This cartoon came across my desk a few weeks ago. It’s apparently a US-made propaganda leaflet dropped over Raqqa, which is the Islamic State’s center of gravity in Syria.
The white sign on the top-left says, “Daesh Employment Office,” and depicts Daesh recruits getting put into the meat grinder. The teevee sign on the top-right says, “Now Serving 6,001″ which is a reference to the US-backed bombing campaign that’s killed an estimated 6,000 ISIS members. The letters of “Daesh” roughly spell out the Islamic State’s long name: “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa al-Sham.”
Better explanation from a February post:
The term “Daesh” is strategically a better choice because it is still accurate in that it spells out the acronym of the group’s full Arabic name, al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham. Yet, at the same time, “Daesh” can also be understood as a play on words — and an insult. Depending on how it is conjugated in Arabic, it can mean anything from “to trample down and crush” to “a bigot who imposes his view on others.” Already, the group has reportedly threatened to cut out the tongues of anyone who uses the term.
As Intelligence analysts, there a few things we should look at when we identify propaganda. Two things we’ll talk about today are Target Audience and Objective.
Full Story @ [guerrillamerica]
