Tag Archives: Abu Muhammad al-Adnani

Coalition Prepares the Ground for Mosul Offensive

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 9, 2016

U.S.-led Coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State (AFP)

Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) is an activist group working from within the capital of the Islamic State (or so-called capital of the so-called Islamic State, if you prefer) to bring news to the outside world of the horrors therein. For this they have paid a heavy price. On 22 September, RBSS published a list on Twitter of eighteen Islamic State (IS) operatives who had been killed by the U.S.-led Coalition between 20 August and 21 September 2016. This list, presented below with some notes and context, shows the preparations being made for the rapidly-approaching offensive on IS’s Iraqi capital. Continue reading →

The Islamic State and Chemical Weapons

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 30, 2016

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This year, the American-led anti-Islamic State (IS) Coalition has targeted members of the organization’s program to develop chemical weapons of mass destruction (CWMD). One reason for this is likely that the Coalition has been building toward—and now appears to be on the eve of—the operation to attempt to expel IS from its Iraqi capital, Mosul, and it is considered probable that IS will use CWMD on its way down. Whether that can now be prevented, and how far IS ever got with its attempt to develop CWMD, might only be known once it is too late. Continue reading →

Bomber in New York and New Jersey Influenced By Jihad

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 25, 2016

Ahmad Khan Rahami

A series of bombings that injured around thirty people were carried out in New Jersey and New York on 17 September 2016, allegedly by a 28-year-old born in Afghanistan, Ahmad Khan Rahami, who was arrested after a shootout with police. Rahami’s motive was clearly Jihadi-Salafism, though the evidence shows influences from both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Continue reading →

Islamic State’s Propaganda Chief Killed in Syria

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 18, 2016

Raqqa

Raqqa

The Coalition announced on Friday that it had killed Wael al-Fayad, more fully Wael Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad, also known as Wael al-Rawi, Dr. Wael, and Abu Muhammad al-Furqan, a reference no doubt to al-Furqan Media, IS’s oldest and most important propaganda organ, which al-Fayad controlled. The head of IS’s Media Council, thus a key member of the group’s propaganda output, al-Fayad was a member of its Shura Council. The obscurity of his name is likely a testament to his seniority and importance within IS. [UPDATE: This turned out to be correct, though Abu Muhammad’s real name was Wael al-Ta’i, as IS revealed in May 2021, and he had also used the names “Ahmad al-Ta’i”, the media emir appointed in “the State’s” second cabinet back in 2009, and “Abu Ubayda Abd al-Hakim”, the mysterious senior IS operative who made a series of media “appearances” in 2011 and signed several captured letters addressed from IS-centre to the wilayats after 2014]
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Is This the Beginning of the End for the Islamic State?

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 8, 2016

Screenshot of an Islamic State video displaying captured materials from the New Syrian Army, 27 July 2016

Screenshot of an Islamic State video displaying captured materials from the New Syrian Army, 27 July 2016

City AM asked for contributions on the above question, and I took the “no” side. As can be seen from the below, however, this was very much a matter of interpretation since both sides gave roughly the same answer: the Islamic State’s statelet is coming to an end, but the group will survive, morphing back into a prior stage.  Continue reading →

The End of the Islamic State by Christmas?

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 5, 2016

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Last week it was reported by The Daily Beast that United States defence and political leaders believe they can at least begin the operation to remove the Islamic State (IS) from its Iraqi capital, Mosul, before President Barack Obama leaves office on 20 January 2017. This seems unlikely. More to the point, if it is true it is highly dangerous, both in the short-term and especially over the long-term. Continue reading →

The Fall of the Islamic State’s Terrorism Director

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 31, 2016

Taha Falaha (Abu Muhammad al-Adnani) in al-Naba

Taha Falaha (Abu Muhammad al-Adnani) in al-Naba

The Islamic State confirmed yesterday, via their “news” agency Amaq, that Taha Subhi Falaha had been killed in Aleppo. Falaha had gained global notoriety under his kunya, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, after his September 2014 speech calling on Muslims in the West to “kill any disbeliever” in range, and to at least “spit in his face” if one was unable to find a knife or a car or a rock to do murder with.

Falaha was often referred to as the spokesman of IS, and so he was—the voice of the organization since 2011. He was also from the first generation of the organization, recruited before the invasion of Iraq, one of the few within the organization of that stature. But, as I explained recently in a paper for the Henry Jackson Society that compiled what is known of IS’s leadership, Falaha was much more than a figurehead.

Falaha was the governor of IS-held areas in Syria and the man who oversaw the external terrorist attacks. By now he was the caliph’s effective deputy. Heretofore, IS’s impressive bureaucracy has managed to replace individuals with minimal perturbation. IS will experience few perturbations quite like this.
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Al-Naba’s Obituary for Abu Muhammad al-Adnani

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 31, 2016

The United States reported yesterday that it had killed one of the most important officials in the Islamic State (IS), Taha Subhi Falaha, better known as Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. As the Pentagon statement noted, Falaha “served as principal architect of [IS’s] external operations and as [IS’s] chief spokesman.”

Within hours, IS issued the forty-fifth edition of its newsletter, Al-Naba. The cover of Al-Naba 45 (above) featured a photograph of Falaha, only the second one of him officially released by IS. The second page contained the only other official picture we have of Falaha—published in the second edition of Dabiq magazine on 27 July 2014—and a brief obituary. And the main editorial on page three was framed around Falaha.

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Looking At the Islamic State’s Past, Seeing its Future

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 27, 2016

Michael Ware

Michael Ware

Only the Dead documents the experience of Michael Ware, an Australian journalist who arrived in Iraq in early 2003 and spent eleven months-per-year there for seven years. Ware made contact soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein with those resisting the new order, at a time when the Americans were struggling to map such forces.

Ware established communication with the more nationalist-Islamist forces. Once in that milieu, the globalist jihadists, who were working in the shadows, a small, foreign-dominated force towards which even many insurgents were guarded, found him. The leader of the jihadists, Ahmad al-Khalayleh, became something of an obsession for Ware as he stepped onto the world stage with his gruesome tactics as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi, the “Shaykh of the Slaughters,” would found an organization that became a movement and then burst Iraq’s frontiers, known to us now as the Islamic State (IS).

In tracking Zarqawi and his men, Ware presents some incredible footage and gives some snapshots from the fascinating days, whose effects we are all still feeling, when the Iraqi insurgency was taking root. Continue reading →

Governing the Caliphate: Profiles of Islamic State Leaders

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 29, 2016

A new report by me for the Henry Jackson Society (accessible here) is out today. It looks at those governing the statelet held by the Islamic State in parts of Syria and Iraq, and those who are orchestrating IS’s foreign terrorist attacks, including in Europe. The wave of attacks over Ramadan has been described as a “lone wolf” epidemic by many, but IS is coordinating this mayhem through its Amn al-Kharji, foreign intelligence service, and the report looks at who staffs this institution and the dangers of writing-off these attacks as the work of lone radicals with no connection to each other or IS.  Continue reading →