Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 17-74-The Deep Battle against the West

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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 17-74-The Deep Battle against the West

“We will conquer Rome, by the will of Allah.”- 15 Feb 2015“I have a message to these disbelievers who are fighting the Muslims, and to all the

nations taking part in the coalition,” Abaaoud says in a clip played over news footage. “You are the ones who dared to come to the lands of the Muslims to fight them. By Allah! By Alllah! By Allah, you have declared a war that you have lost before even starting it.” -- ISIS fanatics have set up secret camps INSIDE Europe to plan more 'large scale' attacks, warn EU police

Al Qaeda And Isis: Existential Threats To The Us And Europe, StudyThis report is first in the series US Grand Strategy: Destroying ISIS and al Qaeda, a joint project between AEI's Critical Threats Project and the Institute for the Study of War This report is first in the series US Grand Strategy: Destroying ISIS and al Qaeda, a joint project between AEI's Critical Threats Project and the Institute for the Study of WarWhy the need for this series?The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute conducted an intensive multi-week exercise to frame, design, and evaluate potential courses of action that the United States could pursue to defeat the threat from the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) and al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. The planning group weighed the national security interests of the United States, its partners, its rivals, and its enemies operating in or influencing the conflicts in Iraq and Syria. It considered how current policies and interests are interacting in this complex environment. It identified the minimum endstates that would satisfy American national security requirements as well as the likely outcomes of current policies. The group also assessed the threat posed by al Qaeda and ISIS to the United States, both in the immediate and long-term, and tested the probable outcomes of several potential courses of action that the United States could pursue in Iraq and Syria.

ISW and CTP will publish the findings of this exercise in multiple reports. This first report (available below) examines America’s global grand strategic objectives as they relate to the threat from ISIS and al Qaeda. It considers the nature of those enemy groups in depth and in their global context. The second report will define American strategic objectives in Iraq and Syria, along with those of Iran, Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, and will articulate the minimum required conditions of military-political resolutions to conflicts in Iraq and Syria. Subsequent reports will present the planning group’s evaluation of several courses of action. The key findings of this first report are:• Salafi-jihadi military organizations, particularly ISIS and al Qaeda, are the greatest

threat to the security and values of American and European citizens. ISIS and al Qaeda pose an existential threat because they accelerate the collapse of world order, provoke domestic and global trends that endanger American values and way of life, and plan direct attacks against the U.S. and its partners.

• Syrian al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra poses one of the most significant long-term threats of any Salafi-jihadi group. This al Qaeda affiliate has established an expansive network of partnerships with local opposition groups that have grown either dependent on or fiercely loyal to the organization. Its defeat and destruction must be one of the highest priorities of any strategy to defend the United States and

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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Europe from al Qaeda attacks.• ISIS and al Qaeda are more than terrorist groups; they are

insurgencies. They use terrorism as a tactic, but these organizations are insurgencies that aim first to overthrow all existing governments in the Muslim world and replace them with their own, and later, to attack the West from a position of power to spread their ideology to all of humanity. Separating the elements of ISIS and al Qaeda that are actively working to attack the West from the main bodies of those groups fighting in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia is impossible. All al Qaeda groups and ISIS affiliates seek to take the war into the West to fulfill their grand strategic objective of establishing a global caliphate, albeit according to different timelines.

• Current counter-ISIS and –al Qaeda policies do not ensure the safety of the American people or the homeland. The primary objective of the U.S. government remains protecting the homeland and the American people, including safeguarding American values both in the homeland and abroad. The activities of ISIS and al Qaeda interact with the policies of Russia, Iran, and China to endanger the international systems upon which American safety and freedom depend. Any strategy to counter ISIS and al Qaeda will require coalition partners. However, there is no natural coalition of states with common goals that can readily work together to resolve this problem. The U.S. must lead its partners and ensure the continuation of existing guarantors of international security such as NATO.

• American and Western security requires the elimination of ISIS and al Qaeda regional bases and safe havens. Salafi-jihadi groups independent of al Qaeda and ISIS form a base of support from which the enemy draws strength and resilience. ISIS and al Qaeda use the extensive safe haven and infrastructure of locally focused Salafi-jihadi groups to help plan, train, and equip fighters for attacks against the West. Destroying specific cells or nodes actively preparing attacks against the West is not sufficient. Al Qaeda and ISIS will be able to reconstitute the threat as long as Salafi-jihadi military organizations continue to support them.

