Pieter Van Ostaeyen
Pieter Van Ostaeyen studied Medieval History with a specialisation in the history of the Crusades (KULeuven 1999) and Arabic and Islamic Studies, focusing on the history of Salah ad-Din al-Ayyubi and the Assassins (KULeuven 2003). Van Ostaeyen has been analysing the conflict in Syria since the outset in 2011. In 2012 he began reporting on foreign fighters and extremist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar as-Sham, Jund al-Aqsa and The Islamic State. Since September 1st 2016 he is a PhD applicant at the University of Leuven researching the usage of social media in the ideological strife between al-Qaeda and The Islamic State.
May 2016, IS began implementing a strategy aimed at inciting lone actor attacks in Western countries, under the supervision of its “external security” body. This report examines changes in the ways in which IS has claimed credit for violent incidents in Western countries under this strategy in an effort to shed light on the links […]
According to the Global Terrorism Index 2018 (GTI), released in November 2018, South Asia ranked second in regions most affected by terrorism-related attacks and deaths in 2017. The 2018 GTI also notes that three countries in the region—Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India—are amongst the top ten countries most impacted by terrorism worldwide. The GTI, and other […]
Whereas video releases have been central to the Islamic State’s efforts to represent itself to its audiences, an extensive quantitative and qualitative study of these sources over a longer period of time is still lacking. This paper therefore provides an overview and analysis of the entire corpus of official videos released by the Islamic State […]