Drone imagery in Islamic State propaganda: flying like a state


 This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the Islamic State's use of images taken by drones, drawing on a dataset of ISIS propaganda images from October 2016 to December 2018. Analysing the three principal uses of drone imagery by ISIS—images of drone strikes, images of other attacks and observation—we argue that ISIS's use of drones distinguishes itself from other state and non-state uses of drones primarily by its communicative and symbolic value. While ISIS’ use of drone strikes takes place in a tactical rather than strategic setting, its employment of drones to film VBIED attacks allows them to achieve a strategic effect. After outlining ISIS’ use of drones for combat air support and to film ground (particularly VBIED) attacks, we argue, drawing on political geography, that ISIS employs drones in propaganda to stake and reinforce a claim to sovereign control of territory, performed through the flying of aircraft. The use of drone imagery, we argue, taps into long-standing visual and discursive strategies which associate vertical hierarchy and flying with mastery and control, allowing ISIS to display attributes of aerial sovereignty. This article, through an analysis of ISIS drone propaganda, provides a rare insight into non-state actors’ perception of drones and the communicative value of drone images, in addition to suggesting further avenues for the incorporation of political–geographical studies of verticality into the study of political violence and rhetoric.

International Affairs 96: 4, 2020 that the non-state use of drones, particularly armed drones, introduces a new symbolic dimension which distinguishes this technology from other technologies of political violence, particularly in the usage of associated media images. The non-state use of RPAs, we argue, entails a symbolic contestation of state sovereignty, distinct from the immediate security dangers posed by the drones and the munitions they drop. The diffusion of images of non-state use of RPAs, in turn, has a potentially far wider reach than any immediate military effect of RPA use, and can be marshalled by non-state actors to claim legitimacy and effective control of territory, introducing-in the case of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)-a claim to de facto sovereignty. Thus, this article provides a theoretical contribution to understandings of contention embodied in political violence by arguing for the presence, through strategic choices reflected in propaganda, of a struggle over normative concepts of sovereignty.
We provide an evaluation of our theoretical claim through a study of ISIS' depiction of drone usage in its online propaganda, arguing that its use of drones should be understood in two ways: first, as combat air support; second-and more importantly-as an integral part of the ISIS propaganda machine. In respect of the first, we argue that ISIS' tactical use of drones is of limited military value, and that its objective is to demonstrate a capability to use airborne technology rather than to achieve a definite military advantage. The second category addresses the symbolic use of drones. We argue that ISIS' extensive use of unarmed drones, both as a means of conducting pre-attack reconnaissance and to film ground operations-particularly the use of vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIEDs)-treats drones as an integral instrument within the ISIS propaganda machine, and as weapons within a political and strategic struggle.
Through this empirical study of ISIS drone propaganda, we demonstrate that drones provide violent non-state groups not only with a potentially effective means of carrying out violent attacks, but also with a vehicle for the contestation and reconfiguration of concepts of sovereignty. We ground this argument through engagements with political geography and visual security studies, specifically with arguments concerning the relation between air power, airborne vision and conceptions of security. As political geographers have emphasized, a state's sovereignty encompasses the totality of its territorial extent as delimited by its internationally recognized boundaries, along with the ground under it and the airspace above it. The control of airspace is-and has been since the aftermath of the First World War-the prerogative of states. 3 Any aircraft, manned or otherwise, is subject to the authority of a state, and it is states that possess control of the airspace. 4 As small drones are easy to obtain and employ, are hard to detect, and can interfere with the lawfully regulated air traffic, they pose a particularly salient challenge for states. Drones operated by non-state actors, therefore, can symboli-International Affairs 96: 4, 2020 cally undermine the sovereign authority of the state, irrespective of the immediate security threat posed. We further engage with discussions of 'vertical geopolitics' in political geography, which examine the vertical and volumetric dimensions of territory, sovereignty and air power, among others. We argue, drawing especially on Alison J. Williams's work on the spatial and political significations of air power, that ISIS uses aerial images taken by drones to highlight its claim to possess key attributes of sovereign statehood, of which control of airspace constitutes a crucial element.
