Islamic State Khorasan (ISKP) mouthpiece Al-Azaim, Uzbek chapter, has published an hour-long audio news bulletin, featuring several speakers as guests.
The audio statement is divided into 8 parts, with a brief introduction and then a comment on the ISKP attack in Kabul on the Langan Hotel, which was carried out by two ISKP operatives Abu Omari and Abdul Jabbar.
It then continues with a brief poem about Uyghurs’ plight before introducing a speaker as a guest who comments on, Abdul Jabbar Tajiki, one of the two ISKP militants who carried out the Langan Hotel attack. The speaker recalls that Abdul Jabbar and Abu Omari both traveled from Tajikistan to Afghanistan with other ISKP supporters, to carry out an operation against the Taliban to expose their security level.
The audio also features a new guest: an ISKP Uzbek militant, Tahir, who narrates his story of migration from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan with his family. Interestingly a baby can be heard crying during the interview.
Another section is a criticism of jihadist Uzbek ideologues Abdulloh Zufar and Sadiq Samarqandi, perceived as being propagandists of Turkey and in favour Hayyat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) regime in Idlib region, Syria. It is important to note that Al-Azaim Uzbek has frequently targeted these two ideologues in several past audio statements, labelling them as a threat to jihadists.
The last section of the audio is dedicated to the analysis of the Islamic State (IS) infographic of attacks claimed in 2022.
It is worth noticing that Al-Azaim Uzbek had briefly stopped publishing audio news in recent months. This marks the first long episode of Al-Azaim Uzbek and Radio Voice of Khorasan Uzbek after a while, potentially highlighting a comeback by the media cell of the group, which had been surpassed both in quality and quantity of content by Al-Azaim Tajik.
However, it should be noted that both language departments of Al-Azaim share their respective publication in each other’s channels.