A central plank of the al-Qaida resurgence noted by U.S. analysts is its sophisticated messaging and propaganda strategy, spearheaded by a state-of-the-art in-house multimedia production facility producing high-quality videos every three days or so.
The as-Sahab Institute, as the terror network’s media arm calls itself, is often in the global spotlight — as it was last week after releasing Osama bin Laden’s message to Americans and two other videos to mark the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
If your prime source of news about Al-Qaida is US TV or, worse, the US government, you may not realize they average a video release every three days.
The videos are messages from and interviews with al-Qaida’s leaders, and propaganda films made by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are released more or less simultaneously in a bewildering variety of formats and quality standards.
The latest bin Laden video was made available in five different versions, ranging from high definition to a special format called 3GP that can be downloaded to mobile devices. The versions were downloadable at more than 20 different places on the Web, and most messages are also released on a CD-ROM format disc as well.
“They produce versions (subtitled) in different languages, and for each of those versions the graphics and the content might be different, too,”.
Interesting – and inconclusive – discussion in the article. This won’t satisfy folks for whom the War on Terror is the new catechism.
