THE SHIITE JIHAD IN SYRIA AND ITS REGIONAL EFFECTS

BUILDING AN ARMY FOR ZAINAB n 29
ment meeting areas established in Najaf and Karbala during Ashura and later
Arbain, another Shiite festival, with the images showing posters with recruitment
phone numbers easily viewable by anyone who clicked the uploaded
images. By early 2014, Badr had improved its techniques by uploading publicly
viewable and more professionally constructed images featuring recruitment
numbers. Until summer 2014, the official Badr Organization’s Quwet
al-Shahid Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr Facebook page’s main cover image was a
recruitment poster featuring Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Ayatollah
Khamenei, and a recruitment phone number to join forces “in the defense of
Sayyeda Zainab.” 168
The Badr Organization was also one of the first groups to upload recruitment
videos to YouTube—beginning March 27–28, 2014 (see appendix 8)—
to be either linked to its Facebook networks or uploaded directly to related
Facebook pages. Set to music celebrating Badr’s ideology and mission to
“defend Sayyeda Zainab,” the videos included combat footage in Syria and,
at the end, a Badr Organization Facebook page address and phone number.
Some of the footage used in these videos was later repurposed for airing on
the group’s al-Ghadeer TV network. 169
Another video-based recruitment effort, albeit a less direct one, was
launched by the RRF. Like Badr’s videos, these clips—posted at varying
intervals to Facebook and YouTube—featured martial music and combat
footage showing RRF fighters and commanders in Syria. Some footage
seemingly included the video creator’s phone number, although contacting
this number yielded only information about joining with “forces to
defend Zainab.” 170
Not all established groups used easily accessible Facebook pages or You-
Tube videos for recruitment. At times, potential recruits would be forced to
seek out harder-to-find Facebook profiles with uploaded images containing
embedded phone numbers. Many of these profiles would use imagery demonstrating
a direct link to Shiite militia organizations. 171 KSS was one group
to prefer this method. Beginning in summer 2013, the group began a sporadic
campaign of posting photos of actual recruitment posters, with the posters
generally including phone numbers, on KSS-related Facebook profiles. The
picture would then be uploaded and circulated. Only in late July 2014 did
KSS first post images specifically crafted for Internet distribution, with these
images generally featuring phone numbers. (See appendix 8.) As with other
KSS posts, such images could only be reached on a more-difficult-to-access
Facebook profile.