END OF CALIFAT TERRITORIAL OF DAECH

BUT POWER OF CYBERCALIFAT

Islamic State is trying to compensate for the disappearance of its self-proclaimed "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq by reinforcing their presence on the Web, experts say.

The jihadist organization has not disappeared and motivates volunteers to take action on their own initiative.

If it still relies on its official propaganda organs, it also and above all on more or less anonymous cyber-partisans spread throughout the world.

"It started in April with the campaign they called" the revenge of the blessed province of Cham ", which was pretty much shared online." Says Laurence Bindner, co-founder of the Jos Project, an organization study of jihadist activity online.

Thus the broadcast on April 30, for the first time in five years, an eighteen-minute video of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has had a global impact, broadcast in various forms by many platforms.

But also translated, subtitled in twenty languages. "Then they made twenty of what I call derivatives, tucked into darker platforms, or there are fewer reports and where they manage to stay online for several days, "she adds.

"The caliphate of the spirit"

"What is striking is that on a video of 18 minutes, Baghdadi from the third minute praised what he calls the knights of the media, among which he cites including the French brothers Clain. This shows the importance he attaches to it. This praise comes before the soldiers and field fighters, "she continues.

If the territorial caliphate has completely disappeared, the message of the IS, however, still resonates with its supporters around the world. "The group will continue to promote its story through the constant flow of effective propaganda."

A dozen official videos of the organization have been put online since the beginning of the year, a figure barely lower than what the media cells of the IS produced in the best days of the "caliphate".

According to the Soufan Group, the group will "use the nostalgia" of the lost caliphate "as a multi-dimensional tool that will be declined at the global level, at the level of the provinces via the media units of these affiliated movements and even at the individual level, thanks to its underground networks ".

The leaders of the jihadist group evoke "what they call the caliphate of the spirit, or the virtual caliphate," says the British Edmund Fitton-Brown, head of the monitoring team of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda at the United Nations.....