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10 tweets,
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1. Our baby boy was born Saturday, but I’m breaking my self-imposed Twitter silence because this news is big: ISIS has just released a video of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the first time he’s appeared in a video in 5 years, since his 2014 televised sermon declaring the caliphate: 
2. The video was released by al-Furqan which is part of ISIS’ central media ministry & is responsible for putting out some of the most important ISIS releases to date, like the video showing the burning of the Jordanian pilot, as well as audio recordings of the group’s leadership
3. Baghdadi has always maintained an extreme security protocol, which explains how he’s stayed alive since 2010, when he became emir of the Islamic State of Iraq. Besides the 2014 video, he’s appeared only in one other in 2008, where he’s shown masked according to @DanieleRaineri
4. So this is literally only the second video he’s appeared in in more than a decade. Why take the risk now? Perhaps because the terror organization he leads is at an inflection point. He’s taken the enormous risk of showing his current appearance to rally his followers
5. According to a translation by @siteintelgroup, Baghdadi refers to the Sri Lankan attack on Easter Sunday, indicating the final version of the video was cut no earlier than 8 days ago. He calls that attack revenge for Baghuz, the last ISIS-ruled village which fell last month
6. Baghdadi praises the attackers in Sri Lanka, calling their combined murder revenge for Baghuz. This is significant because everyone from the Sri Lankan government to prominent journalists fell for *unofficial* statements from ISIS fanboys calling it revenge for Christchurch
7. Key to those watching ISIS’ growing reach in West Africa, Baghdadi acknowledges by name Abu Walid al-Sahraoui, a one-time commander of an al-Qaeda battalion in Mali who pledged allegiance more than 2 years ago to ISIS. Baghdadi makes clear Sahraoui is now part of the fold.
8. In 2017, it was Sahraoui’s group that led an attack on American special forces in Niger, killing four Americans, the largest loss of life in combat in Africa since the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident: nytimes.com/interactive/20…
9. During that attack, Sahraoui’s men stole the body cams off the bodies of the soldiers & used it to create a propaganda film showing their last moments. In a sign of how cut off they were from ISIS, it took them months to get it to the terror group. NYT got video *before* ISIS
10. Baghdadi’s nod to Sahraoui shows that Sahraoui really is considered part of ISIS’ terror network, even if there was a multi-year period when Sahraoui’s group appears to have fallen out of touch with ISIS.
