By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 14, 2017
Ahrar al-Sham’s leader, Ali al-Umar (Abu Ammar)
The Syrian media activist Hadi al-Abdullah interviewed Ahrar al-Sham’s leader, Ali al-Umar (Abu Ammar al-Umar), in a video released on 11 January 2017. The focus was the ongoing negotiations with Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS), al-Qaeda’s rebranded Syrian branch, to create an insurgent merger. The question has caused intense turmoil within Ahrar. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 12, 2017
Two of the very few pictures of Hamid al-Zawi (Abu Umar al-Baghdadi) in existence. The picture on the right, taken after al-Zawi was killed in April 2010, is most often used in Islamic State media.
Hamid al-Zawi (Abu Umar al-Baghdadi), the first emir of the Islamic State when it was founded in 2006, gave his third speech—“Say, I Am Upon Clear Evidence From My Lord” or “Say, I Am Made Certain By My God”—on 13 March 2007. An English transcript of the speech was released online by the Jihad Media Battalion and a video of part of the speech was released, entitled, “This Is Our Doctrine”, a neat encapsulation of the speech’s content. The speech is an interesting first-hand statement of what the Islamic State actually believes, and is reproduced below.
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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 11, 2017
On The Ground News (OGN) interviewed Abu al-Abed Ashidaa on 10 January 2017. Abu al-Abed was appointed to lead all insurgents in the besieged areas of eastern Aleppo City on 1 December 2016. Aleppo City fell to the pro-regime coalition after a months-long campaign of siege, bombardment, and atrocity on 12 December, with the final deportation of the insurgency and tens of thousands of civilians—a crime against humanity in itself—on 22 December.
OGN is an outlet operating inside Syria that is best known for featuring American activist, Bilal Abdul Kareem. The organization claims independence but is clearly within the milieu of the more hardline insurgent forces in northern Syria, and in fact appears to favour the political line of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS), al-Qaeda’s rebranded presence in Syria, against even other extremist Salafi groups like Ahrar al-Sham.
It was Kareem who interviewed Abu al-Abed. The transcript is below. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 10, 2017
Abdallah al-Muhaysini, Issam al-Barqawi (Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi)
In Syria, negotiations continue for a merger between Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS), the rebranded al-Qaeda branch in the country, and other insurgent groups in the north, particularly Ahrar al-Sham. Two Jihadi-Salafi clerics have offered very different proposals for the way forward in the last couple of days. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 9, 2017
On 6 January 2017, pro-al-Qaeda channels distributed a statement, with the picture above, written by Abu Mahmud al-Filistini.1 Abu Mahmud writes of a young jihadist, Abd al-Rahman, who had, after joining the Islamic State (IS), not been fully seduced by their ideology and had maintained contact with Abu Mahmud. At a certain point, however, Abd al-Rahman accepted IS’s ideology and recently killed himself in a suicide bombing against insurgent forces in Syria. It is not clear whether the insurgents referred to are rebels or Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS), al-Qaeda’s rebranded Syrian branch, which was until recently known as Jabhat al-Nusra. The statement is reproduced below with some minor editions, for the sake of clarity, to transliterations and punctuation. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 8, 2017
On 5 January 2016, Abdallah al-Muhaysini appeared on episode sixty of Sham Weekly, an interview series, to lament the failure of the Syrian insurrectionists to merge with Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS), al-Qaeda’s rebranded presence in Syria. Al-Muhaysini places the blame for the failure to merge squarely on Ahrar al-Sham. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 7, 2017
On 5 January 2017, the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, gave a speech, “To Other Than Allah, We Will Not Bow: Brief Messages To A Victorious Nation, Part 5”. Today, al-Qaeda channels put out an English translation. The emphasis of the speech was restating al-Qaeda’s creed and methodology, specifically as it differs from that of the Islamic State (IS). One noticeable point was al-Zawahiri’s admonition against IS’s genocidal approach to the Shi’a: lay Shi’is should not be harmed, al-Zawahiri says; rather, their leaders should be killed for misguiding them and the masses converted to Sunnism. Al-Zawahiri also reiterates that al-Qaeda remains focused on the West and determined to carry out terrorism against it—regardless of whatever short-term strategic calculations currently have al-Qaeda de-emphasizing this aspect of its worldview and conduct. The speech is reproduced below with some transliteration editions and some sections bolded for emphasis. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on December 31, 2016
Abu al-Abed Ashidaa
Abu al-Abed Ashidaa was, on 1 December 2016, appointed to lead all insurgent forces, under the banner of al-Jaysh al-Halab (The Army of Aleppo), in the besieged enclave of eastern Aleppo City. The city’s defences collapsed to the coalition of forces—namely Russia and Iran—supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad on 12 December, and on 22 December the deportation of 40,000 people from the enclave to Idlib was completed. On 29 December, Abu al-Abed gave a speech explaining the reasons as he saw them for the fall of Aleppo City. Today, insurgent channels in Syria circulated an English summary, which is reproduced below with some editions in transliterations and some interesting sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on December 29, 2016
In the past few days, news has circulated of an impending merger between the rebranded al-Qaeda branch in Syria Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS) and several rebel groups, Ahrar al-Sham and Harakat Nooradeen al-Zengi among them. Labib al-Nahhas (Abu Ezzeddine al-Ansari) is the leader of the Political and External Affairs bureau within Ahrar al-Sham. In mid-to-late 2015, al-Nahhas led an effort to recast Ahrar as a mainstream actor in the insurgency that was in any case too large to avoid engaging, a characterization of the organization that is, to say the least, open to challenge. Al-Nahhas is sincerely opposed to Ahrar merging with JFS, however, for the simple reason that he can see it is political suicide: it is the end of any degree (and there hasn’t been much as it is) of Western support for the Syrian armed opposition; once the insurgency is formally attached to al-Qaeda, the only question will be the extent of the Western support for efforts to put it down. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on December 18, 2016
Obituary for Abdurrahman al-Qaduli in the German version of Rumiya, 11 November 2016
The forty-first edition of the Islamic State’s newsletter, al-Naba, released within the territory of the caliphate on 30 July 2016 and released online on 2 August, and the forty-third edition (released 13 and 16 August), contained a two-part obituary for Abd al-Rahman al-Qaduli (Abu Ali al-Anbari), the caliph’s deputy when he was killed on 24 March. The obituaries, entitled, “The Devout Scholar and Mujahid Preacher: Shaykh Abu Ali al-Anbari”,[1] make clear that al-Qaduli was one of the most consequential jihadists in the history of the Islamic State movement. Below is a translation, with some interesting and/or important sections highlighted in bold. The biography resolves some long-standing mysteries, and some of the claims are dubious in light of other evidence we have: these issues, and other points of context and explanation, are in the footnotes. The subheadings are mine, added to signpost the narrative and break it up into more manageable chunks.
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