Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey Into the Syrian Jihad

by Åsne Seierstad

  “Who’s Ismael?”

  Sadiq was rudely awakened from his attempts at telepathy. He felt outside of himself, merely an observer of what was happening in the makeshift court.

  “Who is Ismael?” the man repeated when Sadiq failed to answer.

  Sadiq’s mind was racing. What did Ismael have to do with this?

  “I said ‘Ismael’! Can’t you hear?”

  “He’s my son,” Sadiq replied meekly.

  The Moroccan translated Ismael’s message for Abu Hafs. The police came today to question me. They asked where you were. I said I didn’t know. Where are you?

  No one at home was aware of his imprisonment. He had, in their minds, simply vanished after the last conversation with Ayan. The texts on his phone had come while he was in ISIS custody.

  The Moroccan continued to translate.

  Dad, where are you?

  Dad, call us!

  Dad…?

  * * *

  A few hours after the hearing, Abu Sayaf, the man who had led him from the prison yard the day before, stood over his mattress. When the Moroccan had clarified the contents of the texts from Ismael, Abu Hafs had asked the prosecutors if there was any other evidence that he was a spy. There was not. Sadiq had been sent back to the cell he shared with the other prisoners.

  “You’re being released,” Abu Sayaf told him. “You’re free to go, but you need a permit for the checkpoints and roadblocks. You’ll get the papers tomorrow. Then you can leave.”

  Sadiq felt like he was floating on air. He had survived! The blows, the kicks, the beatings—mock beheadings. He was free!

  But it wasn’t over. He was alive, but he hadn’t accomplished what he came here for: his daughters.

  His mind was cluttered, his thoughts crisscrossed and entangled with one another. He looked around at the men moaning in pain.

  Abu Sayaf went on to tell him that the prison governor had opposed his release. Why had he done that? Sadiq was drained of strength, at the bottom, bewildered. This was not like being in the field in Somalia, this was unfamiliar terrain.

  Still, for the first time since he had arrived at the water treatment plant he fell asleep with a sense of expectancy. He was awakened by the sound of a door being flung open.

  He propped himself up on his elbows. It was the three men who usually beat him. A feeling of dread took hold, followed by relief. You lost this time!

  A triumphant sensation coursed through him. The next day he would be leaving as a free man. The troika approached him. He heard the leader say, “We’re not done with you yet.”

  20

  BLUEPRINT

  Who was in charge here?

  The judge had released him. The head of the prison had protested. Who decided his fate?

  The young fighters were only pawns. The guards locked the doors. The torturers abused whoever they were given. The executioners beheaded on command.

  Without these young men, the system would fall apart. It required brutality. Barbarism was the surface, the external face. Behind the façade, there was a strict hierarchy, and behind the hierarchy lay a carefully devised plan: the formula for a reign of terror, a machinery of violence lubricated with blood.

  Not far away, a little farther to the east, close to the border in the north, sat the mastermind behind the system that held Sadiq prisoner. Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi was a lean man with a graying beard. He came across as polite and reserved, almost a little absentminded, but those who knew him were aware that he had an extraordinary memory and great logistical prowess.

  In a small extension behind a house in the village of Tal Rifat in Aleppo province, beneath some boxes and a pile of blankets, lay a file of handwritten sheets: an organizational chart, pages of diagrams, and lists of names, along with instructions, guidelines, and a timetable. It was the blueprint of the Islamic State.

  The man behind the plan had held one of the most trusted positions in Iraq’s intelligence service. On March 17, 2003, when President George W. Bush gave Saddam Hussein forty-eight hours to relinquish power over his “dying regime,” he also addressed Iraq’s military forces in an attempt to get them to lay down their arms: “It will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders.’”

  Over a quarter of a million U.S. soldiers were on standby in Kuwait, ready to invade Iraq. On March 20, they rolled across the border. Progress through the desert was swift. Many Iraqi forces had quit their bases before the Americans arrived. After a three-week campaign, they reached Baghdad. It took only a couple of hours to take control of the city. The Americans secured the Oil Ministry with a line of tanks and tore down the statue of Saddam outside the hotel where the foreign journalists were staying. Regime change could hardly have been choreographed and packaged for broadcast any quicker. Before a month had passed, Baath rule in Iraq had collapsed. On May 1, George Bush declared, Mission Accomplished.

