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Scott Atran,  Director of Research in Anthropology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University, told Tunisia Live, “The core strategy outlined in the ISIS playbook, The Management of Chaos-Savagery, (Idarat at-Tawahoush),   (required reading for every ISIS political, religious and military leader, or amir), is to fill the void wherever chaos already exists, as in much of the Sahel and Sahara, and create chaos that can be filled as in Europe.”

In achieving this, Daesh must eliminate the “gray zone,” the area of society they regard most Muslim emigrants as inhabiting. The “Brussels attacks represented just the latest, ever more effective, instalment for fomenting chaos in Europe and thereby ‘Extinguish[ing] the Grey Zone,’” Atran said. In a 12-page editorial in the February 2015 edition of Dabiq, Daesh’s online magazine, titled, “The Extinction of the Gray Zone.” specific mention is given to the kind of division that yesterday’s attack was intended to provoke and broaden. “The editorial quotes Osama bin Laden, for whom ISIS is the true heir,” Atran told Tunisia Live. “’The world today is divided. Bush [former US President George W. Bush] spoke the truth when he said, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,”’ with the actual ‘terrorist’ being the Western Crusaders. Now, ‘the time had come for another event to… bring division to the world and destroy the Gray zone.’”

“Motivate the masses to fly to regions that we manage, by eliminating the ‘Gray Zone’ between the true believer and the infidel, which most people, including most Muslims, currently inhabit. Use so-called ‘terror attacks’ to help Muslims realize that non-Muslims hate Islam and want to harm all who practice it, to show that peacefulness gains Muslims nothing but pain.”

My own work shows how mass cultural producers have worked through the state in an effort to reform the regime. I continue to view most of the drama creators with whom I worked as honest critics of dictatorship, given the high degree of dissatisfaction with the regime expressed to me in interviews and informal conversations. This criticism, often dismissed as a regime-sanctioned safety-valve mechanism, sincerely reflected the relatively progressive, secular politics of most TV makers themselves. The uprising has split the drama field, the majal al-fann; some artists have backed the opposition, others remain silent, and some support Bashar al-Asad. A handful of prominent actors—drama industry’s public face—have continually praised the leadership’s handling of the crisis. Yet most screenwriters and some directors—the industry’s “brains”—have embraced the opposition, or condemned the regime. Some have been arrested; at least one remains incarcerated.