By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 17 March 2018
A statement attributed to Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, the official spokesman of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM), was released on 15 January 2006 that announced AQM was being merged with five other Salafi insurgent groups to create the Mujahideen Shura Council (al-Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen). A translation of the statement is produced below.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 March 2018
The predecessor organization to the Islamic State (IS), the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), used to run a “Prominent Martyrs” or “Distinguished Martyrs” series: essentially obituaries for important members of the IS movement. In the forty-sixth edition, on 18 August 2010, ISI profiled Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, the first official spokesman and the deputy of the Media Department until he was killed in 2006. A translation of Abu Maysara’s biography was issued by Ansar al-Mujahideen forum and is reproduced below with some minor editions for transliteration and some interesting points highlighted in bold. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 March 2018
Devastation in Aleppo (image source)
This week marks the seventh anniversary of the Syrian revolution. A movement that began with peaceful street protests calling for reform and—after the government responded with lethal violence—the downfall of the dictator, descended into war that has to this point cost the lives of at least 500,000 people and displaced nearly twelve million others—more than half of Syria’s pre-war population.
In any strategic sense the rebellion has been defeated—it is not able to overthrow Bashar al-Assad by force on its own—and its political cause is increasingly strained as the remnants of the armed opposition are increasingly co-opted by external actors, state and non-state. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 10 March 2018
The 122nd edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State’s weekly newsletter, was released on 9 March 2018 and contained an article, on page 3, suggesting that the use of takfir (excommunication) should be circumscribed. A rough translation is reproduced below. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 February 2018
Ahmad al-Khalayleh (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) [picture via Getty], Muhammad Zaydan (Sayf al-Adel) [picture via Kronos Advisory LLC]
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 15 February 2018
Al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released a speech on 15 February 2018, entitled, “Glad Tidings of Victory To Our People in Egypt”. Al-Zawahiri’s address was the eighth episode of the “Brief Messages To A Victorious Umma (Islamic community or nation)” series. Al-Zawahiri reiterated a theme al-Qaeda has used many times, by referring to the downfall of Muhammad Morsi, the first elected president of Egypt, who was deposed in a military coup d’état in July 2013. Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, had taken part in elections and had tried to find a compact with the non-Islamist sections of the Egyptian state and society, including the felul, the remnants of the fallen tyranny, notably in the military, police, bureaucracy, and judiciary, plus the media and business class. It had served Morsi no good: severely constrained in his authority, Morsi’s government unravelled quickly when these forces came together with foreign sponsors for a putsch. The old regime was restored in Egypt, with the support of Western countries, despite being more violent than ever. For al-Qaeda, the lesson of this episode is clear: without a violent revolution that creates tabula rasa, Islamist politics will not get a chance. An English-language transcript of al-Zawahiri’s speech was made available by al-Qaeda’s media apparatus and is reproduced below. Continue reading
Published at The Arab Weekly
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 11 February 2018
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid out the Trump administration’s vision for Syria, making clear that, contrary to the expectations of many, the United States will stay in Syria beyond the collapse of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) self-proclaimed caliphate, holding the jihadists at bay and establishing an order compatible with US interests.
Crucially, Tillerson—in a sharp break with US President Donald Trump’s predecessor—specified that countering Iranian influence within Syria was a central US objective. The problem with the strategy is that it seems to rely on repurposing the United States’ anti-ISIS Kurdish militia allies against the Iranian revolution. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 9 February 2018
El Shafee Elsheikh (image source) and Alexanda Kotey (image source)
Last night, The New York Times reported and Reuters confirmed that two British Islamic State (IS) jihadists, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, both of them designated terrorists by the United States, have been arrested in Syria. Kotey and Elsheikh, along with the late Mohammed Emwazi (Abu Muharib al-Muhajir) and Aine Davis, formed a four-man cell that has become known as “The Beatles”—hence Emwazi being near-universally known as “Jihadi John”—that guarded, abused, and murdered hostages for IS from before the “caliphate” was founded in 2014. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 February 2018
Salah Abdeslam in prison, April 2016 (image source)
In the 118th edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State’s newsletter, there was an acknowledgment of Salah Abdeslam as a “brother”. Abdeslam is a Belgian citizen of Moroccan extraction, who acted as a logistician and facilitator for the 13 November 2015 massacre in Paris, though failed on the night to carry out his own part in the atrocity. Abdeslam is one of the few conspirators involved in the Paris attacks and the subsequent bombing in Brussels on 22 March 2016 who is still alive.[1] The significance of this is that IS has generally ignored its operatives if they end up being arrested, and Abdeslam is an acute case of this: he has never been acknowledged in IS’s propaganda since the Paris attack, notably being excluded from the twelfth issue of IS’s Dabiq magazine released on 18 November 2015 that named the Paris attackers and described how the operation was carried out. The Naba article is reproduced below. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 5 February 2018
Al-Qaeda’s military leader Muhammad Atef at a press conference in Afghanistan, 26 May 1998 (image source: CNN)
Muhammad Atef, best-known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, but who also went by the names Taseer Abdullah or Taysir Abdullah and Subhi Abu Sitta, was al-Qaeda’s military leader between 1996 and 2001, and one of the three people most responsible for the terrorist attack in the United States on 11 September 2001. Continue reading
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