(The blog formerly known as) All Things Counter Terrorism

This week has been a busy one. I unearthed  the first new KSM photos we’ve seen since he was captured (see for example here, here, here, here, and here ).

I also nabbed the bin Laden audio. See here.

This has made me wonder who else still watches forums.  A lot of people used to be all over this. I know Jarret, Aaron, Casey and Jihadica are but generally speaking  there’s very few of us and interest in the content of forums seems to have dropped off. It’s almost like information fatigue. To my mind this isn’t a good thing.

Those forums continue to be used for strategic guidance, operational instruction, and of course propaganda dissemination.  The propaganda dissemination always seems to get the focus.  Granted it’s a big issue, but the bigger one is people using these forums for far more nefarious operational purposes at both the strategic and tactical level.   I know there is debate as to whether this occurs or not. I can tell you it does. I’ve seen it. Many times. In fact I’m polishing up some red hot case studies of such incidents for my forthcoming PhD.

Granted those using the forums for operational purposes are much smaller in number than the propagandists. However, it is worthwhile remembering we are dealing with small networks here. Al Qaeda only ever had 200 core members. It still does (see my earlier post here). The EIJ had 40 people left when it fled Egypt and only nine members (including Ayman al Zawahiri) in Afghanistan. Abu Musab al Zarqawi went to Iraq with 17 men. I could go on. And on.

It doesn’t take a lot of people to plot and carry out fairly large scale terrorist attacks.  With all the focus on propaganda they can hide in the grass so to speak. And we can miss them.