Professor Eli Karmon comments on Jihadi magazine

On May 2, 2012, Issues 8 and 9 of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's English-language jihadi magazine Inspire were posted, probably to balance the Obama’s administration’s celebrations of the killing of Osama bin Laden (see president’s Obama visit to Afghanistan).

It is interesting to note that the two issues are actually a panegyric to dead “martyr” leaders of AQAP and al-Qaeda, mainly the Yemeni/American Anwar Al-'Awlaki. In the various articles many other leaders killed during the last year or two are also mentioned, in striking contrast to the declarations of future victories of the jihadists.  

On the operational level, it should be noted the publication of the strategy proposed by Abu Musab al-Suri in his previous writings, which seem to show that this is still considered valid  by AQAP and al-Qaeda.

See attached al-Suri’s documents taken from Inspire 8 and 9 relating to “The main arenas for operation for individual Jihad” and “The most important enemy targets aimed at by the individual jihad.”

In the framework of what it calls Open Source Jihad, Inspire publishes operational advice on Training with the handgun by Abu Saleh and Remote Control Detonation by Dr. Khateer.

Inspire No. 9 has an interesting article on “The ruling of burning the forests in the land of the kuffar enemies” by Shaykh Harith Al Nadari and “Qualities of an Urban assassin.”.

Finally, there is an attempt in Inspire No. 9 to demonstrate “the enormous differences” between the jihadists and the Norwegian “Christian terrorist” Anders Behring Breivik.  A subject that should be analyzed separately.

It is of note that there is only one citation from Ayaman al-Zawahiri (Inspire 9) and only one article by Osama bin-Laden (Inspire 8).

Ely Karmon, Ph.D.

Senior Research Scholar

International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) and

The Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) at

The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC)

Herzlyia, Israel

Tel.:   972-9-9527277

Cell.: 972-52-2653306

Fax.: 972-9-9513073, 972-9-7716653

E-mail: ekarmon@idc.ac.il

Web: http://www.ict.org.il/