This month’s In Focus analyzes the Islamic State campaign against the general elections in Pakistan. The campaign included intensive dissemination of propaganda materials calling for a boycott of the elections and maintaining the known tone against the Pakistani regime and the Taliban, as well as a series of attacks against political events and figures connected to the regime and the Taliban. The unfolding of this short-term campaign opens an opportunity to shed light on the evolution of the jihadi group in central Asia, which since 2019 is represented by two branches: the major affiliate, Islamic State – Khorasan Province, which has influence in several countries in Southeast and Central Asia, and the Islamic State – Pakistan Province, which concentrates its efforts mostly inside Pakistan’s Balochistan Province.
In Somalia, IS gave an unusual and elaborate account of its operations, specifically against its rival Al-Shabaab. The detailed account focuses on the year 2023, and in it IS claims it has reclaimed territories and inflicted heavy casualties in the ranks of Al-Shabaab. The campaign involved the use of raid, siege and IED ambush tactics. The given information is based solely on an IS source, and there is no other evidence to corroborate these claims. However, it is plausible to assume that IS managed to achieve victories in northeastern Somalia, where the group maintains stronger influence and larger military forces; Al-Shabaab’s main bastions of suzerainty are in southern Somalia and their military campaign is concentrated on Somali government forces, pro-government militias and other regional military actors in Somalia and across the border.
The Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Malahem Cyber Army has recently published a 50-page guidebook on the potential uses of Artificial Intelligence and Chat Bots. The document showed a deep interest in ChatGPT and its possible application to jihadi activity, particularly propaganda. Given that ChatGPT is a novel platform, we can expect to see more use of it for malicious Islamist activities in the future, along with the increased availability of other AI technologies.
This month’s Who’s Who? analyzes a Facebook profile belonging to a Yemeni IS supporter. According to the POI’s intro, the profile previously belonged to a Shiite individual and was hacked by the POI to promote IS propaganda. This case study resembles previous cases we encountered when IS’ supporters took over private profiles. In some cases, we observed several coordinated Jihadi adherent profiles taking over public Facebook groups and spamming them with jihadi discussions and propaganda.
During our monitoring of instant messaging applications, two different phone numbers were found and investigated – a Libyan-prefix phone number and the other with an Austrian prefix. Using the IRISTM system, both numbers were found to be participants in radical WhatsApp groups with a jihadist orientation, some affiliated with IS. The Austrian number is an active administrator of a WhatsApp group that publishes IS content and propaganda.
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