Article

The Islamic States

symbolic war: Daeshs
socially mediated
terrorism as a threat to
cultural heritage

Journal of Social Archaeology

0(0) 126
! The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1469605315617048
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Claire Smith, Heather Burke,

Cherrie de Leiuen and Gary Jackson
Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Australia

Abstract
Using the Islamic State/Daesh as a case study, we identify the genesis of a new form of
terrorism arising from the convergence of networked social media and changes in the
forms of conflict. Socially mediated terrorism is defined as the use of social and networked media to increase the impact of violent acts undertaken to further a social,
political and/or religious cause with the aim of creating physical, emotional or psychological suffering that extends beyond the immediate audience. Our analysis distinguishes
three strategies involving cultural heritage. The first is smoke, mirrors and mock
destruction, which exaggerates perceptions of power and tests the impact of potential
destruction. The second is shock, awe and censure, which uses international outrage to
cloak the Islamic State with an aura of invincibility and highlight the impotence of its
opponents. The third is financing the Kaliphate, which has transformed the ad hoc
looting of archaeological sites into a business model. Iconoclasm has a lengthy history
in which cultural icons were destroyed with the primary aim of subjugating local populations/audiences. In contrast, the Islamic States promotion of cultural heritage destruction through networked social media is directed simultaneously towards local, regional,
and international audiences with reactions from one audience used to subdue, embolden or intrigue another. As such, networked social media can be viewed as a fresh and
currently under-rated threat to cultural heritage in conflict zones. Finally, we draw
Corresponding author:
Claire Smith, Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, South
Australia.
Email: claire.smith@flinders.edu.au

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attention to Bevans (2012) notion that crimes against cultural property can provide an
early warning of potential genocide.
Keywords
Islamic State, terrorism, networked media, social media, cultural heritage, cultural
genocide

Terrorism is theatre. (Brian Jenkins, 1974: 4)

When the Taliban rst expressed their intent to demolish the Buddhas of the
Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan (Figure 1) they began probing international reaction to this destruction. In 2001, drawing upon the mass media communication
capabilities of the time, the Taliban leadership issued a press release to provide
advance notice that the Buddhas would be demolished (Nemeth, 2011: 217) and, in
contrast to normal protocols, gave permission for international journalists to document their destruction (Rogers 2011: 112). Consequent media coverage permeated
global memories. The global impact of this destruction lay with two intertwined
factors that continue to underpin modern perceptions of conict: the symbolic
power of visual imagery and the communicative capacity of modern media. The
role of the communications environment in this process has been rigorously analysed by Colwell-Chanthaphonh (2003) who argues that:
It was through the staged destruction and choreographed international drama that the
Buddhas were transformed from local curiosity to global treasureit was, ironically,
through their very dismemberment that the Buddhas were imbued with global meanings. (Colwell-Chanthaphonh, 2003: 93)

The global reaction to the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas coalesced two years
later in the inscribing of the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of
the Bamiyan Valley on the World Heritage in Danger list (Jansen, 2009), providing
belated protection for the landscape in which the Buddhas once stood. Reminiscent
of the creation of cultural heritage value for the World Trade Center after its
destruction (see Meskell, 2002), the Outstanding Universal Value of the Bamiyan
Buddhas was ascertained through their destruction. Moreover, as Holtorf (2006:
102) has pointed out, the global reaction against the demolition of the Bamiyan
Buddhas was partly because this destruction went against all of the emotional
values associated by Western people with the concept of human civilization itself.
The lengthy history of iconoclasm has been well documented (e.g. Lemkin, 2005
[1944]; Noyes, 2013; Van Der Auwera, 2012; Wallerstein, 1990) and culture often is
at the heart of conict (Bevan, 2006; Stone, 2012). However, major changes are

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Figure 1. The Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, one of the first examples of global communications being used to expand the impact of cultural heritage destruction. Courtesy David
Adams Films Pty Ltd.

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occurring in the 21st century, where media-oriented terrorism (Weimann, 2005:

382) is becoming a standard technique of terrorist organisations, taking the focus
of cultural heritage destruction from the local to the global, and back. In this
article, we explore one aspect of the connection between networked social media
and terrorism and assess the implications for future risks to cultural heritage.
Using recent actions by the Islamic State/Daesh as a case study, we analyse internet materials and associated literature to identify three interwoven strategies involving cultural heritage that are used by the Islamic State to further its cause. In
addition, we argue that the convergence of networked, social media and changes in
the nature of conict are making cultural heritage an increasingly likely choice for
terrorists seeking maximum visual impact from their actions. While this potential is
latent in the rise of networked social media, this has not been recognised in either
the archaeological or non-archaeological literature. In our conclusions, we draw
attention to Bevans (2012) notion that crimes against cultural property can provide an early warning of potential genocide and consider how social media is
informing this dynamic.

