In a video posted online on September 14th, as-Sahab, al-Qaeda's media wing, released a video entitled "And We Are Enraging Them". In this new propaganda video, Ayman al-Zawahri and Hassam Abd al-Rauf discuss 9/11 and how the United States has dealt with al-Qaeda in the thirteen years since.
Abd al-Rauf starts off by saying that since Usama bin Laden's death three years ago, "there has been an intense media campaign meant to prove that Qaeda al-Jihad is on the decline and that the central leadership has lost control of its branches..". He then goes on to quote a US State Dept report that talks about how the instability in the Middle East and North Africa have left al-Qaeda to take advantage of said instability for their own gains; but, the report also mentions that drone strikes have severely degraded al-Qaeda's capabilities. Al-Rauf then begins to asks, "So how can al-Qaeda have shrunken greatly and lost many of its senior leaders, when it is expanding horizontally and opening new fronts against it?'
This last bit is undoubtedly a reference to three new al-Qaeda affiliates since the death of Osama bin Laden; this groups are ash-Shabaab in Somalia, Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, and most recently, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). In early September, al-Qaeda announced the creation of a new branch in the Indian subcontinent. They said that "This entity was not established today, but it is the fruit of a blessed effort for more than two years to gather the mujahideen in the Indian subcontinent into a single entity to be with the main group, Qaedat al-Jihad, from the soldiers of the Islamic Emirate and its triumphant emir, Allah permitting, Emir of the Believers Mullah Muhammad Omar Mujahid," according to the Long War Journal.
AQIS is likely comprised of the various jihadist groups in the AfPak region that already support al-Qaeda there. These groups are the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Junud al-Fida, Haqqani Network, Harakat-ul-Muhajideen, Harakat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and Brigade 313, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and other groups based in the region.
An English speaking narrator then comes in and cites several paragraphs from American Enterprise Institute's Katherine Zimmerman in her report, The al-Qaeda Network: A New Framework for Defining the Enemy. The narrator specifically quotes, " Al Qaeda has been the most lethal and effective
enemy of the United States since the end of the Vietnam War". He then quotes, "Despite the
modest shift in counterterrorism focus and a significant investment of political and military capital toward the fight against al Qaeda over the past 12 years, the United States has not achieved its objective of dismantling the organization or ensuring that al Qaeda and its associates are unable to attack Americans successfully again".
Shifts to Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia
The video then shifts to Afghanistan, where they discuss how the United States have committed several "atrocities" and murders in homes, marketplaces, and other residential areas. They use a video clip of Jeremy Scahill, author of Dirty Wars, discussing a raid he read about where United States special operations forces killed an innocent woman in her home.
The video then shifts to Yemen where they discuss the United States' drone program in that country. They again use video footage of Scahill, this time reporting in Yemen about the aforementioned drone strikes.
After awhile, the video shifts to Somalia. Here, they discuss how Shabaab militants were able to killed over 100 Burundian forces in a battle in Somalia. They discuss how this was a victory over the "proxies of the Crusader 'super' powers".
The video then ends with Osama bin Laden discussing the 9/11 attacks, the meaning behind them, and the significance of the attacks.
Conclusion
It is clear that this video was intended by al-Qaeda to be as a rebuttal to claims that they are "on the path to defeat" and that they are "irrelevant" since the Islamic State has now taken the media's attention. But just because the media's attention is on IS, does not mean that al-Qaeda is no longer a threat. They are. While some defectors have left their various regional branches, al-Qaeda still retains the loyalty of all of its regional heads and branches and have even created a new branch in the Indian subcontinent in recent weeks. As they said in the video, it is hard to say a group is decimated, defeated, irrelevant, etc. when they keep expanding.
-- Caleb
Edit: The video has since been deleted.
Abd al-Rauf starts off by saying that since Usama bin Laden's death three years ago, "there has been an intense media campaign meant to prove that Qaeda al-Jihad is on the decline and that the central leadership has lost control of its branches..". He then goes on to quote a US State Dept report that talks about how the instability in the Middle East and North Africa have left al-Qaeda to take advantage of said instability for their own gains; but, the report also mentions that drone strikes have severely degraded al-Qaeda's capabilities. Al-Rauf then begins to asks, "So how can al-Qaeda have shrunken greatly and lost many of its senior leaders, when it is expanding horizontally and opening new fronts against it?'
This last bit is undoubtedly a reference to three new al-Qaeda affiliates since the death of Osama bin Laden; this groups are ash-Shabaab in Somalia, Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, and most recently, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). In early September, al-Qaeda announced the creation of a new branch in the Indian subcontinent. They said that "This entity was not established today, but it is the fruit of a blessed effort for more than two years to gather the mujahideen in the Indian subcontinent into a single entity to be with the main group, Qaedat al-Jihad, from the soldiers of the Islamic Emirate and its triumphant emir, Allah permitting, Emir of the Believers Mullah Muhammad Omar Mujahid," according to the Long War Journal.
AQIS is likely comprised of the various jihadist groups in the AfPak region that already support al-Qaeda there. These groups are the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Junud al-Fida, Haqqani Network, Harakat-ul-Muhajideen, Harakat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and Brigade 313, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and other groups based in the region.
An English speaking narrator then comes in and cites several paragraphs from American Enterprise Institute's Katherine Zimmerman in her report, The al-Qaeda Network: A New Framework for Defining the Enemy. The narrator specifically quotes, " Al Qaeda has been the most lethal and effective
enemy of the United States since the end of the Vietnam War". He then quotes, "Despite the
modest shift in counterterrorism focus and a significant investment of political and military capital toward the fight against al Qaeda over the past 12 years, the United States has not achieved its objective of dismantling the organization or ensuring that al Qaeda and its associates are unable to attack Americans successfully again".
Shifts to Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia
The video then shifts to Afghanistan, where they discuss how the United States have committed several "atrocities" and murders in homes, marketplaces, and other residential areas. They use a video clip of Jeremy Scahill, author of Dirty Wars, discussing a raid he read about where United States special operations forces killed an innocent woman in her home.
The video then shifts to Yemen where they discuss the United States' drone program in that country. They again use video footage of Scahill, this time reporting in Yemen about the aforementioned drone strikes.
After awhile, the video shifts to Somalia. Here, they discuss how Shabaab militants were able to killed over 100 Burundian forces in a battle in Somalia. They discuss how this was a victory over the "proxies of the Crusader 'super' powers".
The video then ends with Osama bin Laden discussing the 9/11 attacks, the meaning behind them, and the significance of the attacks.
Conclusion
It is clear that this video was intended by al-Qaeda to be as a rebuttal to claims that they are "on the path to defeat" and that they are "irrelevant" since the Islamic State has now taken the media's attention. But just because the media's attention is on IS, does not mean that al-Qaeda is no longer a threat. They are. While some defectors have left their various regional branches, al-Qaeda still retains the loyalty of all of its regional heads and branches and have even created a new branch in the Indian subcontinent in recent weeks. As they said in the video, it is hard to say a group is decimated, defeated, irrelevant, etc. when they keep expanding.
-- Caleb
Edit: The video has since been deleted.