Incostrat

From Powerbase
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Strategic-communications contractor that provided media and propaganda support to the Syrian moderate armed opposition under UK FCO/CSSF contracts, and in 2019 won an £8m CSSF contract for unattributed counter-extremism campaigns in Iraq; co-founded by Paul Tilley and Emma Winberg


Incostrat

Trade name InCoStrat; Innovative Communication & Strategies
Logo InCoStrat logo.png
InCoStrat letterhead logo (2014 capability statement)
Type US limited liability company (Innovative Communications & Strategies LLC; US EIN 47-1472062)
Founded July 2014
Founder(s) Paul Tilley; Emma Winberg
Headquarters 611 Pennsylvania Ave SE, #144, Washington, DC 20003, United States (address in 2019 FCO contract); operations in Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and the region
Industry Strategic communications; media operations; target-audience analysis
Services Campaign planning; narrative development; media production and distribution; training for opposition media; target-audience analysis; online platform management
Homepage incostrat.com

Incostrat (Innovative Communications & Strategies / InCoStrat) is a strategic-communications consultancy that provided media and propaganda support to the Syrian moderate armed opposition under UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office contracts funded by the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund. According to its own September 2014 capability statement, the company "was formed in July 2014"; it took over the Syria contract from November 2014.[1][2] It was co-founded by Paul Tilley (former director of Strategic Communications for the UK Ministry of Defence in the Middle East and North Africa) and Emma Winberg (later director of Mayday Rescue and wife of James Le Mesurier). The firm positioned itself as one of three FCO partners working on media surrounding the Syrian conflict. From 2019 to 2021 it ran a CSSF counter-extremism campaign contract in Iraq worth up to £7,997,331, covering a network of more than 20 online platforms that it called "Avicenna".[3][4][2][5]

Activities in Syria

From November 2014 Incostrat took over from Regester Larkin the UK contract to deliver “strategic communications and media operations support to the Syrian moderate armed opposition.” The work, overseen by the FCO and Ministry of Defence, included production of videos, photographs, military reports, radio broadcasts, print products and social-media posts branded with the logos of fighting groups. A British source with knowledge of the contracts described the arrangement as the government essentially running a “Free Syrian Army press office.” An Incostrat spokesman told the Guardian: “InCoStrat is providing media and communication support to the moderate Syrian opposition to assist Syrians to better convey the reality of war and those involved in it.” Insiders described “tremendous oversight,” with FCO and MoD handlers meeting contractors up to three times a week and having “the last say in everything.”[2]

Leaked tender documents prepared by Incostrat for the FCO describe a multi-donor project “in support of UK Foreign Policy objectives” in Syria, specifically providing strategic-communication support to the moderate armed opposition. Other funders listed included the US government, the United Arab Emirates and Syrian businessmen opposed to the Assad government. The documents claim networks of over 1,600 journalists and influencers, access to stringers across Syria (including some regime- and ISIS-controlled areas), production studios in Turkey and Jordan, and prior work on platforms such as Basma. They also highlight target-audience analysis capabilities and previous clients including US combatant commands, USAID, the FCO and others.[6]

Iraq: Avicenna and the ITT 2950 contract (2019–2021)

In 2019 InCoStrat won a Foreign and Commonwealth Office call-off contract, CPG/3355/2019, titled "Information Campaign Services to Counter Violent Extremism in Iraq". It was let under the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) Framework 2018 (framework agreement CPG/2350/2018; call-off reference ITT_2950). Payments were capped at £7,997,331 for services to the British Embassy in Baghdad. Work was to start "no later than June 1st 2019" and be completed "by March 31st 2021". The Institute for War and Peace Reporting and YouGov M.E. FZ LLC were named as subcontractors. The contract front page was signed for the Foreign Office on 17 June 2019.[3]

The tender was run by the Foreign Office's Iraq CSSF Strategic Communications Team. Its statement of requirement asked for "a campaign approach that is not attributed to HMG". It said the winning implementer would "manage existing high profile online and social media platforms owned by HMG … (platforms are not HMG branded)", and that the project sat alongside the Counter-Daesh Coalition Communications Cell.[7] Rival bids came from consortia led by M&C Saatchi World Services and Stratagem (see M&C Saatchi).[8]

Avicenna

In its bid, the "Iraq Narrative Transformation through Media and Action (INTMA)" project, InCoStrat said that it, YouGov and the IWPR "currently deliver 'Avicenna'—a successful CVE STRATCOM project consisting of more than 20 online platforms that leverage offline activities, amplification networks, and earned media to reach one in five Iraqis on Facebook". It added that its proposed senior team had been with the project "since its first year in 2015".[4] The bid named Yalla, "Iraq's most prominent youth platform with over 3.1 million followers in Arabic and Kurdish", and Good Brothers, a youth page that "built up its following (2.1 million …) under Avicenna", among the platforms it would use. It stated that "legacy and existing platforms, such as Yalla and Good Brothers, will be operational from the project start".[9][10]

