Inspire, al-Qaeda’s English-language magazine, returns without editor Awlaki

Source: Washington Post

Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen has produced another issue of its English-language online magazine, Inspire, defiantly proclaiming that it is “still publishing America’s worst nightmare” despite the killing in September of two top editors, Americans Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.

Before he was killed in a joint CIA-Special Operations drone strike, Awlaki, a Yemeni American born in New Mexico, had emerged as one of al-Qaeda’s leading propagandists. He and Khan, a Pakistani American, founded and directed Inspire, a publication that combined ideological tracts justifying terrorism with practical, illustrated guides on how to “make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” and “remote control detonation.”

Inspire first appeared online in July 2010 with the mission of radicalizing potential recruits in the United States and Europe. It was studied closely by intelligence analysts for insights into al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based group in which Awlaki was both an ideologue and an operational leader, according to the Obama administration.

Some U.S. analysts, predicting that the magazine would die without its founders, told The Washington Post this year that they would miss the glossy publication because of the window it offered into the thinking of some jihadists.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inspire-al-qaedas-english-language-magazine-returns-without-editor-awlaki/2012/05/02/gIQAiEPMxT_story.html