The article proceeds in four stages. We begin by surveying earlier non-state uses of armed drones, in order both to contextualize ISIS' use of drones and to demonstrate the distinct character of ISIS' media portrayal of drones. We then draw on visual security and vertical geopolitics to argue for the role of drone flights and the propaganda diffusion of images of such flights in performing sovereignty. 5 A description of the empirical research conducted and of the contents of ISIS drone propaganda follows, detailing the three principal categories of images taken by drones present in ISIS propaganda. Finally, we develop the argument about the use of drones both to contest and to claim attributes of sovereignty, detailing the performative, legal and visual aspects of this claim of effective sovereignty.

Terrorism and drones
While commercial variants of drones have become more popular, affordable, sophisticated and accessible over the past decade, terrorist interest in drones is anything but new. A number of violent non-state actors, both groups and individuals, have experimented with drones to enact terror, often with little result. Before the rise of ISIS, however, this extensive experimentation with the use of RPAs-armed and unarmed-tended to treat drones as conventional weapons deployed to achieve existing objectives. Drones were considered mainly as a new means of enacting terrorist violence or gaining a tactical advantage, in line with other techniques of political violence and irregular warfare.
In his 2002 testimony to the US Senate Governmental Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services, Christopher Bolkcom identified seven features that made RPAs attractive to terrorist groups: (1) low acquisition costs; (2) a variety of purchasing pathways; (3) potential for high accuracy; (4) operational flexibility; (5) high likelihood of air-defence penetration; (6) high survivability pre-launch; and finally (7) low levels 5 To be clear, we understand sovereignty here as the effective control and ordering of territory, which in this case is achieved by ISIS through overflying. Roxanne Euben similarly uses an understanding of sovereignty which is not tied to a concept of western (Westphalian) statehood, namely sovereignty as the Hobbesian and Foucauldian power over life and death of its subjects. Simon Mabon, meanwhile, debates briefly the relevance of employing the concept of sovereignty in non-western settings, before opting to retain it. of infrastructure needed to support their deployment. 6 Since Bolkcom's testimony, a series of publications have investigated the use of drones by violent non-state actors or insurgent and terrorist groups, 7 although this topic has traditionally been overshadowed by debates surrounding the use of military-grade platforms, particularly regarding privacy, human rights, ethics and legality. The first documented evidence of a terror plot involving drones surfaced in the aftermath of the 1995 sarin attack in the Tokyo underground by the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo. The group had experimented the previous year with two remote-controlled helicopters as a means of distributing sarin, but both had crashed during testing. 8 Building on the works of Gips, Miasnikov and Bunker, 9 Don Rassler assembled a comprehensive list of suspected cases of terror plots involving drones up to late 2016. 10 These included, among others, a 2002 attempt by a group of Virginia-based individuals linked to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba to acquire drone technology from US companies; 11 the discovery of an RPA during a Pakistani military raid on a Haqqani Network madrassa in Miranshah, North Waziristan; 12 the arrest in 2011 of Rezwan Ferdaus, a US citizen who studied physics at Northeastern University, for plotting to pilot explosive-laden remotecontrol planes into the Pentagon and US Capitol; 13 and a number of domestic terrorist plots in Europe. 14 In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of drone-related terror plots, Rassler's work draws an important distinction between 'terror entities that have shown a more limited interest' in drones and those whose 'drone use International Affairs 96: 4, 2020 is sustained and developed enough to be considered a "program"'. 15 According to Rassler, four terrorist groups-Hezbollah, Hamas, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and ISIS-either have employed drones with sufficient frequency, or have established sufficiently identifiable medium-to long-term infrastructure dedicated to support such operations, to warrant their activity being labelled a 'program'. For Rassler, these groups-along with, more recently, the Yemeni Houthi rebels-are the only ones to have successfully used weaponized drones. 16 ISIS, Yemeni Houthi rebels and Hezbollah are the only groups that appear to have successfully used weaponized drones to kill. 17 Among these groups, Hezbollah arguably has the longest-standing drone programme, the genesis of which can be traced to 1997, when the movement started to intercept poorly encrypted Israeli drone feeds. 