The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria released a video Monday using a captured British journalist to try and debunk claims that the terrorists are on the run in the Syrian border town of Kobani.
The sophisticated 5-1/2-minute video, featuring hostage John Cantlie, looks like a news report and its release is a poke in the eye to President Obama’s anti-Islamic State coalition, whose members met in Kuwait on Monday to discuss how to counter the group’s efforts to spread its message.
It’s part of a media campaign including online magazines, recruiting videos featuring narration in American-accented English and even a jihadi version of the popular video game “Grand Theft Auto” that has provided the group with a steady stream of recruits and inspired like-minded individuals to commit “lone wolf” acts of terrorism.
The video is a direct assault on the idea that weeks of aerial bombardment by the U.S.-led coalition and Turkey’s agreement to allow reinforcements across its borders have turned the tide in favor of the town’s Kurdish defenders. The video refers to the town as Ayn al-Islam (the spring of Islam), rather than by the Arab name Ayn al-Arab, or Kobani, the Kurdish name by which it has become known to most of the world.
“From where I’m standing right now, I can see large swaths of the city … and all I’ve seen here in the city of Kobani is mujahideen,” Cantlie is recorded as saying. “And they are definitely not on the run.”
Coalition forces have launched four airstrikes against the Islamic State in and around the town since Sunday, the U.S. Central Command said — the latest in a month of continuous bombardment. Though American officials initially shrugged at the possibility Kobani would fall, they now see its defense as a strategically important goal, especially as efforts to roll back ISIS’s advances in Iraq have stalled.
In the video, which opens with aerial images described as being shot from a drone operated by the Islamic State, Cantlie mentions the Oct. 19 airdrop of supplies by U.S. aircraft to Kobani’s Kurdish defenders, and notes — as U.S. officials had acknowledged — that two of the 28 bundles had gone astray.
Pentagon officials say the bombing has killed several hundred Islamic State fighters and hurt their efforts to bring supplies into the city. Its defenders also expect to be reinforced by Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters, but it is not clear when they might be able to cross from Turkey.
In the video, Cantlie counters coalition claims saying, “Airstrikes did prevent some groups of mujahideen from using their tanks and heavy armor as they’d have liked. So they’re entering the city and using light weapons instead, going house to house.
“The battle for Kobani is coming to an end. The mujahideen are just mopping up now, street to street and building to building.”
It’s not the first time Cantlie, 43, has appeared on an Islamic State propaganda video. The journalist, who worked for the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Times, reportedly recorded a series of videos entitled, “Lend Me Your Ears.” The latest of them was released Saturday.
The Islamic State also has released videos showing the beheading of four other hostages, U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and British aid workers Alan Henning and David Haines.
This article, originally posted at 3:56 p.m., has been updated.
