication.What was not tested was POTD materialdemonstrating insurgent acts of destructionor the brutalised victims of such deeds.

The research lends credence to the the-ory that some Western Muslims are essen-tially self-radicalising through a process ofsmall-group socialisation fed by images fromthe Western media which Islamist propagan-da tends to confirm and reinforce rather thaninitiate. There is a growing belief in the fun-damental Islamist proposition that there is areal war against Islam being waged under theguise of the War on Terror. The authors ofthe study are cautious about their findingsyet do suggest that there is a worrying con-solidation of the ‘meta-narrative of Muslimsas a unitary grouping self-defined as victimsof Western aggression.’

POTD: ‘I don’t like Mondays’?This research begs further questions. 1)Symbolic language or not, was the overarch-ing message of Islam under threat of attackinsufficient to radicalise and mobilise thesefocus groups (assuming unbeknownst to theresearchers, none was previously radicalisedor became so afterwards)? 2) Or was it mere-ly the cultural language employed on thesample videotapes that was too alien and dis-sonant to be persuasive? In the hands of aculturally attuned British or European film-maker working in contemporary westernidioms, might the message have found its tar-get? Therefore if cultural barriers get in theway of mobilisation, how does POTD everbridge the divide? 3) When groups engage intransnational warfare of words and ideas, arethe barriers of state-national culture, institu-tions and mores so overwhelming that onlythe marginal and inevitable few will ever be

28 Paul Baines and Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, Muslim Voices: The British Muslim Response to Islamist Video-Polemic: AnExploratory Study, Cranfield University School of Management Research Paper series RP 3/06 (December 2006).29 Ibid, p. 1.30 Ibid, p. 2.31 Baines and O’Shaughnessy, op cit, p. 5.


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won over?32 The point here is to what extentPOTD can ever be anything other than ablunt instrument, and whether marginalisedpopulations are drawn to POTD, like mothsto the flame of violence, only when finallybereft of any perceived alternative.Ultimately this becomes a critical point forany definition of POTD: how far is the deeda targeted missile, or are randomness andunintended consequence factored into theoriginal intent of the protagonist?

Political scientists consistently antici-pate rational actors operating within rationalstrategies of cause and effect. In 1979American teenager Brenda Ann Spencer shotten staff and children of a San Diego school.When finally apprehended she declared herreason: ‘I don’t like Mondays’ – a discontinu-ity that has since entered popular culture.But rational or no, it at least calls intoquestion what passes through the mind oftoday’s POTD planner. The contemporaryPOTD may be a phenomenon created byactors without a strategic plan. Alternativelytheir plan may seek to maximise the immedi-ate impact of the act and claim the benefit ofany ripple factor. For instance the strikeagainst the Twin Towers (2001) was obvi-ously a well-planned, highly deliberate act.Commentators looked on in awe: Al-Qa’ida’ssuccess reportedly fused ‘all available mod-ern means to this highly symbolic weapon’.Their invention was to ‘appropriate all thearms of dominant power. Money and finan-cial speculation, information technologiesand aeronautics, the production of spectacleand media networks: they have assimilated

all of modernity and globalization, whilemaintaining their aim to destroy it’.33

However what the planners did not andcould not expect was that both towers wouldcollapse. And the full symbolic impact for theglobal television audience ultimately lay inthe complete humbling of a US capitalismmomentarily reduced to dust and panic. Thissuggests an insurgent wait-and-see strategythat recognises in the complexity and confu-sion of the global broadcast and communica-tions space, the controlled message is longbeyond anyone’s complete control.

Again a visual metaphor may be help-ful. Information and targeted messages pin-ball their way around the mediascape, scor-ing points here and setting off cascades ofbells and whistles there. In other words, thereis the deed and its second and third orderrepercussions. The process is not entirelyrandom. As the trajectory of a pinball can beaffected by bumping the machine and bymanipulation of the flippers so too can thePOTD be somewhat altered, halted, or accel-erated. Because of the architecture of socialmedia small groups are able to manage thePOTD in ways that serve their political endsthrough the manipulation of discussionforums and comments pages as well as thegeneration of counter-analyses. The globalinsurgents have recognised this fact. Forinstance, in June 2007 the Global IslamicMedia Front (GIMF) announced a mediacampaign the declared purpose of which wasto counter the messages against the IslamicState in Iraq (ISI) put out by Arab andWestern media agencies and to stop the

