Iraq crisis: the jihadist behind the takeover of Mosul - and how America let him go

[lostinblue 1,989]

Iraq crisis: the jihadist behind the takeover of Mosul - and how America let him go The fall of the Iraqi city of Mosul to the al-Qaeda offshoot ISIS has shown the power of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - a former US detainee

By Colin Freeman

12:13PM BST 11 Jun 2014

22 Comments

The FBI “most wanted” mugshot shows a tough, swarthy figure, his hair in a jailbird crew-cut. The $10 million price on his head, meanwhile, suggests that whoever released him from US custody four years ago may now be regretting it.

Taken during his years as a detainee at the US-run Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, this is the only known photograph of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. But while he may lack the photogenic qualities of his hero, Osama bin Laden, he is fast becoming the new poster-boy for the global jihadist movement.

Well-organised and utterly ruthless, the ex-preacher is the driving force behind al-Qaeda’s resurgence throughout Syria and Iraq, putting it at the forefront of the war to topple President Bashar al-Assad and starting a fresh campaign of mayhem against the Western-backed government in Baghdad.

On Tuesday, his forces achieved their biggest coup in Iraq to date, seizing control of government buildings in Mosul, the country's third biggest city. Coming on top of similar operations in January that planted the black jihadi flag in the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi, it gives al-Qaeda control of large swathes of the north and west of the country, and poses the biggest security crisis since the US pull-out two years ago.

But who is exactly is the man who is threatening to plunge Iraq back to its darkest days, and why has he become so effective?

As with many of al-Qaeda’s leaders, precise details are sketchy. His FBI rap sheet offers little beyond the fact that he is aged around 42, and was born as Ibrahim Ali al-Badri in the city of Samarrah, which lies on a palm-lined bend in the Tigris north of Baghdad. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is a nom de guerre, as is his other name, Abu Duaa, which translates roughly as “Father of the Summons”.

Some describe him as a farmer who was arrested by US forces during a mass sweep in 2005, who then became radicalised at Camp Bucca, where many al-Qaeda commanders were held. Others, though, believe he was a radical even during the largely secular era of Saddam Hussein, and became a prominent al-Qaeda player very shortly after the US invasion.

“This guy was a Salafi (a follower of a fundamentalist brand of Islam), and Saddam’s regime would have kept a close eye on him,” said Dr Michael Knights, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“He was also in Camp Bucca for several years, which suggests he was already considered a serious threat when he went in there.”

That theory seems backed by US intelligence reports from 2005, which describe him as al-Qaeda’s point man in Qaim, a fly-blown town in Iraq’s western desert.

“Abu Duaa was connected to the intimidation, torture and murder of local civilians in Qaim”, says a Pentagon document. “He would kidnap individuals or entire families, accuse them, pronounce sentence and then publicly execute them.”

Why such a ferocious individual was deemed fit for release in 2009 is not known. One possible explanation is that he was one of thousands of suspected insurgents granted amnesty as the US began its draw down in Iraq. Another, though, is that rather like Keyser Söze, the enigmatic crimelord in the film The Usual Suspects, he may actually be several different people.

“We either arrested or killed a man of that name about half a dozen times, he is like a wraith who keeps reappearing, and I am not sure where fact and fiction meet,” said Lieutenant-General Sir Graeme Lamb, a former British special forces commander who helped US efforts against al-Qaeda in Iraq. “There are those who want to promote the idea that this man is invincible, when it may actually be several people using the same nom de guerre.”

What does seem clear, however, is that al-Qaeda now has its most formidable leadership since Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who kidnapped the British hostage, Ken Bigley, and who died in a missile strike in 2006.

When al-Baghdadi was announced as a new leader in 2010 - following the killing of two other top commanders - al-Qaeda was seriously on the back foot, not just in Iraq but regionwide. In former strongholds like Fallujah, its fighters had been routed after their brutality sparked a rebellion by local tribes. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, drone strikes were destroying the cream of its senior leadership. And the following year, the onset of the Arab Spring revolutions, with their emphasis on democracy and human rights, made it look simply irrelevant.

Indeed, when bin Laden himself was killed in May 2011, Baghdadi’s pledge to revenge his death with 100 terrorist attacks across Iraq looked like little more than bluster.

Today, he is already well past that target, thanks to a devastating campaign of car bombings and Mumbai-style killing sprees that has pushed Iraq’s death toll back up to around 1,000 per month.

“Baghdadi is actually more capable than the man he took over from,” said Dr Knights. “It’s one of those unfortunate situations where taking out the previous leadership has made things worse, not better.”

Quietly-spoken and publicity-shy, Baghdadi is said to be fond of turning up on frontline operations himself. Mindful, though, of the price on his head — second only to the $25m reward for al-Qaeda’s No 1, Ayman al Zawahari - he takes extensive precautions.

Fighters who have met him speak of a shadowy figure who can mimic a number of regional accents to blend in. In the company of all but the closest devotees, he wears a mask to prevent anyone getting a close look at him.

He has, however, won respect for being less gung-ho than other al-Qaeda leaders: while suicide bombers are a key part of his arsenal, he is said often to veto operations that put his other fighters at too much risk.

In the same spirit, his greatest coup so far was to free around 500 of his most loyal supporters during a spectacular jail break last July at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, supposedly the most-heavily guarded facility in the country. It is a trick he is believed to have repeated this week in Mosul, where three jails holding at least 1,000 militants were "liberated".

Many of those freed in the earlier Abu Ghraib break out in July are believed to have headed to neighbouring Syria, where they have proved decisive in turning al-Qaeda into the pre-eminent rebel movement in the fight against President Assad.

