Hot on the heals of the Combating Terrorism Center's new report Deadly Vanguards: A Study of al-Qa'ida's Violence Against Muslims and multiple atrocities carried out against the people of Pakistan, as-Sahab has released a new video featuring Adam Gadahn attempting to do damage control. It's pretty pathetic.
For analysis see:
• Gadahn Signals Gi-normous Extremist Say-Do Gap
• “Al-Qaida Doesnt Kill Muslims…” Who Knew!?
• Gadahn’s denial…
It remains unclear whether as-Sahab is really on the skids, but signs increasingly point to yes. Meanwhile, I'd like to point out that the files as-Sahab uploaded include a .pdf statement. The file is called "azzam to pakistan november 09.pdf" while the document properties identify it as "SH AIMAN TO PAKISTAN RAHE HALAKAT JULY 2009.INP". I think it is in Urdu - my version of Adobe Acrobat claims it can't render the font correctly. As for the name mismatch, I'm not sure what to make of that. Did they actually upload the wrong file?! The document is hosted by archive.org here:
http://ia341333.us.archive.org/1/items/azpkdo2/azzam2pk_pdf.rar
The password is: asrt43atgtsru765e7e657e46sre
Adding to the impression of a decline in the competency of the surviving members of as-Sahab is the matter of the disappearing banner ad. This video had a banner ad promoting it, but shortly after it was released on the forums the site hosting the banner itself pulled the file, replacing it with a message scolding as-Sahab for hotlinking.
Amateur hour at as-Sahab, banner ad gets ToS'd
It will be interesting to observe the jihadi reaction to all this.
Posted on 13 December 2009 @ 19:53