Editor’s note: The following is the report introduction. Download the complete report at the link.http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2016/01/25/al-qaeda-and-isis-existential-threats-to-the-us-and-europe-study/

IntroductionThe terrorist attacks in Paris, France, and San Bernardino, California have focused the West again on the threat that militant Salafi-jihadi groups pose to its security and way of life. They have provoked France, Britain, and the United States to increase their military efforts against the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. They have demonstrated the fallacy of the idea that ISIS can be indefinitely contained within Iraq and Syria, the Middle East, or even the Muslim-majority world. They have revealed the inadequacy of current strategies to address the threat. These tragedies have thus created space for a serious discussion about the nature of the threat and the responses required to counter it.Pervasive mischaracterizations of the challengeThe current discussion of these attacks is cementing fundamental mischaracterizations of the national security problem, however. It presupposes that there is a single war, that ISIS is the only enemy or adversary in that war, and that defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq is




http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2016/01/25/al-qaeda-and-isis-existential-threats-to-the-us-and-europe-study/

http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2016/01/25/al-qaeda-and-isis-existential-threats-to-the-us-and-europe-study/


tantamount to defeating the organization as a whole. It has given superficial credibility to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call for a grand coalition of

all major powers to unite in the ght against ISIS. It largely ignores al Qaeda, including its powerful franchise in Syria called Jabhat al Nusra (JN). It also downplays the importance of the sectarian war that has engulfed the Middle East. That sectarian conflict is one of the primary drivers of the massive flow of refugees now undermining the integration of Europe, facilitating the destruction of multiple states in the Middle East such as Iraq and Yemen, and encouraging the mobilization and radicalization of global Sunni and Shi’a populations in the face of what increasing numbers of people perceive to be existential threats. Any effort to counter the al Qaeda and ISIS threats will fail as long as conditions on the ground do not change.The media’s and policymakers’ single-minded focus on ISIS encourages Americans to overlook the fundamental incompatibility of Iranian and Russian regional and global objectives with those of the U.S. and Europe. Such a narrow lens ignores Russia’s revisionist grand strategy that links Moscow’s actions in Syria with its continued war in Ukraine, its subversive activities in the Baltics, and its mounting global military aggression. It simplifies an extremely complicated set of multi-actor, multi-theater conflicts into a problem that can be solved through counter-terrorism-targeting and homeland security measures. It guarantees that the West will not design or execute a coherent strategy to secure its vital national interests.The San Bernardino attack in California adds superficial validity to the idea that the U.S. must turn inward to secure itself. It brings to the fore domestic issues such as gun control, law enforcement procedures, immigration policies, religious freedom, profiling, and many others. Each issue is important in its own right, and finding the right balance among competing valid concerns is essential to enhance America’s ability to protect its citizens without compromising the civil liberties and individual rights that are the bedrock of our society.Defensive and internal measures will not adequately protect Americans at home, however. Passivity abroad will facilitate the continued collapse of the international order, including the global economy on which American prosperity and the American way of life depend. More states will fail; more conflict will displace refugees; adversaries will revise borders by force and will contest the freedom of the seas; others will test weapons of mass destruction. The symptoms of the collapsing world order have appeared already: the promises of the Arab Spring have largely failed states; ISIS has overrun the borders of Iraq and Syria; Russia has annexed border provinces in Ukraine; refugees and migrants have overwhelmed Europe and collapsed the Schengen Zone; Iran has red missiles in the Straits of Hormuz; China has built islands to allow it to project power; and North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon. The collapse of world order creates the vacuums that allow Salafi-jihadi military organizations such as al Qaeda and ISIS to amass resources to plan and conduct attacks on scales that could overwhelm any defenses the United States might raise. Even a marginal increase in such attacks could provoke Western societies to impose severe controls on the freedoms and civil liberties of their populations that would damage the very ideals that must most be defended. Sound strategy against these enemies requires effective action against their bases as well appropriate domestic efforts.The inextricable interrelationship between the strength of ISIS and al Qaeda in the Muslim-majority world and the threat of direct attack the groups pose within Europe and the United States is one of the most important findings of this exercise. Attempts to identify and target the specific enemy cells planning, preparing, or executing attacks on the U.S. homeland separately from the larger groups of which those cells are a part will





