In the latest salvo against radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, pictured right, YouTube recently withdrew many of al-Awlaki’s YouTube postings at the behest of the U.S. and U.K. governments. The reason for the government’s request was because of concerns about al-Awlaki’s use of YouTube videos to promote his pro-extremist and anti-Western views to impressionable and/or disaffected Westerners, including Americans and British citizens. YouTube spokeswoman, Victoria Grand, stated that YouTube “will continue to remove all content that incites violence according to our policies. Material of a purely religious nature will remain on the site.”
Obviously, the U.S. and U.K. governments regard al-Awlaki as a serious threat and with good reason. Al-Awlaki is best known in the U.S. for his varying degrees of affiliation with 2009 Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab; alleged Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan; and Times Square potential bomber Faisal Shahzad. In addition, through his Internet sites and YouTube postings, he is said to have influenced a U.K. citizen to kill a U.K. legislator. Clearly, the U.S. and U.K. governments have great concern over al-Awlaki’s ability to recruit Westerners to the jihadist cause. To put further pressure on him, al-Awlaki had been designated an international terrorist by the U.S. State and Treasury Departments, thus freezing his material assets, and the U.S. government has authorized his “targeted killing”; an unprecedented edict given his U.S. citizenship.
Al-Awlaki’s response to the latest Western attempts to curtail outlets for his message was to call on Muslims worldwide to kill Americans, adding that religious sanctions or fatwas are not needed as all Americans are the enemy. Strong words from someone as isolated as one could be in Yemen and possibly on the run from Yemen’s security forces as they seek out members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula terrorist group that al-Awalki supports. Yet, the fact that the U.S. and U.K. governments have paid him this much attention should cause one to wonder about what is the threat and how al-Awlaki is able to be so influential.
It’s possible that the answer lies in the fact that al-Qaeda has long known that their existence depends upon replenishing their ranks with new recruits and that recruits can be enticed using various media resources, chiefly the internet. In a July 2005 letter to the now deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s second in command. Ayman al-Zawahiri tells al-Zarqawi that the battle that they are in “is taking place in the battlefield of the media,” and that “we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of our Umma” or the general Muslim population.
While al-Zawahiri makes a number of other points in his letter, it is interesting that more than five years ago, at the height of the Iraq war, the al-Qaeda leadership recognized (1) the importance of getting out their message to the masses and (2) the technology available to al-Qaeda to impart that message.
These two points continue to be followed in today’s version of the Global War on Terror that is being fought in various media outlets, including Facebook, YouTube and other social networking Internet sites. Today, al-Qaeda and their affiliates continue spreading their messages of hate toward the U.S. and the West, but it has become more dangerous due to the language of the new messengers: English.
Until recently, al-Qaeda internet postings were chiefly in the Arabic language, but English has become more popular on radical internet sites because al-Qaeda recruiting efforts are now focused on English-speaking persons with European or U.S. passports who can travel freely within Europe and the United States with little or no suspicion from law enforcement.
Extremists such as al-Awlaki and Adam Gadahn, an American al-Qaeda member based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are known for appearing in many al-Qaeda sponsored videos exhorting jihad against the West. Both are charismatic, native English speakers and the threat they pose should be taken seriously — as we are currently witnessing the results of their exhortations.
One other issue that comes to mind when thinking about YouTube’s actions is that of internet censorship. However, this is another topic for another day.
Steve Young, Ph.D., is a retired CIA operations officer with tours in the Middle East, South Asia and Europe. A former Marine, he also served in Iraq and Afghanistan during conflict operations and with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Houston. Young, who currently teaches at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, blogged as a guest of Chris Bronk, the Baker Institute fellow in information technology policy.