As its military losses mount, isis has turned its sophisticated online propaganda machine into an instruction manual for lone-wolf missions far from its own territory. Its main publication is the slick multi-language magazine Rumiyah, Arabic for “Rome,” taken from a prophecy that Muslims will one day conquer that city, which is a symbol of Christianity and the West. Rumiyah replaced Dabiq, a magazine named after a Syrian town where the prophecy claimed that Armageddon would take place. Then, last year, isis lost the town of Dabiq. Its sights, and its publication, shifted. [...]
In its latest online issue, released this month, isis offers a new terror tactic. It calls on followers “in the lands of disbelief” to use sites such as Craigslist and eBay to lure victims to meetings where they can be seized as hostages. It suggests advertising jobs, property to rent, or online sales as a way to set up meetings in controlled spaces. The goal is not the traditional use of captives to demand ransom or prisoner swaps but, instead, to execute the hostages and taunt the enemy. It instructs, “In order for the operation to gain wide publicity and more effectively plant terror into the hearts of the disbelievers, one can keep some of his victims alive and restrained, making for a more lengthy and drawn out hostage scenario.” [...]
The physical disruption of the isis proto-state may increase the danger of lone-wolf attacks in the West, experts told me. Over the past three years, an estimated five thousand Europeans joined extremist movements in Syria and Iraq; about twenty per cent have returned to their home countries, according to Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent and the author of a new book, “Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State.” Up to eight hundred British citizens joined isis and the smaller extremist movements, a British official told me.
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