Things have changed a lot since the time when the tramp fighters of Tora Bora used audiotapes to communicate between themselves. Now the Islamic fighters even succeed in hacking US military websites.
The news is that the enemies of the Western World are beating us on the same field invented by democratic capitalism. In fact they seem able to master Marketing, meaning the war based on icons and positioning; Franchising meaning the capability of affiliating third parties under a common brand and Communication.
Let’s start from the name: everybody calls them ISIS even if, apparently, the right name should be IS. ISIS means Islamic State of Iraq and Syria but then, as the “Caliphate” has grown a lot including many other territories, it should just be called IS, Islamic State.
Notwithstanding that, we keep calling it ISIS, because this name with the final hissing “s” is much more scary. It reminds lethal and secret organizations, like those created by the evil enemies of James Bond.
However it is the brand of the Islamic State that scares us the most. That black flag with white signs which flies over each of its vehicles and buildings is the real identity asset of the Caliphate. This is the brand under which many heterogeneous elements of the Islamic world are gathering: from the most orthodox religious entities to crowds of bandits just looking for legitimacy.
The Caliphate, in fact, is not expanding through the use of scimitars. Actually it is expanding by voluntary “aggregation” of territories that are out of control. A real spontaneous “franchising” by communities looking for more prestige and power.
Exactly in the same way a fast food strives for joining a big chain so that the consumer can recognize in it all the values represented by the bigger brand. Because life is easier if you are introduced to consumers as McDonals’d or Burger King instead of “Meatballs by John”. This is the same reason why entire tribes, cities and regions lift up the black flag and declare themselves affiliated to the Caliphate.
What makes that black flag so powerful? The brutality it represents.
The “Jolly Roger”, the traditional pirate flag we all remind, with the white skull and crossed bones on a black background frightened to death the commercial ships in deep seas, because that flag meant savage attacking, potentially torture, probably death or slavery. Similarly the new flag of the Caliph brings us back to a world that the western democracies believed was gone forever.
The black flag gains its strength from the acts of groundless brutality, impossible to understand according to our values. It takes us back to a dark medieval world. The destruction of thousands-years old archeological masterpieces and the cold blood throat-cutting of men, following a clear-headed media ritual (in fact video cameras are always there!), are far beyond our understanding. The same happens for the people killed with stones or hurled down from high buildings or burned inside cages. As well as the celebration of the dagger, the weapon of a ‘real man’ as it requires physical contact and cold blood.
All the above is horrifying for our society, where we are even unable to eat animal proteins without feeling guilty.
The communication experts of the Islamic States swim into our fears and weaknesses.
I am not saying that the Western World acts in a less brutal way: air bombing and drone attacks are for sure more lethal than all these caliph stabbings. But we don’t feel as bad with our actions as those are served us through ad idea of a legitimate and “clean” war. And we always see them in green screen where explosions are just some light green spots. We don’t see the blood and don’t feel that bad.
This is exactly what the Caliph has understood about us: not only we are no more used to bleed, but we also cannot accept to see bleeding anybody else. The western democracies do not tolerate to see the effects of violence. Not only on their troops but even on their enemies.
The Caliph brings us back to the bayonet, the blood, the tragedy of the single man, the life that flies away together with the blood that flows on the hands.
And by doing this he lets us know that, on our contrary, he is not afraid to die. Actually he looks for an honorable death because he believes this is right. At the point that it seems normal to him to sacrifice children of its community, stuffing them with explosives and sending them to die among the infidels.
This is what scares us the most: to meet somebody ready to sacrifice everything only to hurt us a little. While we are not even ready to watch him suffering a little bit.
We have to admit that we are very supportive with the Caliph’s marketing strategy. Our indignation always goes with the publishing of the news and the videos (yes we censor them a little but the result doesn’t change and the uncut versions can easily be found on the internet). How many times have we seen the killing of the French police officer of the Charlie Hebdo massacre?
This is how terrorism works: a brutal thing is done so that the media spread it and entire populations are terrorized. The Caliph provides the content and we offer the media space.
Actually we should have the courage of doing the opposite. We should not provide media coverage to these actions to avoid encouraging the terrorist to keep doing them.
I don’t believe they will stop killing but perhaps they will stick to a “charitable” round in the head. And at that point there would be little to communicate or to be frightened.
The United Kingdom adopted such a strategy during the London bombing of 2005. The images that were allowed to be published were specially “aseptic”. We didn’t see victims or people crying. In our memory we can only find images of destroyed double-deckers. The terrorist were deprived of the scope of their bombing: additional terror spread around with the images.
Also regarding the flag of the Islamic State we should invert the theory. The black flag, today a strong point of the Islamic State can become its grave.
In fact these terrorist, by lifting the black flag, made the mistake that, in as asymmetric war, the weak side cannot do: physically occupy a place, a city, a region. The rule is that terrorists, and guerrilla, after striking must run away. Otherwise the police and the military arrive and get them.
The Caliph and its franchising followers instead have physically occupied lands and cities. And they branded and identified the occupied territories with many black flags.
Here we go: instead of scaring us now we know where the objectives stand. Those flags must become the targets of our intelligence and armed forces.