In an effort to recruit and inspire Western jihadis to carry out attacks in their own countries, Al Qaeda is planning to launch a new magazine in English called Resurgence.
An announcement with the name of the new magazine was posted on YouTube, but that video has since been removed as it violated YouTube’s policy on violence. Imagine that.
NBC News has more details:
If the magazine is launched, it will mark the first English-language publication from the central branch of the terror group. Al Qaeda’s media wing, as-Sahab, which released the 80 second video on the internet this weekend, has for years released messages from senior leaders of the terror group like Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The brief video appears to combine audio from a 1965 Malcolm X speech justifying violence — including the quote “talk the language that they understand” – with images of U.S. soldiers, Islamic militants, a purported attack on a U.S. base in Afghanistan and the Boston Marathon bombings.
The announcement comes as al Qaeda central has been devastated by drone strikes in western Pakistan over the past several years and the U.S. commando raid that killed the group’s founder and leader, Osama bin Laden, and suggests that the main branch of the organization is trying to reestablish its waning influence over Islamic militants.
Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism analyst for NBC, said the video appeared to be modelled after Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s online publication, Inspire.
“The announcement appears to be a tacit acknowledgement of the success of Inspire,” Kohlmann said in the NBC report.
“Clearly, al Qaeda's central leadership is seeking to try and recruit Americans from within U.S. borders, including indirectly if necessary — the homegrown terrorism model,” he added.
“Its simplicity appeals in many ways,” Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at Swedish National Defence College, told The Telegraph. “It focuses on the raw emotions of victimhood in the Muslim world which reinforces the al-Qaeda narrative that the West is aggressively at war with Islam.”