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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
The Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Photograph: Uncredited/AP
The Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Photograph: Uncredited/AP

Latest Islamic State horror masks a week of defeats

This article is more than 9 years old
Gruesome videos are taking a toll on populations in Iraq and Syria that are increasingly captive to power of Isis propaganda

After a week in which Islamic state (Isis) has suffered a wave of setbacks, it is determined to show that it plays a long game.

On all of its active fronts, things have not been going well for the terror group. Iraq has been a particular problem: Isis appears to have lost control of one of its prized possessions, the Baiji oil refinery, following a push by Shia militias and the Iraqi military.

Elsewhere in the country, two air strikes have taken a hefty toll on the group’s senior leadership. The first, in al-Qaim near the Syrian border, killed the overall leaders of Anbar province and the pivotal Euphrates river region. And near Mosul, a chief aide to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by a second strike.

The Isis leader and self-anointed caliph emerged on an audio tape on Thursday partly to dispel a belief that he had been injured in that attack. But the recent wounds to the group’s reputation appear to have stung.

In Syria, the battle for the Kurdish town of Kobani is far from the defiant triumph over the US air force that the jihadis claimed earlier in the autumn. Instead, a grinding stalemate has set in, with precision air strikes crippling every advance that Isis makes.

Against such a backdrop, this 16-minute video, which chronicles the group’s rise over a decade and illustrates its bloodthirsty ways, was intended to make a statement – that battlefield woes don’t win wars.

Isis timeline

Isis has used modern media better than any other terror group and most production houses in the region. The vivid HD horror it routinely produces has been just as effective in securing its gains as anything its foot soldiers do – perhaps even more so. Barbarity has never been more chillingly showcased. And, from Mosul to Damascus, and probably far beyond, people have rarely been more terrified.

This video contained two messages. The first was to view recent setbacks through the broad sweep of the group’s history and the time it feels it has on its hands now.

Throughout its many incarnations since 2003, the group’s leaders have often scorned the US military’s preoccupation with short-term outcomes.

“Ideological wars are different”, an Isis member told the Guardian earlier this month. “You [in the west] will never understand that we can afford damage that your politicians would never accept. To us time is nothing. This is a prophecy being fulfilled.”

The second message was far more visceral: anyone the group captures will meet a horrifying end. Unedited images of diabolical deaths are taking a toll on populations in Iraq and Syria that, while not under direct Isis control, are increasingly captive to the power of its propaganda. Each new video has been worse than the last. The ever-more shocking imagery has projected the group’s power – the darkest possible manifestation for a generation raised on made-for-TV gore.

The video, however, did appear to make at least one concession to sentiment. Choosing not to depict the gruesome end of aid worker Peter Kassig’s life was perhaps a nod to the pressure piled on the group by various Sunni Islamists, including the al-Qaida-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra – a leader of which said Kassig had treated him for a battle wound and deserved to be spared.

Kassig, like James Foley, the first western hostage killed in August, had converted to Islam. Several former hostages, now safely in Europe, say he had spent the past year true to the creed of his new faith.

His death, if indeed that is what was shown by the severed head at the feet of the black-clad British jihadi, was not as easy to sell for Isis as some others of the many thousands it has been responsible for. It had either warranted a discretion that his colleagues hadn’t, or had been depicted differently to make the latest horror film stylistically distinctive.

Either way, Isis has shown that it will look for innovative ways to shock and intimidate and new methods of projecting its message that time is on its side and, despite the odd rough week, fortunes will follow.

More on this story

More on this story

  • Inside the hunt for Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

  • Isis has been financially weakened, claim UK and US military figures

  • Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi 'seriously wounded in air strike'

  • Isis: the inside story

  • Syrian jihadists wreak havoc as violence spreads into Iraq

  • How an arrest in Iraq revealed Isis's $2bn jihadist network

  • 'Isis has shattered the ancient ties that bound Iraq's minorities'

  • Inside Isis: from border bootcamp to battle, jihad is run with ruthless skill

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