Attribution

The bid described steps to hide the British government's role. In its conflict-sensitivity section InCoStrat wrote: "Ensuring project activities are not associated with external influence is critical to project effectiveness and the safety of project staff and beneficiaries. When Facebook changed its policy and made admin user locations visible, our Digital Engagement Cell immediately discovered the change and removed a UK-based admin to prevent detection and attribution to HMG."[11] Its risk register, under the heading "HMG Exposure of UK", listed further mitigations: "All work is conducted via our local entity NGOs in Iraq and under which all local staff are hired"; "Admins for FB platforms are geo-located on FB as living in Iraq"; and "Social media advertising is carefully calibrated to ensure growth is perceived as organic and locally funded". The same document names Robbie Harris as CEO and "ultimate risk owner".[12]

Key personnel

Key personnel
Name Role Notes
Paul Tilley Co-founder Former lieutenant colonel and MoD director of Strategic Communications for the Middle East and North Africa; military-intelligence background. Headed the Regester Larkin contract for strategic communications and media operations support to the Syrian moderate armed opposition before setting up InCoStrat, which took over the work from November 2014. Later associated with Innovation and Insight FZE (IN2).[2]
Emma Winberg Co-founder Former FCO diplomat (postings including Damascus and Erbil); later Chief Impact Officer and director of Mayday Rescue.
Michael Flood Co-founder, senior principal and president (US registration) Listed as government business point of contact (President) on the firm’s SAM/CAGE filings at 600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 200, Washington, DC. Also associated with The FED, LLC.[13][14]
Robbie Harris CEO Listed as CEO in InCoStrat’s US SAM/CAGE registration filings, and named as CEO and "ultimate risk owner" in the firm's 2019 ITT 2950 bid.[13][12]
Alexis Everington Partner Described in the firm’s own bid materials as having led over 20 target-audience-analysis and research projects for UK and US governments in Syria and the wider MENA region; work said to have reached US presidential level.[15] Everington later co-founded International Advisory Services (IAS), the United Arab Emirates–based firm that InCoStrat's own leaked Syria tender names as its in-country research partner.[16]
Amil Khan Named in tender materials Named in InCoStrat tender materials in connection with prior journalistic work embedding with extremist organisations.

Relationship to ARK and Mayday Rescue

Incostrat operated in the same UK-funded Syrian strategic-communications ecosystem as ARK Group. Leaked documents and critical reporting note overlaps in personnel and activity, including work on opposition media platforms such as Basma. James Le Mesurier (founder of Mayday Rescue) worked at ARK from 2011 to 2014; Mayday was spun out of ARK. Winberg joined Mayday after her time at Incostrat. The three firms formed part of the cluster of contractors delivering FCO/CSSF programmes in support of the moderate opposition.[5][17]

CSSF Framework 2023–27 and published CSSF awards

Incostrat does not appear among the named suppliers to Lots 1 and 3 of the 2023–27 Conflict, Stability and Security Fund Framework Agreement; the 37 Lot 2 suppliers (counter-terrorism, countering violent extremism and strategic communications) were not published, being "redacted on National Security grounds".[18]

Searches of Contracts Finder for notices mentioning the CSSF return 1 published award(s) to the firm with a combined stated value of £140,434. This is a minimum: many CSSF call-offs, especially under Lot 2, are not published.

CSSF awards published on Contracts Finder
Award date Contract Value (£) Supplier name as published Source
2020-02-24 CSSF: Myanmar - Research into strategic communications 140,434 InCoStrat [19]


Leaked documents (Anonymous, 2018–2021)

Bid documents from Innovative Communications and Strategies (InCoStrat) appear in the “Trojan Horses of HMG” release.[8] They cover CSSF countering-violent-extremism (CVE) and strategic-communications work and include detailed descriptions of the company's methods.

  • Syria “guerrilla campaign” stratcomm (CSSF Framework Lot A, Strategic Communications in the Syria Region, ITT 2017): in answer 2.2.24 of its bid InCoStrat describes two “innovative” approaches. As a worked example it cites the January 2014 Geneva II talks, where it ran a media campaign pushing the line that “ISIS and Assad” were “two sides of the same coin” and provided an Arabic–English-speaking Syrian spokesperson to brief international outlets; a “break the siege in Homs” campaign; and the production of mock/altered Syrian banknotes intended to be “smuggled into regime-held” areas carrying covert-resistance messaging (“the message to the regime: covert but active resistance continues”). The document also describes expanding networks in Kurdish and eastern Syria and a link to a US Department of Defense strategic-communications programme.[8]
  • Further bids cover CVE Iraq, Strengthening Positive Peace in Kosovo and Serbia (ITT 3119), C-VE in Syria, and a CVE Communication Project for a Middle Eastern Country (ITT 2950). The ITT 2950 bid won the 2019 Iraq contract; its attribution measures are described above.[8]