  Toward the end of the year, on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit, the fallen dictator was found in his spider hole, six feet belowground, along with two rifles, a pistol, and $750,000 in cash.

  “You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever again,” George Bush said as images of the bearded, bloodied man were flashed around the world.

  Saddam was finished. But his men were not.

  Most of them were secular Sunni Muslims. Shifting alliances and the bargaining of loyalties were part and parcel of clan rule in Iraq. Many envisaged having a job under the new regime.

  The Americans had other plans. When Paul Bremer, the top civilian administrator in Baghdad, dissolved the Iraqi army with the stroke of a pen, forbidding all those who had held leading positions under Saddam from seeking posts in the new Iraq, men like al-Khlifawi found themselves unemployed and banned from practicing their profession. More than one hundred thousand well-trained Iraqi officers and bureaucrats were robbed of their positions and livelihoods. The Unites States had gotten a dangerous enemy—armed and aggrieved.

  Colonel al-Khlifawi went underground in Sunni-dominated Anbar province in the west of the country. He changed his appearance and reemerged as Haji Bakr. The rejected officers sought a strategic alliance and found it with al-Qaida’s men in Iraq, who were led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a former troublemaker who had discovered radical Islam and sobered up. In the late 1980s, Zarqawi enlisted in the fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan but realized, to his disappointment, that he had missed the war. The withdrawal was already under way when he arrived. In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden took him under his wing while he built up al-Qaida, but he came to view Zarqawi as too extreme and did not support his enthusiasm for the mass killings of Shia Muslims.

  Zarqawi fought loyally on the Taliban side when the United States attacked Afghanistan after September 11. Wounded in action, he left for Iran, traveling to Iraqi Kurdistan, where he joined the jihadist group Ansar al-Islam. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ansar al-Islam’s enemy had been Saddam’s regime, which they viewed as ungodly. Colin Powell, the United States secretary of state, had claimed that Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaida, that the Iraqis had trained the group in the use of weapons of mass destruction, and could cooperate with it on an attack against the West. It was a false accusation. In the wake of the U.S. invasion, it would ironically become truth.

  For al-Qaida, the war in Iraq provided the opportunity to mobilize anew after the loss of its bases in Afghanistan dried up recruiting. Instead of the friendly society Bush had envisaged in Iraq, the country became the spearhead of a new wave of terror. Zarqawi himself was behind several attacks, including the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, followed by a series of attacks against American forces and Shia Muslim leaders and holy sites.

  The Baathists and the Islamic extremists had one firm conviction in common: Control over the masses was to belong to a small elite who did not need to answer to anyone.

  In 2004, al-Qaida in Iraq was formed with Zarqawi as its leader. AQI recruited from across the Arab world. Most
came via smuggling routes through Syria. Assad allowed them safe passage—he wanted the U.S. mission in Iraq to fail, fearing that a successful outcome might tempt the superpower into a subsequent attempt to topple his own dictatorship. From his hideout in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden delighted in the attacks on the American forces but implored the rank and file on the ground to refrain from killing other Muslims. His appeal fell on deaf ears.

  Anbar, where the terrorist leader Zarqawi and the strategist and former Saddam loyalist Haji Bakr were located, is the largest province in Iraq, barren and sparsely populated. Vast swaths of desert and seemingly endless stretches of road made the Americans vulnerable. One-third of the soldiers killed in Iraq lost their lives here. The insurrection grew. The Sunnis in Iraq felt themselves increasingly oppressed by the Shia-dominated and American-supported government in Baghdad. On top of this the Islamists promised a higher salary than the $300 a month offered by the authorities.

  The Americans went to great lengths to put a stop to Zarqawi. In June 2006, a spy plane followed his spiritual mentor to a meeting with the terrorist leader. Two F-16 bombers dropped their payloads on the house he entered.