Terrorism as theatre: Understanding new terrorism by its

e/affects
What is terrorism? Dening terrorism is no easy task. There is no universal denition, in spite of intense theoretical debates and wide-ranging surveys (Laqueur,
1987; Schmid, 1984). Indeed, Richards (2014) points to the conceptual mire that
has underwritten attempts to dene terrorism since the 1970s, arguing that it is
fruitless to seek a denition that applies to all contexts, times and places.
Nevertheless, a denition of terrorism can be useful in distinguishing patterns of
behaviour. So, what is terrorism? Terrorism is not criminal behaviour, in which an
individual undertakes illegal activities to obtain personal gain (Homan, 2006),
though it may involve criminal behaviour. Terrorism is not torture, which is the
intentional iniction of severe mental or physical suering by the state (United
Nations Human Rights, 1987), though it may involve the iniction of severe mental
or physical suering. Beyond this, terrorism is characterised by two distinct qualities. Firstly, terrorism involves violent action that aims to generate broad emotional and psychological impact: [i]f it is not intended to have this wider
psychological impact then it is not terrorism (Richards, 2014: 223). Secondly,
terrorism is motivated by a social, political or religious cause. Accordingly, the
denition of terrorism that guides this paper is: violent acts undertaken to further a
social, political and/or religious cause with the aim of creating physical, emotional
or psychological suering that extends beyond the immediate audience.
What is new in terrorism? In a post 9/11 world, there is a vast array of literature debating the various merits of using the label new to describe the ways in
which, and means by which, modern terrorist groups operate (e.g. Cottee and
Hayward, 2011; Klausen, 2015; Torres Soriano, 2012). While arguments have
been advanced for key aspects of contemporary terrorism having historical

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antecedents (e.g. Duyvestyn, 2004; Lynch and Ryder, 2012), we follow the reasoning of Kurtulus (2011) that new does not have to connote a complete break with
the old, but like a wave merely needs fresh dominant elements to dierentiate
it from previous waves of similar activity. In this, the new wave characteristics
that are common to terrorist organisations since 2001 are that they are more likely
to be religiously based, have fewer imperatives for a centralised structure or vertical
(i.e. hierarchical) organisation and a greater propensity for horizontal networks
which span time zones and territory and in which inuence and power are multidirectional (Kurtulus, 2011: 483, 489, 490). This last is particularly relevant for
understanding how contemporary terrorist groups are organised. The sociologist
Karen Knorr Cetina refers to such at structures as micro-structures and argues
that both currency markets and terrorism represent genuinely global microstructures that illustrate forms of connectivity and coordination that combine global
reach with micro-structural mechanisms that instantiate self-organizing principles
and patterns (Knorr Cetina, 2005: 214).
Cottee and Hayward (2011) contend that jihad terrorism works particularly well
as a horizontal network because it is predicated on the concept of the umma the
worldwide Muslim community. Although this is not true for all groups, a considerable body of research indicates that aective bonds are fundamental to the
growth of terrorism and that people join insurgencies partly because of their
social networks (Abrahms, 2008; Bockstette, 2008; Hammes, 2005). Terrorist
organisations focus their recruitment on both the idealistic and the socially isolated
(Ahmed, 2015; Awan, 2012; Calimachi, 2015); as a result, the formation of social
bonds often precedes ideological commitment to a cause (Abrahms, 2008: 9699).
From this viewpoint, terrorists are rational people who use violent acts to build
strong aective ties with like-minded individuals (Abrahms, 2008: 80; Homan,
2006). Aective communities are those that are bound through common constellations of sentiments, moods, feelings or emotions and in which individual identities are conrmed through their interactions. Terrorist organisations can thus
become attractive outlets for those seeking solidarity (Abrahms, 2008: 100;
Cottee and Hayward, 2011).
In this process, networked media can be particularly eective. The terrorist
group Al Qaeda are one of the most successful examples of a global micro-structure
founded on the use of networked media to create an aective community. A range
of technologies, including television, the web, video and audio, enabled Al Qaeda
to achieve global co-ordination among members of the collective, diasporic Muslim
community. Through images, speeches, commentary and events, Al Qaeda encourages a range of performative eects and reiterates and extends the transcendent
project to which the audience is committed . . . creating . . . a background world that
grounds their activities and experiences (Knorr Cetina, 2005: 221222). In this
context, the power of visual imagery transcends the capacity of pure text in
terms of creating aect (Knorr Cetina, 2005: 224).
Within terrorism, networked media plays several roles. The internet provides a
global, yet also highly individualised way for terrorist groups to communicate with

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target audiences, including current and potential supporters, the international community and their enemies. Since it can be used for data mining, networking, recruitment, mobilisation, instruction, planning and fund-raising the internet is a
performative and exhortatory platform par excellence (Knorr Cetina, 2005;
Michael, 2013; Tsfati and Weimann, 2002; Weimann, 2005, 2012). For Torres
Soriano (2012: 263), the truly revolutionary contribution of networked media
has been the manner in which [it] has transformed the propaganda dimension of
terrorist groups, turning their age-old dream of direct, intermediary-free communication with their potential public into a reality. In some ways, the development of networked media freed terrorist organisations from any former
dependencies on mainstream media and inverted the traditional media pyramid,
turning journalists into ideal victims rather than useful conduits for spreading the
message (Klausen, 2015: 20). Moreover, the real time, often short term, immediacy
that networked media platforms provide (e.g. Twitter) can have the property of
emergent action, in which group behaviour is coordinated in real time and manifests a purposiveness beyond the capacities of any individual (Holmes, 2008: 526).
It can therefore function as a catalyst for grassroots action at global scales
(Holmes, 2008: 526).
Finally, very recent studies have pointed out the calls to individual action in
local contexts that centre on a single actor undertaking ideological terrorism (especially political and/or religious) against non-military targets without external direction or coordination (Feldman, 2013: 271). Such individual acts go by many
dierent labels, not all of which are compatible. Within a somewhat bewildering
array, it is possible to dierentiate between three principal forms of ideologically
motivated, individually performed terrorist acts: personal or individual jihad
(Feldman, 2013), popular resistance terrorism (Marsden et al., 2014) and lone
wolf terrorism (also known as self acting or freelance terrorism, individualised or
autonomous terrorism) (Ranstorp, 2007: 37; Spaaij, 2014: 854).
The rst two personal jihad and popular resistance terrorism arise from
exhortations to supporters to emulate terrorist acts on his land, where he lives
and resides, without . . . the hardship of traveling, migrating, and moving to where
direct jihad is possible (cited in Marsden et al., 2014: 14). Jihad was initially a
collective responsibility to throw o non-Muslim rule over Muslim lands, but
the concept of it as an individual duty developed in the mid-1980s in response to
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and an inux of foreign ghters who supported the mujahedeen resistance (Nillson, 2015: 345346). In the late 1990s Osama
bin Ladens particular strategic vision for re-uniting splintered jihadi groups shifted
the boundary of personal jihad beyond Muslim territories to encompass the entire
world and all pro-Western, neo-liberal interests (Nillson, 2015). Rooted in proselytising calls to emulate a broader terrorist agenda at home as part of a common
cause, networked media has been the platform that allowed groups such as Al
Qaeda to exhort sympathisers to commit acts of resistance on their own initiative.
Rather than targeting people, popular resistance terrorism seeks to inict signicant damage on property and does not have to involve either high prole,