18 By this means the group was able to gain useful intelligence on the locations that the Israeli security apparatus was monitoring across its border in Lebanon-most importantly, the infiltration route that a team of Israel's elite Shayetet 13 naval commandos would later use during a sensitive operation. This information enabled Hezbollah to ambush and kill twelve naval commandos. 19 Most of Hezbollah's drone technology is believed to be derived from, or have originated in, Iran, which has maintained an active military drone programme since the Iran-Iraq War. 20 Hamas, similarly, has 15 Rassler, Remotely piloted innovation, p. 5. 16 Since the publication of Rassler's 2016 report, Iran has also provided drones to Houthi rebels fighting against Saudi Arabia in Yemen. In January 2017, the Houthis released a video depicting an attack by three explosiveladen, remotely operated unmanned maritime craft on a Saudi frigate. With the exception of Hezbollah exploiting hacked drone feeds to gain intelligence, the use of drones by violent non-state groups can generally be understood as a technical innovation intended to improve efficiency in pursuing existing objectives. 24 Most of the scant literature on the subject of non-state drones has therefore been concerned with technical or strategic challenges: how to disrupt the supply of drones to non-state groups, prevent their use for terroristic attacks or mitigate the damage they inflict. 25 ISIS' drone programme, however, differs naissance flight over cities in the Galilee region. During the Lebanon War in 2006, Hezbollah launched a number of Iran-made drones into Israeli airspace, the majority of which were destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). However, two noteworthy incidents occurred during the conflict: on 14 July, Hezbollah packed a small drone with explosives and rammed it into an Israeli warship, causing a fire that took several hours to put out; and on 13 August, Israel shot down three Hezbollah drones in northern Israel that were carrying roughly 70lb of explosives each. Hezbollah's drone flights into Israel continued over the next several years: in 2012 a modified Iran-made Ahyub drone was intercepted by two IDF  from earlier instances in that it uses drones not only in continuity with other weapons systems, but to open up tactical and strategic possibilities that were previously unavailable. In this sense, as demonstrated in Don Rassler's 2018 report on the scale and supply chain of ISIS' drone programme, 'the significance' of this programme 'lies less in its technical sophistication and more in the collection of simple, low-cost, and replaceable devices that made up the group's drone fleet as well as the group's use of those drones in a number of creative ways'. 26 Unlike the Hezbollah and Hamas drone programmes, which have been shrouded in secrecy, the Houthi rebels have regularly used weaponized drones for attacks on high-profile targets, such as Riyadh airport and a Yemeni military parade. ISIS, meanwhile, has taken publicity-seeking a step further by making drone imagery a significant component of its propaganda media machine. We argue that for ISIS, unlike other non-state groups, making the drone activity visible is an end in itself, separate from the tactical value of these weapons. ISIS propaganda has routinely and consistently showcased the use of its drones within its propaganda material, providing researchers with a unique opportunity to study the scope, scale and purpose of the ISIS drone programme. ISIS, therefore, offers a unique opportunity to examine the perception of drones by non-state actors, owing to the unprecedented visibility of its drone programme. While these propaganda images provide limited knowledge of the actual use of drones in combat, they allow us to gain invaluable insight into ISIS' understanding of the perception of drones, their media value, and their significance in the wider geopolitical-media scene.

Vertical geopolitics and sovereignty
Over the past 15 years, political geographers have repeatedly emphasized the necessity to grasp space in its three dimensions, encompassing 'vertical as well as horizontal geographies of power'. 27 Revising Max Weber's famous definition of the state as the 'human community which (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a certain territory, this "territory" being another of the defining characteristics of the state', 28 geographers have emphasized the way in which political power is distributed unevenly, not only across territory, 29 but also in 'volumetric' three-dimensional space, 30 thereby 're-creating sovereign space as a volume' in which power is distributed in a plurality of non-homogeneous 'airspaces'. 31  power, territory and sovereignty, rejecting the notion of sovereign territory as a homogeneous, unproblematic and two-dimensional area. In other words, state sovereignty is expressed not only in the control of the ground, but also in the control of the air, that is, both in the ability to control and regulate all aerial traffic, 32 and in the ability to fly over territory.