inevitably fail to protect the American people. The regional bases of ISIS and al Qaeda provide a pool of resources and specific capabilities that will enable

them to direct growing numbers of sophisticated attacks into the West whenever they so desire. American and Western security requires the elimination of ISIS and al Qaeda regional bases and safe havens.There are multiple, separate wars ongoing at the start of 2016. Many share belligerents. The war in Yemen stems from a geopolitical struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia that has been gravely exacerbated by the ongoing war in Syria. A broader regional war in the Middle East may emerge as the Saudi-Iranian conflict escalates. Russia’s establishment of an airbase in Syria close to Turkey’s border on NATO’s southern flank connects the war in Syria with that in Ukraine, as both challenge the brittle alliance. The United States must prevent the separate wars from merging into a general war, involving great powers, regional powers, and non-state actors. Such a situation may not be imminent, but it is possible and can stress the United States beyond anything we now see in January 2016.Goals and methods of this planning exerciseThe Institute for the Study of War and the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute have conducted an intensive multi-week effort to develop and evaluate various possible courses of action.

The exercise began with a complete re-consideration of the vital national security interests and objectives of the United States, its partners, rivals such as Russia and Iran, and its enemies including both ISIS and al Qaeda. The exercise also considered the nature of the current international environment in which many factors are undermining global order,





stability, and international laws and norms. It evaluated the threat posed by the persistence of safe havens for al Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq and Syria as

distinct from the individual cells of those organizations planning and conducting attacks in the West. The group then designed and tested many possible courses of action to mitigate and, if possible, eliminate these conditions and the threats.None of the courses of action we examined, including a continuation or minor modification of the current strategy, achieved American national security objectives. The planning team is therefore continuing to examine other approaches to the problem and re-evaluating its assessments as circumstances on the ground change.Debate about Western strategy toward Iraq and Syria continues in the U.S. and Europe, however, and negotiations between some Syrian opposition groups and the Assad government are scheduled to start on January 25, 2016. Examinations of American grand strategic interests and of the nature of the enemy groups and the threat they pose to the U.S. and the West should inform all of these discussions. We have decided, therefore, not to wait until we have completed developing possible courses of action to begin presenting our findings.The planning group will thus present its results in several publications. This first paper examines American global grand strategic objectives as they relate to the threat from ISIS and al Qaeda. It also considers the nature of those groups from ideological, structural, and military perspectives and evaluates the relationship between the territory and resources those groups possess in the Muslim world and the direct violent threat they pose within the United States and Europe.The second paper will present the group’s assessment of American strategic objectives in Iraq and Syria in light of the issues considered in this first report. It will also describe the interests and objectives of Russia, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia in Iraq and Syria as they relate to the overall goals of those states. It will then articulate the minimum conditions that a political-military resolution of the conflicts in Iraq and Syria must meet in order to meet U.S. national security requirements.The group will publish one or more additional papers describing in detail the specific courses of action we have evaluated, assessments of their results and whether or not they would achieve core American security objectives, the risks they pose to those objectives, and approaches to mitigating those risks. These results will most likely appear in February 2016.Conclusion. Americans must confront the magnitude of the security disaster we face squarely, neither simplifying the challenges nor minimizing the requirements. Yet we must not throw up our hands in despair and retreat behind our own walls. Retreat will cause a terrible situation to become much worse and will raise the cost and difficulty of repairing it in the future by orders of magnitude. Enemies and adversaries, such as al Qaeda and ISIS, will thrive. Focusing inwardly and defensively will severely undermine core American values suchas liberty and diversity. Retreat will accelerate the collapse of the global order and economy, thereby severely damaging America’s prosperity and the well-being of all Americans.The argument for caution, passivity, and delay is easy to make. The desire to turn away from so vexing and complicated a problem is strong. Nothing about the situation in Syria, Iraq, or in the Middle East generally inspires optimism. But inaction is also action, and refusal to choose among bad options is a form of decision. Drifting along the current path in order to avoid dangerous and unpleasant action will almost certainly fail to achieve vital American national security interests and will put the safety of the American people and their allies in greater danger. The U.S. must choose a new course, risky and costly as it





will surely be. This project will ultimately recommend such a course as it evaluates options, but its primary purpose is to reframe the debate and

discussion in the hopes of igniting well-grounded creative thinking that may produce a better way out of the shadows in which we now find ourselves.

