Al Baghdadi releases rare message
Leader of the ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released a rare audio message on May 14 calling for Muslims, especially in the West, to immigrate to the ISIS and fight for it.
The call to arms by al-Baghdadi came only two days after the reported death of his deputy Abu Ala’a al-Afri, and a month after Sky News reported that al Baghdadi was no longer in day-to-day command of IS after being seriously wounded in an airstrike. The audio message was 34 minutes long during which he discussed several issues including threats against the Saudi Royal Family.
He warned Muslims living in Western countries that Western governments and populations are “planning genocide against them in the not so distant future and that they must join the ISIS to save themselves and their children from certain death or forced conversion to Christianity or Atheism at the hands of Western authorities”.
Although not confirmed, Aimen Dean from 5 Dimension Consultants said that “the audio voice is almost certainly Baghdadi, with his voice and accent extremely close to past audio releases as well as his famous sermon in Mosul last July”.
The audio is clearly recent as he mentions details of Saudi’s intervention in Yemen and Saudi’s failure to achieve any success in Yemen. Therefore, it must have been recorded within the past 20 days.
The Baghdadi’s message focusing on Western Muslims and the need for them to avoid certain genocide in the west confirms the ISIS desire to acquire more recruits from that particular demographic.
Dean added “By warning them of Western action against them as migrant communities, he and the ISIS are looking to engineer the breakdown of trust and harmony between Muslim communities in the West and their host countries. By remotely recruiting lone wolves from within Western based Muslim communities to mount terror attacks the ISIS is sowing the seeds of mistrust between Western Muslims and their host countries”.
He went on to say “ISIS also seem to do their utmost to further the cause of far right groups and parties in the west by attacking their events (Copenhagen and Garland) thereby generating sympathy and support. These actions then exert increased pressure on Muslims living in these countries to leave their host countries and then join the ISIS”.
The assessment of the implication of this announcement by 5 Dimensions is that they expect ISIS to continue to remotely recruit individuals and increasingly mount further attacks with the aim of generating more support for the far right.
Dean concluded by saying “It is the evil genius of generating fear to create an atmosphere of even greater fear within both Muslim communities and their host countries”.
This audio, the first since November last year shows that al-Baghdadi clearly remains as the figurehead leading ISIS.
This report is based on detail provided by 5 Dimension Consultants, a leading company in understanding Jihadi movements globally.
