Announcements published on jihadi forums in recent weeks regarding the establishment of several new media companies signal a new propaganda effort on the part of Al-Qaeda and the global jihad movement to promote their worldview through local channels and in a local context. The campaign coincides with a lowering of the public profile of Al-Qaeda's Yemen affiliate, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which in the past year has been operating under the name Ansar Al-Shari'a.
The establishment of these locally oriented media companies apparently marks the implementation of a strategy Al-Qaeda has laid down for the Arab countries, especially those recently freed from the yoke of autocratic rulers, namely Egypt and Tunisia. As Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri explained in a recent statement: "The war [in Egypt] is a war of da'wa, communication, information, [a war] of rallying the ummah and enlightening it so that it follows the path of salvation and evades the path of perdition." ...
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