With articles like "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom" and "What to Expect in Jihad," al-Qaida is hoping that its new English-language magazine, entitled Inspire, will help to recruit English-speaking Muslims inside of the United States and Europe. Run by the al-Qaida branch in Yemen that has been linked to the failed Chrismas Day bombing, Inspire was sort of distributed online on Wednesday. Only the first few pages, which Marc Ambinder has posted as image files on theAtlantic, came through. (Uncertain that the PDF was without a virus, he refrained from posting the entire file.) The rest of the pages were infected. "AQAP's first effort to post the magazine to jihadist websites failed Wednesday, as many of the pages were contaminated with a virus," Ambinder wrote. "(I half seriously believe that U.S. cyber warriors might have had a hand in that little surprise.)" In the introduction, the magazine's editors, led by Anwar al-Awlaki, ask readers to contribute their own articles and suggestions. Al-Awlaki has inspired several recent terrorist plots through his online sermons, according to the Associated Press. A U.S.-born cleric, al-Awlaki's English language skills are far superior to most of his al-Qaida comrades. But Ambinder suggests that Western intelligence officials, and not al-Awlaki, may be behind Inspire. "It is possible, although not likely, that the magazine is a fabrication, a production of a Western intelligence agency that wants to undermine Al Qaeda by eroding confidence in its production and distribution networks," he wrote. "The U.S. is engaged in direct net-based warfare with jihadis; this sort of operation would not be too difficult to pull off."
Read original story in The Atlantic | Thursday, July 1, 2010
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