Two Months in the Life of the Islamic State
This newsletter has tried to keep an eye on what the Islamic State (IS) is saying in its weekly publication, Al-Naba, but with Russia’s war on Ukraine taking up so much time recently—about which Al-Naba had things to say—and some other projects, plus one or two anniversaries, that ball has been dropped in the last couple of months. So, this post is intended as a brief catch-up, to see where IS focused its messaging in Al-Naba between late May and late July.
Of the eleven issues of Al-Naba looked at, nine of them had Africa on their front pages. IS’s prominence in West Africa has been a fact for some time and this is generally what was reflected on the front pages, with regular reports of (often quite large-scale) attacks in Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Mali; the one exception was the front page from Egypt. Within the Naba issues covered, IS’s expansion in Africa was shown in the regular reports from the Congo and Mozambique, where Christians are being weekly terrorised: the death toll is not always massive, but particularly in Mozambique the scale of the displacement as IS burns Christian villages is alarming. (IS has highlighted this war with Africa’s Christians in January.) And IS’s operations have returned to Somalia, albeit at a low scale.
A steady tempo of attacks was reported weekly by IS at the “Centre”, against the security forces and Shi’a and tribal militias in Iraq and against the SDF/PKK in Syria, though there were two reports of IS attacks against the regime in southern Syria. The escalation of the kind of insurgent attacks, and to some degree the spread of their locations in “Syraq”, as well as the reported reappearance of fake checkpoints, suggest IS gained strength at the Centre during the examined period. The same regularity of activity was reported from Afghanistan and into Pakistan, generally in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (former North-West Frontier Province) but on one occasion much further into the country, in Balochistan. There were also claimed operations in the Philippines and India, where IS rarely manages attacks, and one from Yemen, a first in two years for IS.
Far and away the most important editorial was the call, in mid-June, for foreign jihadists to begin making their way to Africa. A lot of the editorials focused on familiar themes—IS’s version of Islam as the only true one, justified by references to historical episodes and scholars—and agitated against familiar enemies, namely: atheists, Jews, Christians, and other Islamists. The other two editorials that stand out, both also in June, were: IS’s incitement for Muslims to use violence in non-Muslim-majority societies where they live, in the West and India, to enforce Islamic blasphemy codes; and the one country-specific editorial, which targeted Saudi Arabia, specifically its prison system, presented as a kind of GULAG for jihadists that should be broken open by any means necessary. A suicide bomber who attacked a Saudi prison in 2015 is cited as the model.
The front page of Al-Naba 339 (19 May) focuses on Egypt, which does not happen often. IS celebrates several attacks in the Sinai, including Rafah city, which killed and wounded a dozen members of the Egyptian army and “the MOSSAD militia”, i.e. the Sinai Tribes Union (STU), created out of the Sinai tribes late in 2021 and working alongside the Egyptian military to combat the jihadists. The insurgent and terrorist attacks documented in Al-Naba include three small-scale attacks in the SDF/PKK-ruled area of Syria, one of them a targeted assassination in Raqqa, and a rare attack in the Damascus area, in Al-Darkhabiya in western Ghuta, against the Asad/Iran regime. In Iraq, a wave of attacks is recorded in Diyala against Iraqi police and military personnel, killing more than a dozen, and individual attacks in Anbar and Salahuddin. There were two attacks on the Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq, one in Kirkuk. Multiple attacks in north, central, and south Nigeria were recorded by Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), most against the security forces, but one a bombing of a bar in Kogi State against a “gathering of infidel Christians” that murdered three people. And in Afghanistan, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) celebrates killing and wounding nine members of the Taliban, and murdering two Sikhs.
The main editorial on page three of Al-Naba 339 focuses on the “calamities” that have befallen the Muslim world “due to abandoning jihad”, including: the spread of shirk (idolatry, polytheism); “atheists, who deny the existence of the Creator, … [being] seen as symbols of liberation”; alarming signs of equality between Muslims and non-Muslims as the idea of al-wala wal-bara fades; and the implementation of secular legal codes with truly dreadful outcomes like apostates not being killed and slavery being banned. The editorial mentions in passing that Africa is a place where the “branches of the caliphate” (aghsan al-khilafa) have “grown stronger”.
