Al Qaeda ramps up its propaganda

This newest video has attracted a fair degree of interest because of the footage of bin Laden. According to a translation by CNN, bin Laden asked in the video, "What is this status that the best of mankind wished for himself?" "He wished to be a martyr. He himself said: 'By Him in whose hands my life is! I would love to attack and be martyred.' "

But experts say there's nothing up-to-date in his brief and vague comments incorporated there and that his contribution could be months, if not years, old.

"If you look at the video, a lot of it looks rehashed, looks like it's from the archive. There's nothing in the video so new and unusual," says Kohlmann. "I don't really understand what it is about this video [that's attracting attention] other than it's coming in a week when Michael Chertoff said he had a 'gut feeling' Al Qaeda will attack again."

He said there have been other videos released in the past year with short clips of bin Laden taken from around the same period as the latest clip, which he suspects is pre-9/11.

Rita Katz, who runs the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) institute, the world's most active tracker of jihadi propaganda, agrees that the latest video is no departure from the norm. "The phones have been ringing off the hook [but] there's nothing in this video. It's just another propaganda video. The video of bin Laden is old."

The only point of interest in the latest tape, from Ms. Katz's perspective, is its focus on "martyrs" from Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda's media arm has put out similarly slick montages of men who have died in Iraq and other locations in the past, but she said as far as she knows this is the first one focusing on Afghanistan.

The 40-minute video, dedicated to Muslims who have left their homes to fight, included a series of animated scenes showing green fields overlaid with Arabic names written in gold, representing Arab fighters who had died in Afghanistan. Following one such sequence, the self-proclaimed leader of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan appeared, praising his fellow fighters.

"Your hero sons, courageous knights have left to the land of Afghanistan ... the land of jihad and martyrdom, answering the call for the sake of God to kick out the occupier who has desecrated the pure soil of Afghanistan," said Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed.

The Islamic hadith, or sayings attributed to the prophet Muhammad, make a number of references of praise for those who fight and die for God and Islam, promising them paradise.

Where the debate arises for Muslims is in the matter of what causes are merited, and whether the killing of civilians is allowed, whether the cause is just or not.

Most mainstream Muslims believe that acceptable jihads are defensive ones. Al Qaeda has, in turn, created a narrative in which all of Islam is under constant attack by the US and the "West" and, therefore, almost any act that they interpret as hurting the US or its allies is, in their view, allowed.

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