Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan’s Umar Studio & the Global Islamic Media Front: Mapping the Distribution Network

-Christopher Anzalone (McGill University)

The Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) Umar Studio (now called Umar Media) is now having its media materials distributed online via the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), a shadowy transnational jihadi-takfiri media and translation network.  As I wrote in a June article published at Foreign Policy‘s AFPAK Channel on the TTP’s media campaign and networks, the distribution of TTP media provides further evidence of the Pakistani movement’s connections to transnational Sunni jihadism.  A lot of recent TTP videos and statements have been issued via the GIMF’s Al-Qadisiyyah Media outfit as opposed to Umar Studio.  It appears now that even the latter has moved to GIMF distribution.  Interestingly, distribution is not carried out by the Al-Fajr Media Center, a shadowy media network that facilitates the distribution of all media materials from Al-Qa’ida Central (AQC), Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI)/Al-Qa’ida in the Land of the Two Rivers-Iraq (AQI), and Al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb.  Al-Fajr also distributes videos from the Urdu-language jihadi-takfiri media outlet Hittin.