The dynamic jihadi anthology
Scare tactics, hysteria, and experts’ insights are easy to come by whenever a new tape of Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri surfaces. Harder to find is a clear, objective source of material for the messages that terrorists send—at least, those messages that don’t come in the form of bombings or hostage videos. So, the ...
Scare tactics, hysteria, and experts’ insights are easy to come by whenever a new tape of Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri surfaces. Harder to find is a clear, objective source of material for the messages that terrorists send—at least, those messages that don’t come in the form of bombings or hostage videos. So, the people over at RAND have developed a Voices of Jihad Database, which offers a “a compilation of speeches, interviews, statements, and publications of jihadist leaders, foot soldiers, and sympathizers.”
Scare tactics, hysteria, and experts’ insights are easy to come by whenever a new tape of Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri surfaces. Harder to find is a clear, objective source of material for the messages that terrorists send—at least, those messages that don’t come in the form of bombings or hostage videos. So, the people over at RAND have developed a Voices of Jihad Database, which offers a “a compilation of speeches, interviews, statements, and publications of jihadist leaders, foot soldiers, and sympathizers.”
The resource is far from comprehensive. (A search for “bin Laden” yields just 27 sources.) And the clustered results are a bit of a mixed bag of categories. It helps to search for broader terms, like “attack” (66 results) or “jihad” (162).
The larger question, though, is whether this collection of information, and others like it, will provide clues as to when, where, and how the next terrorist attack might occur. I asked noted terrorism researcher Scott Atran about it. He, along with Marc Sageman, has been making the rounds at various government agencies around DC to warn them about the inherent dangers of making predictions about terrorist activity from databases like this one. Atran says that a key problem with these types of resources is questionable reliability; that they make little distinction between information collected from a primary source, like intercepted communications, and less reliable information, like the opinions of experts. “I see no indication that RAND rates for reliability of source or strength of connection.”
As they go, though, this resource seems promising, if imperfect. It doesn’t attempt to predict changes in the targets or motivations of global terrorist groups; rather, it seems to present the words of terrorists as they were uttered. As terrorists and their connections between each other evolve, it’s helpful to have a source where their own messages and communications can be studied and tracked. As long as those doing the tracking are wise enough to understand what it means.
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