Al-Baghdadi himself is also believed to have relocated there, and last year renamed his group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which sees both countries as a single al-Qaeda caliphate. Already the group has about 7,000 fighters in northern Syria, including volunteers from Britain and Europe whom it is feared may one day start terror campaigns at home.

Such has been ISIL's brutality in Syria that it has even alienated other al-Qaeda affiliated groups, and prompted numerous reports that it is at least partly a creation of President Assad's intelligence services, designed to descredit and disunite the rebel movement.

That, though, does not square with Baghdadi's known-hatred of Shia Muslims, the sect to which Mr Assad belongs. Like most other al-Qaeda extremists, Baghdadi views Shias as apostates, be they those in Syria or those in the Shia-majority government in Baghdad.

“One sheikh who knew Baghdadi said he was very sectarian, even more so than other al-Qaeda leaders,” said Sterling Jensen, an interpreter tasked by the US military to liaise with Fallujah’s sheikhs during the rebellion against al-Qaeda in 2007.

Some believe that Bagdadi will eventually make the mistake of many of his predecessors, by over-flexing his muscles and seizing more territory than he can hold. But similar predictions when his men attacked Fallujah and Ramadi in January - and five months on, they are still there.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10891700/Iraq-crisis-the-jihadist-behind-the-takeover-of-Mosul-and-how-America-let-him-go.html

[Jacque67 7,328]

Interesting.

[Póg mo 1,749]

Iran to the rescue...http://online.wsj.com/articles/iran-deploys-forces-to-fight-al-qaeda-inspired-militants-in-iraq-iranian-security-sources-1402592470

[Póg mo 1,749]

Iraq crisis: Sunni caliphate has been bankrolled by Saudi Arabia Bush and Blair said Iraq was a war on Islamic fascism. They lost

BY ROBERT FISK – 13 JUNE 2014

So after the grotesquerie of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 suicide killers of 9/11, meet Saudi Arabia’s latest monstrous contribution to world history: the Islamist Sunni caliphate of Iraq and the Levant, conquerors of Mosul and Tikrit – and Raqqa in Syria – and possibly Baghdad, and the ultimate humiliators of Bush and Obama.

From Aleppo in northern Syria almost to the Iraqi-Iranian border, the jihadists of Isis and sundry other groupuscules paid by the Saudi Wahhabis – and by Kuwaiti oligarchs – now rule thousands of square miles.

Apart from Saudi Arabia’s role in this catastrophe, what other stories are to be hidden from us in the coming days and weeks?

The story of Iraq and the story of Syria are the same – politically, militarily and journalistically: two leaders, one Shia, the other Alawite, fighting for the existence of their regimes against the power of a growing Sunni Muslim international army.

While the Americans support the wretched Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his elected Shia government in Iraq, the same Americans still demand the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad of Syria and his regime, even though both leaders are now brothers-in-arms against the victors of Mosul and Tikrit.

The Croesus-like wealth of Qatar may soon be redirected away from the Muslim rebels of Syria and Iraq to the Assad regime, out of fear and deep hatred for its Sunni brothers in Saudi Arabia (which may invade Qatar if it becomes very angry).

We all know of the “deep concern” of Washington and London at the territorial victories of the Islamists – and the utter destruction of all that America and Britain bled and died for in Iraq. No one, however, will feel as much of this “deep concern” as Shia Iran and Assad of Syria and Maliki of Iraq, who must regard the news from Mosul and Tikrit as a political and military disaster. Just when Syrian military forces were winning the war for Assad, tens of thousands of Iraqi-based militants may now turn on the Damascus government, before or after they choose to advance on Baghdad.

Now we'll march on Baghdad, vow Iraqi insurgents

No one will care now how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been slaughtered since 2003 because of the fantasies of Bush and Blair. These two men destroyed Saddam’s regime to make the world safe and declared that Iraq was part of a titanic battle against “Islamofascism”. Well, they lost.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/robert-fisk/iraq-crisis-sunni-caliphate-has-been-bankrolled-by-saudi-arabia-30351679.html

[Karee 4,191]

I saw something on TV that they stole something like $500 million from a bank in Mosul or Kirkuk a couple days ago. I can't seem to find anything on the web about it now.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Radicalised at a detention camp. Say it isn't so.

[mota bhai 2,675]

It was always a matter of time before a lot of these 'countries' that are nothing more than colonial creations would begin to unravel. That it's taken so long (colonialism ended quite a while ago) is fascinating but better late than never. The partition of Iraq (which is where this is hopefully headed) should set in motion a similar unraveling across the middle east and south asia. Western investors would loose some money (so expect the West to oppose it) but the people in those regions will be better off in the end.

[lostinblue 1,989]

It was always a matter of time before a lot of these 'countries' that are nothing more than colonial creations would begin to unravel. That it's taken so long (colonialism ended quite a while ago) is fascinating but better late than never. The partition of Iraq (which is where this is hopefully headed) should set in motion a similar unraveling across the middle east and south asia. Western investors would loose some money (so expect the West to oppose it) but the people in those regions will be better off in the end.

The survivors that is (be better off) How many heads will line the streets? Oil fits into the equation Are we in better shape to handle an oil shock caused by this unrest? No pipelines built.. coal mines shut down.Power plants being closed by the EPA... The kenyans work is done.

[mota bhai 2,675]

The survivors that is (be better off) How many heads will line the streets? Oil fits into the equation Are we in better shape to handle an oil shock caused by this unrest? No pipelines built.. coal mines shut down.Power plants being closed by the EPA... The kenyans work is done.

When you dismantle an artificial nation into smaller and more coherent pieces, violence is usually part of the process. Not much one can do about that. It is what it is.

As for western oil interests, no reason they should care.