[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Notwithstanding the steady increase in number of Moslems joining the terrorist group ISIS from around the world, the group has started to lose territories on a daily basis. Currently, all its routes are closed and it is unable to stem the heavy loss of life, particularly of its snuffies currently besieged in Raqqa. This has raised the question whether the group will be forced to change its military strategy, replacing its pattern of offensive warfare with defensive tactics to pick up the pieces of its shattered legacy.Video in Spanish
Following the surfeit of international media reports on the Barcelona attack, ISIS released a bizarre video, titled ’The Conquest of Barcelona’ that featured the Spanish-speaking bad boy Abu Layth al Qurtubi. Wearing battle fatigues and feigning a Che Guevara look, al Qurtubi speaks softly with his lithe frame shown to the waist only. The video shows how the group is reshaping its war rhetoric and its media campaign. With a ’nasheed’ playing in the background, a Marxist revolutionary look-alike speaks in Spanish to woo new recruits to his cause. This new style of inveigling the impressionable reflects the desperation in the group to regain its popularity among the youth.