The Kurds in the cyber warfare against ISIS

friend sends you the link to a National Geographic video about the Kurdish Peshmerga fighting the Islamic State (ISIS), but when you try to watch it, you find it has been removed from YouTube.


You post a picture about Kurdish fighters who battle ISIS in Syria on Facebook, and find it gets removed. The same can happen on Twitter.


That is the fallout of the ISIS war that is not only fought on the battlefield, but also on the Internet. Because of the endless stream of propaganda ISIS is posting and its use of social media both as a recruitment tool and for communication between its members, social media companies are blocking ISIS content and accounts.


For that reason, ISIS sympathisers are hard to follow on Twitter, as their accounts get closed constantly, and ISIS movies are now mainly found through organisations following the group for research purposes and posting them on their own sites, away from the blocking policies of YouTube and others.


The cyber warfare against ISIS is a costly one, that takes manpower and close attention, and it is not completely clear how successful it is.


People do still get recruited through the Internet, and many ISIS activists have moved to social media that are harder to monitor. WhatsApp’s latest addition that automatically encrypts messages must have been well received in ISIS circles.


A major problem is that the anti-ISIS policy does not have clearly defined limits. It seems anything related to the war in Syria could be considered for blocking, or even anything related to what some may call terrorism.


This policy towards ISIS has opened the door to censorship at the behest of other, political players in the conflict.


It is clear that some of the content on social media related to the war between the Turkish government and Kurdish community has also been deleted or blocked.


This is because of Ankara’s claim that this is a war against terrorism and that the Kurdish fighters involved both in Syria and in Turkey are terrorists.


But what then to think of the video produced and posted by the well-known and distinguished American media organisation National Geographic about the Kurdish Peshmerga fighting against ISIS? Why was that blocked, as the Iraqi Kurds are not considered anywhere as terrorists – rather even praised as boots on the ground for the West?


It could be a mistake, like made recently in a news item of (Russian) RT under the headline ‘Aiden Aslin fought ISIS with Kurdish Peshmerga, now British govt wants him jailed’, about a British national who joined the fighters of the Kurdish PYD in Syria – and not the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga-troops, as RT incorrectly stated.


Many in the West still do not know that the Kurdish people as a result of British/French politics, since the beginning of the last century have been separated across four different states.


And to complicate it further: that only one part (in Iraq) has been able to secure autonomy, and its one army is called the Peshmerga, and that because of internal political conflict fighters in the other Kurdish parts mostly do not want to be called by that name.


And a result of the lingering ignorance about the Kurds is the fact that the terrorism stamp also mistakenly gets used for the Kurds that were able to peacefully secure their Kurdistan Region of Iraq.


And for brave Kurdish fighters in Syria, as well as for Europeans who joined them in a fight that the West has openly called a just one, who are jailed and persecuted.


Those fighters played a major role in freeing enslaved Yezidi women; they are a major force in Syria that with the help of the Americans have been successful in pushing back ISIS – just like the Peshmerga did in Iraq.


Part of the problem is, that the label of ‘terrorism’ is not a clear one. One’s freedom fighter is the other’s terrorist.


But to add to it: one Kurd is not like the other. And that is far too complicated for many in the West to grasp, already struggling to understand that Kurds are not Arabs.


Kurds have to work harder not to fall victim to the cyber warfare against ISIS.


Either they find ways to leave political strife behind so they can be addressed with one and the same name. Or the different Kurds have to search for ways to communicate their differences more effectively to the rest of the world.


But at least, they have to communicate with the censors on social media and for all to hear that the word Kurd is not a synonym for terrorist.

June 17, 2024 | By Scarface