A stir was caused by the final text page of Al-Naba 339, an excerpt from IS spokesman Abu Umar al-Muhajir’s Ramadan message, because in the headline it used a phrase that indicated Abu Umar was dead. This turned out to be a mistake and was corrected a couple of hours later. Such errors are not common, and one assumes the editor’s fate will deter recurrences. There are two tangentially interesting aspects to this. First, the mystery of what happened to the last IS spokesman: Abu Umar announced the death of his predecessor, Abu Hamza al-Qurayshi, in his first speech in March 2022, when IS admitted the caliph, Amir Muhammad al-Mawla (Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi), had been killed six weeks earlier. While it was easy to come away with the impression Abu Umar had said Abu Hamza was killed alongside Al-Mawla—hence proclaiming a campaign of “Revenge for the Two Shaykhs”—Abu Umar in fact pointedly did not give any details about how, when, and where Abu Hamza was killed. The recent United Nations monitoring report suggests the answer might be that Abu Hamza was killed in an airstrike in November 2021 in northern Aleppo. Second, there is a claim that Abu Umar is now dead because his real name is/was Maher al-Aqal, a senior IS operative killed on the Turkey-Syria border by a U.S. airstrike on 20 June. This is unsubstantiated at the present time.
Al-Naba 340 (26 May) has Africa on the front-page: ISWAP had killed twenty-four “spies” for Nigeria’s army captured in Rann in the Borno State, and killed and wounding twenty-six other soldiers from Nigerien and Chadian forces, specifying that six of them were Christians. The expanded account on page four includes a picture of a murdered Nigerian policeman. Operations against Iraq’s security forces recorded in Al-Naba 340 span Diyala, Kirkuk (accompanied by a terrible picture of a Shi’a soldier having his throat cut), Ninawa, Salahuddin, and Anbar. In Syria, IS attacked PKK checkpoints in Hasaka and Deir Ezzor. ISKP is claimed to have killed forty-four Taliban jihadists and Shi’is in Afghanistan. Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) killed twelve “Christians and local militias”, plus three Congolese soldiers. Christians were killed and their homes burned by IS in Mozambique (now detached from ISCAP). Sixteen soldiers were killed and wounded by the Islamic State East Asia Province (ISEAP) in the Philippines. And in Egypt, two bombings killed members of the army and “MOSSAD militia” (STU).
The main editorial in Al-Naba 340, entitled, “A War on the Creed”, plays off the anti-Christian themes on the front page, documenting the “distortion” of Islam that has settled on the region and brought it to “calamity” through such horrors as inter-faith dialogues and humanism. This is not only done by “infidels” form the outside but “apostates” from within, some claiming to represent the faith, like “the Murji’ah”, the Sururis, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The prevalence of national identities that allow Christian citizens to be seen as equal to Muslims particularly annoys the Naba writer. If it carries on like this, Islamdom will begin following the ways of “the wrathful” Jews and “the lost/misguided” Christians. Al-Naba concludes, naturally, that the only way to counter this “all-out war against Islam” is jihad.