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theatrical acts of terrorism specically designed to cause mass casualties using

explosions or martyrdom operations (Marsden et al., 2014: 2). Instead, acts of
popular resistance terrorism focus on material targets in North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO) countries, but also elsewhere in Europe, Russia and
Australia, include arson and other acts of sabotage, and are relative unsophisticated, requiring limited preparation (Marsden et al., 2014). Unlike personal jihad,
popular resistance terrorism may be deliberately anonymous and therefore dicult
to link to a particular organisation or call to action. It is relatively low risk to
perpetrators, who stand a better chance of evading capture because they do not
claim responsibility (Marsden et al., 2014: 4). According to Abrams (2008: 89),
64% of terrorist attacks worldwide since 1968 have been anonymous and these
have been rising in frequency since 2001.
Lone wolf terrorism, the third type of individually motivated terrorism, draws on
participants from all types of extremist organisations (Weimann, 2012) and has
been increasing in recent decades (Spaaij, 2014). Unlike either personal jihad or
popular resistance terrorism, however, lone wolves operate individually and are not
under the command or control of any terrorist entity, though they may have an
online community of support (Weimann, 2012). To date, the overwhelming trend
for lone wolf terrorism remains with the far right in the US (Feldman, 2013), perhaps rooted in older ideas of leaderless resistance encouraged by guerrilla groups in
the 1960s and organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan in the 1980s (Feldman, 2013;
Spaaij, 2014), although there is nothing that restricts it to this basis.

The Islamic State and socially mediated terrorism

What is the Islamic State? Building on and extending strategies developed by Al
Qaeda, the Islamic State is the rst extremist organisation to systematically exploit
the imaginative capacities of networked social media. Led by Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi,
the Islamic State is a political and military organisation based in Syria and Iraq that
holds a radical interpretation of Islam as a political philosophy (Friedland, 2014: 5).
It has cells in a dozen countries in north Africa, the Middle East and East Asia, partly
through the absorption of smaller groups (Faireld et al., 2015), and around 68
million people in its territories (Keatinge, 2014). The inaugural issue of this groups
English language magazine, Dabiq, outlines a commitment to a Khilafah (also
known as Kaliphate or Caliphate), a state governed in accordance with Islamic
Sharia law with the aim of leading Muslim people across the world (Dabiq 1).
Originally known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) (Laub and Masters, 2015), the
evolution of the term Islamic State (IS) documents the growth of this groups
aspirations from local, to regional, to global: the name has changed from the
Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or the Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), to the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant
(ISIL) and, most recently, the Islamic State (IS) (Dabiq 1). It is also referred to as
Daesh and by its Arabic acronym, DAASH (Ollivant and Fishman, 2014). The
Islamic State is an emerging force globally. Douglas Ollivant, former Director for

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Iraq at the US National Security Council, and Brian Fishman, former Director of
Research for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, state:
Out of the crucible of the Syrian civil war and the discontent in Iraqs Sunni regions,
something new is emerging. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is no longer a
state in name only. It is a physical, if extralegal, reality on the ground.
Unacknowledged by the world community, ISIS has carved a de facto state in the
borderlands of Syria and Iraq. Stretching in a long ellipse roughly from al-Raqqah in
Syria to Fallujah in Iraq (with many other noncontiguous islands of control in both
Iraq and Syria), this former Al Qaeda aliate holds territory, provides limited services, dispenses a form of justice (loosely dened), most denitely has an army, and
ies its own ag. (Ollivant and Fishman, 2014)

It is possible to distinguish four principal groups within the Islamic State. The rst
group is the leaders and core members, principally based in Syria and Iraq, who are
ideologically and politically committed to enacting a particular political and religious vision. The second group is people who have joined the movement after it
takes control of the territory in which they live. When the Islamic State moves into
new territory it oers two options to local populations: repent and join the movement or be killed:
So we warn the tribes . . . there are only two camps: the camp of truth and its followers,
and the camp of falsehood and its factions. So choose to be from one of the two
camps . . . From now on, everyone whose aliation with the pagan guards, police, and
army is conrmed, or his collaboration and espionage for the crusaders is veried,
then his ruling is execution, and not only that, his house also will be destroyed and
burnt, after removal of the women and children. This is in retribution for his treachery
towards his religion and ummah, and so that he becomes a manifest lesson and a
deterring example. (Abu Musab az-Zarqaw (rahimahullah), cited in Dabiq 3: 12)

