Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS Leader Known for His Brutality, Is Dead at 48
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| Most of the world learned of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in July 2014, when he mounted the pulpit of a mosque in Iraq to declare himself the head of a growing terrorist organization. via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
President Trump announced the death of al-Baghdadi, who transformed the Islamic State into a global terrorist network that conquered territory the size of Britain and directed horrific attacks in the West.
By Rukmini Callimachi and Falih Hassan
Oct. 27, 2019
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the cunning and enigmatic black-clad leader of the Islamic State who transformed a flagging insurgency into a global terrorist network that drew tens of thousands of recruits from 100 countries, has died at 48.
His death was announced on Sunday by President Trump, who said al-Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest during a raid this weekend in northwestern Syria by the United States Special Forces. Mr Trump said preliminary tests had confirmed his identity.
There was no immediate confirmation from the Islamic State’s media arm, which typically is quick to claim attacks but generally takes longer to confirm the deaths of its leaders.
The son of a pious Sunni family from the Iraqi district of Samarra, al-Baghdadi parlayed religious fervor, hatred of nonbelievers and the power of the internet into the path that catapulted him onto the global stage. He commanded an organization that, at its peak, controlled a territory the size of Britain from which it directed and inspired acts of terror in more than three dozen countries.
Al-Baghdadi was the world’s most-wanted terrorist chieftain, the target of a $25 million bounty from the American government. His death followed a yearslong, international manhunt that consumed the intelligence services of multiple countries and spanned two American presidential administrations.
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| The burnt-out home where al-Baghdadi was born in the village of Al Jallam, in central Iraq. Ivor Prickett for The New York Time |
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| ISIS fighters in Raqqa, Syria, in 2014. via Associated Press |
After being stripped of electronic devices, including cellphones and cameras, Mr. al-Ithawy and others recalled, they were blindfolded, loaded onto buses and driven for hours to an unknown location. When they were finally allowed to remove their blindfolds, they would find al-Baghdadi sitting before them.
Meetings lasted between 15 and 30 minutes and the ISIS chief would leave the building first. His visitors were required to stay under armed guard for hours after his exit. Then they were once again blindfolded and driven back to their original point of departure, according to aides who saw him in three of the past five years.
“Baghdadi’s concern was always: Who will betray him? He didn’t trust anyone,” said Gen. Yahya Rasool, a spokesman of the Iraqi Joint Operation Command.
Much of the world first learned of al-Baghdadi in 2014, when his men overran one-third of Iraq and half of neighboring Syria and declared the territory a caliphate, claiming to revive the Muslim theocracy that ended with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
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| American-backed forces in Syria in February, as they fought to take back Baghuz, the last village under Islamic State control. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
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| Raqqa, Syria, was once the de facto capital of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
Although Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader, had dreamed of restoring the caliphate, he was reluctant to declare one, perhaps fearing the overwhelming military response that eventually cost al-Baghdadi his territory.
Yet it took five years before troops seized in March the last acre of land under al-Baghdadi’s rule. And in the interim, the promise of a physical caliphate electrified tens of thousands of followers who flocked to Syria to serve his imagined state.
At its peak, the group’s black flag flew over major population centers, including the Iraqi city of Mosul, with a population of 1.4 million.
Its territory spread east into the plains of Nineveh, the biblical city where the extremists turned centuries-old churches into bomb factories. It reached north into the mountains of Sinjar, whose women were singled out for sexual enslavement. It extended south to the Syrian oil fields of Deir al-Zour and the majestic colonnades of Palmyra.
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| A grieving mother in Mosul, Iraq, in 2017. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
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| A family fleeing Qayyara, Iraq, in 2016. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times |
While some of those medieval punishments are also meted out in places like Saudi Arabia, the Islamic State shocked people around the world by televising its executions. It also offended Muslims by inventing horrific punishments that are not mentioned in Islamic scripture.
A Jordanian pilot was burned alive in a scene filmed by overhead drones. Men accused of being spies were drowned in cages, as underwater cameras captured their last tortured gasp. Others were crushed under the treads of a T-55 tank, or strung up by their feet inside a slaughterhouse and butchered like animals.