The front page of Al-Naba 341 (2 June), which is continued on the inside, is once again from Africa, documenting ISWAP attacks that killed twelve troops the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) drawn from Nigeria itself, Chad, Cameroon, and Niger. The main editorial in Al-Naba 341 is an examination of “ibtila” (affliction, ordeal, trial, test tribulation), arguing that God does not demand more of believers than they can bear: the obligation is jihad, and has to be sustained even through hardships. The editorial finishes with a swipe at Islamist groups who fall at the first hurdle when they encounter trying circumstances by changing themselves to seek financial support, international recognition, or removal from terrorism lists. In terms if reported operations: In Iraq, IS attacked and wounded security forces in Diyala and assassinated a member of the “Tribal Hashd”, Abd al-Rahman Dhiyab Haza’a al-Azzawi, in the Sharwin area. Attacks on the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are also recorded in Kirkuk, where the Kurdish Peshmerga were also hit; north of Bayji, in the Zab al-Asfal area, where an IED detonated under an ISF vehicle and IS burned crops as part of their “economic war”; and in Abayji (close to Al-Tarmiya), north of Baghdad, where a “Tribal Hashd” operative was captured and “slaughtered”, “after interrogation”. In Syria, there were two attacks on the PKK in Deir Ezzor, one targeting a PKK leader, who was injured but survived. ISKP is reported to have killed and wounded ten “Taliban militiamen”, two of them “spies”, and wounded two Pakistani policemen in an attack on their barracks. ISCAP massacred twenty Christians with machine guns in the Ronzori area of Beni city in north-eastern DRC, near the border with Uganda, and killed two Congolese soldiers in a separate attack. Three Christian villages were burned by IS in Mozambique. And three policemen were injured in an attack in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.
The front page of Al-Naba 342 (9 June) was from Africa: ISWAP attacks on the army in north Nigeria and killing and wounding twenty Christians in the south. In Iraq, IS destroyed a “thermal camera” in Abayji; an IED in Diyala killed and wounded thirteen ISF; an attack using machine guns on a barracks in Samarra killed one soldier, wounded another, and destroyed military equipment, including thermal cameras; agricultural land in Kirkuk was burned and as part of the “economic war” an electricity pylon was also disabled, while an attack on a police station destroyed six thermal cameras. There are notably no reports from Syria. IKSP is claimed to have killed and wounded ten “Taliban militia” members in Afghanistan, including a targeted assassination of one with a pistol in Kunduz and a bomb on a car in Kunar, and to have killed a “Pakistani spy” in Bajaur, within Pakistan. IS-Mozambique says it caused a large exodus of Christians from Cabo Delgado by “attacking their villages and burning dozens of homes”. Al-Naba says this is evidence of the “increased activity of the mujahideen recently, contrary to the claims of the Mozambican government and its allies”. In eastern Congo, “for the second consecutive week”, Al-Naba claims attacks on military and civilian targets that “killed at least twenty Christians … and burned dozens of their homes”. In Egypt, the army and STU (referred to again as “the MOSSAD militia”) lost two men and had two wounded in IS attacks in Rafah city and on a checkpoint. An attack on a checkpoint in Mogadishu, Somalia, using a hand grenade, injured one soldier.
The main editorial in Al-Naba 342 focused on the “Africa Focus Group”, which was created to coordinate with the anti-IS Coalition: “The meeting … is tantamount to an admission that they lied about the success of the [Coalition] mission in eliminating the caliphal state … This alliance, which failed to quell the flames of jihad in Iraq and Syria, today wants to export its failure to the African theatre, where jihad is accelerating in a way they did not expect.” This is happening, Al-Naba goes on, when the “Crusader” West is “suffering major political, economic, and security crises such as they have not witnessed for decades” with the war in Ukraine: by IS’s telling, the Coalition moving into Africa is just an expansion of the America-Russia confrontation. Al-Naba concludes by claiming IS is confronting “all the infidels as a unified solid structure” and is expanding through Africa and Asia, while the anti-IS alliances are fragmenting and competing with each other.
Al-Naba 343 (16 June) had a series of attacks in Mali on the front page, specifically in the Ménaka area, where dozens of casualties are claimed to have been inflicted and the numerous military vehicles destroyed and captured. This is the fifth consecutive week the IS newsletter was headlined by Africa-related events. Separately—though in the same region—ISWAP is claimed to have killed and wounded 100 soldiers across eastern Nigeria, Niger, and western Chad. IS-Mozambique is said to have “continued to escalate their attacks against the Christians and the Mozambican forces”, killing sixteen Christians (there is a gruesome picture of a beheaded elderly man accompanying the article), two soldiers, and the security guard for a Western mining company. Four churches and 140 “primitive” Christian houses are also claimed to have been destroyed in attacks concentrated in the Ancuabe area of Mozambique, part of a deliberate strategy to displace Christians and make it too chaotic and unsafe for Western companies to operate, according to Al-Naba. ISCAP in the Congo is said to have killed four Congolese soldiers and burned down two of their barracks, as well as killing and wounding “a number” of Ugandan soldiers, and murdering two Christian civilians and burning down their homes, in “nine separate attacks and ambushes”. IS in Sinai claimed to have killed two officers of the Egyptian army and killed and wounded ten more soldiers and tribal militiamen (“MOSSAD militia”) in attacks on patrols west of Rafah.
