Narrative Landmines: Rumors, Islamist Extremism, and the Struggle for Strategic Influence

Chapter 1. Rumor Theory: Narrative Systems and Hegemonic Struggles in Contested Populations

1 + Rumor Theory Narrative Systems and Hegemonic Struggles in Contested Populations Every concrete utterance of a speaking subject serves as a point where centrifugal as well as centripetal forces are brought to bear. The process of centralization and decentralization, of uni- fication and disunification, intersects in the utterance. . . . —Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination Too many mistakes have been made over the years because our government and military did not understand, or even seek to understand, the countries or cultures we were dealing with. —Secretary of Defense Robert Gates,  April  On  January , Mas Selamat Bin Kastari (Mas Selamat), a reported Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist, was arrested by Indonesian authorities and subsequently extradited to Singapore. After more than two years in custody, he escaped from Singapore’s maximum-security Whitley Road Detention Center. News of his escape broke fast. But the government failed to explain in a sufficient or timely manner how this feared terrorist could escape from Singapore ’s most secure detention facility. Rumors filled the information void. Some reported that the government intentionally let Mas Selamat escape. Others suggested that he was killed in custody and that the government concocted the escape story as a cover- up. And still others claimed he had magic powers that gave him an unnatural edge over his would-be captors: he simply walked through the wall. These and other rumors were picked up by Singapore’s cyber community, which fused them with a vast array of popular narratives—from Hollywood films featuring great escapes to parodies of government officials (fig. .).1 The production of these virtual rumors had little to do with the particulars of Mas Selamat’s escape or even terrorism itself; instead, they contributed to a growing online critique of Singapore’s government. Rumors not only capture the popular imagination of wired “netizens” in stable countries, they also advance insurgent interests in volatile regions and, as a result, thwart counterinsurgency efforts. Immediately following the  invasion of Iraq and continuing through the violent insurgency and U.S. “surge” strategy that followed, a labyrinth of rumors about the motivations and intentions of U.S. forces severely hampered reconstruction and stabilization efforts (fig. .). Initially collected by U.S. intelligence and information operations officers in a publication titled the Baghdad Mosquito, the rumors became a great concern to some U.S. military commanders. Many of these rumors sprang up organically; that is, the rumors were not intentionally spread by insurgent groups but rather were repeated by everyday Iraqis living narrative landmines 8 •.. Conceptualization of interrelated events, stories, and rumors• in Iraq’s narrative landscapes. Figure by Becky Eden. rumor theory 9 •.. Mas Selamat escapes from the inescapable prison.• Original creator unknown; image found on  November  at http://xmercenaries.com/fourer/wp-content/uploads/ //masescapealcatrazqq.jpg amidst profound social and economic upheaval. Ever the opportunists, the insurgents helped to spread these and other rumors in an effort to encourage Iraqis either to turn a blind eye to or to participate in the growing insurgency. One rumor turned a U.S. civil affairs mission to inoculate cattle at the behest of Iraqi farmers into a bovine poisoning story, which then fused with a number of other rumors, from purported links between U.S. technologies and the country’s drought to reports that the U.S. invaded Iraq only for its oil. These rumors painted the United States as a colonizer less interested in the safety of the Iraqi people than in a Christian and capitalist crusade of exploitation. Insurgents and governments alike engage in rumor-mongering. On  September , Indonesian authorities in Central Java, Indonesia, killed Noordin Mohammed Top, a notorious Jemaah Islamiyah financier, recruiter, and bomb maker. Noordin was connected to several hotel and embassy bombings, including the  Bali bombing in which  people were killed. After examining his body, a state forensic pathologist claimed he found evidence that the feared terrorist had been sodomized. Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean media quickly picked up on the comment, speculating that Noordin, who was married to several wives, was a “sexual deviant.” Rumors asserting his homosexuality began proliferating across the region. Contrary to the rumors about Mas Selamat and those found circulating in Iraq, the Noordin rumors ended up advancing the state’s information campaign to paint the terrorist and, by extension, Jemaah Islamiyah as “deviant” and thus hypocritical (fig. .). Other than being related in some way to Islamist extremism, it might appear that the Singaporean, Iraqi, and Indonesian...