When a 2015 survey by the magazine Time Out overwhelmingly determined that British people had the sexiest accent in the world, doubtless voters were not dreaming of the menacing drawl of ISIL’s British jihadi contingent.
Only weeks after Mohammed Emwazi, better known as “Jihadi John”, was reportedly killed in a drone attack in November, up crops his successor fronting a 10-and-a-half-minute video chillingly threatening Britain and promising that ISIL will “one day invade your land where we will rule by the Sharia”.
For all the furore and the sounds of government back-slapping after Emwazi’s killing, ISIL clearly did not struggle to replace him. Experts are now poring over the video for clues and analysing the voice. Some believe that the man is Siddharta Dhar, known as Abu Rumaysa, a 32-year-old former bouncy castle salesman, who had fled Britain while on bail.
Shiraz Maher of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence told me that there was probably a “queue” of British jihadis all eager to take his place. Emwazi and his replacement are expendable messengers, not core components of ISIL’s organisation, neither militarily or ideologically.
That said, the selection of these propagandists is quite particular. Peter Neumann, Mr Maher’s colleague, has highlighted the use of people in videos “who create a sense of intimacy”.
It is also noticeable that the age and demeanour of those in the videos is a device to engage with the demographic they are keenest to recruit from, the young and marginalised. These figureheads are not religious ideologues able to quote every verse of the Quran, but more akin to gang leaders and streetwise thugs.
ISIL videos have somewhat lost their shock and awe value. The media has started to tire of them, despite ISIL increasing the gore factor.
But the shock factor for this latest video was not of course the accent but the use of a child – albeit not for the first time. In the video, the boy chillingly threatens: “We will kill the kuffar [non-believers] over there.”
This young child, probably British too, looks around 5 or 6 years old. His appearance is both deliberate and completely in keeping with ISIL’s use of children: they have been used for propaganda purposes, but also as soldiers, suicide bombers and even executioners.
But ISIL’s chief weapon is fear, buying fulsomely into Machiavelli’s infamous dictum that: “If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.”
To that extent therefore, it does matter that a British jihadi with a genuine British accent was used to deliver this latest missive, as opposed to the thousands of Iraqis or Syrians who could easily have done the job.
Much of the international media coverage focused on this, with mention of the British accent typically in the headline or the first sentence. “Terror has a British accent,” read one headline.
ISIL, of course, knows exactly what reaction it is provoking. It has done this with other countries.
Videos exist of French hostages being killed by French-accented jihadis. In other videos, it is Russian speakers who kill Russians.
Last summer a French jihadi, also masked, executed on video a Syrian soldier, before kicking him off a cliff. The jihadi proclaimed that ISIL would “fill the streets of Paris with dead bodies”, a threat brutally enacted on November 13 last year.
Only in December, a Chechen was shot for allegedly being a spy by a Russian-speaking jihadi who threatened Vladimir Putin directly – just as the latest video with a British jihadi mocked British prime minister David Cameron.
“Listen, Putin the dog, the [Syrian] regime bombed us before you came and then America and its coward allies bombed us. Oh Russian infidels, we’ve been waiting for you. You have been taken to a new defeat.”
The videos are all amplified by a host of ISIL publications written in multiple languages and circulated largely over social media platforms. It all builds a sense in the UK, for instance, that the jihadis are not just “over there”, but inside the country.
In recent memory, the UK first experienced this in 2005, after the “martyrdom” videos of the 7/7 bombers showed them speaking with unmistakeable British accents. Howls of outright astonishment greeted the news that the London bombings were carried out by British Muslims, born and brought up in Yorkshire.
It created an uneasy sense in the country that Britons may be living alongside people who agree or even just tolerate and accept such extremism. Such a view will only increase with more videos from ISIL.
The fear of home-grown jihadis remains powerful. This is amplified to an extent by the sound of distinct regional accents from Birmingham or Yorkshire emphasising that these people were almost certainly born in these places.
It fulfils two of ISIL’s core aims, firstly to sow fear in the target country and secondly, to foment division. While blatantly unfair, British Muslims feel the cold stare of suspicion on them – precisely the emotional reaction ISIL craves. The far right will also take advantage.
ISIL, however, is merely the beneficiaries of a much longer process. It has taken decades for extremist recruiters to set up their networks in Europe.
In the UK, back in the 1980s and 1990s, it was non-British Muslims like Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza who fronted the recruitment drive to extremist groups.
Mr Maher believes that jihadist groups “do not need these characters any more”. The recruitment has become home-grown and sadly infinitely more effective as a result.
Who are young disaffected 20-year-old Muslims going to listen to, a streetwise youth like Emwazi or an ageing “cleric” like Abu Qatada?
British Muslims overwhelmingly reject and oppose such horrific extremism. Yet the reality is that there are enough young disaffected Muslims for ISIL to prey on.
The use of native speakers for targeted audiences is unlikely to stop. For Britain, it is a reminder, if any were needed, that the jihadist threat today is as much home-grown as it is the product of overseas dynamics.
So far 900 British citizens have travelled to Iraq and Syria, mostly to join ISIL. Perhaps as many as 70 to 100 have been killed and over 50 returned to the UK. It may well be that in Iraq at least military forces will eventually prevail over ISIL in 2016, but the wider transnational threat will very much remain.
Britain has been served notice of an impending attack. An attempt looks probable and it is a fair bet that ISIL will deploy British jihadis for the task. The days of arrogant taunts in regional British accents are unlikely to be over.
Chris Doyle is director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding
On Twitter: @Doylech
