BASHIR, Iraq // Sitting in their frontline positions or hunched in narrow drainage tunnels in the small Iraqi town of Bashir, the ISIL fighters had plenty of time on their hands.
They had been holed up here since ISIL stormed into northern Iraq in 2014. While the Kurds prevented ISIL from taking Kirkuk, the extremists did manage to seize Bashir – a town south of the city. Being marooned on the fringes of ISIL did not mean the fighters were out of touch with what was happening in the other territories in Iraq and Syria that were under ISIL control, nor were they out of reach from the propagandists seeking to shape their world view.
Every week the men in combat fatigues would receive the latest edition of “Al Naba”, or The News – a crisp newspaper printed on high quality paper in A3 format. It was a welcome distraction from the boredom on a quiet frontline.
Here, the troops could read about recent battles – which according to Al Naba all ended victoriously and at great cost to the enemy. The newspaper eulogised ISIL fighters killed in air strikes, and affirmed their radical beliefs with OpEds urging readers to adopt ISIL’s apocalyptic ideology. There were also full-page advertisements claiming success in imposing ISIL’s harsh Sharia law on to the populations it controlled.
The ISIL occupation of Bashir ended in early May, when a combined force of Kurdish Peshmerga and Shiite militias retook the town, killing or capturing its defenders, and forcing some to flee. Among the things left behind in tunnels, fortified positions and rows of houses connected by holes punched into the walls were copies of Al Naba, which The National obtained during a visit shortly after the fighting ended.
Most of the newspapers found strewn on the floor of a ransacked house were confiscated by an intelligence officer of the Shiite militias that now control the town. But the two editions that were salvaged – from March 23 and April 27 – give a unique insight into ISIL propaganda efforts outside the group’s vast online presence.
Unlike its web recruitment efforts, which are aimed at the outside world, Al Naba is directed at those within the self-styled caliphate: the grunts in the trenches and impressionable locals living in its confines.
“Satan is Weak”
The cover of a 16-page edition published on March 23 this year revelled in the bloody terrorist attacks in Brussels a day earlier which killed 32 people, for which ISIL claimed responsibility. “Operation Brussels – Satan is Weak” screamed one headline. Triumphantly, the article explained the wider consequences of the attack.
“If you look at this operation, the direct effect of it is far greater than the number of dead and wounded. It has disrupted life and caused huge financial losses. The most important thing is that it shows the weakness of the intelligence agencies of the western countries, who claim be the strongest in the world,” gloats the article.
It was a message intended to revive morale among ISIL members who were being pummelled daily by air strikes and suffering from salary cuts that in the past afforded them a comfortable life when not on frontline duty.
“The operation shows that security in Europe is a myth,” concluded the unnamed author.
The frequent terrorist attacks on civilians in Iraq also got a mention, alongside reports on battles and skirmishes.
A failed offensive by the Iraqi army at Makhmour is the subject of one article, titled “The fight in West Makhmour increases the failures of the Shia army”. It gave a detailed and only partly accurate account of the fighting near the town in northern Iraq where a US soldier died from ISIL rocket fire in March.
Some articles cited information from ISIL’s Press Office for the Wilayat Junub — or southern province. Others referenced the Amaq news agency, an online ISIL propaganda outlet.
All part of ISIL’s efforts to gain legitimacy by mimicking the mechanics of a state, and recreating the machinations of conventional government-run media operations.
Unconventional Advertisements
However, Al Naba is less conventional in its use of advertisements, which take the form of full page graphics detailing the supposed success of ISIL operations.
One such ad listed the effects of the Brussels bombing in rows of images with accompanying “statistics” such as: 300 dead and wounded, alleged financial losses resulting from the attack, and the decline in stock market value in airlines and travel companies.
An ad by ISIL’s morality police, the Hisbah, provides statistics for the reduction in behaviour deemed inappropriate according to its fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia. The propaganda newspaper claimed that 12,300 cases had been judged by Sharia courts throughout the radicalised group’s domain in recent months. This, the ad claimed, led to a 31 per cent reduction in businesses operating during prayer time, a 56 per cent reduction in women wearing make up or men wearing western clothing, and a 13 per cent decrease in drug consumption.
The newspaper also provided tips on public safety to its readers.
Beneath the menacing image of a US military jet was a list of preventive measures against coalition bombing. ISIL fighters were also urged to dig tunnels and fortifications, to replace glass windows with plastic, and to avoid parking their cars out in the open.
Praising the Camp Speicher Butcher
Al Naba also lavished column inches on fallen fighters. A double page spread in the March edition entitled “The Story of a Martyr” commemorated the “noble prince” Husam Abid Zaid, who went by the norm de guerre Abu Al Magheera Al Qahtaani. According to ISIL, Abu Al Magheera was a veteran “jihadi” and a former soldier in the Iraqi army, who joined Al Qaeda in the insurgency against the Americans after the Second Gulf War in 2003.
He was caught repeatedly and spent time in Iraq’s toughest prisons, including the infamous Camp Buka that served as an incubator for ISIL.
When ISIL surged across the Syrian border into Iraq, it destroyed several Iraqi army divisions and butchered more than 1,700 captured army recruits at Camp Speicher near the city of Tikrit. Abu Al Magheera, by now a high ranking ISIL commander, was behind the massacre, claimed Al Naba: "He is responsible for the killing of thousands of Shia."
The paper writes that the murderous Abu Magheera was finally killed by a US air raid in the Libyan city of Derna, where he was sent to help ISIL to establish itself as the fortunes of war were turning against it in Syria and Iraq.
Death by In Laws
As a propaganda tool, the paper is heavy on content promoting ISIL appeal to Muslims. In a full page OpEd, the author exhorts his readers to rally behind the embattled terror group.
Asserting that the whole world is united behind the US in opposition to ISIL, Al Naba claims that all Muslims have a duty to support the group.
“In spite of all this clarity, we find that some people are still questioning with whom they should stand. Listen you poor, you don’t understand, something big is going on. [ ...] Don’t ally yourself with the unbelievers.”
Sometimes, the blinkered rigidity of the paper’s ideology can lead to unintended comedy.
At the back end of the 23 March edition, a headline warns the reader of “Death by In Laws”. According to the article, ISIL’s hyper prudish moral guidelines forbid the wives of their members to spend time with a male relative of her husband without supervision. “The woman cannot stay alone with any male family members of husband – it’s worse than death,” it warned.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae