Blog:
http://jarretbrachman.net/?p=587
“CT Investigative Insights from “Savvy Irhabi””
SNIPPET: “Traditionally, we think of the’ jihadi ego’ as being bad for us. Its the brazen arrogance of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, for instance, that led him to think of ramming commercial jets into our buildings. It’s the unbridled cockiness of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that helped him believe that his ragtag band of thugs could seize control of a country. These men may or may not accomplish their extravagant objectives, but they sure raise hell in the process of living out their Hitlerian fantasies of grandeur.
In the case of Jihadi Recollections 2, however, the ‘jihadi ego’ is actually quite helpful. I tend to view this kind of writing, particularly from Western jihadis, in two ways. First, I take it at face-value. These guys are really trying to “instill” an “intellectual culture” among the jihadi community. And it’s the best initiative that I’ve seen in English to date. They know the right guys to discuss, they get how to leverage us against ourselves. There is no doubt that they’ve been keenly studying As-Sahab over the past four years and are now feeling their jihadi legs, so to speak.
Second, I see mags like Jihadi Recollections 2 as an existentially cathartic activity - one that helps them justify themselves and one another. Western jihadis tend to have a compulsive need to document their trans-epistemological journey and prove to some abstract ‘other’ that they are authentic ‘Muslims.’ (It’s probably because they know on some Freudian subconcious level just how deviant they are being). It’s a fascinating process to observe however, (Daniel Maldanado’s blog, Adam Gadahn’s biographical letter about his conversion, the Toronto boyz’s online poetry, Badr al-Harbi/Nasr al-Dawsari’s thousands of online postings, etc..) The problem for them, however, is that this need to incessantly profess their brilliance is inherently subversive to their goals, that is if we simply listened and used it against them.
I’ll demonstrate with an article published in JR2 by “Savvy Irhabi” (irhabi meaning terrorist) - Savvy Irhabi writes an article on global media jihad that tries to distill the various ‘lessons learned’ and ‘protocols’ floating around the jihadist web world about ‘the jihadi media enterprise.’ In the process of strutting his jihadi stuff for all his friends to see, Savvy sheds some important light on how al-Qaida supporters in the West interact with al-Qaida media. In my thinking, these are great investigative insights for law enforcement on what to look for in their CT cases.”
Blog:
http://occident.blogspot.com/2009/05/jihad-recollections-2-armchair-jihadi.html
FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2009
“Jihad Recollections #2: Armchair Jihadi Publishing “Chic” & ‘History’ that Never Was”
SNIPPET: “FROM THE SERIES OF RESEARCH NOTES FROM MY CURRENT PROJECT, “The Art of the Martyr & Mujahid,” (All Material Copyrighted) :
A few days later than originally promised, here is the first in a very brief series of analytical notes on select articles in the recently released second issue of the glossy English-language cyber journal Jihad Recollections. The journal is produced by a staff of U.S.-based, self-styled armchair jihadis (though they’re more like cheerleaders), whose self-promotion has more than a few hints of self-importance and delusions of grandeur. All joking aside, I do not mean to downplay the potential motivational influence that this, and other cyber journals, may have on mobilizing armchair “warriors” to become actual militants. However, having said this, the Jihad Recollections staff missed very simple copy editing mistakes, such as using “jihadi’s” (singular possessive) when they meant to use the non-possessive plural, “jihadis.” Since they seem to have the graphics and design under control (though JR will not be winning any design prizes any time soon), the mysterious “editors” may want to invest some resources in improving the copy editing.”
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Previously...
http://occident.blogspot.com/2009/05/second-issue-of-jihad-recollections.html
SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009
“Second Issue of ‘Jihad Recollections’, English-language Jihadi Journal, Published Today”
http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/006504.html
26 May 2009
“JARRET BRACHMAN VS. THE SAVVY JIHADI
Some thoughts:”
SNIPPET: “5. It amazes me that after all this time these guys still think that we are after the sites and not the people who run the sites. Achtung! We are not after your websites, we are after YOU.”
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Previously...
http://jarretbrachman.net/?p=587
“CT Investigative Insights from ‘Savvy Irhabi’”