But in addition to brutality, the group also meted out services, running a state that was recognized by no one other than themselves, but which in certain categories outperformed the one it had usurped.
The Islamic State collected taxes and saw to it that the garbage was picked up. Couples who got married could expect to receive a marriage license printed on Islamic State stationery. Once children of those unions were born, their birth weight was duly recorded on an ISIS-issued birth certificate. The group even ran its own D.M.V.
For a group intent on re-establishing a theocracy from the Middle Ages, the Islamic State was very much a creature of its time. The militants harnessed the internet to connect with thousands of followers around the globe, making them feel as if they were virtual citizens of the caliphate.
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| Civilians lining up for an aid distribution in Mosul in 2017. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
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| Scavengers, many of them young boys, foraging for scraps at Mosul’s main dump after ISIS was ousted from the city. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
The message of these new jihadists was clear, and many of those on whose ears it fell found it emboldening: Anyone, anywhere, could act in the group’s name. That allowed ISIS to multiply its lethality by remotely inspiring attacks, carried out by men who never set foot in a training camp.
In this fashion, ISIS was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people around the world. A shooting at an office party in San Bernardino, Calif. An attack on a Christmas market in Germany. A truck attack in Nice, France, on Bastille Day. Suicide bombings at churches on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka.
In many instances, the attackers left behind recordings, social media posts or videos pledging allegiance to al-Baghdadi.
“Baghdadi was central to giving voice to ISIS’ project in a manner that achieved startling resonance with vulnerable individuals globally,” said Joshua Geltzer, who was senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council until 2017.
“He will remain a singular figure in the group’s emergence and evolution,” Mr Geltzer said.
‘Sheikh Ibrahim’
Born Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi began life in a dry and desolate plain in the village of Al Jallam in central Iraq. He was one of five sons and several daughters of a conservative Sunni man who eked out a living selling sheep.
Neighbors described the family as average, and the area as unremarkable.
But one detail stands out in al-Baghdadi’s early story, and it would later become a key element in his claim to be a caliph or religious ruler: Al Jallam is populated by members of the al-Badri tribe, which traces its lineage to the Quraysh people of the Arabian Peninsula — the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad.
A hereditary connection to the Quraysh is regarded as a prerequisite for becoming a caliph, and pamphlets published by ISIS exhorting Muslims to pledge allegiance to al-Baghdadi trace his ancestry from the Badri community in Al Jallam to Fatima, the youngest daughter of the prophet.
By the time al-Baghdadi began elementary school, the family had moved to the nearby city of Samarra. He was a mediocre student. His high school transcript shows that his highest grade was in art (95 out of 100), while in core subjects like algebra, he mustered scores in the low 50s.
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| A photograph of a young al-Baghdadi, who was born Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri, on his records at a school he attended in Samarra. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
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| Students mingled in the courtyard of the school in Samarra that al-Baghdadi attended as a young boy. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
In interviews with 17 people who knew al-Baghdadi, including friends, classmates, neighbors, teachers and former pupils, he was described as “shy,” “reserved,” “isolated” and “quiet.” He found his place, they said, at the local mosque, where his father enrolled him in a Quranic memorization class.
“Yes, he had a spiritual gift,” said the owner of the Ahmed Ibn Hanbal mosque, Khalid Ahmed Ismael, adding, “His soul was connected to the mosque.”
Mr Ismael recalled how, without being prompted, al-Baghdadi — a nom de guerre he adopted when he became a militant — would lead the other boys in cleaning the house of worship, dragging the carpets outside, hosing them down and placing them on the roof to dry.
And he quickly outdid the other boys in the memorization and recitation of scripture. By the time he was in high school, congregants began asking for the boy to lead the prayer in the imam’s place.
“That’s how sweet his voice was,” Mr Ismael said. “It was so sweet that you could feel the sweetness and it would attract others into the mosque.”
But already there were signs that al-Baghdadi saw his conservative approach to faith as one that should be imposed on others.
When a neighbor got a tattoo of a heart on his arm, al-Baghdadi lectured him. Tattoos, the neighbor, Younes Taha, recalled him saying, are forbidden under Islamic law. Soon, he even felt comfortable reproaching his mentors.
