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Beirut: Behind the ultra-violent execution videos that have become the Islamic State's disturbing trademark is a carefully calibrated set of messages aimed not at terrorising but at recruiting people to "an alternative way of living".
In the last two months the terrorist group has begun publishing photographs depicting shops on the street and corner ice cream parlours along with descriptions of economic prosperity in areas under its control, Charlie Winter, a senior researcher at the UK-based counter-extremism think-tank Quilliam told Fairfax Media.
It is a narrative the US-led coalition against the Islamic State group has not come close to countering, Mr Winter argues in a new report examining the group's first year of propaganda.
"There is a very strong strain of Islamic State propaganda that depicts the caliphate as a stable place … that is not even being remotely contested right now," Mr Winter says.
This line of propaganda says while justice may be ruthless "if you operate within Islamic State boundaries and its interpretation of what is right and wrong you will be fine – and not only be fine but you will be eating ice cream as well," he says.
#SYRIA - #ISIS Release Propaganda Photos Of Ice Cream Parlors In #DeirEzzor pic.twitter.com/LCAjUdhHO1— Terrormonitor.org (@Terror_Monitor)
June 14, 2015
It is a message that is getting through – not just to new foreign recruits and their families but also to some living in areas under Islamic State control.
In a country that is in its fifth year of civil war, and all the carnage and chaos that comes with it, some say they welcome the security the militants appear to bring.
Electricity is restored, law and order improves and the streets feel safer, some who lived under Islamic State rule in the Syrian border town of Tel Abyad told Fairfax Media.
Their accounts of life under IS provide a small window into both the deep divisions over the extremist group and also the violence and neglect that has laid the groundwork for the group to take, and maintain, so much territory.
Hatem, 20, lives with his extended family in Akcakale, the Turkish town that borders Tel Abyad to which about 30,000 Syrian refugees fled last month.
He spent 18 months fighting against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with Ahrar al-Sham, one of the largest militia groups operating in Syria. In January 2014, his unit was confronted by IS fighters and he was given an ultimatum: either hand over his weapons and go home or join the militant group.
"I gave them my weapons and I went home," he says, but acknowledges if last month's battle for Tel Abyad had gone on any longer, he would have joined the Islamic State group.
And if their Syrian power base of Raqqa is challenged: "I will go to Raqqa to help IS defend it."
With IS in charge of his town, "life was much safer, there was no more stealing, everything was more secure", Hatem says.
Before they were driven out by Kurdish forces, the IS soldiers in Tel Abyad were mostly foreign fighters – Chechens, Azerbaijanis and Saudis – who had moved to Syria with their families.
"They were the best to deal with … if you follow sharia you are OK, they will have nothing to do with you. If you go the wrong way they would take you and you would appear before a judge," Hatem says.
"I know the limits that would make them angry," he says. "For me, it was my lifestyle already: I pray, I go to the mosque and I do not smoke, but those who smoked were not happy."
There is no doubt, Mr Winter says, that some want to live under the Islamic State but "for the majority of people living under them it was the least worst option … not because they believe in their aims and ideals".
The full body of Islamic State propaganda is vast and unprecedented, he says, with an average of three videos and four photographic reports circulated each day.
There are daily radio news bulletins in multiple languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish, English, French and Russian, as well as fully produced nashids (Islamic recitals sung a cappella), while feature-length films depicting its most cruel acts emerge on a monthly basis, the report found.
"Like any mass movement, it captures the imaginations of its potential recruits by offering both immediate change and the ability to transform their future and … an alternate way of living."
For the international audience, the use of brutality by Islamic State is a red herring, Mr Winter's paper argues, that has "fatally derailed mainstream understanding of the organisation and its appeal to its many thousands of foreign recruits".
"While brutality is easily the most prominent of these narratives in the West, utopianism is by far the most important narrative for Islamic State's propagandists; it is the organisation's utopian offer that is most alluring to new recruits."
Unless this utopia is challenged, he says, any attempts to interrupt the flow of propaganda are doomed to fail.
Western governments' reluctance to tackle the Assad regime was also working against efforts to counter the extremists' message, especially with Syria's Sunni community, who have experienced relentless bombardment from the regime air strikes over the last four years of war.
And laws that criminalise foreign fighters who turn their backs on IS and return home, such as those enacted this year by the Abbott government in Australia, also hamper efforts to push back against the propaganda machine.
"These people are very important resources for counter-messaging efforts and putting them in jail can be very harmful to that cause," Mr Winter says.
Acknowledging the need to improve its outreach in support of the international coalition against IS – of which Australia is a member – the United States and the United Arab Emirates launched a "multinational online messaging and engagement program" on Wednesday.
The Sawab Centre will use direct online engagement to counter terrorist propaganda, including messages used to recruit foreign fighters, raise funds for illicit activities and intimidate and terrorise local populations, the US announced overnight.
The centre plans also engage and expand the network of people willing to speak out against the terrorist group's propaganda, recruitment and fundraising efforts, the US statement said.