A number of recent studies have highlighted this vertical dimension of sovereignty and its link to air power: most importantly, these studies demonstrate multiple ways in which control of the air can influence, modify or overtake control of the ground. Eyal Weizman, for instance, argues that Israel, following its ground withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, replaced ground control with aerial surveillance and domination, mainly through drones, noting that 'although political sovereignty is traditionally expressed in the state's control of ground territory, at present the most effective and contested political sphere is the airspace over Palestinian territories'. 33 Numerous works have addressed the use of air power to establish and enforce imperial control of territory, notably Priya Satia's 'The pain of love' and Thomas Hippler's aptly titled Governing from the skies, which both discuss the use of air power for colonial policing by the British empire in 1920s Iraq. 34 Both argue that air power was used as the main tool to assert and enforce sovereign control over rebellious groups without actually entering into contact with them, reducing the need for ground troops. Further recent works have highlighted the potential of aerial power-notably drones-to lead to forms of aerial neo-imperialism, among them Ian Shaw's argument concerning the aerial 'enclosure' of humanity and Antoine Bousquet's genealogy of the 'global imperium of targeting'. 35 In all these works, the ability to position oneself above, to fly over, the other is taken as an indicator of power and domination. As Peter Adey, Mark Whitehead and Alison J. Williams note, 'being above is powerfully strategic. Height and verticality are values that are commonly associated with dominance and the projection of force.' 36 The relations of power embedded in visuality from above reinforce this association of verticality and domination: Kyle Grayson and Jocelyn Mawdsley associated drone warfare directly with means of visual production and representation, contending 'that central to the production of drone warfare are the asymmetries among who controls what is seen, how it is experienced, and by whom it is experienced'. 37 These asymmetries of seen and unseen rely, in large part, on a vertical differentiation between the view from above and the view 32 Alison J. Williams The view from above is one of superiority, associated with scientific rationalization and control. The association of control and aerial power is further reinforced through symbolic imagery. In his history of aerial hijacking, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage traces the struggles over the control of aircraft in Peru in the early 1930s, and later in pre-revolutionary Cuba: groups that could fly over territory used this ability as a validation of their claim to sovereignty and legitimacy. 39 Stephen Graham, furthermore, argues that 'vertical and other spatial metaphors literally work to constitute and reconstitute social power'; for this reason, 'political and social struggle takes on an increasingly three-dimensional character, reaching both up from and down below ground level'. 40 Graham, drawing on linguistic, iconographic and visual metaphors, demonstrates that altitude is recurrently associated with power, whether in a governmental or work hierarchy, religious imagery or mapping. Similarly, Adey, Whitehead and Williams argue for the presence of a longstanding link between aerial vision and sovereignty: 'From map-making, aerial survey and photogrammetry, the view from the air is complicit in producing, sustaining and eroding territorial sovereignty on the ground below.' 41

Data collection
In late 2015, ISIS switched from Twitter to Telegram as the principal platform for disseminating the bulk of its official visual propaganda. The move was prompted by Twitter's updating of the language of its stance on abusive behaviour to include statements 'threatening or promoting terrorism', and subsequently banning ISIS accounts en masse. 42 Bloom, Tiflati and Horgan describe Telegram as 'a free, crossplatform messaging app that offers secure messaging ... in which users must be invited to join chats in order to gain access to the content'. 43  chat rooms that can host up to 100,000 members-and 'channels', a unidirectional messaging service allowing administrators to broadcast messages to an unlimited number of subscribers. In recent years, ISIS has developed a clear preference for using Telegram channels to engage with its core supporters, allowing it to broadcast its propaganda media to a large number of sympathizers around the world. 45 In order to explore the propaganda use of the ISIS drone programme, we employed a subset of an ISIS propaganda database constructed by the Transcultural Conflict and Violence Initiative at Georgia State University. 46 This database was constituted by monitoring Telegram channels associated with ISIS for 'photo reports', an ISIS propaganda product consisting of a sequence of images often linked by theme and location. Once saved from Telegram, each image was tagged with key identifiable markers such as the date posted, which official media channel produced the content, and information from the caption. The data collection from Telegram between 9 October 2016 and 30 December 2018 yielded a total of 19,749 images, establishing the initial dataset; within this dataset 524 images showed drone activities.