One outcome is that members in these regions are not necessarily committed to ISs
vision but support IS as part of their own survival strategies. The third group
consists of idealistic, and often deeply religious, volunteers from foreign countries
who are attracted to the Islamic State on the basis of its often-valid critiques of the
West (Nillson, 2015), their own real grievances (Ahmed, 2015; Awan, 2012), a
commitment to the concept of ummah, the belief that Muslims globally should
assist other Muslims who are faced with oppression or injustice, and humanitarian
concerns of the kind of social dimension which we might more readily
associate with a gap year student than a ghter (Home Aairs Committee,
British House of Commons, 2014: 17). The multi-layered strategy undertaken by
the Islamic State aligns with legitimate disenchantment within Western nations,
particularly in terms of work, consumerism and poverty (Zygmunt, 2004), human
rights, structural violence and ethical globalisation (Smith, 2007) and an everwidening gap between rich and poor, both within and between nations (OECD,

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2015). At least 20,000 foreigners have travelled to Syria and Iraq in recent years
making this conict the largest mobilisation of foreigner ghters in Muslim majority countries since 1945 (Neumann, 2015). The fourth component group of the
Islamic State is people in their home countries who support the Islamic States
vision. King and Taylors (2011) study of homegrown jihadists revealed that the
internet has featured in some capacity in each such plot since 2002 and more
recently, calls to personal jihad have resulted in several recent terrorist attacks
by one or two individuals, such as the hostage crisis and shooting at the Lindt
Cafe in Sydney in December 2014 (Hermida, 2014), the shootings by two radicalised French citizens, Sa d Kouachi and his younger brother, Cherif Kouachi, at the
oces of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris in January 2015
(Barrabi, 2015) and the shootings in February 2015 at Copenhagens central synagogue and the Krudttnden cafe (Khomani and Erikson, 2015). Moreover, it seems
that the Islamic States global aspirations are accelerating, as suggested by deep
and sophisticated planning for the November 13, 2015, attacks in Paris. The
Islamic States representational coverage of these attacks included the immediate
release of pre-prepared images that key into the heroic tropes of online video
gaming, such as Prototype and inFAMOUS. These images are designed to
garner new recruits by turning virtual warriors into actual warriors (Smith et al.,
2015).
The use of networked social media is seamlessly interwoven into the strategies of
the Islamic State. The U.S. Department of State (2015) has estimated that supporters of IS post around 90,000 messages a day online through a variety of platforms,
including Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, while The Brookings
Institutes study of 20,000 ISIS supporter accounts provided a conservative estimate of at least 46,000 Twitter accounts (Berger and Morgan 2015: 2). This has
transformed Syria into the most socially mediated conict in history (Home
Aairs Committee, House of Commons, 2014: 48). The main sources of proISIS Twitter messaging was located in the US, the UK, Russia, India and Saudi
Arabia (Smith 2015: 19) as well as in Iraq and Syria (Berger and Morgan 2015: 11).
Twitter support has sought to raise the Islamic States prole through hashtag
campaigns and hijacking hashtags (Smith 2015: 19). Social media accessible via
mobile phones has become the predominant means of communication. Klausens
(2015) 2014 study of Twitter use amongst foreign ghters in Syria found that while
only one fth of the population has access to the internet, around 60% have cell
phone coverage. In spite of regular shut downs of mobile phone networks, IS
members manage to maintain active and widely read Twitter accounts (Klausen,
2015: 20). Social media has become ISs particular innovation in terrorist strategy:
Across the Middle East, phones have become the most commonly used instrument for
obtaining reliable news. In this context, ISILs broadcast of Twitter feeds of executions and crucixions carried out in Aleppo and Deir Hafer turned social media into a
tool of oensive psychological warfare and battleeld tactics . . . Social media have
proven highly eective as a messaging tool and also as a terrorist medium for

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intimidating local populations, the near enemy, in the insurgency zone and provoking outsized fear far away from the war zone. (Klausen, 2015: 20)

Socially mediated terrorism and cultural heritage

Whilst in the past its most publicised/web-streamed acts have involved the killing
of hostages, recently the Islamic States brand of socially mediated terrorism has
concentrated on cultural heritage to a greater extent. Following from our earlier
denition of terrorism, socially mediated terrorism is dened as the use of social
and networked media to increase the impact of violent acts undertaken to further a
social, political and/or religious cause with the aim of creating physical, emotional
or psychological suering that extends beyond the immediate audience. Within
ISs repertoire of terrorist tactics, we have identied three strategies that involve
cultural heritage: smoke, mirrors and mock destruction; shock, awe and
censure; and nancing the Kaliphate. Our analysis of internet materials and
associated literature distributed by the Islamic State, and of responses published
in the Western press, reveals that these strategies are played out in terms of
three major audiences: local populations, regional populations and distant
populations.