32 An alarming aspect of the conflict called the War on Terror is the tendency on both sides to appeal to moral prin-ciple as a guide and justification for action. In this respect the conflict bears a resemblance to the Thirty Years’ Warwhich, for all its ferocity and horror, was fought over something intangible. At stake were the rules for intra-European conflict. Before the Thirty Years’ War the control of strategy and of the conduct of war lay in the appealto moral principle; after it the codification and acceptance of legal rules and restraints among the rulers of Europe(notably that sovereigns would not interfere in the internal affairs of the states of other sovereigns) supersededappeals to moral authority. See Philip Windsor, Strategic Thinking: An Introduction and Farewell (London: LynneReiner, 2002), pp. 14–15. This is what gives the Thirty Years’ War its special historical significance. The currentconflict, if it too is essentially about establishing a new rule set, may be as momentous, ferocious and horrific.33 Jean Baudrillard ‘The Spirit of Terrorism’, Le Monde, 14 November 2001 (transl. Rachel Blou)<http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-the-spirit-of-terrorism.html>.


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increasing military campaign against the ISIby Sunni organisations in Iraq. In a messagetitled ‘The Battar Media Raid: How toParticipate? How to Help? What Is My Role?’the campaign’s goals and methods, includinginfiltrating non-Islamic forums for the pur-pose of posting pro-ISI propaganda weredescribed:

What we expect from you brothers and sisters isfor the [Islamist] forum to be like beehives duringthe raid... [whereby] one person takes part in dis-tributing [material]... another generates links...one person writes an article... while anotherwrites a poem... People must feel and notice thatthe forums have changed radically during thisblessed raid... beloved [raid participants], the raidis dependent on you... The raid demands of youmany things... such as expertise, especially in thefollowing areas: seeking religious knowledge,montage, translation into any language, upload-ing material onto various types of websites, webdesign, graphic design, journal and publicationdesign, and hacking and security. If you haveexpertise in any of these [fields], contact theGIMF representative on any of the forums. If,however, you do not possess this expertise... thereare other matters you can [promote]: for exam-ple, posting matters related to the raid in most[jihad] forums... posting [material] in non-jihadforums, posting in non-Islamic forums such asmusic forums, youth forums, sports forums, andothers’.34

In this respect the tendency of Westernmedia relations to focus the bulk of theirattention to the first ninety minutes of astory is counterproductive to the extent thatit overshadows the importance of the subse-quent ninety days or, indeed, ninety years.The stateless insurgent builds this semi-ran-domness and long timescale into his plans; byand large, the state-based counter-insurgentstill does not.

POTD and Media in a ShrinkingWorldWhat differentiates today’s Propaganda ofthe Deed from its nineteenth-century precur-sors are the effects of the post-1980s’ liberali-sation in global communications. The inten-sity of consumer demand means this explod-ing mediascape has grown too porous tostaunch ever-increasing flows of informa-tion. So has POTD come full circle? OncePOTD had to shout to gain attention, wheninformation distribution was controlled bystates and select entrepreneurs. Now POTDmust shout even louder precisely because ofthe proliferation of state and private distribu-tion channels. Have television and the web ineffect reduced POTD to nothing more thanan uncontrolled act of ‘shock and awe’? It isnot so simple as first appears.

‘The commodity that the media actuallytrade in is audience attention’ 35

Media are losing control of the informationflows in their own industries. This plays tothe advantage of insurgents who adapt theirmethods accordingly. News organisations aretrapped in a competition to deliver audi-ences; at the same time, they are caught inshrinking time and space. Reporting storiesin real-time through twenty-four hour televi-sion news stations places them on an ever-shrinking timeline between event and broad-cast. This timeline is governed by a numberof factors. 1) The commoditisation of newsand factual programming into a form ofquasi entertainment creates viewer appetite.2) The ‘tabloidisation’ of information meansthe most dramatic content rises to the top ofthe news running order, while the mediumcontinues its ‘race to the bottom’. 3) Theubiquity and standardisation of formatisedprogramming across television networks

34 Translated excerpts from the message were made available on the website of the Middle East Media ResearchInstitute (MEMRI). See, ‘Global Islamic Media Front Instructs Islamists to Infiltrate Popular Non-Islamic Forums toSpread Pro-Islamic State Propaganda’ MEMRI Special Dispatches Series 1621 (14 June 2007),<http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP162107>.35 Jean Seaton, Carnage and the Media (London: Penguin/Allen Lane, 2005), p. 251.