The 524 images of drone activities collected were compared with an ISIS dronestrike dataset covering the whole of 2017 compiled by Nick Waters, a Bellingcat analyst, in order to validate our dataset. 47 Waters's dataset was chosen as it represents the most comprehensive collection of imagery of ISIS drone strikes publicly available, containing a total of 443 images of 208 individual drone strikes. 48 Using publicly available image duplicate-detecting software, we confirmed that in addition to containing 83 images not found in the Waters dataset, our dataset contained 99.32 per cent of the images Waters had uncovered, buttressing the validity of our collection methodology.
Subsequently, the images were analysed by each author independently to identify salient themes, using an approach drawing on inductive visual content analysis. 49 To analyse the images, we drew on both the content of the images themselves and the captions accompanying them. The purpose of this approach was to identify the main categories of content material, in order to prepare for an analysis of the role of these images within the wider ISIS propaganda ecosystem. The images were then classified in five categories: 50  images of grounded drones, ranging from drones in various stage of construction or repair, or about to be deployed; and (5) infographic: graphic representations of data concerning the drone strikes conducted by the group. 51 In addition, for each image, we collected the reported location-country and wilayat (province)the date the image was reportedly taken, the date the Georgia State University research team captured the image, a translation of accompanying captions, and, in the case of a drone strike, the type of target. The images we obtained are all taken from ISIS-curated propaganda materials; therefore, we do not claim that these provide an accurate portrayal of the actual use of drones in combat by ISIS. We simply do not have data available to assess exactly how ISIS uses drones in combat. Rather, we use these images to gain insight into ISIS propaganda efforts and the group's understanding of the symbolic role and significance of drones.

ISIS drone propaganda
Since the beginning of its activities in Syria, ISIS has made use of drones as means of collecting imagery intelligence. As mentioned above, a cursory overview of ISIS propaganda featuring drones shows that they have been employed to carry out attacks, document suicide-bomber attacks in order to disseminate the photos 51 An intercoder reliability test employing Cohen's kappa was conducted to determine measurement consistency. The overall interreliability for the coding instrument was measured at 0.92, well above Cohen's threshold of 0. 80  through ISIS media channels, and collect observations. By late 2016, ISIS had begun weaponizing drones to attack peshmerga soldiers in northern Iraq; armed drones were subsequently used against Iraqi army targets during the campaign in Mosul, and later in the battles that took place over eastern Syria during the second half of 2017. Arguably, the most significant drone use for offensive purposes occurred on 24 October 2017, when ISIS used a drone to drop two IEDs onto a large Syrian army ammunition depot located in the Deir ez-Zor stadium, ultimately destroying it. 52 ISIS has also used drones to document suicide-bombing attacks for propaganda purposes, for example recording VBIEDs being driven to their targets, their detonations and the aftermath; and recording several of its recent drone strikes from the point of view of the drones themselves, using commercial drones, such as the DJI Phantom. Finally, an example of drones collecting intelligence can be found in videos depicting reconnaissance flights, by a DJI Phantom commercial drone, prior to the takeover of the Al-Tabqa airfield west of Raqqah. As Colin Clarke has noted, such reconnaissance flights allowed ISIS 'to scout out what the base looked like' and identify sensitive or vulnerable areas 'before going in with more kinetic attacks' such as using multiple suicide bombers to gain entry. 53

Demonstrating offensive capabilities
The use of drones by ISIS to drop munitions accounts for just over half the images present in our database: 281 out of 524 images. Generally, such drones involve modified quadcopters, to which mortar shells, grenades or other forms of explosives have been attached and from which they can then be dropped. Captions generally do not refer to exact targets, but rather to types of targets. The overwhelming majority of images of offensive use of drones depict the dropping of ordnance on moving targets that are part of enemy forces. 