Signaling that they’re planning to be there awhile, and to continue to consolidate and expand their caliphate.
“Commencing jihad: ISIS tweets photos of military ‘graduation,'” by Malia Zimmerman, FoxNews.com, March 30, 2015:
The Twitter photos show a “graduating class” of ISIS fighters.
The black-clad graduates listened intently as speakers inspired them to change the world, but instead of caps and gowns, they wore masks and fatigues, and in place of diplomas, they clutched AK-47s.
Photos tweeted out from the Islamic State in Syria in the last few days showed the terror group’s latest “graduating class,” which included dozens of foreign fighters who came to Syria to join the Islamic caliphate. The graduation pictures capped 18 months of training in ideology and weaponry at a university in Deir Az-Zour, in northern Syria, and grads are now ready to advance to killing in the cause of radical Islam. Experts say ISIS has reasons for attaching the formal trappings of commencement exercises to the training of its fighters….
By promoting their special force in a series of propaganda photos, experts said ISIS is sending a message to potential recruits that it has created a professional, deadly and well-equipped force ready to protect its expanding Caliphate….