*ISLAMABAD – The Islamic State group’s elusive supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadimade his first purported appearance in five years in a propaganda videoreleased Monday, acknowledging IS’s defeat in the Syrian town of Baghouzwhile threatening “revenge” attacks.*
The world’s most wanted man was last seen in Mosul in 2014, announcing thebirth of IS’s much-feared rule across swathes of Iraq and Syria, andappears to have outlived the proto-state.
In the video released by IS’s Al-Furqan media arm, the man said to beBaghdadi referred to the monthslong fight for IS’s final redoubt Baghouz,which ended in March.
“The battle for Baghouz is over,” he said, sitting cross-legged on acushion and addressing three men whose faces have been blurred.
He referred to a string of IS defeats, including its onetime Iraqi capitalMosul and Sirte in Libya, but insisted the militants had not “surrendered”territory.
In a segment in which the man is not on camera, his voice described theApril 21 Easter attacks in Sri Lanka, which killed 253 people and woundednearly 500, as “vengeance for their brothers in Baghouz.”
The man insisted IS’s operations against the West were part of a “longbattle,” and that IS would continue to “take revenge” for members who hadbeen killed.
“There will be more to come after this battle,” he said.
On Monday IS militants claimed their first attack in Bangladesh in morethan two years, saying they had “detonated an explosive device” on a groupof police in Dhaka, wounding three officers, the SITE Intelligence Groupreported.
*‘It’s survivable’*
The United States, which has a $25 million bounty on Baghdadi’s head, saidit was assessing the authenticity of the video but vowed to keep up thebattle against the extremist group.
The US-led coalition will “ensure an enduring defeat of these terroristsand that any leaders who remain are delivered the justice that theydeserve,” a State Department spokesman said.
Even if Baghdadi is alive and well, the spokesman said that the militants,frequently called ISIS, had been battered.
“ISIS’s territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria was a crushing strategic andpsychological blow as ISIS saw its so-called caliphate crumble, its leaderskilled or flee the battlefield, and its savagery exposed,” he said.
The speaker identified as Baghdadi referred encouragingly to popularprotests in Sudan and Algeria, apparently to demonstrate the video wasrecent.
“The mention of places like Sri Lanka and Sudan are largely to timestampthe video, to show that it wasn’t created a long time ago,” said AmarnathAmarasingam, senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
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He said the references to lost territory were also an effort to reshapeIS’s narrative.
“Part of the importance of someone like him is to contextualise the defeat…to show that this was either an expected turn of events, or that it mightbe unfortunate but that it’s survivable,” Amarasingam told AFP.
The speaker appeared in a white-walled room lined with cushions, but it wasunclear exactly where or when the footage was shot.
He had a long grey beard that appeared dyed with henna and spoke slowly,often pausing for several seconds in the middle of his sentences.
An older-model Kalashnikov assault rifle, similar to those seen in videosof Al-Qaeda’s former chief Osama bin Laden, leaned against the wall behindhim.
At the end of the video, he appeared to examine monthly reports of IS’sglobal activities, including in areas that have not been officiallydeclared IS “provinces” yet.
The man in the 18-minute video was identified as Baghdadi by both SITE,which tracks IS, and Hisham al-Hashemi, an Iraqi expert on the group.
*‘The Ghost’*
Born Ibrahim Awad al-Badri in 1971, Baghdadi came from modest beginnings inSamarra, north of Baghdad, and chose to study religion.
After US-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003, he was detained in theAmerican-run Camp Bucca, where he is believed to have come of age as amilitant.
He later rose through the ranks of Iraq’s Al-Qaeda franchise and eventuallytook the helm in 2010, expanding into Syria in the midst of that country’swar in 2013.
The following year, Baghdadi declared himself “caliph” of IS’s sprawlingterritory in an infamous sermon from Mosul’s famed Al-Nuri mosque.
He then lay low for years, earning him the nickname “The Ghost” amidrepeated reports he had been killed or injured as IS’s territory shrunk.
His last voice recording to his supporters was released in August, eightmonths after Iraq announced it had defeated IS and as the US-backed SyrianDemocratic Forces closed in next door in Syria. -APP/AFP
