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As with other ISIS videos, it is highly produced, with music and dramatic video effects – like the trailer for a movie no sane person wants to see.
International Business Times reports that the day before this video was released, “a new group calling itself the Islamic State’s Green Brigade took responsibility for a bombing in Yemen that had allegedly killed five Shiite rebels.”
According to the UK Daily Mail, the group depicted in the video calls itself “Soldiers of the Caliphate in Yemen.” They are looking to muscle in on their old mentors in al-Qaeda, which is currently mixed up in a three-way battle with the Iran-backed Shiite Houthi insurgents and the recognized government of Yemen, which is receiving an airpower assist from Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners.
The full video is nine minutes long, and features the “soldiers of the Caliphate” promising to “cut the throats of the Shiite Houthis” and “take back the land they have occupied.” Analysts are careful to note that the video could have been filmed in any number of desert locations across the Middle East; we have only the word of the “Soldiers of the Caliphate in Yemen” that it was filmed within a few miles of Sanaa.