54 Given that all images were obtained from ISIS propaganda channels, these represent a sanitized and necessarily distorted view of ISIS use of drones and its success. Thus, every single drone-strike image published by ISIS shows the ordnance reaching its intended target, several of the images showing shots that seem exceedingly difficult. This can be attributed to the fact that ISIS only publishes pictures of successful drone strikes. In fact, on numerous occasions a photo series showed smouldering impact craters near the targets, indicating previous unsuccessful attempts to strike the target for which no pictures were published. As such, the propaganda surrounding armed drones can be understood as a demonstration of strength; ISIS, through these curated images, demonstrates its capacity to engage in airborne attacks, even if the actual military value of these attacks is arguably limited. 55 International Affairs 96: 4, 2020 Most scholars tend to associate western drone warfare with some form of targeted killing, and it is in this respect that scholars such as Ian Shaw, Grégoire Chamayou and others speak about the neo-imperial imposition of total American power, or what Antoine Bousquet calls a 'global imperium of targeting'. 56 The propaganda surrounding the use of drones for offensive operations by ISIS, in contrast, does not similarly claim to achieve a global reach. ISIS gives extensive publicity to its use of armed drones, in a way that is probably meant as a quid pro quo for the use of western drones-a demonstration of advanced war-fighting capabilities. However, ISIS seeks to demonstrate strength in a purely tactical sense; its use of drones to drop ordnance is shown in roles of combat air support and interdiction, hitting targets near the front or on the way to the front.
By all accounts, despite some minor battlefield successes, ISIS drones have had relatively limited military success. Their strategic role in propaganda material, therefore, is separated from their military function, and relies on their ability to see and capture images from the air, rather than on their weaponization. Antoine Bousquet, in the Eye of war, posits an ever greater fusion of the 'eye' and the 'weapon'. 57 In Bousquet's account, the western ideal of the 'martial gaze' lies in the notion of the weaponization of the eye: to see is potentially to destroy. 58 In the case of ISIS, these two functions are separate: the drone has an observation function which is separate from-and as important as, if not more important than-its use as an offensive weapon. ISIS has constantly exploited the symbolic value of drone images. Capturing images is therefore of use not merely in its contribution to targeting and to a military advantage, but in its expansion of the reach of other weapons, and in its use to effect a media impact which is far greater than anything that ISIS' rather meagre and rudimentary drone force could ever achieve on the battlefield. To the extent that ISIS drones can be said to have any kind of strategic effect, that effect lies in their propaganda value, not in their military role.
A significant proportion of ISIS images taken by drones show large explosions and destructive action. These images-160 out of the 524 in our dataset-do not, however, show the effects of drone-dropped ammunition; rather, they show the moments surrounding 'martyrdom', that is, the execution of VBIED attacks. In the captions provided along with these images, the name of the perpetrator is often given, along with a short prayer-'May Allah accept him'. The contrast here between uses of drones for striking-in which targets are designated merely by type-and the propagation of drone-taken images of VBIED attacks-in which the perpetrators are named-highlights the focus of ISIS' propaganda use of drones: the emphasis is placed not so much on the results of the attacks as on the act of attacking itself. The naming of perpetrators of suicide attacks highlights the act of attacking the enemy through personal sacrifice, rather than the results of the attack; in fact, in many cases, the picture of the perpetrator is superimposed on the image taken by the drone. In the same way, the lack of precise designation of the targets of drone bombings suggests that ISIS is more concerned with demonstrating its ability to fly over and bomb the enemy from the air-its ability to undertake the action itself-than with demonstrating its ability to inflict meaningful damage on the enemy. In this role, therefore, drones serve as signal boosters for other attacks. Whereas, as Bousquet argues, western powers seek the ever-further integration of the visual and destructive capabilities of drones in order to fulfil the ideal of the martial gaze, ISIS' use of drones exploits specifically their visual component to heighten the visual effect of other attacks. While ISIS drones are prevented by their technical capabilities from having a direct strategic effect, as their range is limited, their use within an integrated propaganda machine multiplies their value. The impact of martyrdom attacks and selective drone strikes is heightened when the symbolic value of suicide attacks is combined with the view from above provided by the drone. The further dissemination of these images allows these purported tactical successes to acquire a global reach.

