Twenty one minute video from Halab which shows a group of seven men enrolling into Islamic State. The number seven has a an important meaning in this production.

“specifying the number seven, it has to do with the creation and sahr’i commands of Allaah. Allaah created seven heavens, seven earths and seven days, and man’s creation is completed in seven stages” (here)

The men are shown being transported to a meeting point then to a Mosque for prayers from which they are then taken to what looks like a admin supply outlet where they are fitted with uniforms.

The last minutes include a training session and a kitting session until they are whisked away to the frontlines. The video follows the seven inductees pointing them out with digital labels as they traverse the training program which will look familiar to any person trained in urban warfare. Close proximity live fire training, flashbangs, which don’t flash, and some unique gymnastics are also shown as the men clamour over each other making human ladders to gain a tactical advantage fireing into empty bombed out buildings.

The ending shows one of the narrators climbing into a cobbled together VBIED only to vaporise on the horizon in a mushroom plume of TNT.

“The lights are on but nobody is home” look is clearly evident amongst the men who seem lost in a haze of illusion. Feeding drugs to soldiers in war is not a new thing and can be traced back to Alexander the Great (here) and even in modern times by Nazi Germany. (here) The bottom line here is that Daesh are still actively recruiting and seeking to draw upon the vast populous of disillusionment. 

Further Reading – “Interpol circulates list of 173 suspected members of Isis suicide brigade” (TheGuardian)