Global Islamic Revival

DUBAI — Osama bin Laden's second-in-command has warned in a new Al-Qaeda video that US President Barack Obama will be defeated by Islamic fighters, a US-based monitoring group said.

The video, released to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, features Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and footage of a US soldier captured in Afghanistan, according to a statement by the SITE Intelligence Group.

The 106-minute video, called "The West and the Dark Tunnel," also features Adam Gadahn, known as the Al-Qaeda operative "Azzam the American," SITE said.




In the video, Zawahiri urges Muslims to participate in jihad, or holy war, and slams Arab leaders for following what it says is US policy of forcing support for Israel.

"This policy finds some who respond to it. All Arab presidents and kings cooperate with it. All those who belong to the so-called Arab nationalism deal with it, which accepts the conditions of American domination over the world."

Turning to Obama, Zawahiri warned that "the Muslim nation has begun to awaken" and that a "jihadi awakening will pervade."

"You will know who the Islamic nation is," Zawahiri said, according to SITE.

"To break your back, maybe at the hands of the Mujahedeen (Islamic fighters) with permission from God, the world will rest from your criminality, roughness and falsehood," Zawahiri added.

"Mr. Obama, America has waged many wars in the past and has known defeat in Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs (in Cuba) and others but this time is not like the previous ones because you are involved with the Muslim nation that has woken up."

IntelCenter, another group that monitors Islamist websites, said that footage of US soldier Bowe Berghdahl, kidnapped in Afghanistan in June 2009, also appears in the video.

"The footage appears to be similar to previously released footage," it said.

SITE quotes Gadahn as saying, in regard to Berghdahl, "I think that as the American people reflect on the fate of the young Idahoan soldier of the American occupation in Afghanistan, they should also start to reflect on the conditions of thousands of Muslim prisoners, suffering in their own government's custody at home and abroad."

Egyptian-born Zawahiri had in June criticised Obama when he visited Cairo to deliver a much-anticipated key address to the world's Muslims.

"His bloody messages were received and are still being received by Muslims, and they will not be concealed by public relations campaigns or by farcical visits or elegant words," Zawahiri had said in an audiotape.

Earlier this month, the As-Sahab media branch of Al-Qaeda released an audio statement by bin Laden in which he said Obama was "powerless" to halt the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and must rethink his policy on Israel.

Bin Laden had said that among "some other injustices," US support to Israel motivated Al-Qaeda to launch the September 11 attacks, IntelCenter reported.

Bin Laden has a 50-million-dollar bounty on his head and has been in hiding for the past eight years.

Intelligence officials, military analysts and other experts have long believed he is hiding along the remote mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

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