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Classifying the Rasht conflict as a "War on Terror" has shaped the way the event was translated into stories in the online media landscape. On the one hand, this led to an overestimation of the conflict's global importance, and on the other, to a misperception of its local relevance. Though ignored by the majority of the international news media because of its relative harmlessness and peripheral location, the conflict was nevertheless integrated into the discourse of danger by Stratfor and Russian sources, and into global jihad by jihadi websites.This chapter is divided into seven sections, each of which focuses on different online media located within very different discursive formations. The first of these three sections focuses on one think tank that has shown interest in Central Asia beyond the event, Stratfor. The second section is a reflection on a series of Russian reports that contextualize the events in the Rasht Valley within a Soviet narrative that differentiates between "good" and "dangerous' Islam. The third section provides an analysis of the website of the Kavkaz Center. The website reports extensively (if not objectively) on all conflicts in which jihadists take part, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq, or Tajikistan, but with a clear focus on the Caucasus. The fourth section illustrates the ways in which official state media in Tajikistan locate danger outside the country, whereas the fifth and sixth sections discuss the local mediascape that situates the conflict within an intra-Tajikistani tension that has little to do with Islam. The chapter's final section pays special attention to a website called Irshod.net, which was established during the 2010 conflict, and which would go on to function as a link between militant Islam within Tajikistan and global jihad.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-03843-4_5

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