Smoke, mirrors and mock destruction

One value of networked social media is that it can be used to exaggerate perceptions of power or conceal damage to an organisation. Hairan states that the
Taliban:
. . . are believed to have adopted a new tactic: never acknowledge the arrest or murder
of the spokesmen; the new spokesmen should use the same old names. Hence, it is
believed, even observed, that there are many Qari Yousufs and Zabiullah Mujahids.
(Hairan blog, 2010)

The Islamic State has developed this strategy through a sophisticated combination of smoke and mirrors, which draws upon an illusion of power to obtain
real power, and mock destruction, which tests the impact of potential acts and
responds according to this impact. One clear example of this sophisticated combination of military strategies concerns the ancient walls of Ninevah in Iraq. On 8
January 2015, a threat by IS to destroy the ancient walls of Ninevah was reported
widely in the international news (e.g. Gayle, 2015) and on 28 January 2015 the
Iraqi News (Mamoun, 2015) stated that large sections of the walls had been
blown up by IS. Using the real-time responsiveness of social media, however,
this claim was countered 2 days later by a tweet from Eleanor Robson, Professor
of Ancient Near Eastern History, University College London, revealing the rst
to be illusory:

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11

Report just in from #Mosul archaeologist: walls of #Nineveh still intact, 9am Iraqi time
today. No trace of damage or exploding at all. (Robson tweet January 30 2015)

The use of smoke and mirrors tactics is not all empty posturing, since the strength
of a claim is part of its power, regardless of whether or not the destruction is
realised. Klausen (2015: 20) has pointed out how easily social media amplies
false images of strength and becomes an oensive strategy of psychological warfare and, as Homan (2006: 2) notes, the threat of violence can be as important as
the act itself. Furthermore, widespread publicity concerning the proposed destruction of cultural heritage may eventuate in its actual destruction as the people
involved become committed to an act that might otherwise have been merely a
threat, or are able to gauge that this action will have the widespread impact that
they seek. Damage to the site of Nineveh around 8 March 2015 (Jones, 2015)
realised that possibility.

Shock, awe and censure

The Islamic States uses a strategy of shock, awe and censure to garner maximum
publicity from the destruction of cultural heritage whether real or not to subjugate the will of the opponent and elicit responses, including direct intervention,
that can be used to further its goals. While terrorist web sites using pre Web 2.0
technologies have typically downplayed violence (see Tsfati and Weimann, 2002:
328), the Islamic State consciously disseminates images of violent acts through a
range of online and social media (e.g. any issue of Dabiq). This approach augments
the time-tested tactic of shock and awe a military strategy of rapid dominance in
which the deployment of power aims to destroy an adversarys will to resist
(Ullman and Wade, 2013) with the military strategy of provoking the enemy to
over-react (Greene, 2006).
This entwined tactic successfully elicits outrage from the West, as demonstrated
in Figure 3, and uses this to facilitate territorial control and expansion. For the
Islamic State, this censure serves the strategic purpose of highlighting the impotence of Western countries and institutions such as the United Nations
Educational, Scientic and Cultural Oganisation (UNESCO) at the same time
that it cloaks the advance of the Islamic State with an inexorable quality.
Essentially, the message is: The United States cant stop us. Russia cant stop
us. Britain and European nations cant stop us. The United Nations cant stop
us. We are coming to a town near you, and your friends will not be able to help
you. There is no point in resisting.
From this lens, the destruction carried out by the Islamic State has impact at three
distinct levels: 1) locally, by providing the Islamic State with an aura of invincibility
that weakens resistance as it moves into new territory; 2) regionally, by reinforcing a
sense of inevitable success in incipient movements in neighbouring countries; and 3)
internationally, by attracting recruits to the cause, exhorting some to join battle on
the lands of the Khilafah and others to act alone in their home country.

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Figure 2. Charlie Hebdo rally in support of free speech, Paris, 11th January, 2015.

Figure 3. Headlines reflecting Western outrage over the loss of cultural heritage in Syria.

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13

Combined with a globally publicised reputation for ruthlessness, the creation of

this inexorable quality is a great facilitator of territorial expansion. The strategy of
using statements by Western leaders to establish the strength of the Islamic State
and the weaknesses of its opponents is most clearly seen in the section in the IS
magazine, Dabiq, entitled In the Words of the Enemy (Figure 4).
The Islamic States sophisticated use of networked media is apparent in the high
production qualities of Youtube videos, including The Promotion of Virtue and
Destruction of Vice video that was released on 6 March, 2015. This video depicts
the destruction of both replicas and original objects at the Mosul Museum (Jones,
2015) and is celebrated in the Islamic State magazine Dabiq (Figure 5). Analysis of
this video provides insights into the arguments used by the Islamic State to further
its cause.
Our rst point is that the video only serves its purpose if it is watched. While
videos of murders are too gruesome for most people to watch, the destruction of
cultural heritage can be riveting. The Promotion of Virtue and Destruction of Vice
video opens with verse from the Quran about Abraham, stating:
. . . and as he [Abraham] told his father, and his people, what are these statues that you
are worshipping. They said we dont know. We found our ancestors worshipping
them. He [Abraham] said You and your ancestors were in total darkness.1

Figure 4. Using the words of the enemy to establish power (Dabiq 6:5657).

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Figure 5. The destruction of statues by members of the Islamic State at the museum in
Mosul, Iraq, February 2015 (Dabiq 8: 22).

