NEW AL-QA’IDA ENGLISH-LANGUAGE MAG: ‘RESURGENCE’

NEW AL-QA’IDA ENGLISH-LANGUAGE MAG: ‘RESURGENCE’
By Michael S. Smith II

Titled Resurgence, a new English-language magazine produced by al-Qa’ida’s as-Sahab Media Foundation is being circulated online, and is accessible via the Internet Archive, a website that is frequently used by al-Qa’ida members and other terrorists to promote their propaganda.

Titled “Besiege Them!,” the cover story was penned by the American-born Muslim convert Adam Yahya Gadahn. The teaser for this article reads:

It is time for us to fight fire with fire, and impose our own blockade and embargo on the Jews and Crusaders, by hitting them where it hurts and striking the heart and lifeblood of their economy, represented by international trade and finance.

Also featured are excerpts of al-Qa’ida emir Ayman al-Zawahiri’s series focused on al-Qa’ida’s deceased founding emir, Usama bin Laden, along with a piece titled “Strategic Overstretch in Guerilla Warfare” by Abu Ubaidah al-Maqdisi, an alias used by the late al-Qa’ida intelligence chief Abu Ubaidah Abdallah al-Adam (d. 2013), whom the editor(s) describe as a “a close associate” of Saif al-Adl and a “student” of Abu Zubaydah, as well as a pupil of Abu Musab al-Suri and Atiyatallah.

Interestingly, the release date of this new e-zine found on the cover conflicts with the publication date found on its contents page (screenshot above), “Fall 2014” and “Summer 2014,” respectively.

It is possible the release of Resurgence was postponed so as not to overshadow the contents of the new online bulletin titled al-Nafir, which was released by al-Qa’ida’s senior leadership last summer. As highlighted in a previous DOWNRANGE post, in al-Nafir, al-Qa’ida’s senior leaders effectively rebuked Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi for his use of the title Caliph and for allowing his organization to declare its establishment of a caliphate by renewing their pledges of bayat to Afghan Taliban founding leader Mullah Omar, whom they refer to as the Emir al-Mu’minin, a titled historically reserved for the Caliph. (As if to also rebuke al-Baghdadi, in a message released by Omar soon thereafter, Omar, whom the US has designated a foreign terrorist while refusing to designate the Afghan Taliban a foreign terrorist organization, continued to employ this very title.)

Further processing by DOWNRANGE to follow.