“When you stand up and recite the prayer, the smell of your breath will make the angels fly away,” he reportedly told Mr Ismael when the mosque owner began smoking.
At age 20, in 1991, he enrolled in the Shariah college of Baghdad University, according to school records obtained by The New York Times from Iraq’s intelligence agency.
He earned a bachelor’s degree and then enrolled at Saddam University, an institution dedicated to Islamic studies where he earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in topics related to Islamic scripture.
To pay for his studies, he taught Quranic classes at al-Haj Zaidan Mosque in the Topchi neighborhood of Baghdad, where his pupils referred to him as “Sheikh Ibrahim.” Those who interacted with him described him as taciturn and reserved, a quality that impressed his students.
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| Worshipers at the mosque that al-Baghdadi once attended in Samarra. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
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| Worshipers outside a mosque in the Topchi area of Baghdad where al-Baghdadi lived and preached between 1998 and 2003. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
But outside the mosque, some began to be bothered by his proselytizing.
On weekends, he coached a youth soccer team, using practices as an opportunity to hand out pamphlets advocating the ultraconservative Wahhabi strain of Islam.
“We were like: ‘Why? We’re here to play soccer.’ I just took it and threw it away,” recalled Faisal Ghazi Taih, one of the former players. His parents pulled him off the team when they found out, he said.
In 2003, as military jets sliced the sky over Baghdad and the American invasion to topple Saddam Hussein began, al-Baghdadi told his students at the mosque in Topchi that he was heading home.
Less than a year later, Mr Taha was watching TV when he suddenly recognized his former neighbor in footage showing detainees arrested by American forces. They were lined up in orange jumpsuits, the same color that Western hostages of ISIS would later be forced to wear in their execution videos.
Security officials say that al-Baghdadi was arrested near Falluja at the home of his in-laws in January 2004.
The target of the raid was al-Baghdadi’s brother-in-law, who had taken up arms against the American occupation. Al-Baghdadi was swept up in the raid, considered little more than a hanger-on at that point, officials said. He spent 11 months in a detention center at Camp Bucca, according to declassified Pentagon records.
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| A view of Camp Bucca, where al-Baghdadi was detained for 11 months, according to declassified Pentagon records. David Furst/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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| Men thought to be ISIS members in a prison controlled by Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria this month. Most hope to get amnesty for renouncing the Islamic State. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
Talib al-Maya, now 54, met al-Baghdadi inside the tent where they were both assigned at Camp Bucca. Al-Baghdadi was in his 30s and went by the nom de guerre “Abu Dua,” recalled his fellow detainee, who is under a form of witness protection in Iraq and was interviewed in the presence of intelligence agents.
The prisoners inside the camp were beginning to organize, appointing secret “emirs” of each tent, Mr. al-Mayahi said, and al-Baghdadi was chosen to lead his. He immediately set to work driving Shiite prisoners from the tent, leaning on a gang of fellow Sunni prisoners, armed with shanks made from the metal mined from the camp’s air-conditioning units, Mr. al-Mayahi said.
Hatred of the Shiites was a hallmark of the insurgency that was sweeping across Iraq. Their places of worship began to be targeted in a move that was criticized even by Al Qaeda. Later, it would become a hallmark of the Islamic State, whose followers began targeting the sect throughout the world, dispatching suicide bombers to Shiite sites in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran, and Bangladesh.
“It got to the point where Shiite prisoners would ask to be transferred to another tent,” Mr. al-Mayahi said. “Then when there were no Shiite left, he began threatening fellow Sunnis: Why are you smoking? How come you didn’t show up to prayer? Why is your beard so short?”
The Hunt
Pentagon records indicate that al-Baghdadi was released in late 2004, a failure of intelligence that would come to haunt American officials.
“It’s hard to imagine we could have had a crystal ball then that would tell us he’d become head of ISIS,” a Pentagon official told The Times a decade later.
For years, he disappeared from view. Then in 2009, security forces recovered a cache of documents in a safe house used by the militants and found the name “Abu Dua” on the group’s personnel list.
