ISIS has named this parade in past years, and then NYPD Chief Bill Bratton said they were prepared. Nothing happened.
One message from al Baghdadi's speech:
To the soldiers of the Khilafah in Khurasan, Bengal, Indonesia, Qawqaz, the Philippines, Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula, Sinai, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Somalia, and West Africa: Know that today, you are the supports of Islam and the pegs of the Khilafah in the earth. You have stunned the nations of kufr with your jihad, patience, and steadfastness. ... You have enraged the nations of kufr with your coming together and waging jihad, just as they have equally been enraged by the rise of the Khilafah. As such, they will strive to extinguish the light of Allah between you by spreading the causes of division and discord, so be patient and persevere, and do not fear.
Remain steadfast and do not flee when engaging the enemy. If you have patience, then Allah will empower you, support you, and give you a firm foothold. .... Know that if some of your leaders are killed, then Allah will replace them with those who are equal or better than them. Allah will not neglect you, so do not be disheartened. Truly, Allah is with us.
On a related note, the Obama Administration added some Jabhat Fath as-Shām (formerly al Nusra) leaders to its designated terror list and ordered targeted (kill) strikes against its leaders.
Obama’s new order gives the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, wider authority and additional intelligence-collection resources to go after al-Nusra’s broader leadership, not just al-Qaeda veterans or those directly involved in external plotting.
Jabhat Fath as-Shām, despite claims to the contrary, is an al Qaida associated group and is enemies with ISIS (so far.) It has teamed up with the so-called "moderate rebels" the U.S. is supporting in their fight against Assad.
The White House and State Department led the charge within the Obama administration for prioritizing action against the group. Pentagon leaders were reluctant at first to pull resources away from the fight against the Islamic State.
But aides say Obama grew frustrated that more wasn’t being done by the Pentagon and the intelligence community to kill al-Nusra leaders given the warnings he had received from top counterterrorism officials about the gathering threat they posed.
The new order from Obama includes NW Syria:
To support the expanded push against al-Nusra, the White House pressed the Pentagon to deploy additional armed drones and intelligence-collection assets in the airspace over northwestern Syria, an area that had been sparsely covered by the United States until now because of its proximity to advanced Russian air-defense systems and aircraft.
Sheikh Abdullah Muheisseni, one of those targeted yesterday, has this to say about Trump's election (via Research Fellow Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi on Twitter :
“From one perspective the victory of Trump is an important step towards the victory of the Sunnis. The first step towards victory is the correct awareness about the reality of the battle. How much did we need to proof the fact that the Rawafid are allies of the US. But Trump summarized it in one video with the Lebaneze Shia cleric Muhammad Al-Hajj Hassan. How much time did we need to explain to the Sunni media activists that the battle is not against the terrorists (Mujahideen) rather it is against the Sunnis and the Mujahideen who are their first line of defense. But Trump summarized it. The American politics did not change much. What changed is their tactic of war, from secretive to openly, and this good.
Obama relied on the logic of clearing the battle by targeting the leadership and Trump relies on profiting from wars and exploiting countries as if they are as cheap as rice. Perhaps the presidential victory of Trump will pave the way for bloody battles and intense chaos in which the Sunnis will not be the biggest losers, as they have reached a depth in which they do not have anything to lose anymore. Obama supports consensus and containment in the internal affairs of the US while Trump on the other end wants to shatter his opponents. May Allah increase their division. (my emphasis)
The nuclear deal with Iran; the presidential victory of Trump; the enactment of JASTA; the presidential victory of Aoun Michel; Egypt holding joint military drills with Russia and negotiating oil deals with Iran; the Houthi campaign; Hizballah in Syria - are these facts not enough to stand with the Mujahideen? The reality of the Sunnis today and their heedlessness about what is happening around them with the Muslims reminds me of the invasion of the Tartars, the Sultans at that time were heedless until a maid killed one of them while he was dancing in front of him!”
Sheikh Muheisseni's twitter page is here. A Daily Mail article on his statements about being pleased about Trump's victory is here.