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around the world means the underlying,tabloid visual grammar is shorthanded andhomogenised, thus readily understood byany viewer. 4) The proliferation of state andcommercial TV stations increases competi-tion for the dramatic image and increasesmarket-access for groups engaged in POTD.5) The availability of low-cost technologymeans POTD group activity can be relayedthrough ‘in house’ units of insurgents whorecord and edit attacks before making themavailable either on internet insurgency sitesor via the web to global TV stations. 6) Theemergence of the recent phenomenon ofmobile phone users photographing orrecording moving images before mailingthese indiscriminately within minutes of anevent to TV networks. 7) The self publishinginnovation of ‘citizen journalists’, the ordi-nary man-on-the-street, who shoots inci-dents before uploading to social networkinternet sites such as YouTube.

A growing climate of existential ‘vul-nerability and fear’ experienced by Westernnation-states increases the pressure thisshrinking timeline can apply. Political elitesstand accused of a failure of leadership anddecision-making. They over-indulge in moralrelativism and create confusion in the mindsof the public over what to believe.36 By com-pressing time between POTD taking placeand its appearance on mediated outlets, valu-able thinking time is reduced for news edi-tors.37 Yet this time is crucial to establishingthe veracity of the source; if news-editors areto preserve the trust of the end-user, thatvital component of the broadcaster-audiencerelationship, they must continue to resist thepressure to transmit breaking stories despiteconcerns about the accuracy of their infor-mation. Failure to do so will only underminethe credibility of the organisation’s brandalready under attack from ‘unbranded’ mate-rial freely available from independent orrogue sources. However the laws of competi-

tion soon cut in. As one journalist put it: ‘Ifyou don’t or they don’t fill that space,rumour, conjecture, and innuendo fill it aswell as those who have aggressive intent’.Many broadcasters perceive consumerhunger for content as the salient force intoday’s information society. Audiences, weare reminded, want ‘truth’ and if the journal-istic beacon brands of ‘truth’ – like the BBC– do not provide it fast enough, fickle view-ers will take their business elsewhere. Newseditors vacillate between the scylla of veraci-ty and authenticity, and the charybdis of los-ing audience share to their commercial com-petition. Significantly this only increases theopportunity of the insurgent to exploit theuncertainty gap in the security marketplace.Hence the conundrum.

The point here is that for exponents ofPOTD, the act has entered a new domainwhere sometimes messages are controlled intheir production and disseminated by insur-gents’ own video units and satellite TV chan-nels. But sometimes, mass technology con-sumers use telephone and web-sites to trans-mit ‘news’, increasingly cutting out the edito-rial middle-man on the TV news-desk. Onlythe original act and its accompanying mes-sage remain initially fully under control ofthe insurgent. But within minutes these aredistributed by independent vectors and thepinball-randomisation begins. Thus the sameevent produces two broad streams of propa-ganda, the deliberate and the semi-random –the controlled and the semi-controlled.Crucially the insurgent can shape both. Hecan shape the random element by continual-ly returning to it, casting and recasting it forhis audience in a constant iterative process.

Where Fact Meets FictionWhether the salient force driving contempo-rary information consumption is for journal-istic reporting grounded in ‘truth’, or per-

36 Frank Furedi, Invitation to Terror (London & New York: Continuum, 2007).37 Broadcast TV, internet news, images and texts to mobile phones.


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haps more likely, for an appetite for anygraphic or dramatic content is a moot point.A video of Nick Berg’s beheading attracted15 million downloads from websites.38

Similarly YouTube proudly announces thatover 16 million have watched its feature con-taining topless photographs of the singerBritney Spears.39 In the virtual space both‘events’ fall prey to a culture where reality isplayed out as entertainment. In this worldthe boundaries between truth and fictionmerge, taking on a different meaning.

