Wow, super embarrassing! This story was the basis of a whole series produced by the NYT, the "award-winning" Caliphate.

The sad thing is: it's not the 1st time @rcallimachi falls into fake stories. This could be avoided by having someone able to vet sources & spot discrepancies
Last October, she ran an article with claims that anybody who knows this subject would immediately dismiss as implausible. As we found out, it was based on faked documents supplied by dodgy sources.
More damning (if we put the lack of expertise aside) is that she misrepresented quotes by an expert to make it sound like he was vouching for their veracity, even though he'd raised concerns.
The third major story written by the same journalist was based on the unethical smuggling of documents from Iraq, which the Iraqi embassy later complained about & forced the NYT to return the documents to Iraq. aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/3…
Each time, @nytimes ignore local complaints about its unethical/flawed reporting by dodging the issue. For example, even though documents were proven to be fake & all experts said that, the NYT ran a "rowback" that made it sound like experts were "torn"
This is not about a person or a newspaper, it's much more pervasive, and we tend to give a pass to such mistakes involving extremists, even if the stories harm other people or at least produce myths.

Examples:
One "expert" wrote a whole piece based on interviewing a fake Twitter account that pretended to be a U.S. rebel commander, even if it was immoderately clear the account was probably run by a pro-ISIS operative.

tcf.org/content/report…
Another expert wrote like the same article 30 times over years based on the false assumption that one extremist cleric was the official Mufti of ISIS. Despite pushback against that, that myth persisted in the jihadism studies circles. Based on unknown Telegram accounts.
This, again, would not be popularized by someone who knew these groups up close. It is the kind that only someone with a laptop/iphone & a list of social media accounts but no real expertise could write. That's the skill required to write such bad but 'interesting' analysis.
Then the recent issue of the USG government selling a laughable talking point about the new leader of ISIS, which is likely to stick for a while, until it is debunked with time.

As explained here: cgpolicy.org/articles/exclu…
All this to say how this field of jihadism / counterterrorism is such a mess, full of 'experts' who think compiling data online or documents can substitute for real-world knowledge of these groups. It's an important field, but it's a shitshow.

Also, "no":
Here we go again, with a laughable excuse. If you have a main character in a podcast called Caliphate & build everything else around it, and he turns out to be a hoaxster, you call that narrative tension & hope to get away with it... once again.

Great thread on the real-world effects of such reporting:
This line is how the @nytimes screwup is being justified: but let’s quickly explore this.

Hint: the character of Abu Huzayfa has been not just central to this whole story, but it was used to promote the podcast CONSISTENTLY. If you thought it was fake, why have him so central?
Examples of how Abu Huzayfa wasn’t depicted as a potentially fake story, but he was placed front & center in the @nytimes articles & podcast series. This is an interview with the reporter with PBS. Pretty clear it’s believed wholeheartedly, or otherwise deceptively. ImageImage
More examples of how central the character of Abu Huzayfa was essential for the story and the promotion of it. ImageImageImageImage
So, no, another laughable “rowback” won’t work.
Another forgotten example, from 2016. The same person, outlet & excuse:

"New ISIS Video Suggests Media-Friendly Defector Lied About His Own Role. But The New York Times is standing by its story, insisting key claims from the former militant are backed up" huffpost.com/entry/isis-def…

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More from @hxhassan

18 Dec
Even as it tries to do the right thing, @nytimes falls short. Who has a history of misrepresentation that the NYT has avoided specifying?

The Times said its investigation had “found a history of misrepresentations by Mr. Chaudhry”

nytimes.com/2020/12/18/bus…
Really? After months of investigation, the paper found the interviewee is to blame? Apart from the rhetoric, it really merely walked back on its earlier decision to still use the podcast but edit it. Now it’s saying no, we’ll retract it, and everyone is supposed to applaud.
For an brief on what is the real trouble here, follow this thread (
[the problem is much deeper, it’s systemic & there are real-life effects to journalism led by ignorance + arrogance, despite repeated warnings of the damages it had caused.]
Read 5 tweets
2 Dec
Important: A breakthrough in the Gulf rift in the coming hours, sources tell Al Jazeera aja.me/b5k8f
Kuwait is to issue a statement about a "breakthrough" in the Gulf rift, between Saudi Arabia & Qatar. The breakthrough will be a set of confidence-building measures before a full end of the crisis that began June 2017. Moves to resolve the Saudi-Qatari dispute started last fall.
The gist of it: the imminent breakthrough is to allow Qatari flights over Saudi Arabia, which the US hopes will rattle Iran’s economy. Currently Qatar pays millions of dollars to route over Iran.

nytimes.com/2020/12/02/wor…
Read 5 tweets
6 Nov
Doom & gloom within Arab regime circles about reports of a Biden win. They were hoping Trump would win.

Even if they don’t think Biden would actively be against them, they get how their detractors will have space & multiple advantages perhaps unprecedented in recent decades!
In 2016, it was a whole different world: Arab dictators and their circles were simply intoxicated with their love of the incoming Trump presidency. They saw historic opportunities, and they were right to a certain degree but not entirely.
These regimes will always have friends in DC but things, and they may think their puppets are doing a great job at placing op-eds or forming partnerships here & there; but there are parallel things happening both inside the US & when it comes to their detractors they can’t stop.
Read 12 tweets
18 Oct
Two weeks before the anniversary of the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdad, ISIS is releasing a new statement from the media outlet specializing in top leadership releases.

The new leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi has not yet made a public statement: cgpolicy.org/articles/exclu…
ISIS releases a statement by its spokesman Abu Hamza al-Qurashi titled "So recount the tales"
In the first 5 minutes, he speaks about the Salafist tenet "obedience to rulers" and attacks it as un-Islamic. He also talks about clerics that preach against rebelling against rulers.

[A key part of why jihadism is part of a theological revolution, just a violent version]
Read 16 tweets
17 Sep
Contrary to what we know, the current leader of the Islamic State (ISIS) was born NOT in Tal Afar, but in a village near Mosul.

An Arab, not a Turkoman.

You heard it here first. - Iraq sources.
Also the detail in my tweet below was going against the conventional wisdom of the Iraqi and the US intel about his ethnicity.

I based my conclusion on internal discussions within ISIS & my understanding of the tribal origins of this "Turkoman" tribe.
Until recently, the US, Iraq & the UN all thought the current leader (Hajji Abdullah or Abdullah Qardash) wasn't really a Quarashi, that he was a Turkoman, and that he was a 'placeholder' until ISIS would appoint an Arab of Qurashi origins per its ideology
Read 17 tweets
12 Sep
In ~5 years, and don’t hold any of this against me:

• Israel will have its 1st base in the Gulf
• Turkey will control a zone from northern Iraq to northern Syria
• Turkey will expand Libya presence
• Egypt & Sudan will form something along the lines of a “Nile Confederation”
A military base in the Arab side of the Persian Gulf.
The normalization with tiny countries in the Gulf may indeed seem to be non-events. But, in that bubble, I think this process will produce interesting changes in the future. Normalization will have a snowball effect that’ll drag with it both Saudi Arabia & Qatar as party to it.
Read 6 tweets

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