Tactically speaking, the village of Dabiq in northern Syria wasn’t all that militarily significant. But when it was cleared of Islamic State fighters Saturday, its loss dealt a huge, humiliating defeat to the Islamic State.
Dabiq was one of six towns and villages liberated over the weekend by Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces. It’s not just any town, though. It’s the village some Muslims believe was prophesied in the 7th century as the battlefield for an epic, apocalyptic showdown between Muslims and Christians. It’s also the name for the group’s propaganda magazine, so the group has had to rename the publication.
“Dabiq was so important to ISIL’s propaganda machine that the terror group’s magazine was named after this town,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Monday.
“ISIL carried out barbaric atrocities in Dabiq and even claimed that its final victory will take place there,” Cook said. “Instead, its forces have been defeated in Dabiq just as they have been from territory across Syria and in Iraq.”
Given Dabiq’s symbolic value, the Free Syrian Army had planned a careful and cautious siege of the village, but the Islamic State fighters took off without a fight.
The inability of the Islamic State to defend a city that was so central to its radical ideology was just one more sign of the group’s diminishing power, and shrinking caliphate.
The Pentagon says the loss of Dabiq forced ISIS to rename its magazine, but because the issues are undated and not published on a regular schedule, further details are hard to come by.
ISIS meanwhile has recently begun publishing a new smaller magazine, separate from Dabiq, called Rumiyah, according to the Clarion Project website.
The group, which says its mission is “challenging extremism and promoting dialog” monitors the publication of ISIS propaganda.
It says the new Islamic State magazine is shorter than Dabiq, and focuses on “putting forward the group’s political and theological stance, explaining why opposition to the group is heretical and gloating about terrorist attacks.”
The title Rumiyah refers to Rome, which the Islamic State wishes to conquer, since its sees Western civilization as a continuation of the ancient Roman Empire, against which the early Muslims fought, according to the Clarion Project.
