It's a "guerrilla" without arms or soldiers against the Islamic state and Al-Qaeda, the United States fought on social networks, with direct and sometimes sarcastic tone that clashes in the ultra-plush middle of the diplomacy.
Diplomats and experts of this new "digital diplomacy" recognize, however, that Twitter, Facebook or YouTube will never be the "panacea" to fight the jihadists.
On the battlefield of social networks, the American Foreign Ministry scrutinizes past 18 months dozens of accounts of radical Islamist groups, seeks to inform in Arabic and English, targeting young Arab and Western countries, tweet, post on videos, photos, links, comments and sometimes tit for tat reply to those who challenge America.
At the very civilized Department of State, a few dozen employees of the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC), created by the American presidency in 2011, animate a Twitter account in Arabic since late 2012DSDOTAR, his little brother from the English late last yearThinkAgain_DOS and the last born there a few days, a Facebook page, ThinkAgainTurnAway.
On the internet against the Islamic state (EI), Al-Qaeda and their cronies, "this is a war thousands of skirmishes, not a great battle," said one senior State Department. "America loves the big battles. But it's not that, it's more a guerilla warfare," said the diplomat told AFP, one of the architects of this digital offensive.
As in the other mysteries of the American administration, execution by beheading of American journalist James Foley, broadcast by the IU 19 August in a video, came as a shock. Since then, the CSCC tweet-for-all: tributes reporter murdered, reports and analyzes of the international press about radical Islam armed, photos and cartoons shock.
Tweets are sometimes bluntly.
The State Department has touted last week the reported death in Syria of members of IE, including his spokesman Moussa Abu who had sworn in a report to "raise the flag of Allah on the White House."
Another tweet welcomed the "attack against" militia Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking non-Muslim community, which had "killed 22 fighters EI in northern Sinjar" in Iraq.
More in line with the diplomatic line of Washington, a photomontage shows the portraits side by side on the bottom of a ruined city, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and head of the Abu Bakr al-AR Baghdadi "Baghdadi and Assad are racing to destroy Syria, do not do worse, "proclaims the tweet.
- The IE and the Nazis together on Twitter -
Summary executions images broadcast by the jihadis are also legion of the Department, who ventures to historical comparisons: two photographs published one above the other, one color showing jihadists strafing prisoners in a trench, the other in black and white showing Nazi committing the same crime.
American diplomacy also seeks the humor card.
She has retweeted a cartoon showing an Islamist press pour a bucket of blood on a representative of the "civilized world." Misusing the famous "challenge bucket of ice water," an initiative to raise money for a charity.
The American diplomat claimed that "sarcastic tone" in his own social networks on which he says he wants to "create content" and "occupy space" to "attack" radical Islam, while seeking to educate young people in the West and in Muslim countries tempted by a trip to Syria or Iraq.
But there is no illusion: Twitter or Facebook, "it is neither a panacea nor a panacea (...) to defeat the extremists."
William Braniff, director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, also recognizes that Washington's efforts are akin to "a drop in the ocean" face "propaganda extremist "on social networks. However, he defends, "we must allow time for these programs to create a dynamic".
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