As Bockstette (2008: 12) points out, the legitimisation of terrorist movements

establishing their social and religious viability while they engage in violent acts
requires a continuous communicative eort. Such eorts can be perceived in this
video, which seeks religious legitimacy through drawing upon a specic section of
the Koran in which the prophet criticised idolatry. The reference to Abraham
appeals to both Sunni and Shite Muslims. This is explained explicitly by an IS
spokesperson who states:
Dear Muslims, these idols behind me belong to people from the old times, who
worshipped things other than Allah. All of these people, such as the Assyrians and
Arcadians and others, had gods for rain, gods for war. They worshipped these Gods
and made sacrices to appease them . . .
Abraham himself was praying to Allah that he and all his bloodline would be saved
from worshipping these pagan idols. When Abraham went to Mecca he destroyed
idols. [More recently] when Mohammad when to Mecca he also destroyed idols that
his people were worshipping.

Appealing to Shite Muslims a reference to Ali bin Abi Talib (the cousin of
Mohammad) states that the prophet said that if you pass an idol, dont leave it
as it is, destroy it, that the prophet himself and most of his companions did the
same when they started spreading Islam to other countries. This overlooks other
sections of the Koran which speak about dierent groups living together. The video
segues seamlessly into an IS chant:

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Destroy. Destroy. . . . Destroy the state of the Crusaders. Destroy the idols and statues.
Destroy the untruths of the Americans. The idols belong in hell. These statues and
idols did not exist at the time of the prophet and his companions but the devil worshippers [i.e. archaeologists] dug them out.

The devil worshippers are archaeologists who have excavated statues and gurines in the region. Elsewhere the narrator enjoins followers not to listen to the
opinion of tyrant corrupted scientists. Increasingly, cultural heritage destruction is
keying into what McDonald (2014) describes as a new grammar of violence in
which brutal videos are being posted online, including videos of the decapitation of
prisoners (Nordland, 2015), the multi-angled recording of the execution of the
Jordanian pilot, Muath al-Kaseasbeh (Black, 2015), and, most recently, the
beheading of Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Assar (Shaheen and Black, 2015).
As Schroer (2013: 212) points out, networked media provides a powerful platform
for the urge to self-display on which acts of violence and terror are performed as
attention-generators par excellence [that are] guaranteed not to be overlooked
(Schroer, 2013: 220). Religion is used to justify the destruction at Mosul
Museum at the same time that outrage in the West is presented as being beloved
by Allah:
With the kuar [unbelievers] up in arms over the large-scale destruction at the hands
of the Islamic State, the actions of the mujahidin [religious warriors] . . . served to
enrage the kuar, a deed that in itself is beloved to Allah. (Dabiq, 8: 22)

The reference to crusaders in The Promotion of Virtue and Destruction of Vice video
seeks legitimacy for the actions of IS ghters by placing these actions as part of the
continuation of an ancient religious war and aligning coalition forces with invaders
of the past. The technique of grounding contemporary actions within a wider historical and political framework that includes the battlegrounds of the past is also
evident in the 29-minute video, Until There Came to Them Clear Evidence, which
begins with a recounting of the early history of Christianity and an outline of the
schisms that led to the creation of the Coptic, Eastern Orthodox and Roman
Catholic churches, as well as the development of Protestantism. This history,
including computer-generated scenes of historic Islamic battles, serves as a precursor justication for violence depicted in the video: the destruction of churches,
crosses and paintings of the Virgin Mary and the massacre of the Ethiopian
Christians who refused to convert to Islam or pay a protection tax. At the end
of the video the inexorable quality of the advance of the Islamic State is highlighted
in a statement by An-Nashwan:
We tell Christians everywhere that the Islamic State will spread, God willing, It will
reach you even if you are in fortresses. Those who embrace Islam or jizya will be safe.
But those who refuse . . . will have nothing from us but the edge of the sword. The men

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Journal of Social Archaeology 0(0)

will be killed, the women and children enslaved, and the money seized. That is Allah
and the prophets judgment. (Shaheen, 2015)

Financing the Kaliphate

A key factor in whether terrorist and insurgent groups can sustain and survive is
whether they can develop internal sources of funding (Keatinge, 2014). While large,
immovable items may be destroyed by the Islamic State for their propaganda value,
the sale of small, movable antiquities can be used to nance the costs of running the
organisation. In 2007, Nemeth foreshadowed the ways in which the growth of the
art market since the end of WWII has created new opportunities for novel abuses
of cultural property, notably how terrorist groups could nd value in directly
exploiting destruction and looting (Nemeth, 2007). Spurred in part by the looting
that had taken place at the Baghdad Museum in 2005, he coined the term cultural
security to encapsulate this new eld of activity, arguing that:
If allowed to continue, a buildup of illicitly acquired antiquities in collecting nations
will provide terrorist groups with a powerful political weapon, and the networks that
connect collectors to looters will provide an infrastructure for executing terrorist
agendas. The interdisciplinary eld of cultural security identies such risks and
enables the design of policies and strategies for mitigating the role of art in political
violence. (Nemeth, 2007: 37)

While archaeological sites in the Middle East were plundered long before the
arrival of IS (Mallowan, 1947: 32), and there are reports of nancial ows
from illicit antiquities to the Syrian government (Smith, 2015: 17), under rule
by the Islamic State the scale and eciency of plundering has undergone a radical
change. Looting is estimated to be the Islamic States second largest revenue
source after oil sales (House of Commons, 2015: col. 1002). Operating in one
of the richest archaeological regions in the world, IS has transformed the ad hoc
looting of archaeological sites into a business model. Watson (2015) states that:
While ancient sites at Nimrud, Nineveh and Hatra are being destroyed, a stream of
artefacts suspected to come from such places has appeared on the black market. IS
either uses so-called bulldozer archaeology (unearthing sites using any equipment
available which is extraordinarily destructive), or employs locals to dig up sites and
tombs. The group then takes a tax, approved by Sharia law, based on the value of any
treasure taken. No-one knows what has come out of the ground and such loot is
impossible to identify later. (Watson, 2015)

The critical dierence is that looting is being undertaken to support the construction of a de facto state, rather than as an illicit activity undertaken by an individual
or group. Detailed information on these activities comes from Al-Azm et al. (2014)

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Smith et al.