Outside of Africa, in Iraq, Al-Naba 343 records an IED killing one tribal militiaman in a car in Diyala. North of Baghdad, a soldier’s home was attacked and a thermal camera destroyed in Abayji. Two thermal cameras were destroyed in Kirkuk and in the same area an Iraqi military vehicle hit by an IED, wounding three. West of Mosul, a vehicle belonging to the security forces for the Oil Ministry was blown up and two people wounded. In Syria, IS injured three PKK operatives in a roadside bombing in Al-Karama, east of Raqqa, and in Deir Ezzor assassinated three PKK officials, one of them, Ibrahim Khalil al-Turman, as part of the “Breaking the Walls” campaign: a part of the PKK security apparatus, he was killed “in the context of [taking] revenge for the [jihadist] prisoners”. One other assassination attempt against the PKK in Deir Ezzor failed, though the man was wounded. ISKP claims to have killed and wounded thirty Taliban in Afghanistan, including attacking a prison in Kabul and killing six by blowing up a bus in the capital, while once again there is a claimed cross-border attack in Bajaur that injured two Pakistani policemen and damaged their station using four hand grenades.
Al-Naba 343 had one of the most important recent main editorials, entitled, “Africa: A Land of Hijra and Jihad”. Hijra refers to “migration”, i.e. the bringing in of foreign fighters. IS argues that having begun in Iraq and “spilled the blood of its leaders and soldiers to water the tree of monotheism”, the cause has expanded and now reached a level in Africa where jihadists should journey there to help implement the shari’a and ultimately a caliphate. Al-Naba says IS’s program is proceeding in Africa on two tracks to fight democracy: the establishment of state institutions to convert the societies through da’wa (proselytism), and of course jihad. “The scenes that we see today in the African lands are the same as what we saw yesterday in Iraq and Syria”, Al-Naba continues, including the “cubs of the caliphate” (recruitment of children). The stage is being set for “tamkeen” (lit. “empowerment”; jihadist governance) in Africa, according to Al-Naba, which has touched this theme before. Al-Naba mocks the military efforts to suppress IS in the Sahel, saying despite them all IS’s growing success in gaining converts, its growing military strength, and even its escalating ability to administer territory are “unmistakable”. The editorial concludes by calling for IS loyalists who are thwarted in migrating to other theatres to make their way to Africa, a “fertile arena for receiving energies and cadres that seek to support Islam”.
The front page of Al-Naba 344 (23 June) was from Afghanistan, celebrating the 19 June attack on the Sikh temple in Kabul by an inghimasi fighter, Abu Muhammad al-Tajik, which killed one and allegedly wounded about fifty people, including security officers around the temple. The attack was aimed at the Sikh and Hundi “pagans” (wathaniyeen), Al-Naba says, in revenge for the insults to the Prophet Muhammad by officials of the Indian government. There were attacks on the Taliban by ISKP, and Al-Naba is gleeful in mocking the Taliban, both for its alleged efforts to protect Sikhs and its failure to do so—indeed, its general, “repeated failure to ‘combat terrorism’.” ISKP also says it killed a Pakistani policeman on the Pakistani side of the border. Later there is a claim to have killed a Shi’i within Pakistan, cutting him down with pistol fire in Rawalpindi. The main editorial in Al-Naba 344, entitled, “Victory for the Chosen Prophet”, was focused on this attack. The editorial argues that only violence can enforce Islamic taboos around blasphemy upon “the worshippers of the cross … and the worshippers of the cow”; peaceful protests and online outrage will not do. Muslims are chided in the conclusion of the editorial for having reacted so widely and harshly against insults to the Prophet from the “pagan Hindus”, calling for boycotts and so on, while IS is condemned for “terrorism” and “extremism” when it attacks Shi’is, whose insults against the faith are (allegedly) worse.
