Tag Archives: Deso Dogg

Al-Qaeda and Global Terrorism: What is the Current Threat?

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 23 February 2023

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The Fall of Islamic State’s Caliphate Won’t End the Foreign Attacks

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 July 2017

Screenshots from the bay’a-martyrdom videos of: Riaz Khan Ahmadzai (Muhammad Riyad), Anis Amri, Mohammad Daleel (source)

The Islamic State (IS) has escalated a campaign of global terrorism over the past few years, exactly as it was losing overt control of territory. In 2016, IS consolidated a model of guiding and claiming attacks in the West and elsewhere via is media channel, Amaq. The outlines of this have long been known. Now there is significant new detail thanks to a four part reporting series in the German newspaper BILD by Björn Stritzel, who contacted Amaq and posed over many months—in consultation with Germany security agencies—as a potential terrorist. Continue reading

Activist Group Lists Ten Most Important Islamic State Leaders Killed

Originally published at The Henry Jackson Society

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 22, 2016

Coalition airstrikes in Mosul (source)

The activist group, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), which works against the Islamic State (IS) in its Syrian capital, published a list on Thursday on Twitter of the eleven “most important” IS leaders who have been killed in Raqqa Province. Continue reading

The Rise and Fall of Mohammed Emwazi

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 20, 2016

Emwazi

Emwazi’s eulogy picture in Dabiq

Yesterday, the Islamic State (IS) released their thirteenth issue of Dabiq. Among many things, it contained an admission of death for Mohammed Emwazi (“Jihadi John”). Referred to by his kunya, Abu Muharib al-Muhajir, Dabiq said (pp. 22-23) Emwazi had been hit by an “unmanned drone in the city of ar-Raqqah” on November 12, “destroying the car and killing him instantly.” The biography that Dabiq offered gave some intriguing details, confirming some surmises I had made about Emwazi when his identity was revealed last spring, including his early involvement in an al-Qaeda network in London sending fighters to al-Shabab in Somalia—the thing that brought him to the attention of the security services, confirming that the truth was the inverse of CAGE’s infamous claim that harassment by the MI5 had radicalized Emwazi—and that Emwazi had left Britain to do jihad in Syria in the company of another British citizen. Emwazi was also in the thick of it when IS broke from al-Qaeda and offers an interesting and rare example of a European IS fighter entrusted with an internal security role for the caliphate.
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