By comparison, Contracts Finder records a single small published CSSF award to InCoStrat – Myanmar – Research into strategic communications (£140,434, 2020) – while FCO/FCDO transparency data record InCoStrat-named spending of about £32.0m (2015–2021), indicating most of its UK work was not individually published. The £7,997,331 Iraq call-off contract CPG/3355/2019 (2019–2021) is one such unpublished award.[3][20]

Note on sourcing. The material in this section comes from leaked tender and bid documents of unverified provenance that were published online under the “Anonymous” name. The figures are the values proposed or tendered for in those documents (bids, Statements of Requirement and pricing schedules), not confirmed contract awards or payments; official award figures from Contracts Finder and FCDO transparency data are given alongside for comparison. The leakers’ own commentary is not reproduced here.

See also

External links

Notes

  1. ↑ InCoStrat, InCoStrat – A Brief Summary of Capability and Experience, September 2014, in documents published by Anonymous, avalonlibrary.net (InCoStrat-side), accessed 22 October 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 The Guardian, How Britain funds the ‘propaganda war’ against Isis in Syria The Guardian, 3 May 2016.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Foreign and Commonwealth Office and InCoStrat, CSSF Framework 2018 – Call-off Contract: Information Campaign Services to Counter Violent Extremism in Iraq, contract CPG/3355/2019 under framework CPG/2350/2018 (call-off reference ITT_2950), clauses 3.1 and 5.1, with front page signed for the Authority on 17 June 2019; in documents published by Anonymous.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 InCoStrat consortium, Iraq Narrative Transformation through Media and Action (INTMA) Project [ITT-2950] 1.2.8 Project Team, bid to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, April 2019, p.1; in documents published by Anonymous.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 RT, White Helmets founder Le Mesurier is now a mainstream saint… RT, 2020.
  6. ↑ Leaked Incostrat tender documents (Lot A: Invitation to Tender for the Provision of Strategic Communications in the Syria Region), 2014, archived at Avalon Library / AppForest.
  7. ↑ Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Iraq CSSF Strategic Communications Team, Statement of Requirement – Strategic Communications – Iraq Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), ITT 2950 Attachment 02 (amended), March 2019, paras 16, 23, 54 and 64, marked "COMMERCIAL-SENSITIVE"; in documents published by Anonymous.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Procurement and bid documents published online in 2020–2021 as the “Trojan Horses of HMG” / “Op. HMG Trojan Horse” release, circulated under the “Anonymous” name; index and files mirrored at telegra.ph, avalonlibrary.net and pdf-archive. Provenance is unverified; the figures below are proposed/bid values stated in tender documents, not confirmed payments.
  9. ↑ InCoStrat consortium, INTMA Project [ITT-2950] 1.2.1 Methodology, bid to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, April 2019; in documents published by Anonymous.
  10. ↑ InCoStrat consortium, INTMA Project [ITT-2950] 1.2.7 Timeline, bid to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, April 2019, p.2; in documents published by Anonymous.
  11. ↑ InCoStrat consortium, INTMA Project [ITT-2950] 1.2.4 Conflict Sensitivity, bid to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, April 2019, p.1; in documents published by Anonymous.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 InCoStrat consortium, INTMA Project [ITT-2950] 1.2.3 Risk Management, bid to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, April 2019; in documents published by Anonymous.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Innovative Communications & Strategies LLC | InCoStrat (CAGE/DUNS filing).
  14. ↑ Innovative Communications & Strategies Llc | Incostrat (SAM registration).
  15. ↑ InCoStrat tender response on target audience analysis (c.2014), published in the Grayzone/Anonymous Syria leaks.
  16. ↑ Innovative Communications Strategies (InCoStrat), tender response for the provision of strategic communications in the Syria region, in documents published by Anonymous, Operation Trojan Horse archive avalonlibrary.net, accessed 21 October 2026.
  17. ↑ Consortium News, Leaked Docs Expose Massive Syria Propaganda Operation… Consortium News, 12 October 2020.
  18. ↑ Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) Framework Agreement (2023-2027): contract award notice 029743-2023 Find a Tender Service, 2023.
  19. ↑ Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, CSSF: Myanmar - Research into strategic communications Contracts Finder, 2020-02-24.
  20. ↑ Contracts Finder and FCO/FCDO spend-over-£25,000 transparency data (InCoStrat), 2015–2021.
Retrieved from "https://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Incostrat&oldid=295088"