As Iraq’s insurgency diminishes in its ability to affect the transition to a democratic state, Al Qaeda in Iraq digs in for the long haul. Evan Kohlmann reports on the discovery of a new web site being built by al Qaeda in Iraq. This site was discovered after a mistake was made by a jihadi programmer who humorously refers to himself as "Terrorist 007":

Several weeks ago, credible representatives of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Al-Qaida faction in Iraq announced that they would soon be opening their own Al-Qaida website on the Internet, featuring propaganda materials, communiqués, video clips, and audio recordings. Finally, late last week, a critical security error made by an Al-Qaida cyber-facilitator known as “Terrorist 007” allowed public web users to briefly view the rough draft of Zarqawi's new homepage on the Internet.

Mr. Kohlmann notes that al Qaeda in Iraq is quickly putting this site together, and the intended audience is both for local and foreign consumption – note the importance placed on European and Middle East compatible technologies for downloads:

It is clear from browsing the website inadvertently broadcast by Terrorist 007 that Zarqawi's cyber-operatives are intensely active at the moment, working--among other things--on the production of future issues of their nascent online magazine, Tharwat al-Sanam (“The Camel's Hump”). Additionally, there is a renewed focus on providing reliable download links for jihad video clips, including versions specifically encoded for use on European and Middle Eastern web-equipped cellular telephones. Americans will be comforted to learn that the website--along with Zarqawi's entire current video archive of beheadings and suicide bombings--is being hosted from a server in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. Al-Qaida representatives have not offered any comment on when the final version of Zarqawi's homepage will be open to public visitors.

The emphasis placed on technologies for local and foreign consumption mirrors a point made in Desperate Terrorists last week; “The flurry of propaganda coming from the Al-Qaeda Jihad Committee in Mesopotamia is an attempt to give the appearance of strength to local fighters, the foreign media and potential sympathetic supporters.” As the public’s assessment of Iraq turns around, al Qaeda is forced to commit resources to attempt to raise the profile of their operations. Zarqawi has a dire need to disseminate images of jihad to keep the appearance of strength and success alive, lest the faithful lose faith in al Qaeda’s ability to strike back and support for Jihad wane.

The Internet has been a reliable means of broadcasting al Qaeda’s message; to re-route around the traditional media when they will not cooperate by transmitting their propaganda (although we have seen the traditional media employ terrorist operatives as stringers, such as the CBS cameraman or an AP photographer). This has been another useful tool in Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW, asymmetrical warfare), a method of communication that has been difficult to defeat. As al Qaeda does not possess traditional media outlets, it has taken advantage of the distributed nature of the Internet to host their sites remotely. Unlike traditional media outlets, there is no need for fixed locations for tools of the trade such as printing presses, studios, radio and television broadcasting equipment, etc. Information can be uploaded remotely to servers on another continent, and if the servers are shut down, new hosting sites can be found and sites can be recreated. The hosting site in Atlanta may not even be aware of the content they are hosting, much like HostingMatters gives little thought to monitoring the content of this site.

One item of note on Zarqawi’s new website: based on the web page screenshot provided by Mr. Kohlmann, there is a striking resemblance of this site’s look to that of another notorious pro-jihadi website, Jihad Unspun. Note the color schemes, font colors, the layout and other items. This all may be purely coincidental, but methinks the web designer may be one in the same.