Demonstrating control of territory
The third category of images found in our dataset, designated as 'reconnaissance' in figure 1, does not show any active combat situations-neither aerial bombardment nor ground attacks-but rather simply shows drones flying over territory. These images, we argue, make clear ISIS' exploitation of the symbolic link between air power and sovereignty described above to further establish its claim to the effective exercise of-and therefore a legitimate claim to-sovereign statehood. Drawing on Alison J. Williams's work, we consider that the diffusion of images of flight over contested territory constitutes a form of 'political discourse' which, as Williams notes, 'performs political positions'. 59 More specifically, these images exemplify a demonstration of performative sovereignty, through which ISIS seeks to show that it can act as a sovereign power. This is significantly different from other forms of drone use for terrorism: while previous terrorist plots involving drones sought to undermine public order and security, and create widespread fear, 60 we argue that ISIS' depiction of drones in propaganda seeks not to destroy public order but to support its state-building exercise.
As Stuart Elden argues, 'territory is a process, not an outcome'; 61 in other words, territory, as the foundation of sovereignty (as Weber argues), is continu- 59  ously constructed by the active control of space and terrain. ISIS, therefore, is not seeking merely to deter threats to its sovereign territory; it is seeking also to spatialize its claim over the territory overflown by its drones. Our argument, therefore, is that the diffusion of images of territory being overflown by ISIScontrolled drones aims to demonstrate that ISIS exercises de facto control over the territory which it claims. Such control does not necessarily bind ISIS to a Westphalian concept of de jure statehood-which would be an unlikely referent for it-but rather emphasizes the effective control of the ground and the air by the group. 62 Through these flights, ISIS contests the territorial sovereignty of the state in which they fight (and which they claim), seeking to 'rende[r] the sovereignty of that state contingent', 63 while simultaneously 'constituting a novel form of aerial sovereignty'. 64 Williams, similarly, discusses this performative aspect through aerial 'power projection [which] can be conceptualised as referring to the "stretching" of power from the centre outwards and ... this provides a geopolitical imagery of power as being highly mobile, yet tied to the centre and projected outwards'. 65 Drones, in some ways, might even be more effective tools of power projection than regular aircraft, given the explicit connection between the 'centre' and the aircraft, drones being controlled from a remote location. Williams further highlights 'the importance of analysing the production and representation of military airspaces as a way to understand how states project their power to create and maintain a strong image of their abilities and help deter threats to their sovereign territory'. 66 If state failure is understood as the de facto absence of a sovereign power, 67 which is taken as the justification for foreign intervention, ISIS here seeks to demonstrate its reverse: the de facto presence of a state, made visible through its diffusion of aerial images, which renders the space governed and ordered. As Tareq Ismael and Jacqueline Ismael note, the rise of ISIS was not a cause of state failure in Iraq and Syria, but a consequence of the absence of state authority. 68 Therefore, ISIS seeks to demonstrate the manifest failure of the existing order, and its own ability to enforce order where the post-2003 Iraqi state failed to do so. 69 By diffusing images taken from above, ISIS is exploiting these associations created by visual imagery to reinforce the perception of control of territory and to appropriate for itself the perspective of 'mastery and control' which, effectively, International Affairs 96: 4, 2020 reflect this claim to statehood. 75 Drawing on, among others, the same video from 2014, Mabon argues that ISIS propaganda seeks to demonstrate the key attributes of sovereign statehood, namely a hierarchy of authority, the assent of citizens to its rule and the control of territory. This last point, he notes, represented a particular challenge for the group, in a situation where fighting entailed a constant reconfiguration of borders. 