US Drops Haunting Propaganda Cartoons on ISIS Capital of Raqqa
The United States has opened a new front in the war against the Islamic State: information.
The Daily Mail reports that US planes dropped 60,000 leaflets with anti-ISIS cartoons and messages on the city of Raqqa, Syria, which serves as the capital of the Islamic State.
One of the messages the leaflets contained was a cartoon that showed sinister ISIS recruiters picking up recruits only to toss them into a meat grinder. The leaflets were dropped March 16 by an F-15 Strike Eagle Fighter that was equipped with a special munition whose purpose is the delivery of such information packets.
Many politicians and policy makers in the West have complained about ISIS' diverse and effective international media campaign, which has helped the group lure thousands of recruits from around the world to the deserts of Iraq and Syria. In addition to the well produced videos it releases of executed Western hostages, the group creates memes, Instagrams cat pictures, and creates trailers from clips of fighting that could pass for the trailer of a Hollywood film.
The United States has slowly begun to try and counter the ISIS narrative. One of the first steps it took was the creation of the Twitter account @ThinkAgainTurnAway. Twitter itself has also begun a crackdown on accounts affiliated with ISIS or that share ISIS' message.
The internet activist group Anonymous has also gotten in on the action, albeit without explicit US support. Members of the collective have hacked and taken down thousands of ISIS websites and social media accounts in an ongoing effort to weaken the group's outreach.
