Return of Al Qaeda's Inspire Magazine

A poster found in an al Qaeda classroom shows Osama Bin Laden smiling and surrounded by military vehicles.

(Photo by U.S. Navy/Getty Images)

This Osama Bin Laden propaganda poster was found in an al Qaeda classroom by U.S. Navy SEALs on a search and destroy mission in the Zhawar Kili area January 14, 2002 in Eastern Afghanistan.

Two new editions of Inspire, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's (AQAP's) English-language propaganda magazine, were published May 2. The online magazine was dealt a serious blow Sept. 30, 2011, when a U.S. airstrike in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Yemeni cleric and a contributor to Inspire, and Samir Khan, the magazine's editor. The recent editions were the magazine's first since the airstrike. The new releases of Inspire indicate that AQAP is continuing its heavy focus on engaging and radicalizing Muslims in the West. Despite these efforts — and the fact that grassroots jihadists will continue to pose a threat for some time — the few Inspire-motivated attacks attempted in the West have been operationally unsuccessful and demonstrate the difficulty of carrying out such an attack.