Libya: ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Brotherhood towards Integration. Members of ISIS carrying out flogging punishment on people in LibyaTripoli- Confidential documents reviewed by Asharq Al-Awsat revealed a plan made by senior leaders in ISIS, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda, and the Islamic Brotherhood in Libya to integrate into a unified “Shura Council”.The documents reflect the existence of a state of confusion among the leaders of the extremist groups following the signing of the National Reconciliation Government agreement led by Fayez Al-Siraj. These organizations headed towards integration to limit the internal conflicts, which emerged between a number of their leaders due to external interventions. A leader in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group told some of his colleagues from Tripoli leaderships that his group has lost its prestige due to the weakness of al-Qaeda and the strength of ISIS. He added that the situation now requires integration with ISIS and that Tripoli must now be for Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and the Islamic Brotherhood, led by ISIS. According to documents, a meeting was held at Mitiga International Airport in Tripoli between Al-Madhuni Battalion commander and an envoy to the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, called Sufian al-Ghazali. Security monitoring operations in Libya of the leaders of the three organizations since the beginning of last month have revealed their agreement on increasing their activity in the neighbouring countries, and expanding the operations of extremists in Egypt from Rafah and Sheikh Zuid in Sinai to Cairo and Alexandria.

The Syrian operative claimed more than 4,000 covert ISIS gunmen had been smuggled into western nations – hidden amongst innocent refugees. The ISIS smuggler, who is in his thirties and is described as having a trimmed jet-black beard, revealed the ongoing clandestine operation is a complete success.

"They are going like refugees," "Others just go to Europe to be ready." he said. "Just wait," he smiled.

ISIS fanatics have set up secret camps INSIDE Europe to plan more 'large scale' attacks, warn EU policeEurope's elite police force warns ISIS has a new 'combat style capability'Report said ISIS was preparing more attacks to be executed within the EUEuropol said there was threat of both lone actor attacks as well as groupSmall terrorist training camps thought to be set up in EU and the Balkans





Islamic State are plotting mass casualty terror atrocities in Europe following the massacres in France last year, the EU’s crime-fighting agency has warned.The terror group claims have to hundreds of militants in countries across the continent ready to bring murder and mayhem to the streets, said Europol.This militants have set up a specialist command after carrying out horrifying strikes against Western targets, including the machine gun assault and suicide bombings which murdered 130 people in Paris last November.Concern: Europol has warned that the Islamic State has honed its ability to launch global attacks. Pictured, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of the Paris terror attacks which cost 130 people their lives last year A report by Europol, the agency set up to share intelligence, crime-fighting techniques and bolster cross-border police co-operation, said there was ‘every reason’ to expect another IS attack.

It said: ‘There is every reason to expect that IS, IS-inspired terrorists or another religiously inspired terrorist group will undertake a terrorist attack somewhere in Europe again, intended to cause mass casualties amongst the civilian population.

‘This is in addition to the threat of lone actor attacks, which has not diminished.’IS is preparing more strikes by marauding machinegun-wielding gunmen that echo the Mumbai atrocities in 2008 after repeating the tactics in the French capital.Intelligence suggested IS had developed an ‘external actions command’ trained for Special Forces-style operations abroad, said the report. It said: ‘The attacks will be primarily directed at soft targets, because of the impact it generates. Both the November Paris attacks and the October 2015 bombing of a Russian airliner suggest a shift in IS strategy towards going global.’

New attacks are also likely against critical infrastructure such as power grids and nuclear facilities not currently seen as a priority for IS.

The jihadists are also thought to have set up small terror training camps in the EU and Balkans, the report added.