So too do time and space merge. Bylinking distant places and communities intothe here and now individuals are offered theopportunity to feel part of multiple, indeeddivergent collectives, simultaneously. Nine-teenth century societies were no stranger tothis development. In the nineteenth centuryindustrialised printing and incipient mediaempires bridged gaps of distance and differ-entiation in the same way as railways andtelegraphs conquered the classic militaryconstraints of time and space. But now indi-viduals observe apparently other like-mindedindividuals reacting in real-time to the sameevent, and in the same way, thus reinforcingsubjective attitudes. Just as audiences viewPOTD events, so the perpetrators of suchviolence need not wait too long to see theseaudiences and their representatives react,both positively and negatively.

The New Face of POTDThe contours of some new understanding ofPOTD 2008 are beginning to emerge. Wemay propose: 1) It is not limited to a singleevent. After all an event may now last min-utes, hours, days, weeks, years. And the rea-son it endures is because each bomb, eachmass killing, resonates internally within anarchipelago of violent moments which refer-ence each other, creating meaning and

momentum, and a sense of historical narra-tive. 2) These events communicate acrosscommunities using symbols and images thatare readily understood, triggering deep-seat-ed grievances, shaping identity politics andmobilising new recruits. 3) Insurgentsembrace the media, recognising its need foraudience attention. The bigger the bang, themore attention it commands. 4) POTDevents create random and deliberate conse-quences. ‘Unintended consequences’ are nolonger a by-product of poor planning.Beyond the control of the insurgent, theybecome accepted, ‘intended’, part and parcelof the media communications strategy. Thisought to be the red flag for media rela-tions/information operations specialistsbecause if we are correct, it amounts, in anutshell, to saying ‘embrace chaos’. What inpractical terms does this mean when the rub-ber hits the road, they would rightly ask. Towhich we would suggest there is somethingto be said for an exchange of philosophicalviews in the ministries of defence of theworld between specialists in media relationsand their colleagues in the meteorologydepartment.

38 Akil Awan, ‘Radicalisation on the Internet? The Virtual Propagation of the Jihadist Media and its Effects’, RUSIJournal (Vol.152, No.3, June 2007), pp. 76–81.39 <http://www.youtube.com/> last accessed 7/02/2008.


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The Insurgency Research Group conference2008 examined POTD in the local andregional operations theatres of Iraq andAfghanistan. If the message, not the bullet,has become the real weapon of choice, how,if at all, are states engaging with the newwarfare? We have argued that POTD takesfull advantage of its symbiotic relationshipwith global media. It creates a dramatic act ofpolitical violence which works on differentlevels, addressing different audiences. Initiallyit shocks its victims and immediate popula-tions. Rapidly it provokes state governmentsin the full glare of watching cameras. And asgovernments are drawn into violent retalia-tion, they undermine their own credibilityand ability to preserve the security and ordi-nariness of daily life by resorting to extraordi-nary strategies. Primarily the argument hereis that the force of the deed is its ability to res-onate, not just shock or provoke, and throughresonance to attach itself to underlyinggrievances in populations, ultimately mobil-ising and expanding these new-found con-stituencies. How does this new conceptuali-sation impact operations theatres?

The Strategic OverviewAdept at dealing with contact battle, Britishforces in Afghanistan have realised the needto come to terms with a ‘strategic makeover’in the face of a new threat. This transforma-tion is informed by key principles: 1) insur-gents conduct ‘influence operations’ and thecounter-insurgency must be political but sup-ported by the military; 2) ‘not to attack orrespond to a terrorist act is as much an influ-ence operation as the decision to take action’(experience of the Indian Army in Kashmiroperations demonstrated that in the absenceof a clear-cut, identifiable enemy, it was bet-ter to walk away and not jeopardise hard-won community relations); 3) the ‘anthropo-

logical’ approach must inform the strategy –understanding local, complex historical,social, political dimensions is critical; 4) thelocal must be situated in the regional, socommanders must be cognisant of the rolesand relationships of the operational theatrewith neighbouring countries. However thisrepresents a major shift in political and mili-tary thinking which currently awaits abureaucratic analysis, adoption and promo-tion still sorely lacking. Before civil servantsand officials feel secure in backing radical ini-tiatives they will always assess their ability tosell them to their paymasters. If the groundhas not been clearly delineated by consensus,bureaucratic resistance will restrain progress.Thus ‘strategy is effectively absent’.