Al-Naba 344 reports from Iraq that IS hit an ISF patrol car with an IED near Tuz Khurmato in Kirkuk and destroyed four thermal cameras in the province. A government “spy” was captured, tortured, and murdered “with automatic weapons” in Diyala, where IS also attacked a barracks and destroyed a thermal camera and an electricity pylon. Another government “spy” has his house burned north of Baghdad. Al-Naba gives prominence to the 20 June attack on the bus containing Syrian regime soldiers in the Badiya desert, which killed thirteen men: displaying the grim aftermath, IS says it stopped the bus with small arms fire and was then able to “finish off the wounded and burn it before [the jihadists] returned to their positions safely”. ISWAP in Nigeria murdered seven Christians, burning one of their churches, and killed and wounded fifteen Nigerian troops, as well as setting fire to their vehicles (this is the picture with the article) and confiscating a Red Cross vehicle. In Somalia, an IS operative threw a grenade at the home of a government official, damaging the house. IS-Mozambique killed eleven Christians and burned dozens of their homes, as well as killing two Mozambican soldiers, and, in the Congo, ISCAP killed five Christians and burned three of their cars, while killing one Congolese soldier in two separate attacks on their barracks. ISWAP carried out a series of attacks in Ménaka in eastern Mali and in western Niger, which apparently left “dozens dead and wounded” and allowed the jihadists to carry off nineteen vehicles and “a large quantity of weapons and ammunition”. In Egypt, at least five soldiers and STU militiamen (again referred to as Israel’s agents) were reported killed, including one officer.
In Al-Naba 345 (30 June), the front page was given over to Africa again, in this case an ISCAP rampage in eastern Congo that killed and wounded forty-one Christians, while burning to the ground multiple villages and forcing the inhabitants to flee. A picture of an IS jihadist stood before one of the burning houses was featured with the article. Egypt was given an unusual prominence as IS’s fighting with state forces raged for a “fourth week” around Rafah: IS killed two soldiers and eight members of the “MOSSAD militia” (STU), while wounding at least six, despite being under “continuous air and artillery bombardment”. IS-Mozambique celebrated its “continuous attacks” on Christians; the attacks seemed fewer in numbers than in previous weeks but the same pattern in Cabo Delgado of villages raided, homes burned, Christians displaced, abducted, and murdered. ISWAP carried out attacks in northern and southern Nigeria, killing and wounding fourteen security forces (and two “spies”), raiding a barracks and carrying away some ghanima (war booty), kidnapping one Christian, and burning a church, plus several attacks in western Chad.
Al-Naba 345’s coverage outside of Africa included Afghanistan, where ISKP is said to have killed and wounded about nine Taliban members in attacks in Kabul and Kunduz, and Syria, where it was said seven PKK operatives were killed in IED and automatic weapons attacks in “Al-Baraka” (Hasaka province). This edition of Al-Naba then had a “Miscellaneous News” section that rounded up: an RPG and machine gun attack on a PKK headquarters in Deir Ezzor (Syria); the capture, “interrogation”, and murder with pistol fire of a soldier south of Tal Afar (Iraq); the destruction of a thermal camera in Samarra (Iraq); the ambush of a military patrol car that killed one and wounded three in Tulul al-Baj in the Salahuddin province (Iraq); the injury of one soldier and the destruction of a thermal camera in an attack on a barracks in Diyala (Iraq); and an IED attack on a Tribal Hashd vehicle south of Daquq in Kirkuk province (Iraq).
