Download - Foreign Military Studies Office - U.S. Army

Muslim World Outreach Strategy. Radio Sawa, a music-news station which
began operation in 2002, and Alhurra, a satellite-TV news network which
started in 2004, were aimed at Arab audiences. The US Agency for
International Development (USAID) also does some excellent strategic work.
All of these organizations are looking at countering anti-US propaganda and
fostering more tolerance on the part of Arab nations in the Middle East. 497
Further, the US military has formed a new Joint Psychological Support Element
(JPSE) in Tampa, Florida. US News and World Report stated that it is designed
to replace the Office of Strategic Influence that was created in 2001 and
disbanded in 2002. 498
At the same time, insurgents are moving forward with their own IO
organization and plans. A recent speech delivered by Stephen Ulph at a
Jamestown Foundation conference in 2005 on insurgency underlined these
insurgent capabilities. A new March 2005, jihadi web magazine, Dhurwat al
Sanam, was described as “a periodical issued by the information department of
the organization of the Qaedat al Jihad in the Land of the Two Rivers.” 499 Just
knowing that an insurgent organization has an information department is
usually a signal for nation-states to employ a counterpropaganda capability.
The information department was initially inward-focused, supporting
jihadi morale. However, a recent development cited by Ulph is that insurgents
have developed an information brigade with several subcomponents to include
a propaganda attack mechanism. He noted that
On March 4, a statement was posted on the Minbar Ahl al-Sunna wal-
Jama’a, a jihadi forum, from the newly constituted Information Jihad
Brigade [Katibat al Jihad al I’Iami], which introduced itself as “a
support and aid to our mujahid brothers to break the Zionist control
over the media.” The statement outlined the Brigade’s specific aim: a
full-scale propaganda war to constitute the newest arm of jihad. Its
purpose is “to influence the morale of our enemies” and “expose the
reality of what is happening to them in Iraq, so that the soldiers lose
their faith in themselves and their commanders.” 500
497 Islam Online (UK), 20 April 2005.
498 David E. Kaplan, “How Rocket Scientists Got into the Hearts-and-Minds Game,”
US News and World Report, 25 April 2005, p. 31.
499 Stephen Ulph, speaking at the Jamestown Foundation Forum “Insurgency and Jihad:
The Iraqi Theater and Beyond,” Panel One, 11 April 2005, as accessed and downloaded
from the Jamestown Foundation website (www.jamestownfoundation.com), on 4 May
2005.
500 Ibid.
276