Writing the Counter-narrative: FightingMessage with MessageHow should the counter-narrative be con-structed? Some staff officers argue for amulti-tiered set of narratives which sit withinone overarching framework or supra-narra-tive requiring each component to be consis-tent with the next. Yet there is inherent fric-tion in the process. The intervention forcesuffers the disadvantage of a local knowledgedeficit. The insurgent understands the indi-vidual resonance of Propaganda of theDeed, shaping the narrative to local commu-nities, but significantly from the bottom-upnot top-down. And it is at the grass-rootslevel that critical but minute shifts in under-standings and loyalties sense and adapt to thechanging dynamics and fortunes of conflict.This knowledge deficit is compounded bythe support role which coalition forces mustuphold, militating against an over-enthusias-tic spearheading of the propaganda initiative.If national governments are to resist thelong-term assault on their rule, their legiti-macy depends on their ability to exercise

3. POTD and Counter-Insurgency: Towards a Solution


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independent sovereign authority. On theother hand in Afghanistan it is the verynature of power relations that separatesKabul – geographically and tribally – fromthe rest of the country. It is striking that Arabmedia picked up Iraq’s Anbar Awakeningbefore foreign observers, and will have beena more trustworthy medium for the dissemi-nation of that message. The structure andorganisation of societies such as Afghanistanalso calls for a dialogue between coalitionforces, NGOs and agencies at communitylevel in villages, towns and cities whose agen-da will be driven by the people’s self-interestand the fundamental desire for security. Butthe answers to the two key questions – ‘howlong will the coalition forces be around?’ and‘which is going to be the winning side?’ areproblematic with the second hanging on thefirst, and the first being as likely to be deter-mined by Western governments’ electorates,or their perception of those electorates’wishes, as by the ‘far enemy’, who may notfigure at all in the final judgement.

Meanwhile ‘the narrative provides thecanvas upon which events will be painted’and this narrative must be backed by consis-tent momentum. Thus analysis of the politi-cal-military campaign echoes Gould’s earlierstrategy40 of democratic electoral campaign-ing: ‘Gaining momentum means dominatingthe news agenda, entering the news cycle atthe earliest possible time, and repeatedly re-entering it, with stories and initiatives thatensure the subsequent news coverage is seton your terms’. This is about turning defenceinto attack. ‘You must always rebut a politicalattack if leaving it unanswered will harmyou. And you must do it instantly, withinminutes at best, within hours at worst, andwith a defence supported by facts’. Newsspreads fast through informal networks inAfghanistan and Iraq. Countering POTDmeans being alert to instantaneous response– legitimate and credible figureheads callingfamily and friends to staunch the flow of dis-

information, denying insurgents the oppor-tunity of commanding the discourse terrain.Effectively this secures the narrative opera-tional theatre. Next the message of the insur-gent must be undermined. But its basis mustbe fact and accuracy. In Iraq ‘a unit respond-ed to an attack by flying in Iraqi media, con-tacting local Sunni and Shia authorities tospeak to their followers, calling defenceattaches in countries affected by the attack toprevent the spread of domestic disinforma-tion, and visiting local hospitals to speak withhospital staff ’. And why hospitals? BecausePOTD assaults force their way onto theRichter scale of media by the volume ofcasualties, and insurgents repeatedly attemptto control and adversely manipulate thissource of ‘evidence’. Instead of focusing onthe event itself which leaves the field open tocontinued re-interpretation of the underly-ing motivation, the victims and the misery oftheir families wrought in violence, mustbecome the story in the counter-narrative.This suffering is then reattached to the perpe-trators of extreme violence, singled outwherever possible as individuals, indeed self-interested criminals, thus detached from anylegitimising ideology. David Galula famouslywrote:

The asymmetrical situation has important effectson propaganda. The insurgent, having no respon-sibility, is free to use every trick; if necessary, hecan lie, cheat, exaggerate. He is not obliged toprove; he is judged by what he promises, not bywhat he does. Consequently, propaganda is apowerful weapon for him. With no positive poli-cy but with good propaganda, the insurgent maystill win.