The main editorial in Al-Naba 345 focuses on Saudi Arabia, specifically the imprisonment of jihadists in the Kingdom: “The wickedness of the tawaghit Al-Salul [Saudi] family in Bilad al-Haramayn [the land of the Two Holy Mosques] is increasing day by day. They were not satisfied with fighting the shari’a, allying with the Jews and Christians, and spreading corruption in the land of al-wahi [revelation]”, and have escalated to imprisoning believers, “women and men, young and old”, “filling the Holy Land with” oppression that “will only be stopped by jihad”. IS claims prisoners are subjected to “physical and psychological” torture. Framing it within the “Breaking the Walls” campaign—though not mentioning the name—IS calls for Muslims in Saudi Arabia to follow the “right path” as shown “a few years ago” by “one of the heroes of Islam” who “killed his uncle (an apostate colonel), took his car and headed towards Al-Ha’ir prison, where he detonated his explosive belt at the prison walls”. (The reference is to 19-year-old Abdullah al-Rashid, who carried out his crime in July 2015.) The Naba editorial quotes an August 2018 speech from the then-caliph, Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi), who among other things said: “Awaken from your sleep and your intoxication, and shake off the dust of humiliation, for the tyranny and disbelief of the state of Al-Salul … is no longer hidden from anyone, even your children.”
Al-Naba 346 (7 July) had the 5 July ISWAP attack on the Kuje prison in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, on its front page—yet another one from Africa. The attack, which IS describes in some detail as being conducted by three teams over fifty minutes (the reality seems to have been somewhat longer), released nearly 900 prisoners, about half of whom were soon recaptured. The main editorial was also devoted to this attack and said it should leave no doubt that “the campaign of Breaking the Walls is still ongoing”. The rest of the editorial was fairly standard IS presentation of itself as the lone voice of true Islam, while so many other Islamist groups claim the mantle but do not work to implement the faith and instead compromise with popular sentiment. ISWAP claimed further attacks on the Nigerian army in Borno state in the northeast.
Al-Naba 346 records ISCAP in the Congo continuing to terrorise Christians, attacking the village of Bolongo in Beni and setting homes on fire; the picture accompanying the article shows an IS fighter standing among burning huts. Another Christian was killed nearby in eastern Congo. IS-Mozambique claimed to have attacked multiple villages, killing one Christian, and burning their homes, displacing more Christians in the Cabo Delgado area. Two Somali policemen were wounded by an IS attack with an IED in Mogadishu. In Iraq, there were four attacks in Diyala, including one double-tap attack with an IED, against the IDF and Tribal Hashd; an Iraqi soldier was wounded in southern Ninawa by an IED; a gunfire attack on an ISF patrol in Salahuddin killed one and wounded three; and an IED disabled an ISF vehicle in Kirkuk. The most notable attack in Syria was the assassination of a regime policemen in Khirbat Ghazaleh, in Deraa in the south, where IS does not often report activity. The other Syrian attacks were more usual, attacks on a PKK checkpoint and a vehicle in Deir Ezzor, leading to injuries, and anti-PKK attacks in Raqqa, including a targeted assassination. ISKP launched multiple attacks against the Taliban in Afghanistan, apparently killing and wounding thirty of them, including targeting a conference hall with both snipers and rockets and an inghimasi attack on a bus in Herat by an ISKP operative named Sayf al-Islam Umar. ISKP is also claimed to have trespassed the border again, killing three Pakistanis—two policemen south of Peshawar and a tribal leader who was a “spy” for Pakistani intelligence.
A series of IS attacks in Niger that killed seventeen soldiers and policemen, and the defection of eleven Al-Qaeda militants to IS, led the front page of Al-Naba 347 (14 July). Interestingly, the attacks were carried under the banner of “Wilayat al-Sahel” (rather than ISWAP), a label IS seems to have first used in Al-Naba 331 (24 March) when it had operations against the Azawad National Movement in Mali, which allegedly killed 250 of them, on its front page. The main editorial on page three is a generic ideological incantation, presenting IS’s version as the only authentic Islam. Continuing after the editorial in Africa, ISCAP is said by Al-Naba 347 to have killed “about” forty-seven Christians in the Congo, eight of them military men, with dozens of homes burned. ISWAP operations, including an IED ambush on a convoy, were reported from Nigeria, Niger, and Chad. IS-Mozambique reports six attacks that killed five Christian civilians and two soldiers, while “burning dozens of homes”. In Egypt, clashes with “the MOSSAD militia” (STU) near Rafah killed one of them and injured others. In Somalia, an IED was detonated under the vehicle of an officer in the Karan district of Mogadishu; the car was damaged.
