New Jihadi Magazine for Afghanistan

Following the pattern of al-Qaeda’s web journals Sawt al-Jihad and Mu’askar al-Battar and the Algerian GSPD’s Al-Jama’a, the Afghan Mujahideen have launched their website magazine Tora Bora. Dated 1st Muharram 1425 (February 22, 2004) the new publication founded by Ghazi Ajmal and edited by Moulavi Hatim Tayy, styles itself as the “Islamic magazine on the Afghan Jihad against the Crusaders”. It is published in Jalalabad, and gives its address as No.3, 14th Street. It also supplies the contact phone number 070601120.

Although it is in the sequence of jihadist website magazines, it is not yet as slickly produced as its Arabian counterparts. In content, it features the customary diet of ideological, jurisprudential articles on jihad, complete with excerpts of exhortative prose and poetry. There are interviews with leading jihadi figures, and descriptive accounts on the progress of the jihad in Afghanistan’s regions. Volume I includes a lengthy, illustrated feature on the prison at Guantanamo but perhaps the edition’s most useful feature is the 6-pages of detailed news updates on jihadist activity in the country. Volume II, dated Rabi II 1424 (sic for 1425), May 2004, distinguishes itself with an extended article on “The Secret of Success in Battle” and an analysis of Pakistan’s campaign in Waziristan province.

If only for the news update pages, Tora Bora is likely to become a standard and valued source of information to complement the official media channels.