The counterinsurgent is tied to his responsibili-ties and to his past, and for him, facts speak loud-er than words. He is judged on what he does, noton what he says. if he lies, cheats, exaggerates,and does not prove, he may achieve some tempo-rary successes, but at the price of being discredit-ed for good. And he cannot cheat much unless hispolitical structures are monolithic, for the legiti-mate opposition in his own camp would soon dis-

40 Op. cit. pp. 294–5.


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close his every psychological manoeuvre. Forhim, propaganda can be no more than a sec-ondary weapon, valuable only if intended toinform and not to fool. A counterinsurgent canseldom cover bad or nonexistent policy with pro-paganda.41

There is much wisdom in what Galula saidand with respect to the injunction that thecounter-insurgent must not lie (lest he causelong-term pain to his credibility for short-term gain), ought to be regarded as some-thing akin to a scientific law. However, inanother respect he is wrong. The insurgentcan be judged by what he does as well aswhat he says. The delta between the two isthe target of the counter-insurgent propa-gandist. In crude terms, the ‘bad guys’ needto stand up and be counted. The ‘insurgency’is all too often conceptualised, abstracted,rendering it amorphous, and blurring the dis-course. In fact these are real events involvingreal people. Separate these and you disaggre-gate the ethnic, religious and political com-ponents. In Iraq and Afghanistan power poli-tics and resource competition can often berevealed by separating the ideological fromthe theological, the Sunni-based from theShia-based.

‘Over half the actual battle takes place inthe media’42

It is tempting to conclude the deployment ofmulti-tiered messaging resembles manoeu-vre operations. A command-intent sets theframework for devolved command and con-trol to react to fast-moving changes on theground. But what drives the entire enterpriseis the recognition that today’s war is one ofstrategic communications. Moreover, itshould be recognised that there is a distinctlyattritional element to the media battle.While from time to time there may beopportunities to dislocate the enemy’s infor-mation campaign with some clever stroke, by

and large the dominant characteristic of bat-tle in the media-space is the dogged divert-ing, diluting and refuting of the other side’smessages with messages of one’s own day inand day out. Here we see the perspicacity ofMcLuhan’s choice of words in describing his‘war of icons’ as the erosion of the collectivecountenance of one’s opponent. Thisbecomes even more urgent as the focuswidens to embrace a global picture of POTDevents. Returning to our archipelago analogy,we may liken this to Indonesia with its 17,000islands within a half dozen main clusters.The onus now moves to making sense ofthese divergent incidents of global insur-gency. Their effect fans out across numerousand often apparently disconnected diasporas,and their host populations. We have pro-posed shaping multiple, targeted messages inAfghanistan and Iraq to address specific localand regional constituency agendas but with-in a consistent and coherent whole. Likewisewe now require targeted messages thataddress different communities in other coun-tries including the UK with their differentconcerns. How ideas are disseminated in‘bottom-up’ as well as ‘top-down’ socialprocesses, demands further investigation. Inthe end all messages must be harmonisedinto an holistic narrative architecture.

Can States use POTD? The StateConundrumPOTD is a symbolic act of political collectiveviolence whose true impact supersedes theforce of its military spectacle, and derivesfrom its ability to communicate and dissemi-nate a message. But because POTD’s veryessence is concerned with undermining theauthority and legitimacy of the state, andthis weakness can be amplified if the stateretaliates in kind, then the state inevitablyfights with one hand tied behind its back.Advocates of soft power argue that a war of

41 David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (New York, NY: Praeger, 2005), pp.14–15.42 Ayman al-Zawahiri (Al-Qa’ida).


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ideas may only draw on words. This unbal-ances the equation. Insurgents may usewords, ideas and violence but the state isbarred from anything other than words.

Perhaps this misrepresents the picture.States command superior human and capitalresources which can be mobilised to thesecurity, political and developmental effortthen targeted at disenfranchised populations.The state always remains in the dominantrole. To portray it as a Goliath struck-downby David is ill-advised. Here we must differ-entiate between the UK, USA, Europe andAfghanistan. It is particularly in territoriesand societies where the state exists largely asan integer in the international system of sov-ereignty that this superiority of power beginsto crumble. Where the state has never exer-cised monopoly control over legitimate vio-lence nor promoted institutions of represen-tation promoting rights and benefits of theindividual citizen, it is found wanting andweakened in the face of the insurgent.