76 In this sense, the display of aerial photography contributes to the demonstration of control of territory, allowing the group to spatialize its claim to authority within a defined territory. While Mabon engages briefly with the risks of the 'Westphalian straitjacket', namely that imposing western notions of sovereignty on non-western settings may erase non-state-centric dynamics, he nevertheless maintains that an engagement with concepts of sovereignty can highlight 'aspects of the ISIS brand that seek to achieve this outcome' of statebuilding. 77 Finally, as several commentators have noted, ISIS visual propaganda is full of imagery depicting the functions of a well-established sovereign state in all its mundane aspects. 78 These include images of ISIS currency, medical offices and other elements of the bureaucracy of a functioning state, all aimed at demonstrating ISIS' ability to build an effective state, with all its visible manifestations, and thereby advancing the notion of 'Islamic State' as a legitimate state in order to gain the long-term support of local populations. This is of critical importance to ISIS in its attempt to socialize the Muslim world into the ideas and values embodied in its notion of the caliphate. 79 ISIS propaganda has long sought to highlight these performative aspects of state sovereignty, and the aerial images taken by drones continue this component of their propaganda effort.
ISIS' propagation of imagery of drones overflying terrain, without engaging in combat, reflects a longstanding association of flight with sovereign power and the control of territory. This association is in line with other elements of ISIS propaganda, notably its depiction of normal, ordered and regulated daily life. Claims of effective sovereign power permeate all elements of ISIS propaganda, and visual metaphors of power are recurrently featured in propaganda materials. As Graham notes, 'vertical metaphors of social power ... gain their power from the way they are used ubiquitously in ways that are unintentional and unconscious'. 80 The use International Affairs 96: 4, 2020 of drones in ISIS propaganda to further a claim to sovereignty, therefore, aligns with a significant thrust of ISIS media efforts and reasserts pervasive associations between air power, domination and statehood, which drones are ideally suited to express.

Conclusion
While there is a common misperception that ISIS fights in a disorganized manner and will throw whatever forces it possesses into battle without any wider plan-Barack Obama famously compared ISIS to a 'jayvee [ junior varsity] team', suggesting a lack of capability and sophistication in comparison to Al-Qaeda 81that is clearly not the case in respect of its mediatized use of drones. Its use of drone images for propaganda is carefully planned for maximal effect, in coordination with VBIED attacks and other actions. Propaganda dependent on the visual faculties of drones is therefore not incidental to the employment of drones by ISIS, but an integral part of its drone programme. Therefore, while ISIS does not directly mirror the use of MALE drones by western powers, it clearly envisions its rudimentary air force as more than a mere tactical tool, and depicts it in ways which highlight its claim to statehood and the possession of an advanced fighting capability.
The ISIS drone programme represents the first instance of a highly mediatized use of drones by a terrorist organization, in which drones are embedded as much in the propaganda machine as in war-fighting. As such, it offers an unprecedented opportunity to gain insight into the group's understanding of the function and symbolism of drones. Furthermore, it allows for the consideration of visual aspects of political contention, and of the use of visual propaganda to challenge and disrupt norms and claim normative change. In this article, we have argued that ISIS' use of drones highlights the group's claim to effective control of territory and airspace, furthering its claim to 'seeing like a state', 82 flying like a state and acting like a sovereign state. This article highlights the communicative value of drone imagery, and argues that the non-state use of drones entails a form of symbolic political contention which exceeds the violent potential of such weapons. The imagery of drones released in ISIS propaganda recalls several aspects of aerial sovereignty, notably through demonstrations of the de facto control of airspace.
While we have focused here on the role of drones in this respect, the argument that tactics are selected in part on the basis of their communicative value, and their ability to disrupt and challenge established normative underpinnings of state power, is not necessarily limited to drones, as the final section shows: drone propaganda is distinctive, in that it draws on vertical tropes and imagery, but is in no way exceptional in its display of sovereign power. We hope to point here at the poten-