By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 15 March 2022
Tag Archives: Taha Falaha
Another Islamic State “Caliph” Falls
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 February 2022

The compound where Islamic State leader Amir Muhammad al-Mawla killed himself, 3 February 2021 || Image taken from social media
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
Islamic State Celebrates the Murder of French Schoolteacher
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 24 October 2020

Al-Naba 257, page 3
The 257th edition of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), was released on 22 October. Al-Naba 257 contains an article praising the 16 October murder of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist who accused him of blasphemy for showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Islam’s prophet Muhammad during a class on free speech, but the article does not claim that the Chechen refugee who carried out the assassination, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was an IS operative. Among other things, this is a reminder that IS’s claims of responsibility are not indiscriminate, even if it is believed there have been a couple of incidents of high-profile deception. Continue reading
State Department Offers Bounty for Islamic State Propaganda Official
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 29 May 2020
Last night the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program announced that it would pay $3 million for information leading to the capture or killing of Muhammad Khadr Musa Ramadan, described as “a senior leader of and key propagandist for the Islamic State”. Continue reading
Former Head of Islamic State Executive Committee Speaks
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 23 May 2020
There is now, with various caveats, a general agreement that the Islamic State (IS) is on the upswing—in Iraq, particularly, but also in the Badiya, the desert regions of eastern Syria, and more recently in the south of Syria around Deraa. Still, there have been some recent notable gains against the terrorist group. 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 Appoints New Caliph and Spokesman
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 31 October 2019
Earlier today, the Islamic State (IS) released a speech through Al-Furqan Media by its new spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurayshi. The statement was brief, just under eight minutes, and entitled, “Whosoever Fulfils That Which He Has Promised God, On Him Will He Bestow A Great Reward” (drawn from Qur’anic verse, 48:10). Abu Hamza confirmed that IS’s caliph, Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi), was dead, killed in the American raid in Idlib in the early hours of the morning [Syria time] on 27 October, and that his predecessor, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, was also deceased, killed in an airstrike the day after Al-Baghdadi’s demise. The new IS leader was announced as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi. IS released a transcript of the speech, which is reproduced below with some editions for transliteration and interesting sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading
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