UK said using 'covert propaganda' to stop Muslims joining IS

Guardian reports that efforts could backfire as government role in campaign targeting young people is kept low key

The UK government is reportedly spending millions of pounds on “clandestine propaganda campaigns” in an effort to dissuade young British Muslims from joining the Islamic State group. The efforts, which are designed to bring about “attitudinal and behavioral change,” are part of a Home Office (interior ministry) push to counter the terrorist jihadist group’s online presence, the Guardian said Monday, citing “mounting anxiety” in the British corridors of power.

The report, however, said that the Research, Information and Communications Unit (Ricu) project could backfire, as the involvement of the government has been kept low key.

According to the Guardian, Ricu has run a campaign that presented itself as a program on aiding Syrian refugees, engaging thousands of first-year students at so-called “freshers’ (freshmen) fairs” across the country, without clarifying the government’s role. The “Help for Syria” campaign, the report stated, also distributed fliers to more than three-quarters of a million households across the UK, without acknowledging that it was a government initiative.

Ricu outsources much of its work to a London-based communications company called Breakthrough Media Network, which the Guardian said has produced “dozens of websites, leaflets, videos, films, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and online radio content” aimed at discouraging recruitment by Islamic State.

British Muslim groups are “working closely” with Breakthrough to combat extremism in the community, the report said. While the groups say they decide the final message being disseminated, and are using Ricu to help them access a larger number of people, the Guardian reported that it has seen documents showing that Ricu “is the one retaining editorial control.”

According to the Guardian, the Home Office acknowledged that Ricu was engaged in propaganda, but argued that “All we’re trying to do is stop people becoming suicide bombers.”

The AP reported in March that IS has trained hundreds of fighters to target Europe in deadly waves of attacks, deploying interlocking terror cells like the ones that struck Brussels and Paris with orders to choose the time, place and method for maximum carnage.

Some 800 Britons had left the country to fight for IS or opposition forces in Syria, the Daily Mail reported in December, with as many as 400 returning to the UK. British MPs were told in a contemporaneous debate on expanding airstrikes that seven IS terror plots in the UK had been foiled in the past year.

AP contributed to this report