Al-Naba 347 reports from Iraq an attack on a police barracks in Kirkuk that led to an unknown number of casualties. An IED against the ISF northwest of Tal Afar killed and wounded three. Two soldiers were wounded in the Abayji district north of Baghdad and a thermal camera destroyed. In Syria, IS assassinated three PKK officials in Deir Ezzor. An attack in India, in the Lal Bazaar area of Srinagar, is claimed to have killed and wounded four policemen; as Al-Naba notes, a video of this attack was published by Amaq News Agency. In Afghanistan, ISKP claims to have carried out a series of bombings against the Taliban in Kabul and Kunar, though they do not seem to have been very lethal. ISKP says it killed at least two Talibs—one shown gruesomely beheaded in Mazar-i-Sharif—and a Pakistani “spy” was assassinated over the border with a pistol in Bajaur. There is a claimed suicide bombing by IS against Iran’s Huthis (Ansarallah) in Yemen, which “inflicted a number of deaths and injuries”. As Al-Naba itself puts it: “It is noteworthy that this is the first attack announced by the soldiers of the caliphate in Yemen since the apostates’ allegations they had eliminated the mujahideen there about two years ago.” (For more on the complications with IS-Yemen, see here.)
Al-Naba 348 (21 July) has an African front page once again: ISWAP claims to have killed and wounded nineteen Nigerian soldiers and inflicted seventeen casualties on the Chadian military. Al-Naba also notes the release of a video by ISWAP that “combined the joy of the mujahideen on Eid, and their joy at releasing the families of their brothers from the Kuje prison”. In Egypt, fifteen soldiers and members of the “apostate MOSSAD militia” (STU) are said to have been killed in “central Sinai” and six of their vehicles destroyed. A clip on IS-Mozambique—including a grisly picture—documents three attacks that killed three Christians, one of them a soldier. An IED attack in Somalia against an African Union convoy damaged one vehicle. In Mali, IS says “Wilayat al-Sahel” downed a Russian drone belonging to the “Wagner” unit, which was subsequently burned. Al-Naba adds, not incorrectly, “It is noteworthy that the Russian ‘Wagner’ militias are fighting alongside the apostate Malian government against the mujahideen in the Sahel, after the French forces failed in this mission.” ISCAP carried out three attacks in the Congo that killed two soldiers and wounded others in the Beni area.
Al-Naba 348 celebrates what it designates as an important attack from Iraq, against a federal police station in Al-Jalam, east of Samarra in the Salahuddin province, which killed six men. A minesweeper belonging to federal police was blown up south of Daquq, where most of the IS attacks in Kirkuk province are reported from. In Salahuddin, west of Al-Shirqat, a barracks was attacked; casualties not given. In Syria, a PKK “spy” was struck down in Deir Ezzor and Al-Naba claims an “epic battle” took place “last week”, on 12 July, “between a group of mujahideen and a joint patrol of American forces and the PKK” in the village of Al-Zar; no casualty count is given, but it is claimed the jihadists returned safely to their positions. A PKK official was assassinated north of Raqqa. In Afghanistan, ISKP murdered four Shi’is in Logar and killed and wounded six Taliban operatives, one of them a pilot. In Pakistan, two policemen were assassinated, and their pictures are prominently displayed. IS claims to have assassinated a Pakistani “spy” on 18 July using pistols in Balochistan, notably further into Pakistan than previous claims that tend to be in Bajaur.