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on the basis of interviews undertaken in 2014 with Syrian activists and museum
sta preservationists working and living in areas under IS control. They state that
while IS is not actively looting archaeological sites it has instituted a system
whereby local inhabitants are permitted to dig at these sites in exchange for a
tax on the monetary value of the goods or treasure recovered. The tax varies
between 20% and 50%, according to region. In some areas, semi-professional
eld crews operate through a license from IS and under the oversight of IS representatives. More insidiously, the Islamic State is removing barriers to the export
of archaeological nds from northern Syria to southern Turkey, in eect institutionalizing the illicit export of antiquities (Al-Azm et al., 2014). The steps in this
trade are outlined by Cox (2015). Given the clandestine nature of such trading, it is
dicult to place a gure on the income that IS derives from this source. However,
in a recent report to the British House of Commons, the control of territory in
Syria is estimated to have given IS some 515 million in cash and assets before the
takeover of Mosul (Smith, 2015: 17), and Iraqi intelligence has estimated that IS
has collected as much as $36 million from the sale of artefacts (House of Commons,
2015: col 1002).
Given growth in the Islamic States social responsibilities, the looting of antiquities can be expected to increase. In naming itself as a State the Islamic State
incurred some of the responsibilities of a State. In search of legitimacy, initial
announcements of the Islamic State declared a commitment to pump millions of
dollars into services that are important to Muslims (Dabiq, 1: 13). State-like
activities undertaken by IS include welfare services, such as caring for orphans
(Dabiq, 2: 38), minting coins (Dabiq, 6: 99) and the provision of security and
stability as well as food and commodities in the marketplace (Dabiq, 1: 13;
Friedland, 2014: 17), all of which are increasingly promoted through social
media and online videos (see Zelin, 2015: 93). The delivery of such services has
to be supported by reliable income streams. The sale of cultural heritage objects
is one such stream.

Discussion
In 2004, an explicit link between terrorism and the destruction of cultural heritage
was recognised in Recommendation 1687 of the Parliamentary Assembly Council
of Europe, Combating Terrorism through Culture:
Culture is . . . becoming increasingly a target of terrorism. Beyond the physical damage
or destruction of monuments, temples or symbols of a given culture and way of life,
such terrorist acts target the very cultural identity of a people or a population. They
also harm a cultural heritage that is common to all peoples of the world.
(Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe, 2004)

In this article, we have identied the genesis of a new form of terrorism socially
mediated terrorism arising from the convergence of networked social media and

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Journal of Social Archaeology 0(0)

changes in the forms of conict. We contend that the conuence of recent changes
in networked social media and in terrorism is creating new opportunities for both
symbolic (and real) violence. We argue that one of the ways in which the contemporary communications environment has changed how terrorist groups organise is
through providing the means through which destructive acts can have global
impact, and that the visual, symbolic nature of cultural heritage makes this heritage
particularly vulnerable. In any war, symbolic heritage is a target for destruction,
but within a modern, post 9/11 terrorist framework, iconic cultural heritage is at
greater risk than in the past. In particular, an increasing propensity for individually-motivated terrorist acts could be argued to favour low-cost, low-risk emulation
in which cultural heritage is a soft target. In line with Gerstenblith (2014) and
others (e.g. Bevan, 2012; Stone, 2012; Van der Auwera, 2012), Meskell (2015)
argues that the destruction of cultural heritage in Syria is characterised by bombing in urban centres, attacks on religious structures, the use of archaeological sites
as strategic vantage points and the looting of sites and museums for objects to be
sold on the international market. To this list, we add the genesis of socially
mediated terrorism.
Our analysis of social media and other online materials produced by the
Islamic State and of the reactions of Western leaders as recorded in the media
has identied that the destruction of cultural heritage serves the strategic purpose
of cloaking the Islamic State with an aura of invincibility through highlighting
the impotence of its opponents. This has dierent but signicant strategic impacts
at local, regional and international levels. The essence of our argument is
threefold:
1. That the inherently theatrical nature of terrorism creates the potential for symbolic attacks in a range of contexts, a range that has changed radically since
2001.
2. That this change can be linked to a rise in the use of networked social media
since 2000 using highly visual imagery, real-time communications and dynamic
personal and group interactions.
3. That terrorisms encouragement of emulation, both directly (i.e. through some
form of horizontal organisation) and indirectly (through inspiration to individual acts) taps into this platform in ways that are only now becoming apparent.
Why are recent events so profoundly dierent to what has come before? The
crucial dierence is the potential for global impact. In the past, cultural heritage
was destroyed as part of a strategy of subjugating local populations/audiences, but
today terrorist organisations use networked social media to broaden the impact of
cultural heritage destruction to manipulate and persuade dierent audiences. This
profound break from the past that can be seen in terrorist actions that are directed
simultaneously towards several audiences local, regional and international with
reactions from one audience used to subjugate, embolden or intrigue another audience. As social media continues to capture peoples imaginations, the destruction of

