Global jihadist in Fourth General Warfare context is seen as turning point for extremist jihadist group such as Al Qaeda and ISIS to fasten the recruited of their new members process and also as a platform to spread propaganda and awareness to public about their beliefs. It is amaze how fast the extremist group to quickly realise the power that social media have in order to spreads messages and their ideology to realising their needs and aims. The practitioners of 4GW are often transnational groups without territorially based armies as such. (Shaheen Sardar Ali, Javaid Rehman, 2005) Their tactics are bound to be different from those employed by conventional militaries.
They, unlike uniformed militaries, will resort to a combination of terrorism, revolutionary tactics and unconventional strategies. Much of their activity will resemble guerrilla warfare or low intensity conflict. It involves conflicts of culture and religion; it is likely to generate a high degree of emotion. Thus, the hostility in the minds will be of much higher intensity compared to that in the real wars. In 4GW, it is the psychological and emotional capacity of the populations to endure that will have the greatest impact in deciding the outcome.
In the Jihadist ideology, only God (Allah) is sovereign, and His law already exists in the form of the shariah. Legislators or rulers presume to make laws and anyone who practices it and accept that law is acknowledging the divinity of the legislators. Global jihad nowadays is bound by 40 years of philosophical development and the narrow body of law that they consider to be ideologically pure. (Zabel, 2007) Some factors have cemented a philosophical framework within which must remain in order to be true to ideology of jihad. The internal legitimacy is very important to them; global jihad literature is littered with the shariah (legal) justifications for their actions.
(Counterterrorism, 2014)Another element that would be found in 4GW is the use of the new communication media in spreading their ideology and its propaganda. It focuses on a great deal of attention on the use of the latest communication technologies. Generally, Fourth Generation Warfare or 4GW has changed the traditional warfare thinker from the traditional view to the modern-day of modern technology.
The Islamic extremist radical groups are not directly violent. Some jihadist group only want to share the Jihadist ideology and do not even have direct operative links to armed Jihadist groups. Some of their activities like denominations of Mohamed Atta Brigades, Al-Islambouli Brigades, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, or Ansar al-Zawahiri and some of their event inside the organization have sometimes led to media attention and/or sending specific threats and attacks. Although there is no identification that any of these members of these organizations has been carried out, they contribute to the Jihad as a result of the confusion and demoralization. Their actions cause a lot of chaos in the West.
Some communities of Global Jihadist group attain media attention nad mainstream media (usually when Osama bin Laden or Ayman Al-Zawahiri are mentioned). (Ingrid Borárosová, Aaron T. Walterand Ond?ej Filipec, 2017)Jihad is an Arabic word that is derived from a verb that means “to fight, endeavour, or exert oneself.” It appears in the Quran in the context of calls to strive for the advancement of Islam and to make a personal vow to struggle “in the foundation of God.” At its most general level, jihad denotes taking action on behalf of Islam and fellow Muslims. Jihadist modern propaganda is used for numerous purposes including so-called caliphate, enrolment purposes and to spread their ideology through various channel including social media. This includes the ability to communicate and promote membership of the extremist organization faster and in more efficient ways than in the “real” social world. In recent years, media battle and technology has given many advantages towards extremist groups.
Osama bin Laden, the first and the most popular icon of terrorist to embrace the internet technology as early as 1997. Due to that, global terrorism quickly adapted with new technology and one of the clearest developments that we can see due to the global terrorism is the increasing of collaboration between the criminal and terrorism networks. Several factors that have converged in global terrorism are war, religious, and ethnic conflict, and the growth of information technology.Aside from using social media, jihadist movement also spread by online magazines and web forums in website.
The book Management of Savagery that was published by Center of Islamic Studies and Research (The Markaz Al- Buhuth Wa Al-Dirasat Al-Islamiyya) gain so much attention when it first published. In 2004, it was released on jihadi website for the first time and was distributed, discussed and recommended by numbers of jihadist web-forums and website such as Al Firdaws, Al Ansar etc. (Counterterrorism, 2014) The author of the book, Abu Bakr Naji also known as the contributor of Voice of Jihad magazine aim to train, educate and give inform people about preparation and comprehensive strategy to defeating the United States of America and its allies.
The fact that, the United States of America Administration and the media took a great interest of this book also been noted on the Jihadi web. (Šonková, 2015)The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage through Which the at Will Pass has both specific sections on educational methods to be used by the jihadist movement as well as general educational purpose. The “know-your-enemy” approach has been borrowed from the Western strategic studies genre and be used in this book for educational purposes. Most of Naji’s wok urges his readers to study more on Western works on organisational theories, military strategies, sociology, political science and many more in order to help to tackle challenges that will be facing through the jihadist movement. All these themes not only could help to understand the weakness of military forces but also could help to identify ways to exploit inherent vulnerabilities in Western democracies ad to find ways to divide the USA with their allies. Several of his works focus on creating chaos in the Western political areas as well as to organize the strategies for how jihadist movement should manage the resources in order to consolidate territorial control to establishing an Islamic state.
In this book also, Naji recommends a multi-pronged jihadist strategy for weakening governmental control in the Islamic control in the Islamic control while describing it as continuation of what Al Qaeda started with 9/11 attacks. (Niles, 2008)After 9/11, Al Qaeda started to aim to focus on the global attention instead of states. Any public declaration were reported majorly in paper, social media as well as main news channels to attract people about the awareness of the existing of this group. Al Qaeda continued to encourage individual and clandestine distribution of propaganda in diverse formats together with the increasing of the use of Internet and the global media. There are few basic elements of the information management system used by terrorist group like ISIS and Al Qaeda that help in creating global jihad. The lessons elements are to integrate the information of the attacks in the design and execution, to exploit the mobilization of attacks, to manage the times to maximise attention through mediums, to complete attacks for propaganda ends, the implementation of a strong-minded Jihadist aesthetic and to stock dialogue with pious legitimacy. (Manual R.
Torres, Javier Jordan, Nicola Hosburgh, 2006) All this lessons is to drives Jihadist and to decorate the messages with continuous religious invocations. In the case of Iraq after 9/11 attack, together with the growing amount of information and high spreading of ideology and propaganda, it is a partly contribution to the use of the Internet in this urban era. One must also highlight the better technical quality, in particular of videos and picture on terrorist operations in Iraq. All of this is due to the desire to satisfy the younger audience and the greater opportunities in terms of editing programmes, accustomed to more sophisticated multi-media products.
