I'll start with the most immediate and least effective, which is obviously pulling Twitter feeds, pulling videos, things like that, including getting various services, like Twitter or Facebook, to do so can have a disruptive effect. But I think in terms of a messaging campaign, obviously we're looking for something much more sophisticated than that.
As I said, I don't think a messaging campaign can be driven by, say, a politician on the stump saying ISIS is actually weak. Instead, the U.S., Canada, other countries that are active in Iraq, have a lot of information related to ISIS. I think making sure that the information gets to the right people, that is credible news sources, both from the western world and from the Arab world, is extraordinarily important and can have a disruptive effect.
Number one would be showing their losses, and I think even putting together information packets for reporters that vividly document this group's losses. You have, for example, this new study that came out saying that ISIS has doubled its territory in Syria. It's not accurate. I've been following this in very granular detail. It has not doubled its territory in Syria. If you look at the most gains being made by jihadist groups...look, jihadist groups are gaining, but it's mainly the al-Nusra Front, which is ISIS' primary competitor, which has been on a rampage over the past few months. Likewise in Iraq, the fact they've lost Sinjar, the fact that their logistics are increasingly challenged, and the fact that Mosul is being increasingly encircled, these are the kinds of things that can vividly show the disruption of their momentum, and right now that's not getting out.
Another thing that could be shown is where they are exaggerating their reach. They've consistently exaggerated, and they've gotten it out into the media. I mentioned Derna before, where they were able to convince several western media outlets that they controlled Derna when they didn't. They have been in this campaign to make it seem as though various jihadist organizations have joined ISIS when they haven't. Ansar al-Sharia, in Tunisia, is an example. The Uqbah Ibn Nafi Brigade, also based in Tunisia, is another one where they got some of their supporters in Uqbah Ibn Nafi to release a statement favourable to them and for a while people thought that Uqbah bin Nafi had become part of ISIS. These are ways they're trying to generate false momentum.
Another great thing is that on November 10 they got a number of organizations at the same time to pledge their bay'ah to ISIS, with the exception of one, that being Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, in Egypt. All those organizations have not only pledged to ISIS before, but they have pledged multiple times. That's interesting, right? It's actually something that demonstrates their desperation. But we didn't have a messaging where we could get that out to reporters and say that there was this announcement and all these groups had pledged before. They're trying to blow it up into something bigger than it is.
The final thing is ISIS' atrocities. I interact a lot on Twitter with ISIS supporters, who are an annoying lot to interact with, but one interesting thing about them is a lot of them don't believe ISIS' atrocities even when ISIS itself claims those atrocities. What that shows me is that within ISIS' supporters in the west, and even some of those in the theatre, some of them just don't believe what ISIS is actually doing. As one of them said to me in a conversation, it's photos or it didn't happen.
I think it involves getting out what they're doing, and being able to more effectively show it. Look, in their own magazine, in Dabiq, they had an entire article dedicated to the reinstitution of sexual slavery. They are in fact doing that. They are enslaving women. It's a disgusting practice. You've had some stories come out about it, but the atrocities they're committing are important from both the perspective of their violating their own extremist interpretation of sharia law, but also they get to the fact that, regardless of whether someone can craft a sharia justification, a lot of their supporters are deeply uncomfortable with what they're doing and so they've created this kind of perspective where they're just not going to believe it. Part of that is our fault, in that we're not getting that information which we have out to publications, which can really vividly demonstrate what ISIS has been doing.