Amaq

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Amaq News Agency ( Arabic وكالة أعماق للأنباء, DMG Wikālat Aʿmāq li-l-Anbāʾ ) is a news channel of the terrorist militia " Islamic State " (IS) and an important medium for disseminating its propaganda in the broad world public. He describes himself as a news agency .

Amaq posts short messages on its website and via Telegram , Twitter and other internet services. Notifications, articles and videos are distributed, which, as in established journalism, are given the headings “ Breaking News ” and “Exclusive”. Amaq publishes monthly infographics with the "martyrs of the caliphate", which lists the suicide attacks by IS fighters.

history

The news channel first appeared in August 2014 during the fighting over the Syrian-Kurdish city of Kobane on the border with Turkey as the voice of the “Islamic State” terrorist militia in Syria . According to experts, IS fighters at the time shared current information on their private Internet profiles and via encrypted short messages with the keyword "Amaq". The Arabic word “Amaq” means something like “The Depths” and, according to the journalist Sabine Rossi, refers to the depth with which the medium reports from the IS network. However, this interpretation ignores the apocalyptic ideology of the IS organization. According to a hadeeth, the Last Judgment should only come when the armies of the Byzantines at al-Aʿmāq or Dābiq (see also Dabiq (magazine) ) in northern Syria are defeated.

Distribution channels

The Amaq website has to change its address frequently because the associated domains are repeatedly blocked by security authorities. Amaq's messages are distributed in parallel via the encrypted message transmission service Telegram or via Twitter.

Amaq also developed its own Android - app . The hacker group "Ghost Security Group" discovered the app and made "Amaq News" known in western countries. While Twitter and Facebook are being monitored by Western security authorities, you can communicate anonymously via your own app.

reception

Rukmini Callimachi wrote in The New York Times Online in early 2016 about the importance of Amaq: “The agency has the exclusive reports ( Scoops ) because it gets its tips directly from ISIS; for those of us who have been affected by terrorism Amaq was one, must-read' medium every time again goes up a bomb. "Media reports presented also notes that in the alleged claim of responsibility and self-accusations rarely perpetrators knowledge divulged and these are usually provided with monotonous sentence fragments such as “soldier”, “martyr” or “fighter of the caliphate”.

Authorities for the protection of the constitution such as the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Baden-Württemberg at the end of 2016 judged Amaq to be, among other things, a permanent part of IS propaganda: ; in the meantime it has become an integral part of the organization's self-portrayal after an alleged or actual attack. In official announcements and videos, the IS therefore never confirms the existence of AMAQ as its own 'news agency'. ”Current references - after the military defeats in Syria and Iraq -“ obviously compensate for the loss of the invincibility myth in the self-portrayal of IS ”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Joscelyn: Islamic State-linked 'news' agency claims 90 suicide attacks launched in February. In: The Long War Journal. March 5, 2016, accessed March 23, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Sabine Rossi: IS-close "news agency": "Amaq" - the mouthpiece of the terrorists. In: tagesschau.de . July 15, 2016. Retrieved July 19, 2016 .
  3. ^ McCants, William: ISIS fantasies of an apocalyptic showdown in northern Syria. In: Brookings, October 3, 2014. Retrieved November 9, 2019.
  4. ↑ Deniz Aykanat, Felicitas Kock: Attack at Breitscheidplatz: IS claims attack on Christmas market in Berlin for itself. In: sueddeutsche.de . Retrieved December 20, 2016 .
  5. ↑ What can the IS's new app do? In: 20min.ch. December 11, 2015, accessed March 23, 2016 .
  6. ^ Rukmini Callimachi: A News Agency With Scoops Directly From ISIS, and a Veneer of Objectivity. In: The New York Times Online . January 14, 2016, accessed on March 23, 2016 (English): "The agency has been getting the scoops because it gets tips straight from ISIS, and for those of us on the terrorism beat, that has made Amaq a must-read every time a bomb goes off. "
  7. ↑ What does the letter confessing to IS say about the attack? , Welt.de of December 21, 2016, accessed on October 3, 2017
  8. ↑ Tatbekennungen the IS-Media Office AMAQ after terrorist attacks , verfassungsschutz-bw.de 11/2016, accessed on October 3, 2017