His clout inside the terrorist group did not become clear until months later when security forces captured a senior leader of the insurgency, said Abu Ali al-Basri, the director-general of Iraqi intelligence.
At a checkpoint in Baghdad in March of 2010, Iraqi agents arrested Manaf al-Rawi, believed to be one of the executioners of an American contractor, Nick Berg, whose videotaped beheading was posted on the internet. Under interrogation, Mr. al-Rawi named “Abu Dua,” as one of the group’s coordinators, tasked with passing secret messages between the insurgents.
“I directly sent word to the prime minister with the names of three people we deemed important based on the interrogation of Manaf al-Rawi,” Mr. al-Basri said. “One of the three was Baghdadi.”
Not long after, in May of 2010, the insurgents announced their new leader: It was Abu Dua, who now introduced himself to the world as “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”
The meaning of the new nom de guerre was not lost on his future followers: Abu Bakr was the first caliph after the Prophet Muhammad’s death in ancient Arabia and is credited with the wave of Islamic expansion that followed.
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| The mosque in Mosul from which al-Baghdadi first declared a caliphate in 2014. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
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| Al-Baghdadi escaped several ambushes, including one in the Topchi neighborhood in Baghdad. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
There were numerous near-misses, he claims, saying they came close to catching him in the Baghdad district of Mansour, then in Adamiya, where he was spotted driving. On another occasion, they got a tip that he was driving to the town of Ghazaliya to meet with a Qaeda operative.
And in Topchi, near the mosque where his voice used to call the faithful to prayer, they laid an ambush. Somehow, he managed to get away.
“At that point, he was luckier than he was smart,” Mr. al-Basri said.
But with each close call, al-Baghdadi became more circumspect, more obsessed with security and more untrusting. He is believed to have stopped using cellphones more than a decade ago, relying exclusively on hand-delivered messages, Mr. al-Basri said.
In 2014, when he ascended the marble pulpit of a mosque in Mosul to declare the caliphate, it was the first time a video appeared that showed his face uncovered.
Al-Baghdadi’s reclusiveness fed rumors of his demise, with many news outlets carrying speculative reports of his death, all of which proved to be untrue. Each time, he resurfaced in audio recordings, and later videos, thumbing his nose at the world.
American officials who worked in the Obama administration say that for all of 2014, 2015 and 2016 there was not a single time when they believed they had solid intelligence about al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts, even as numerous other senior Islamic State leaders were hunted down and killed, including al-Baghdadi’s No. 2.
But unlike Osama bin Laden, al-Baghdadi was no recluse.
Bin Laden walled himself off from the world in a compound in Pakistan in an effort to avoid detection and operated as a distant manager. Al-Baghdadi, by contrast, was directly involved in some of his group’s most notorious atrocities, including the organized rape of women considered to be nonbelievers.
One of them was D, who was just 15 years old when she was kidnapped alongside other Yazidi women and girls from her village at the foot of Mount Sinjar a few weeks after the declaration of the caliphate. Interviewed after her escape, she asked to be identified by only her first initial because of the stigma of rape and described how the women and girls were transported to a building in Raqqa, which acted as a viewing gallery for the men wishing to enslave them.
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| A woman who said she was raped by Islamic State militants at a refugee camp in northern Iraq in 2015. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times |
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| A woman who said she was raped by Islamic State militants at a refugee camp in northern Iraq in 2015. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times |
The first man to come in was al-Baghdadi, she said, information that was confirmed by two other girls who were held at the same facility.
“I noticed right away that he was important — everybody stood up when he walked in,” D said.
She and the other girls he chose were moved from house to house, eventually ending up in the same villa as 26-year-old American aid worker Kayla Mueller of Prescott, Ariz. All of them were taken out and raped by al-Baghdadi, including Ms. Mueller, who returned to their shared room sobbing unconsolably, according to the account of survivors that were confirmed by American officials and Ms Mueller’s mother.
Al-Baghdadi took pleasure in brutality, the women held captive said.
One day in August 2014, D was summoned to see him. Fearing she was about to be raped again, she was surprised when al-Baghdadi took her into the living room, not the bedroom, and asked her to sit next to him on a couch.