The report on changes in the way Islamist terror groups operated was published at the launch of a European Counter Terrorism Centre based in the The Hague, the Netherlands. It came as IS released a video on Sunday purporting to show nine of the jihadists who attacked Paris in which they threaten ‘coalition countries’ including Britain.Europol director Rob Wainwright said Islamic State had ‘developed a new combat-style capability to carry out a campaign of large-scale terrorist attacks on a global stage, with a particular focus in Europe.’

He added: ‘So-called Islamic State has a willingness and a capability to carry out further attacks in Europe, and of course all national authorities are working to prevent that from happening.’ Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has called on all Muslims to rise up and overthrow the West.

Last year Andrew Parker, director general of the security agency, said Islamic State terrorists were planning mass casualty attacks in Britain. He said threats from homegrown jihadis who want to fight for the militant movement showed no sign of abating.





There are now more than 4,000 covert ISIS gunmen "ready" across the European Union, he claimed. The operative said the undercover infiltration

was the beginning of a larger plot to carry out revenge attacks in the West in retaliation for the US-led coalition airstrikes. He said: "If someone attacks me then for sure I will attack them back." He said: "It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world," he said "and we will have it soon, God willing.

Islamic State extremists are taking advantage of developed nations' generosity towards refugees to infiltrate Europe, he said. He said: "There are some things I’m allowed to tell you and some things I’m not."

During the meeting, the operative said he believed future attacks would only target Western governments – not civilians.

When the wave of refugees from Syria reached its peak in September, European politicians opened wide their borders. Ever so compassionate, they welcomed the refugees by the thousands and reassured their citizens that their acts of kindness would not jeopardize national security.

However, by so doing, they completely disregarded reality—not to mention the warnings from both terrorists and counterterrorism experts

Counterterrorism experts themselves say it’s impossible to thoroughly vet the Syrians seeking refuge in American cities. About that vetting process, FBI director James Comey said in October:

We can only query against that which we have collected. And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database till the cows come home, but [nothing will] show up because we have no record on that person.

Prior to the Paris attacks, in September, the Islamic State had claimed that 4,000 of its terrorists had already traveled to Europe disguised as Syrian refugees.

It was French national Salim Benghalem who masterminded the Paris attacks, according to a terrorism research body challenging the widely accepted notion that the organizer was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian.Salim Benghalem was “the brain” behind the bloody attacks on November 13, while Abdelhamid Abaaoud was only a “coordinator,” Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium (TRAC) told Belgian newspaper De Morgen.Benghalem prepared the attacks from Syria, where he has lived since 2013, TRAC says.“What is described as a group or a cell is in fact a large company that uses the same network logistics to bring its terrorists from Syria to Europe,” Veryan Khan, the director of TRAC, told De Morgen.

New ISIS video features ‘last words’ of Paris attackers, threats to UKPublished time: 25 Jan, 2016 02:01





Islamic State has released a new 17-minute video featuring the Paris attackers apparently participating in gruesome murders somewhere in an undisclosed desert location before they infiltrated the EU and subsequently conducted attacks in the French capital.TrendsFrance terror attacks, Islamic StateWhile the video is yet to be authenticated, the footage uploaded to Islamic State’s official Telegram messaging service account shows Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) extremists wearing camouflaged outfits, sending out chilling warnings to EU heads of state for their countries’ actions in the Middle East. Subtitled in French and Arabic, the video claims to be a message addressed to all the countries, which due their policies decided to engage in battle against the terror organization in Syria and Iraq. The clip features bulls eye graphics placed over photographs of world leaders including French president Francois Hollande and UK Prime Minister David Cameron with a target pointed directly at his head. The video concludes with text over Cameron’s image, that threatens death to all non-believers who stand against the self-proclaimed caliphate’s ambitions.The French Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the video, after Reuter's request. The UK Prime Minister's office or the Interior Ministry is also yet to comment on the footage. However Laith Alkhouri of Flashpoint Global Partners, which monitors militants’ social media activity, told Reuters that the “video meets all the right criteria of an authentic and official ISIS release.”

