By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 23, 2020
A chapter about Islamism in Syria I wrote for the American Foreign Policy Council’s (AFPC) ‘World Almanac of Islamism’ was published today. Do check it out, and the broader site, which is a great, accessible resource. The format of the website necessitated that the chapter as I submitted it was edited, condensed, and split up to fill out the various categories. In case it is of any interest, the original version of the chapter is reproduced below.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 4, 2020
A chapter about Al-Qaeda I wrote for the American Foreign Policy Council’s (AFPC) ‘World Almanac of Islamism’ was published today. Do check it out, and the broader site, which is a great, accessible resource. The format of the website necessitated that the chapter as I submitted it was edited, condensed, and split up to fill out the various categories. In case it is of any interest, the original version of the chapter is reproduced below.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 September 2020
Al-Naba 252, page 3
The 252nd edition of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), was released on 17 September.
Al-Naba 252 contained reports of guerrilla attacks and targeted assassinations at the Centre—against Iraqi security forces and the Iranian proxy militias in the Hashd al-Shabi in Iraq, and against the SDF/PKK in eastern Syria—and the “West African State”, Chad and Niger specifically. IS has been making the Maghreb a primary front since the caliphate collapsed. There was, as ever, the ideological essay on page eleven (of twelve).
The two most notable aspects of Al-Naba 252—expanded on below—were the devotion of the main editorial on page three to an attack on the Taliban for the deal they have made with the Americans over Afghanistan, and IS finally claiming responsibility for the murder of the French aid workers in Niger on 9 August, while continuing its ideological war with Al-Qaeda in Africa. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 11, 2020
In writing a chapter earlier this year about the current status of Al-Qaeda, part of the process was reviewing the organisation’s history since its formation in the late 1980s. What really struck me was how extensively Al-Qaeda is now manipulated, under the influence of, and in places even controlled by state powers. To mark the nineteenth anniversary of 9/11, I thought I could give a brief sketch of this development.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 August 2020
Al-Naba 248
The Islamic State (IS) produced the 248th edition of Al-Naba, its newsletter, on 20 August. The front page was devoted to recent events in Yemen, which had not gone well for IS—although one could easily miss that fact when reading a story that a focuses almost entirely on enemy casualties and the failures of others. IS is, of course, not pleased about the Israeli normalisation of relations with the United Arab Emirates, but Al-Naba makes clear that it is more perturbed that Muslims should believe Turkey or Qatar are any better than the U.A.E., despite their different approach to Islamists. Al-Naba 248 documents IS’s continuing advances in Afghanistan—and, indeed, Iraq, Syria, Africa (the Sahel), and Egypt. There is also a report of insurgent activity in the Philippines. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 21 August 2020
Al-Naba 246, front page, 6 August 2020
The Islamic State (IS) published the 246th edition of its newsletter, Al-Naba, on 6 August, which highlighted the 2-3 August prison break in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, a massive IS operation lasting twenty-plus hours, and proclaimed that freeing IS jihadists from prisons will now be a priority for the group. In 2012, shortly after the American withdrawal from Iraq, IS announced Operation BREAKING THE WALLS, which went on for a year, breaking open Iraqi prisons. The narrative of the IS’s “defeat” by the Surge and Awakening of 2007-08 is problematic in some of its fundamentals, but among the reasons it proved to be so fleeting in practice was this prison-break campaign that restored to the battlefield key IS operatives who planned the caliphate project in 2014. It is, therefore, alarming to see the arrival of such a campaign in Afghanistan at the moment the U.S. is headed, heedlessly, for the exit. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 13 June 2020
Ghanima (war spoils) captured by Islamic State in Sabha, Libya [Al-Naba 181, 9 May 2019]
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 12 June 2020
Ismail Nazlikul (Kasim Engin) [image source]
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 11 June 2020
France announced last Friday that its forces in Mali had killed Abd al-Malek Drukdel (Abu Musab Abd al-Wadud), the emir of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which covers the North Africa and Sahel areas. Paris has sometimes been unreliable on these matters, but the United States independently confirmed Drukdel was gone, as have sources within AQIM. The French also announced that on 19 May they had arrested Mohamed Mrabat, a veteran jihadist and member of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS). Continue readingBy 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
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