Counter Daesh Communications: 1 year on

This week marks 2 years since the UK made the decision to join the Global Coalition – a unified body of 67 international partners dedicated to degrading and defeating Daesh. Two years on and the Global Coalition’s work has seen results. Foreign fighters travelling to Iraq and Syria to join Daesh have decreased by up to 90% and over three quarters of a million Iraqis have returned to areas liberated from terrorists. Daesh has lost territory across Iraq and Syria. To put it simply, Daesh are failing to create their “state”.

The UK has been at the forefront in this effort at every stage. Politically we helped set up the structures of the Coalition. Militarily we have conducted over 1000 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria; provided highly advanced intelligence and surveillance; and trained over 25,000 Iraqi forces. And on the humanitarian side, we hosted the ‘Supporting Syria and the Region’ conference – which raised more money in a single day than any other event in history; and we have pledged more than £2.3billion in aid to help those affected by the conflict in Syria – an unprecedented response by the UK to a single humanitarian crisis.

One of the areas where we have had the most impact has been leading the Coalition on communications. Exactly one year ago, the UK launched the Counter-Daesh Coalition Communication Cell, which was designed to counter Daesh’s propaganda and damage its brand.

Since then, through the UK’s leadership, we have changed the international narrative around Daesh – from one which promotes their atrocities to one which highlights their failures. This has been vital in damaging how Daesh is seen and reducing their ability to recruit. We have done this by providing media packs to our Coalition partners. The packs contain facts, figures and digital content to be used on all channels. We also launched a Global Coalition website. All of this has helped Governments highlight Daesh’s lies and expose their inadequacies.

This effort has been helped by the fact that the Coalition Comms Cell is international by design. We have had staff join us from the governments of Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Bahrain, and the US, and we are about to receive staff from Australia, Italy and France. We have also had financial contributions from across the Coalition.

As well as our efforts to change the public narrative, we have worked with governments across the Middle East to establish several local projects which counter Daesh’s narratives. We also work closely with social media companies to disrupt Daesh’s propaganda online. For example, we’ve seen a 58% decrease in the average number of pro-Daesh Twitter accounts. Their accounts now have a fifth of the followers they had in 2014. Daesh’s own propaganda is diminishing in quantity and quality while anti-Daesh material is in the ascendance. Daesh is clearly no longer dominating the communications space.

We have also launched HMG-specific communications. For example, the @UKagainstDaesh twitter handle now has over 18,000 highly engaged and influential followers.

As Daesh continue to lose territory in Iraq, Syria and Libya, lose their finances, and lose their leaders and fighters, they will change their strategy and narrative. We will have to remain agile to continue to undermine them. But we have always been clear that this is a fight that will take time and patience – and the UK has the skills and experience to lead this international effort.