They Come In Threes

In the same week that brought us web-published recordings from Osama bin Laden and Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's #2 terrorist Ayman al-Zawahri is now appearing in a video released on an "Islamic militant website".

[Al-Zawahri] said the terror network's branch in Iraq had "broken the back" of the U.S. military with hundreds of homicide bombings... He said that U.S. and British forces in Iraq had bogged down in Iraq and "have achieved nothing but loss, disaster and misfortune.

Al Qaeda in Iraq alone has carried out 800 martyrdom operations (homicide attacks) in 3 years, besides the sacrifices of the other mujahedeen, and this is what has broken the back of American in Iraq," al-Zawahiri said.

Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian militant believed to be hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan, also denounced the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as "traitors" and called on Muslims to rise up to "confront them."          

The bin Laden audiotape released 6 days ago was followed by the coordinated Sinai bombings, then the release of the Zarqawi videotape in the subsequent two days, making this an abnormally concentrated period of psychopath propaganda.

Because of the limited quality of cave-borne production facilities and the producers' inability to drop in on their local news affiliates unfettered, we can't tell too much about when these tapes were created (though Zawahri mentions Bush's March trip to India and Pakistan), so it's hard to say whether the coincident timing is deliberate and meaningful, or merely coincidental.

If they do represent a coordinated communications blitz, whether to instill fear, demonstrate relevance, rally the faithful, or to trigger attacks, it would suggest that the substance of the messages is largely irrelevant.  Yes, there's always a good bit of "standard jihadi wanker boilerplate" as Allah Pundit put it, but the specific themes are generally divergent and, in this case anyway, dissimilar to the attacks that actually occurred.  Zarqawi and bin Laden urged confronting the infidels in Sudan, not Egypt.  Zawahri's video is entitled "A Message to the People of Pakistan", carping about President Musharraf.

If there's any good news behind the prospect of the timing of these tapes being deliberate (according to my lay speculation), it'd be that these terrorist leaders are in close coordination, maybe even closely co-located, which might suggest they throw up a larger signature on the radar screen of those hunting them.