Counterterrorism Blog

This past week has been interesting for the sudden re-emergence of the high-profile al Qaeda/salafist propaganda machine, showing a broad range of Islamist actions to demonstrate the movement is alive and well, and triumph is inevitable.

The different fronts in the propaganda war are interesting and seem to have some coordination, at least the timing if not the entire scope of all the messages.

We get the publishing a slick web zine, the "Voice of Jihad," after a two-year hiatus, including directions from Osama bin Laden to attack oil facilities; a Zawahiri interview blasting Bush for fairly current events; the release of videos by al Qaeda in Afghanistan, supposedly showing attacks on Coalition forces; and, as Evan Kohlmann finds new video releases by Al Qaeda in Iraq, including the biographies of foreign troops killed there.

This media onslaught is not a small accomplishment, especially given the relatively good quality of the products. They are far better than some of the recent jihadi websites out of the Salafist forces in Somalia, for example. My full blog is here.