“He had a big, black laptop,” she said, recalling how he hit “play” on a video on the screen. It showed the execution of an American journalist, James Foley.
“He told us, ‘We killed this man today,’” she said. “He was laughing at our reaction.”
Some who knew al-Baghdadi the longest wondered if it was his very nature that accounted for his ability to evade capture for so long, and not just his extreme security measures.
Hussam Mehdi, an ISIS member who first met al-Baghdadi at Camp Bucca and is now in jail in Baghdad, said his enduring memory of the man who would become one of the world’s most powerful terrorists was of him walking back and forth along the fence line — by himself.
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| Youths in Najaf, Iraq, watching the news on Saturday about the possible death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader. Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters |
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| An Islamic State flag hanging above a bed in a house used by militants in Mosul. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
“It’s something I have wondered about: a man who was totally alone, a person who doesn’t socialize, just ‘salaam alaikum,’ and then moves on,” Mr Mehdi said. “I wonder if it’s because he likes to be alone that isolation came easily to him.”
Mr Mehdi thought back to the men who had come before al-Baghdadi at the helm of the Islamic State.
“Abu Musab was killed,” he said. “Abu Omar was killed. But Abu Bakr lasted.”
Rukmini Callimachi reported on this obituary from Samarra, Al Jallam and Baghdad, Iraq, between late 2018 and early 2019. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
The NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/world/middleeast/al-baghdadi-dead.html
Baghdadi Death Eliminates Islamic State Chief But Not the Group
ReplyDeleteBy Samer Al-Atrush and Glen Carey on October 28, 2019.
The death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi solidifies the transformation of the world’s most feared terrorist organization into a more conventional threat -- an extremist ideological movement rather than a state-like entity.
Islamic State had already become a more scattered movement before Baghdadi’s death during a raid by U.S. special forces soldiers. It had lost most of the land it once held in Iraq and Syria as a result of a multi-year U.S.-led campaign. Its soldiers were locked up in jails, watched by Kurdish guards.
But while Baghdadi’s guidance had allowed Islamic State to maintain a sense of central command -- and his claims to a God-given right to rule will make it difficult to replace him -- it’s premature to say Islamic State is a spent force. That’s especially true in other parts of the world where it has continued to carry out attacks.
“The successor will be someone suited to their current needs: a military leader with a jihadist pedigree who can signal a strong transition,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, assistant professor at Queens University and fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London.
Baghdadi’s death could become a rallying cry for his supporters to show the U.S. and others that it remains a force to be reckoned with. The question is whether there is capacity still for large-scale reprisals.
“We may see a small uptick in attacks, but that is to be expected and should not be confused with strength,” Amarasingam said. “We may see just as many supporters who basically fade away after his death and move on with their lives.”
Islamic State, Al-Qaeda Hunker Down to Rebuild in Weaker Nations
According to Islamic State ideology, the leader of Islamic State should meet several criteria: among them that he should be able to rule over physical territory and claim descent from the tribe of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed. The first has largely ceased to be the case, while the second makes it possible that Baghdadi could be replaced by a tactical commander rather than a caliph, or leader of the Islamic world, which Baghdadi claimed to be.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who led the fight against Islamic State on the ground in Syria, said on Twitter on Sunday that a joint operation with the U.S. had also targeted Islamic State’s spokesman Abul Hassan Al Muhajir near Jarablus in north western Syria. It did not give further detail. Abul Hassan would be one potential successor for Baghdadi.
Islamic State Head Who Inspired World Fear Dies on Run from U.S.
Whoever that person is, he’ll be issuing statements to a loose network of followers while on the run and in hiding. That’s a far cry from Baghdadi’s heyday, when his proclamations were governance edicts for conquered territory and the group had a self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa, Syria.
But Western intelligence officials note that the group has since late 2017 already devolved more responsibility to local offshoots which had previously been managed centrally. That’s empowered affiliates outside the Middle East, particularly in weakened states in north and central Africa, as well as lone-wolf attackers who have pledged allegiance to the group as they carried out assaults elsewhere, including in Europe, Asia and the U.S.
