Pictures of smiling locals, tales of life-changing experiences, articles glorifying centuries of heritage and predicting a bright future: if the "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria had an airline, Dabiq would be its in-flight magazine.

For now, global jihad's latest English-language publishing endeavour is distributed online and the aircraft over Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's dominion are more likely to be warplanes and drones than commercial jets.





But the 50-page magazine strives to convince its readers that the caliphate proclaimed by Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group on an area twice the size of Israel, is the legitimate and viable home of the world's Muslims.

In design, it strongly resembles the Inspire magazine published by Al Qaeda's franchise in the Arabian peninsula that disseminated bomb-making instructions and aimed to engender "lone wolf" militants, a goal achieved in 2013 with the Boston bomber brothers.





RE: PT, from Dabiq, ISIS's new English language rag (Issa bin Maryam is Jesus, son of Mary): pic.twitter.com/Nu8YYmcy21 — Eide (@_eide) July 16, 2014

The editorial emphasis in Dabiq, analysts say, is more on state-building than on incitement or operational issues.

"The aim isn't to get young radicalised Western Muslims to carry out attacks but to come to Syria," said Peter Neumann, director of the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.

Many foreign fighters have already taken that step and Richard Barrett, a former counter-terrorism chief at Britain's foreign intelligence agency MI6, argued Dabiq was mostly a brochure selling the caliphate as a real and credible entity.

"It is the same phenomenon as advertising techniques that aim to endorse your choice of a product rather than inspire it," said Barrett, who now works for The Soufan Group, a New York-based consultancy.

View photos People inspect the aftermath of a double car bomb attack at a busy market in Ghadeer district in southeastern Baghdad, Iraq. Photo: AP More

- Newly rebranded -

Thousands of foreigners have joined jihadist groups in Syria since the start of the war there in March 2011 and many of them are now part of the newly-rebranded IS, which has broadened its remit from Iraq into Syria.

Dabiq's first issue also sings the praise of Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an ultraviolent military commander who headed IS's early incarnations before being slain in a 2006 US air strike, as a founding figure of the caliphate.

The magazine's introduction explains that it is named after the site of a major 16th century battle in what is now northern Syria that saw the Ottomans defeat the Mamluks and begin a major expansionist phase of an empire Baghdadi and his followers consider to have been the last caliphate.

What the jihadist group "wants to communicate by picking this name is that they're following in the Ottomans' footsteps," said Neumann, a professor at King's College London.

View photos Iraqi Shiite tribal fighters pose with their weapons in Baghdad's Sadr city, Iraq. Photo: AP More

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