September 22, 2007	Saturday	Ramazan 09, 1428

PARIS: The sixth anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks has provided an opportunity for Al Qaeda to show off once again its mastery of the Internet as a tool for international propaganda, terrorism experts said on Friday.

Thursday’s broadcast of a new message from Osama Bin Laden – the third in just a few days – is evidence of an orchestrated campaign of pronouncements on the web, deliberately spaced out in order to maximise their impact, they said.

“They just have to provide the inspiration, the directions, the fuel for global jihad,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a specialist at Sweden’s National Defence College.

“They just need to send a few sparks all over the world to see where it will catch fire. And it’s entirely in line with their strategy of regime change.” Regime change was exactly what Bin Laden intended when he called for “holy war” against President Pervez Musharraf, said Anne Giudicelli, who heads the French risk analysis centre Terrorisc.

“They search out the weak point and then press on it. Musharraf is weakened at the moment because of his domestic troubles .... But (the broadcast) also has also to be seen in the context of American politics: the weakening of (US President George W.) Bush because of Iraq.

“What Al Qaeda wants to do is drive the nail in as deep as possible, searching out the fault-lines.

“In a way what they’re saying is not new at all. It is just the fact that the recordings are so recently made. It is a way of saying to the world, and especially the Americans, ‘I am still here’. And every time that Bush responds, he is taking the bait,” she said.

In its annual report last week the British think-tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said that Al Qaeda retained the capacity to carry out “large-scale attacks”. But the IISS also said that “The long-term challenge is to confront the extremist ideology which gives rise to terrorism and which Al Qaeda has shown great skill and ingenuity in propagating.” According to Ranstorp: “This media jihad is a very easy one to wage: it’s an open world canvas, because no one is trying to compete with them on this canvas.

“The West is incapable of competing on it because it doesn’t understand how to deal with it in psychological warfare terms. They have a complete monopoly of the canvas, and they are painting it in all sorts of colours,” he said.

Not for the first time experts underlined the skill with which Bin Laden uses the international media: his messages are considered, structured and broadcast according to carefully laid plans, they say.

“The international media love Bin Laden. When he releases a tape, everybody has to write about it. He’s playing the media with art,” said Bob Ayers, an expert at the Chatham House think-tank in London.

“He knows he is a major media figure and that when he releases something, he’s going to have extensive coverage. It’s a newsworthy event, and everybody climbs on the bandwagon. You can’t not write about it.

“He doesn’t have to leave the cave or the camp where he is hiding. All he has to do is every now and then send a video or audiotape and everyone gets excited and goes off to jihad.

“But we should not attach a great deal of importance to what he says: it’s another one of his continuing monologues against the West. We should start getting tired of this after a while,” Ayers said.—AFP