The main editorial in Al-Naba 348 is a condemnation of those who try to take an à la carte approach to the shari’a, as if it was not the law of God, clearly laid down in the Qur’an. IS rejects the idea that its determination to enforce the shari’a in totality makes them narrow-minded or the ones who are dividing the Muslim community; rather, it is those who are embarrassed by the shari’a or who equate it with repression who are in the wrong. The fixed hudud punishments, the prayers, fasts, haj, honouring of parents, whipping of people who drink alcohol, stoning of adulterers, cutting the hands off thieves, and killing witches, al-mufsidun (corrupters, seditionists), and al-murtadeen (apostates) are non-negotiable tenets of the faith, by Al-Naba’s account. The Muslims who condemn IS’s imposition of the shari’a as “reactionary and extremist” and use “flimsy arguments” to do so merely “show the separation between us and them”, says Al-Naba: the only division that matters is between Muslims committed to “the full shari’a”—monotheism, jihad, da’wa, and so on—and “the unbelievers and hypocrites”.
The front page of Al-Naba 349 (28 July) is an interview with an IS military official, which continues on pages 8-10, on how the group survives in the deserts of the Badiya in eastern Syria. (A separate post will deal with this in more detail. [UPDATE: post is now live.]) In Iraq, an IED attack is reported in Salahuddin against a convoy of Shi’a militiamen from the Sadrist Saraya al-Salam that killed and wounded five people. The article goes on to comment about intra-Shi’a politics. In Diyala, twelve soldiers were killed and wounded in one attack, and two policemen were injured in two other attacks. An IED wounded two soldiers and damaged their car in Kirkuk, and four electricity pylons were destroyed. North of Baghdad, three soldiers were wounded, and two “spies” were assassinated after IS set up a temporary checkpoint—a significant data point in assessing the group’s strength—near Tarmiya. An ISF patrol car was blown up with an IED in the deserts of Heet in western Anbar, injuring those on board. In Syria, a PKK checkpoint in Deir Ezzor was attacked with machine guns, injuring two people. In Raqqa, three IED attacks killed two PKK operatives and wounded one, and another PKK official was assassinated (which is shown in a bloody picture). A series of attacks in Hasaka, killed and wounded ten PKK fighters; notably, IS says that in this area it was able to set up its own temporary checkpoints “on the roads in search of wanted apostates”.
Al-Naba 349’s coverage of Africa has a notice on IS-Mozambique killing eight Christians and burning dozens of houses in attacks in three areas of the Caba Delgado region. ISWAP killed a militiamen working with the Nigerian army, two barracks were attacked, and two military vehicles were burned. An ISCAP operative stabbed to death a former Congolese soldier and political activist in the Beni region. In Egypt, a joint patrol of the army and STU was struck with an IED, wounding several.
The main editorial in Al-Naba 349 celebrates a number of claimed “milestones” for IS over the past year: the suicide-massacre at the Kabul airport in August 2021, the Ghwayran prison break in Syria in January 2022 (“the last and most honourable achievement” of Al-Mawla as caliph), and the Kuje prison break in Nigeria in July 2022. Al-Naba goes on to argue, with historical examples, that IS is comparable to the first years of the Arab state under the Prophet Muhammad and the Rashidun Caliphs: the same mix of jihad, conquest, trials, hardships, patience, and steadfastness—with the difference that in the seventh century none of the Muslims “slandered” the caliphal project and declared it a “failure” (fashalat) or a “fake state” (or “paper state”; dawla wa-hamiya). Rather, says Al-Naba, the Muslim chroniclers “celebrated the heroism of the Islamic state during the conquests and victories, and praised the patience of its leaders and soldiers during adversity and [times of] calamity”: recognising strength and weakness, expansion and retraction, as inherent to the project. IS says it is well-positioned, with its ranks unified by their ideology, waging a prolonged battle of attrition from their desert sanctuaries—“there is no embarrassment” in being out in the deserts at the centre, especially when IS is advancing on the cities in West Africa, expanding in the Congo and Mozambique with a relentless war on Christians that is even disrupting international trade, clearly empowered in Afghanistan, remaining steadfast in Libya, the Sinai, and East Asia, with the Yemeni wilayat “returning”. “Fifteen years have passed since the declaration of the Islamic State in Iraq, and eight years since it was expanded and declared a caliphate on the Prophetic method”, Al-Naba concludes. It “remains” (baqiya), and is “following in the same footsteps as the first prophetic state”.