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cultural heritage will play a greater symbolic role in conict, with the power of
visual imagery transcending the persuasive capacity of pure text as sensory and
visual modes of presentation help to create not so much imagined communities,
bound together by symbols of belonging, as aective communities that are willing
to engage in specic actions that recreate the disturbed emotional order (Knorr
Cetina, 2005: 224).
What lessons can be learnt? What practical or theoretical recommendations can
emerge from this study? At an overtly tactical level, networked social media provides
a potential means to monitor the activities of terrorist groups or the signs of incipient
terrorist activity and perhaps predict violence before it occurs. Cohen et al. (2014), for
example, argue that linguistic markers may be able to function as early warning signs
of radical violence on social media, raising the possibility of identifying the warning
behaviours that may indicate increased or accelerated risk. In the context of heritage,
such markers could be cross referenced to Robert Bevans (2012) notion that the
destruction of a communitys cultural heritage could serve as one such early warning
sign, as such acts have been used to prepare ground for the de-humanisation of a
group, as with Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, or, in the current case, the destruction
of Christian monuments and murder of Christians in Ethiopia (Shaheen, 2015). In
this sense, then, the removal of specic, symbolic cultural heritage may be one indicator of the level of intended dominance via destruction of the social and economic
status of an adversary with an assigned identity (Hartley, 2007: 238), or a pathological preoccupation or xation with a group or a cause (Reid Meloy et al., 2012).
Bevan argues that instances of cultural heritage destruction should be included as
part of a suite of indicators being developed by the United Nations and human rights
and humanitarian organisations to help predict the types of conicts likely to ratchet
up into ethnic cleansing or genocide:
In particular, research is needed that establishes timelines: At what point (if any) in
any conict situation does cultural destruction begin? When does it become systematic? Can these points be correlated with a change in the nature of a conict as it
becomes sectarian or manifests ethnic cleansing or incipient genocidal aspects.
Historical data needs combining with information from media databases such as
Factiva and the records of human rights and humanitarian NGOs to discover exactly
what is happening now, what happened in the past and in what order. (Bevan, 2012: 5)

From this viewpoint, some ancient monuments can be perceived as symbolic

islands of the West within the territories of the Islamic State. The destruction of
these monuments may signal an escalation in conict with the West.
These are early days and, ironically, this study has been limited by the limitless
capacity of the internet. If the arguments presented here are to move forward, more
exhaustive data collection needs to take place and precise programs for identifying
emergent terrorist threats to cultural heritage need to be established. While many
scholars have addressed the targeted destruction of cultural heritage as part of
modern conict (Bevan, 2006; Meskell, 2015; Stone, 2012; Van der Auwera,

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Journal of Social Archaeology 0(0)

2012), few have done so in terms of terrorist strategies. There is an urgent need for
detailed case studies which analyse the role that cultural heritage destruction plays
in terrorist strategies and the ways that networked media can be used to exploit or
counter these. Networked social media continues to grow and to capture peoples
imaginations. In both economically advantaged and disadvantaged countries, the
increased ability to reach millions of individuals directly continues to be a means by
which objectives and ideologies can transcend geographical, social, economic and
cultural boundaries. Never before has the world had so much capacity to communicate, so much need to communicate and so little will for people to understand one
another.
Acknowledgements
This article has grown from a melting pot of interactions. We thank Alice Gorman,
Rob Bevan, Scott Cleland, Jim Smith, Andrew Jackson, Matthew Ebbs and Eman Shariq
Mohammed Assi for feedback that helped to rene our ideas. In addition, we are grateful to
the four anonymous reviewers of this article, who provided useful critiques and suggestions
that we have incorporated into the article, and Lynn Meskell for facilitating rigorous review.
We thank David Adams Films Pty Ltd for permission to use the photograph of the Bamiyan
Buddha in Figure 1. The photo of the Charlie Hebdo rally in Figure 2 is courtesy of Claude
Truong-Ngoc/Wikimedia Commons. The images in Figures 4 and 5 are from the Islamic
States Dabiq magazine and are produced courtesy of Elliot Friedland of the Clarion Project
and Aaron Y. Zelin of Jihadology.net and of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The Promotion of Virtue and Destruction of Vice video was translated by a native Arab
speaker from the Middle East who wishes to remain anonymous. This paper was drafted
when Claire Smith and Gary Jackson were visiting researchers at Kyushu University, Japan.
We thank Koji Mizoguchi and Kyushu University for this support.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no nancial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.
Note
1. This translation was undertaken by a native Arab speaker who wishes to remain
anonymous.

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Author Biographies
Claire Smith is Professor of Archaeology at Flinders University, Australia and
Adjunct Professor at Kyushu University, Japan. Her areas of expertise are symbolic communication, archaeological theory and Indigenous archaeology.
Claire.smith@inders.edu.au
Heather Burke is Associate Professor of Archaeology at Flinders University,
Australia. Her areas of expertise are historical archaeology, archaeological
theory and the archaeology of capitalism. Heather.burke@inders.edu.au
Cherrie de Leiuen is a doctoral candidate in archaeology at Flinders University.
Her areas of expertise are gender archaeology, archaeological theory and the
archaeology of capitalism. cherrie.deleiuen@inders.edu.au

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Journal of Social Archaeology 0(0)

Gary Jackson is an Adjunct Senior Researcher at Flinders University. His areas of

expertise are cultural anthropology, colonialism and anthropological theory.
Gary.jackson@inders.edu.au

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