Before Paris attack, Islamic State terrorists committed grisly executionsBY THOMAS JOSCELYN | January 25, 2016 | [email protected] | @thomasjoscelynThe terrorists responsible for the Nov. 13, 2015 coordinated assaults in Paris are featured in a new Islamic State video.A new video released by the Islamic State (titled “Kill Them Wherever You Find Them”) features the terrorists responsible for the Nov. 13, 2015 attacks in Paris. Several of the jihadists are shown executing captives in Iraq and Syria. They threaten the West and implore Muslims to join the “caliphate’s” cause as they behead or shoot their victims from behind. The footage was filmed in the months before the coordinated assault in France’s capital city.Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s men claim France deserves to be terrorized because of its role in the anti-Islamic State coalition. But their grisly executions of helpless victims undermine their rationale, demonstrating why the West was compelled to intervene in Syria in the first place, as well as in Iraq once again. In fact, the Islamic State’s sadistic videos played a significant role in convincing Western leaders to join the air campaign.The first Islamic State member to speak at length is Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Umar al Baljiki. European officials have identified Abaaoud, who was killed during a counterterrorism raid after the Paris massacres, as a key figure in the plot. The Islamic State’s English-language Dabiq magazine published an interview with Abaaoud in early 2015. “I have a message to these disbelievers who are fighting the Muslims, and to all the nations taking part in the coalition,” Abaaoud says in a clip played over news footage.





“You are the ones who dared to come to the lands of the Muslims to fight them. By Allah! By Alllah! By Allah, you have declared a war that you have

lost before even starting it.” (A screen shot can be seen on the right. Abaaoud is in the lower right hand corner.)After threatening to kill Westerners in their homes, Abaaoud says the Islamic State’s terror is a result of their government’s policies.“All this is a result of your policy — your policy of war — or I should say, the policy of your rulers,” Abaaoud claims. “Indeed, you voted for these rulers, and this is the result. The result is that your rulers have declared a war whose consequences they will not be able to bear.”Abaaoud refers to the Western-led coalition’s airstrikes, arguing that the jihadists’ attacks have been carried out in retaliation. “By Allah, as long as you continue to direct airstrikes against us, and as long as you continue to declare war and fight the Muslims, we will not stop fighting you in every part of the world, regardless of whether you are on a tourism trip or a work trip, or are fast asleep in your homes.”“You, along with more than 70 other nations, formed a coalition to fight the Islamic State,” Abaaoud says. “But you will not be able to stop it. By Allah, this is just the beginning.”After Abaaoud’s appearance, the video shows several of his accomplices in succession. Some of them execute bound victims before or after they address the camera.“I was sent by Amir ul-Mu’minin [“Emir of the Faithful”] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Husayni al-Qurashi (may Allah safeguard him) to cleanse the earth of disbelievers, whoever they may be and wherever they may be,” a jihadist known as Abu Qital al Faransi says.Al Faransi continues: “By Allah, we have come to you with slaughter, and indeed our knives come closer to your throats day after day. And by Allah, we will fight you — with Allah’s permission — in the heart of Paris and at the corner of the Eiffel Tower.”Although al Faransi refers to the “heart of Paris” and the “Eiffel Tower,” he may not have had the specific Nov. 13, 2015 plot in mind. His threat may have been only a general one at the time he spoke. Al Faransi goes on to criticize the Muslims in France who have not joined the Islamic State’s cause.Another member of the Paris terror cell, identified as Dhul Qarnayn Al Baljiki, also addresses the French directly. “This is a small message to all those who voted for…[French President Francois] Hollande, the dog of the White House,” Al Baljiki says. Frances’s “hands have been tainted with blood,” he claims, because the people elected a “president who today bombs our Muslim brothers in Mali, Sham, and Iraq.”The video confirms that all of the jihadists who took part in the Paris attacks fought for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria beforehand. Although they do not say that they were acting under Baghdadi’s orders on the night of Nov. 13, that is the clear implication of their testimony. One of the final jihadists to speak, known as Abu Rayyan al Faransi, explains “it is an order from Amir ul-Mu’minin Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (may Allah safeguard him) to fight you in your lands.”The propaganda production ends with a threat to Britain. An onscreen caption (shown above) warns that whoever stands with the disbelievers will be targeted. British Prime Minister David Cameron is shown standing in the background.Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for The Long War Journal.




Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 17-74-The Deep Battle against the West

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