The “Voice of the Caliphate” Looks Beyond Iraq

The latest Sawt al-Khilafa (Voice of the Caliphate) broadcast by the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) was distributed on the forums on November 20, and again demonstrated the strategic value of the media for the mujahideen. With a new interview format, entitled “To Be Continued,” the presenter questioned the GIMF public relations director Sayf al-Din al-Kinani on the purpose of the media campaign and the identity and affiliation of the Sawt al-Khilafa team. Al-Kinani outlined the role of the campaign as one of “galvanizing the fight against the enemy” and underscored the Internet’s role “as a new form of recruitment method.” He also underlined the need for active participation by the “youth of the jihadi forums.”

Al-Kinani was at pains to downplay the affiliation [by the enemies of jihad] of his media group with the Organization of al-Qaeda in Iraq. He argued that the group actually occupied itself “with the affairs of the Muslim Nation in general, and of the mujahideen in particular,” and asked why it was, then, “that they do not say we are affiliated, say, with the Islamic Army in Iraq, even though we mentioned news about them and their operations? These are some of [the enemy’s] known methods of deception and cunning, by which they intend to retain their enemy as a single symbol—al-Qaeda.” The purpose of this deception, al-Kinani explained, was to “divert the gaze from [the existence of] the new generation of mujahideen, a generation with the same fierceness as al-Qaeda, and spread out all over Iraq and the other occupied lands.”

Al-Kinani argued that the jihad is becoming, thanks to the Internet, a worldwide phenomenon of “reawakening” among the Muslim youth, a reawakening that requires its own, independent media propaganda to feed it. To serve this internationalization of the jihad, he explains: “Sawt al-Khilafa is a self-standing organization of the Islamic Nation, designed for the sons of the mujahideen, and impartial vis-à-vis the jihadi groups that conduct themselves according to the correct way, and that it is fighting against the domination of the Zionist American media.” Al-Kinani emphasizes that this media wing of the jihad, now that it has been inaugurated, is to progress to the next stage in order to reach its full potential. “The day will come when anything that does not offer something to the Nation, the Faith and the Brothers, will be expelled,” he warned. “It is high time,” al-Kinani concludes, “for the jihadi forums to become a beacon of continuity, and a support for the jihad and its exponents.”