IS is winning the social media war, U.S. concludes

Washington

 An internal State Department memo reveals that top officials don’t have confidence in the U.S. strategy against the Islamic State (IS) social media propaganda machine.

 State Department officials have said that “countermessaging” the IS is one of the pillars of the strategy to defeat the terrorist group. The memo concludes, however, that the Sunni radical group’s social media strategy has “trumped” U.S. efforts, The New York Times reported on Friday.

 It also casts an unflattering light on internal discussions between American officials and some of their closest allies in the military campaign against the militants. A “messaging working group” of officials from the United States, Britain and the United Arab Emirates, the memo says, “has not really come together.”

 “The U.A.E. is reticent, the Brits are overeager, and the working group structure is confusing,” the memo says. “When we convened meetings with our counterparts, I am certain we all heard about various initiatives for the first time.”

 The blunt assessment comes amid broader criticism that the military campaign against the IS is flagging. The group’s fighters recently took over the city of Ramadi in western Iraq and have occupied Falluja and Mosul for more than a year.

 State Department spokesman John Kirby told The New York Times that the memo “acknowledges what we’ve made clear in the past: We must do a better job at discrediting ISIL in the information space.”

 The internal document, composed by Richard A. Stengel, the State Department’s under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs and a former managing editor of Time magazine, was written for Secretary of State John Kerry after a conference of Western and Arab officials in Paris this month on countering the Islamic State.

 State Department spokesman John Kirby told The New York Times that the memo “acknowledges what we’ve made clear in the past: We must do a better job at discrediting ISIL in the information space.”