Islamic State, Largely Defeated at Home, Is Rebuilding in Africa.
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“The underlying geopolitical conditions that allowed ISIS to emerge in the first place will remain for the foreseeable future, which Baghdadi’s followers will be able to exploit to stage a comeback,” said Kamran Bokhari, founding director of the Center for Global Policy in Washington. “So, it is a race against time.”
DeleteAs an August attack in Afghanistan that killed more than 60 people underscored, Islamic State affiliates can carry out deadly strikes, gain support and establish footholds from Sri Lanka to Nigeria. Nathan Sales, the State Department’s coordinator for counter terrorism, said at the time of the Afghan attack that even without the so-called caliphate, “the ISIS brand lives on around the world.”
Islamic State, Al-Qaeda Hunker Down to Rebuild in Weaker Nations
The United Nations warned in a July report that the risk of attacks from Islamic State “remains high.” Like al-Qaeda, which came under pressure from the U.S. following the 2001 terror attacks, Islamic State has adjusted its strategies for fundraising, striking and tapping the Internet and social media.
One key goal for the U.S. after the Baghdadi killing will be to use the material obtained from his compound to gain fresh intelligence on the inner workings of the group so Washington can carry out further strikes, Bokhari said.
Lawmakers Shower Praise on U.S. Forces After Al-Baghdadi Death
Other questions remain about the group’s future, especially after President Donald Trump pulled U.S. troops out of the way in Syria and allowed a Turkish offensive against Kurdish militants. Kurds made up the front-line force in the battles against Islamic State when it still controlled territory on the ground.
Most important, it’s unclear what will happen to thousands of Islamic State detainees once held by the Kurds, and whether enough of them could escape or be freed to constitute a revived threat amid the chaos of Syria’s long civil war.
Why What Happens in Syria Matters Beyond Its Borders: QuickTake
“It would be foolhardy and premature to pen the obituary of ISIS. The organization is still resilient,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.
“It has thousands of fighters in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and beyond. It has already morphed into a lethal insurgency,” he said. “It carries out scores of attacks in Iraq and Syria and elsewhere. It has become decentralized. Regional lieutenants are in charge of their own fiefdoms.”
Much depends on who comes next.
“Al-Baghdadi got old and slow-- and found his demise,” said Paul Sullivan, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University in Washington. “ISIS, like the mafias that they closely resemble, will find a replacement. The successor may be worse than Baghdadi.”
- Bloomberg
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-27/baghdadi-death-kills-the-islamic-state-chief-but-not-the-group
Al Qaeda-linked group reappears in Nigeria
DeleteBY CALEB WEISS | October 27, 2019 | weiss.caleb2@gmail.com | @Weissenberg7
Following several years of inactivity, the al Qaeda-linked Jamaat al Ansar al Muslimeen fi Bilad al Sudan, better known as Ansaru, has reappeared online.
A new photo of the group was released today by the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), a clearinghouse for propaganda of al Qaeda’s global network. GIMF also announced a new media outlet for Ansaru, Al Yaqut Media Center.
A Telegram channel, ostensibly ran by members of Ansaru, also reposted the photo, giving further credence to the veracity of the picture.
The photo details three members of Ansaru, presumably in northern Nigeria, and features a famous Hadith [saying of the Prophet Muhammad] about the importance of ribat [frontline fortifications in the defense of Islam]. The same photo above was also released in Arabic and Hausa.
While the photo itself offers little information, the release and creation of a new media outlet is meant to demonstrate Ansaru’s continued existence and presence inside Nigeria. This attempted resurgence has been hinted at in al Qaeda’s propaganda in the past.
For instance, in 2017, Al Risalah Magazine, a former publication released by al Qaeda-linked jihadists in Syria, released an article penned by Usama al Ansari. Ansari, who was described as Ansaru’s emir, heavily criticized Abubakar Shekau, offered a detailed history of the group, and spoke highly of al Qaeda’s men around the world in the piece.
That article was the first sign of life for the group in almost two years at the time.
