IS leader suddenly reappears, mocks America

The leader of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) organization Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appears to have broken his silence of the past 11 months by mocking the US and affirming that IS still exists.

CNN reported that in a rather long audio message, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi also called on jihadists to focus on fighting the Syrian government.

IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

"We are aware of the audio recording purportedly from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and are taking steps to evaluate it. While we have no reason to doubt its authenticity, we are not confirming it at this time," a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told CNN.

The speech appears to have been newly recorded, as it mentions North Korea’s nuclear threats against the US and Japan, and also touches on the Syrian peace talks – in which Russia, Türkiye and Iran are trying to extend a ceasefire across Syria.

The release of the video appears to be in response to claims by the Russian military that it almost certainly killed Baghdadi in a September 28 airstrike near Raqqa, the IS capital in Syria.

US officials have said that most of IS has been driven out of Raqqa and Mosul, and that Baghdadi may be hiding somewhere in the Euphrates River Valley, an area straddling the Syria-Iraq border where much of IS’s leadership has moved since early 2017.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition against IS said they were not aware of the tape. “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” US Colonel Ryan Dillon told reporters at the Pentagon on September 28 in a conference call from Baghdad. Dillon later admitted that “if there is no evidence of Baghdadi’s death, we assume he is alive.”

In the 46-minute message, Baghdadi also urged his fighters to be patient and to show that the bloodshed in Mosul, Raqqa and elsewhere was not in vain, according to an interpretation by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist groups. He called for jihadist attacks worldwide, declaring that "America, Europe and Russia are living in a state of terror."

Baghdadi also rallied Sunnis against Shiites, arguing that they would never accept “half solutions” – especially after all the destruction and achievements that had been made. This appeared to be aimed at Iran’s regional reach.

The scholar Hassan Hassan, author of a book on the rise of ISIS, commented on Twitter that the central theme of Baghdadi’s speech was that the terrorist leader saw “the war of ISIS as endless, aimed at destroying all enemies.” In that vein, Baghdadi claimed that Washington’s decision not to send ground troops to Syria was a testament to ISIS’s strategy. (The U.S. actually has several hundred combat troops in Syria.)

Baghdadi criticized the US for being tired and Russia for taking control of Syria. He also echoed the message of Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, another IS leader who said that holding territory was not as important as the will to fight. Adnani was killed in 2016.

In the speech, Baghdadi argued that the Prophet did not tell his companions when or how Islam would triumph, "so they neither triumph nor fail because of the loss of territory or because of the death of believers".

According to CNN, both the US and Russian air forces and many ground forces are operating in the area, but IS still holds a number of towns on the banks of the Euphrates River.

According to Vietnamnet.vn