ISIS has issued a chilling warning to the United States as America marks 25 years since the September 11 attacks, claiming its conflict with Washington is “far from over” in a renewed propaganda message targeting the country.
The warning appeared in the latest edition of al-Naba, ISIS’s propaganda publication, in an Arabic-language article headlined “And America Lost”.
The lengthy article attempts to portray the United States as a declining power since the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, arguing that Washington’s subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan exposed the limits of American military strength.
ISIS claims the US entered those conflicts believing it could impose its will and reshape the Middle East, only to suffer military, economic, political and “moral” setbacks.
The publication repeatedly contrasts America’s military capabilities with what it describes as the ability of extremist groups to resist US intervention. It argues that Washington has increasingly relied on air power, drones, special forces and allied forces rather than large-scale conventional occupations.
The article presents that shift as evidence that the US is no longer capable of projecting power globally on the scale it once did.
Its claims form part of a longstanding ISIS propaganda narrative that seeks to portray Western military intervention as futile while presenting Islamist militants as capable of challenging vastly more powerful states.
There is, however, no independent evidence supporting ISIS’s sweeping claim that America has suffered a comprehensive defeat.
Both ISIS and al-Qaeda have sustained major territorial, organisational and leadership losses following years of US-led military operations and international counter-terrorism campaigns.
The 9/11 attacks themselves were carried out by al-Qaeda, the terrorist organisation led by Osama bin Laden. Almost 3,000 people were killed.
ISIS did not exist when the attacks took place.
The attacks nevertheless triggered America’s so-called “War on Terror”, beginning with the US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. Washington sought to dismantle al-Qaeda’s infrastructure and remove the Taliban government that had provided sanctuary to the organisation’s leadership.
The US and its allies invaded Iraq two years later, and the subsequent collapse of the Iraqi state helped create conditions in which extremist organisations could expand.
One of those groups was founded by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His organisation became an al-Qaeda affiliate following the 2003 invasion, known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
Zarqawi was killed in 2006, but the organisation survived and underwent several transformations before eventually emerging as ISIS, also known as Islamic State.
ISIS later broke decisively with al-Qaeda, turning the two organisations into rivals.
The split reflected fundamental disagreements over leadership, strategy and the timing and methods for establishing an Islamic state.
A quarter of a century after 9/11, ISIS’s latest message seeks to recast that history as a story of American decline — despite the destruction of the group’s territorial caliphate and the sustained pressure placed on its leadership and networks by international counter-terrorism operations.
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