Prior to the magazine article, the last Ansaru publications were in early 2015. In January and February of that year, two videos were released by the jihadist group with the aim of distancing itself from the actions of Abubakar Shekau and his Boko Haram.
In the videos and aforementioned magazine article, Ansaru’s leaders closely stuck to al Qaeda’s guidelines for jihad. This was not surprising as the history of the group is closely tied to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
Two of Ansaru’s founders and leaders were trained by AQIM’s men in Mali. In some instances, Ansaru’s men even took part in al Qaeda’s operations in the Sahel and further claimed attacks inside Nigeria in defense of AQIM in Mali.
And in 2013, Khalid al Barnawi, the former leader of Ansaru, referred to Ayman al Zawahiri as “our good emir” and praised al Qaeda’s branches around the world.
After Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in March 2015, Ansaru has widely been regarded as al Qaeda’s franchise in Nigeria.
However, following fierce competition with Boko Haram, and later the Islamic State West Africa, and the arrest of Barnawi in 2016, Ansaru was severely weakened and largely relegated to a state of dormancy.
It is unclear how successful Ansaru would be in an attempted resurgence inside Nigeria. It is possible that the ascendency of jihadist violence in the Sahel could provide Ansaru the capacity to reconstitute its forces.
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Weakening security situations elsewhere in Nigeria, such as in Zamfara state, could also potentially be exploited by the jihadist group to regain strength.
DeleteThe weakening of Islamic State West Africa and/or Shekau’s Jamaat Ahl al Sunnah [Boko Haram’s official name] could also provide an opening for Ansaru. But all of this remains to be seen.
Though one thing is clear with today’s announcement, al Qaeda is signaling to jihadists that Ansaru is still alive.
- FDD's Long War Journal
- https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2019/10/al-qaeda-linked-group-reappears-in-nigeria.php
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed himself during raid, U.S. says
ReplyDeleteBY THOMAS JOSCELYN | October 27, 2019 | tjoscelyn@gmail.com | @thomasjoscelyn
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, is dead, according to the White House. President Donald Trump announced Baghdadi’s death earlier today, saying “U.S. Special Operations forces executed a dangerous and daring nighttime raid into Northwestern Syria to accomplish this mission.” The Islamic State leader blew himself up by igniting his suicide vest, “while a large number of Baghdadi’s fighters and companions” were also killed, Trump added.
Baghdadi was reportedly killed in Barisha, a somewhat surprising choice of hiding spot. Barisha is in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, not far from the Turkish border. Baghdadi’s jihadists rivals in Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other groups control much of Idlib. HTS and its predecessor groups have been central to rivalry between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Indeed, HTS regularly claims operations targeting Islamic State cells throughout Idlib province.
Baghdadi’s jihadist career began years before the rise of his self-declared caliphate.
He cofounded an insurgency group early on in the Iraq War and joined the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC), a front group established by al-Qaeda in Iraq in early 2006. Later that same year, the MSC was relaunched as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and its leader was named as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a murky figure the U.S. military claimed didn’t really exist. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was dubbed the “Emir of the Faithful,” a title usually reserved for Muslim caliphs. But the ISI didn’t market the first Baghdadi as a true caliph. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would later leverage the same title in his quest to dominate.
Baghdadi rose to the top spot in the Islamic State of Iraq’s (ISI) leadership after its two top men, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (a.k.a. Abu Ayyub al-Masri), were killed in April 2010. Baghdadi was a largely unknown figure outside of the ISI when he assumed control of the group.
By that time, the ISI’s first state-building effort in Iraq had been rolled back by American, Iraqi and allied forces. But it wasn’t finished. While the original 2003 Iraq War created up a new state-building opportunity for the jihadists, the withdrawal of American forces in 2011 helped reinvigorate it. Other factors, such as the war in Syria, allowed Baghdadi’s men to expand their footprint as well.
Baghdadi would eventually come to revile al-Qaeda in public. But that was not always the case. For example, he offered a glowing eulogy for Osama bin Laden after the al-Qaeda founder was killed in a May 2011 raid. Baghdadi claimed that the “martyrdom of our sheikh” (bin Laden), would only lead to more unity and firmness among his fellow mujahideen.
