By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 31 July 2023
The Death of Al-Qaeda’s Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri: One Year On
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Tag Archives: Sahwa
The World Cup in Qatar and “Personal Freedom” Make the Islamic State Very Angry
The ‘Strategic Plan’ of the Islamic State
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 August 2022
Islamic State and “Breaking the Walls”: Jihadist Prison Breaks
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 January 2022
Islamic State car bombing against Al-Sinaa prison in Syria, 20 January 2022 [image source]
The Spokesman’s Response When the Islamic State Went to War With the Syrian Rebellion
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 24 May 2021
Taha Falaha (Abu Muhammad al-Adnani) is probably most famous for the September 2014 speech he made as the official spokesman for the Islamic State (IS) calling for international terrorist attacks, which initiated a wave of atrocities in Europe and beyond lasting about three years. But Falaha had been in office by that time, formally, since the summer of 2011, and in total he would make two-dozen speeches before he was killed at the end of August 2016. The twelfth speech, entitled, “The Scout Doesn’t Lie to His People”, and reproduced below,[1] was made on 7 January 2014, four days after the onset of a massive assault on IS by the Syrian rebellion that inter alia killed senior jihadist commanders like Samir al-Khlifawi (Haji Bakr or Abu Bakr al-Iraqi). What is interesting about this speech, as revealed in the recent Al-Naba profile of Falaha’s great friend and collaborator, the media emir Wael al-Ta’i (Abu Muhammad al-Furqan), is that Falaha composed this speech while he was besieged by the rebels in Aleppo. Al-Ta’i had evacuated the IS media department and their families, then slipped back into the area surrounded by the rebels to help Falaha compose IS’s first political counter-measure to this unexpected development in Syria, which was followed nearly a fortnight afterwards by a speech from the caliph himself, Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi). Continue reading
The First “Interview” with the Islamic State’s War Minister (2008)
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 April 2021
The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) released a forty-five-minute media product, “The First Audio Interview with Shaykh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir”, on 24 October 2008. A translated transcript of the interview is reproduced below, with some interesting and important sections highlighted in bold.
The Dissolution of Al-Qaeda in Iraq
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 17 January 2021
One of the few pictures in existence of Abd al-Munim al-Badawi (Abu Hamza al-Muhajir)
Abd al-Munim al-Badawi (Abu Hamza al-Muhajir) had become the leader of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM) after its founder, Ahmad al-Khalayleh, much better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had been killed in June 2006. AQM was the dominant faction within the Islamic State (IS) when it was announced in October 2006 as a merger of jihadist insurgents, and for that reason most analysts at the time considered IS a “front” for AQM. When IS’s emir, Hamid al-Zawi (Abu Umar al-Baghdadi), made his first speech in December 2006 affirming the statehood declaration, most read this as the foreign-led AQM putting an Iraqi face on their enterprise. In fact, as can now be seen, dynamics were essentially as presented by the jihadists.
Crucial was a speech Al-Badawi gave on 10 November 2006, his fifth of what would prove to be fifteen, released by Al-Furqan Media Foundation within IS’s “ministry of information”, entitled, “I’na al-Hukm I’la Allah” (إن الحكم إلا لله), something like “Judgment is Only for God” or “Judgment is God’s Only”, where he gave his bay’a (oath of allegiance) to Al-Zawi, put AQM’s troops under Al-Zawi’s command, and effectively dissolved Al-Qaeda’s presence in Iraq. A transcript of the speech is available here, and a summary of the speech is below. Continue reading
Islamic State Spokesman Vows Revenge Against Enemies, Plays the Israel Card
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 21 February 2020
The Islamic State’s (IS) spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurayshi, gave his second speech on 27 January 2020. The speech was entitled, “Allah Destroyed Everything Over Them, and for the Kafireen is Something Comparable”, by IS’s official English translation. The title is drawn from the Qur’an, the Surah of Muhammad (47), verse 10. The verse can be rendered as, “God Destroyed Them Completely, and a Similar Fate Awaits the Disbelievers”. Below is a copy of the transcript of Abu Hamza’s speech, with some editions for transliteration and translation, and some interesting sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading
The First Speech of Islamic State Spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 7 November 2019
Taha Falaha (Abu Muhammad al-Adnani) [right] appearing in an Islamic State video alongside Tarkhan Batirashvili (Abu Umar al-Shishani, 3 June 2017, displaying a scene from 2014 when IS demolished the borders between Iraq and Syria. Falaha was killed in August 2016. It is common for IS to hold back pictures and footage of its leaders for time-spans that can reach over a decade.
Islamic State Profiles the Leadership
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 6 April 2019
Islamic State flag in front of the main gate of Saddam Husayn’s palace in Tikrit, 5 April 2015 // AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED SAWAF
A lengthy document—roughly sixty pages and 12,000 words—was published online on 21 February 2019 containing biographies of twenty-seven senior Islamic State (IS) officials, past and more recent. Those bios that are dated were written between October 2018 and the time of publication, with one exception that was written in the summer of 2018. The author claims to be an IS veteran. While longevity is difficult to prove, the fact that the author provides heretofore unseen images of some of the IS leaders suggests that at a minimum he is an IS operative. Continue reading
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