So can any state ever legitimately resortto the use of POTD? It is argued, by defini-tion categorically not. States are excludedfrom deploying it. This in effect is the beautyof POTD that as soon as the state resorts toit, it alienates its support base, furtherfuelling the insurgency. But is that always thecase? States, even democracies, can and doregularly adopt POTD as a technique of sym-bolic action. It should not be dismissed mere-ly as the knee-jerk response of authoritarianstate-terror. A commander participating inthe conference, who had recently returnedfrom Iraq, related how US/Iraqi forcesrecently dropped a 500 pound bomb on ahouse holding Al-Qa’ida fighters. This strikeclearly had a tactical-level purpose – namely,the removal of the insurgents once and for allfrom the operations theatre. Yet its scale anddrama were such that press and media wereinvited to interpret a deeper, more meaning-ful intent. How far this spectacle resonated

with the Sunni Arab population, within arelentless drip feed of state-sponsoredPOTD, and consequently how that con-tributed to the Anbar Awakening, remainsunexplored.

Likewise slow-motion footage of tar-geted missiles played and replayed on world-wide television during the 1991 Gulf Warwas nothing if not POTD. It celebrated thenarrative of political power through a visionof ‘awe’ – hi-technological, military and eco-nomic achievement. Did these images onlyalienate, or is it actually feasible they wonover new recruits to the coalition and liberalcause? Alternatively, even if the audience was‘shocked’ was it necessarily simply alienated?At the less dramatic end of the spectrum,how should we view the Blair government’sdecision to surround Heathrow airport(2003) with tanks, 450 troops, 1,700 addition-al police and a Nimrod circling London?43

This was clearly POTD. Through show ofmilitary strength, it aimed to send out signalsto reassure a domestic population, ratherthan threaten insurgent-activists and sympa-thisers. On this occasion state violenceremained implicit.

By contrast it was explicit when NATOforces attacked Taliban operations chiefswith Hellfire missiles launched from PredatorRPVs. Yet the failure to broadcast this assaultwas troubling. It revealed an entrenched fail-ure of understanding amongst planners.What insurgents intuitively appreciate is thatfulfilling military objectives is only part ofthe battle. The key is to demonstrate to theeyes of the world, on camera, that ‘yourguys’ are not only winning but that yourcause is just and irresistible. This remains acontest for the narrative and symbolic space.But we return to the dilemma outlined earli-er. Had the Taliban strike been recorded fortransmission or broadcast live, what wouldhave been its effect? We may assume it mighthave played positively to broader constituen-

43 BBC News, ‘Ministers to make Heathrow statement’, 13 February 2003.<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2755663.stm> – accessed 10 February 2008.


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cies ‘back home’ supporting the Coalitionforces through tax-pounds (and dollars), butnegatively to many in their Muslim commu-nities in Dewsbury and Bradford who wouldread it as further evidence of a Western waron Islam. This is a far cry from the Talibanassault on Kabul’s Serena Hotel, a symbolictarget of Western values. By singling out thiswidely known health-and-fitness venue forvisiting female aid and security workers, itresonated a symbolic, ideological critique ofvalues to those same disenchanted few inDewsbury and Bradford, and indeed themany within Kabul’s host-population. So too

did the Taliban’s strike against troops at apassing-out parade under the gaze ofPresident Karzai in early May 2008 demon-strate the inherent weakness of the Afghangovernment in its own capital, despite thearmed presence of NATO troops and the his-toric difficulties faced by the Taliban in pene-trating Kabul. Within minutes pictures ofthis propaganda triumph for the insurgentwere flying through the ether of the globalmediascape. These two incidents alone areproof-positive of the state conundrum in thebattle for narrative space.

4. Conclusion: TheWay Forward and Recommendations

In summary, Propaganda of the Deed per-forms 1) operationally in order to shock forattention; 2) tactically to engage the state-enemy and provoke retaliation; 3) commu-nicatively to attach itself to underlyinggrievances; 4) strategically to expand its con-stituency and polarise it from a governmentthat has met violence with violence and thusfurther delegitimised its authority. Howeverthe instant transmission of events in evershrinking delivery times via television, inter-net and telephony often invites the wronganalysis. A deed is not homogeneous. Insteadit is important to recognise that the samedeed sends out different messages and diver-gent objectives, simultaneously to potentiallymultiple audiences.