“I say to our brothers in the Al-Qaeda organization, with the mujahid Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri, may Allah preserve him, and his brothers in the leadership of the organization…May Allah double your rewards and confer upon you the utmost solace for this tragedy,” Baghdadi said. “You have in the Islamic State of Iraq a group of loyal men pursuing the endeavor of truth, they shall never forgive, nor resign,” he said when addressing al-Qaeda days after bin Laden’s death.
Later, Baghdadi and his men wouldn’t be so deferential to al-Qaeda’s senior leadership.
The ISI helped spawn Al-Nusrah Front, which was originally the group’s arm in Syria. Consistent with al-Qaeda’s instructions, Al-Nusrah did not publicly announce its affiliation. By early 2013, Al-Nusrah had grown into a force of its own. Baghdadi attempted to reassert his authority over the growing insurgency organization. But his one-time lieutenant, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, rejected Baghdadi’s orders and appealed directly to al-Qaeda’s senior leadership for assistance. Although Zawahiri chastised Julani for revealing his al-Qaeda allegiance, he ruled in Al-Nusrah’s favor, declaring that it should remain an independent al-Qaeda branch in the Levant.
Cont. Below...
Baghdadi notoriously defied Ayman al-Zawahiri’s ruling and his group, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham as of early 2013, extended its state-building efforts into eastern and northern Syria.
DeleteBy the middle of 2014, the jihadists’ campaign led to the fall of much of western and northern Iraq, including the city of Mosul.
On June 29, 2014, the group’s chief spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, declared that Baghdadi fulfilled all of the requirements to be considered a caliph. Baghdadi was rechristened as “Caliph Ibrahim,” the leader of the first supposed caliphate since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Baghdadi accepted the honorific “Emir of the Faithful” in early July 2014, during a speech from the pulpit at the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul.
As “Caliph Ibrahim,” Baghdadi demanded the allegiance of not only all other jihadists, but indeed all Muslims. He and his men repeated this demand on more than one occasion.
On Nov. 10, 2014, groups of mostly unknown men in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen swore allegiance to the supposed caliph. Three days later, on Nov. 13, Baghdadi publicly accepted their oaths, proclaiming “the expansion of the Islamic State to new lands.” Baghdadi accepted “the bayat [oath of allegiance] from those who gave us bayat in those lands,” and declared “the nullification of the groups therein.”
And with that, Baghdadi and his loyalists extended their war on al-Qaeda and its regional branches around the globe.
In the coming months and years, the Islamic State would grow into a worldwide organization, with “provinces” everywhere from West Africa to Southeast Asia declaring their fealty to Baghdadi. Only a few of these “provinces” controlled any real ground. And al-Qaeda retained its own global network of branches, remaining stronger than the so-called caliphate in countries such as Somalia and Yemen, while also being arguably deeper in other areas as well.
Under Baghdadi’s leadership, the Islamic State not only expanded its capacity for guerrilla warfare outside of Iraq and Syria, but also plotted terrorist attacks around the globe. Some of these attacks, such as the November 2015 assault on Paris and the March 2016 Brussels bombings, deliberately targeted civilians living in countries that belonged to the anti-Islamic State coalition. Building on the groundwork laid by al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Islamic State encouraged individual terrorists in the West to lash out in its name. Baghdadi’s external operations arm also systematically directed small-scale operations throughout the West, sometimes coaching individuals via encrypted messaging applications.
Earlier this year, the Islamic State coordinated a global propaganda campaign, dubbed “And the Best Outcome is for the Pious,” in which jihadists from more than one dozen countries renewed their fealty to Baghdadi. The footage featured men in all of the following countries or regions renewing their oaths of allegiance to Baghdadi: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, the Caucasus, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Iraq, Khorasan, Libya, Mozambique, Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, West Africa, and Yemen. Although the videos were undoubtedly intended to buttress fighter morale, given the loss of the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate, the productions underscored the worldwide nature of Baghdadi’s network.
The Islamic State has yet to name Baghdadi’s replacement or confirm his death.
-The Long War Journal
- https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2019/10/abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-killed-himself-during-raid-u-s-says.php