We recommend that policy-makers dis-tinguish individual components of an all tooeasily conflated single conflict. Thus we notea deed committed in Afghanistan may target:1) the balance of power within a local politi-cal economy, where actors compete forpower and resources; 2) hierarchical politics,where the attack seeks to influence or con-trol without subverting the sovereign state:some actors aspire to share in the benefits

that accrue to sovereign members of theinternational community, especially theirhigh volumes of foreign aid; 3) ethnic andtribal identity politics that reach beyondAfghanistan’s ill-defined borders: sometimesthese politics impact immediate neighbours,sometimes more distant communities alongthe Pakistan-Iran lateral axis, and the north-south axis of the Central Asian corridor; 4)ideological politics on the scale of an intra-state project of dismantling the sovereignstatus quo and bringing about a neo-Taliban,Islamic order; 5) conversely, ideological poli-tics within a supra-state project with itsseparate agenda of creating a transnational,global umma embraced by Al-Qa’ida and itsderivatives. This notional deed may play intoany of the above categories whether the per-petrator represents the Taliban or Al-Qa’ida,with their distinct but occasionally overlap-ping programmes.

Consequently we recommend policy-makers with their more nuanced sensitivityto European societies, resist overarchingaggregation when surveying diverse commu-nities. As we have argued above, a deed com-mitted in the UK will find some resonance


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somewhere in the UK population because ofstructural inequalities rooted in domestic,minority communities. These communitiesmay already be alienated by marginalised liv-ing standards, reduced job opportunities,racially and religiously motivated discrimina-tion, and basic issues of identity. What we donot yet know is, to what degree if at all, thissense of injustice reverberates and resonatesoutwards from the UK to other populationsin majority Muslim states or Muslim diaspo-ras. How far were French North African,German Turkish, or Spanish Moroccan com-munities with their distinctive personalitiesand provenance, influenced by London’s 7/7deeds? Whilst we are willing to accept thenotion of a geographical imaginary such asthe global umma, what we have yet to pene-trate are the relationships and understand-ings which bind its constituent communitieshere in Europe.

Indeed the Insurgency Research Grouprecommends that future research agendasinvestigate: 1) where the operational objec-tive ends and the message campaign begins;2) how internal regimes of violence affect theshaping of messages within insurgentgroups, and; 3) why certain deeds find sym-pathy with target populations while othersimilar atrocities alienate their very chosen

constituency? These are perennial questionsthat challenge our understanding of insur-gency in its many guises around the world.However they are made all the more pressingby today’s confrontation with the extrememanifestations of political Islam.

Meanwhile the current priority for thecounter-insurgency narrative remains 1) toidentify and delineate separate conflictswhich to date have been conflated into theperception of a single war; 2) to hone partic-ular messages which address each of these,and to recognise that some subsequentlymay be inherently contradictory; and 3) toreconcile all contradictions into a single har-monious framework, a meta- or strategicnarrative that seeks to overcome the deep-felt resentment shared by many communitiesand societies to aspects of the Western liber-al project. Only by shaping a matrix of rela-tionships between parallel but often diver-gent communicators and their communica-tions is there any chance of framing an over-arching grand strategic narrative. Coherenceand consistency are all. Such a narrative willneed to encompass differing sets of values,uneven stages of development, and persuadedisparate populations around the world ofthe justice of its cause. This remains the fun-damental test in the war of words and ideas.


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Annex A: Conference panelists and participants.

PANELISTS

Brigadier Dickie Davies HQ Land Forces

Professor Nicholas O’Shaughnessy Queen Mary’s College London

Nik Gowing BBC World

PARTICIPANTS

Brigadier (ret.) Gavin Bulloch Land Warfare Centre

Colonel Peter Davies Defence Academy JSCSC

Dr Dominick Donald Aegis Research and Intelligence

Professor Theo Farrell King’s College London, Insurgency Research Group

Dr Amanat Hussain President e-Worldwide Group

Mr George Lawrence MA War Studies, King’s College London

Mr Shuvra Mahmud BBC Monitoring

Dr John Mackinlay King’s College London, Insurgency Research Group

Colonel H.R. McMaster IISS

Dr Terence McNamee RUSI

Dr Jeff Michaels Royal Air Force College

Mr Saqeb Mueen RUSI

Dr Andrew Mumford BISA

Mr Alexander Nicoll IISS

Dr Ben O’ Loughlin New Political Communication Unit, Royal HollowayCollege

Ms Gemma O’Neill BBC Monitoring

Mr Mark Phillips Team for Shadow Defence Minister

Mr Samir Puri Defence Analyst, RAND Europe

Mr Paul Smyth RUSI

Mr Timothy Stevens MA War Studies, King’s College London

Mr Nicholas Walton BBC Radio

We are particularly grateful to the conference panelists, noted above.

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