  George Bush assured the world that “Zarqawi will never kill again.”

  * * *

  From 2006, the name of a new resistance movement—ISI, the Islamic State in Iraq—began to circulate. Haji Bakr was one of its military strategists. The Americans tried to choke the growth of the network, and one mass arrest captured the former colonel.

  The prisons were divided along sectarian lines; Sunnis served time with Sunnis, Shias with Shias. Experienced jihadists shared dormitories with youths who had never had anything to do with the insurgency. The Islamists doled out tough justice. Prisoners were tried in secret sharia courts and sentenced to beatings, having their eyes cut out, or death. The less their fellow prisoners knew about Islam, the easier it was to convince them that jihad was a religious obligation.

  The prison camps became sanctuaries for the resistance movement. Whereas their previous status as fugitives had meant that meeting with one another was fraught with danger, they were now free to sit in the shade of the walls, in places like Camp Bucca, to recruit and lay plans. As long as the prisoners did not make any trouble and followed the routines, the guards were not bothered by their machinations. On the contrary, they picked out prisoners who seemed to hold positions of authority to keep control of the others. One of those selected was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Americans gave the future ISIS chief a leadership role at Camp Bucca.

  When they eventually understood what was going on, the Americans introduced secular education to offset radicalization. The inmates were taught to read and write, and moderate imams were brought in to preach about peaceful Islam. At the same time, the prison population was reduced by the release of those deemed less dangerous. Like Haji Bakr. After two years of incarceration, he was let out of Camp Bucca in 2008 and immediately went underground. A year later, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was set free, registered as a “low-level prisoner.”

  ISI’s brutality had put them at loggerheads with several powerful Sunni tribes. The tribes wanted self-government, not submission to a dogmatic militia. With the help of the United States and local security forces, the tribes formed councils and militias called sahwa, meaning “awakening.” These sahwa militias, deeply rooted in local areas, proved effective in the offensive against ISI and were well assisted by superior American weaponry.

  When almost all of the ISI leadership was wiped out in an American air strike in April 2010, many predicted the end of the insurgence. Thirty-four of forty-two commanders were killed, and there were no qualified successors in sight. The organization badly needed a strong leader who could pick up the pieces and give it fresh legitimacy, and fast.

  In May, the relatively unknown Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was appointed head of the organization, partly due to his training in sharia, because ISI had to rest on a solid religious foundation, but more importantly because he was a Qurayshi. According to Islamic tradition, the next caliph would come from the Quraysh tribe.

  Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was born in 1971 in Samarra into a family of teachers and preachers. As a teenager, he was passionate about playing football, a sport he would later prohibit. He lived a quiet life and shunned violence of any form. In the decade prior to the American invasion, he lived in a room adjoining a small mosque in a poor area on the outskirts of Baghdad. He spent most of his time reading, sometimes he led prayers, and he remained largely unnoticed.

  The man who had been known as “the invisible sheikh” quickly set his mark on the organization. Potential critics were eliminated and replaced with people he trusted, preferably men he had served time with in Camp Bucca. Under his leadership, ISI carried out a wave of well-coordinated suicide bombings in Baghdad and Mosul. Nevertheless, the Islamists were fighting a losing battle—people wanted peace, the tribes wanted to rule themselves. In spite of ISI preaching about the establishment of an Islamic state, the organization resembled a terror group more than a nation builder.

  * * *

  Then the event that would change the Arab world took place. In December 2010, a street vendor set fire to himself outside the governor’s office in a rural Tunisian town. His cart had been confiscated by a police officer and the fruit seller attempted to bribe her, as was the custom, in order to get it back. She reportedly spat on him. His self-immolation led to unrest and rioting across Tunisia. A few weeks later, after more than twenty years in power, the dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia. The Arab Spring had begun.

  The protests spread eastward to Egypt and Libya. In Syria, the burgeoning civil war created a power vacuum, a golden opportunity.

  In late 2012, Haji Bakr and a small group crossed the border from Iraq into Syria. There, in the northern provinces, the government forces of Assad had for the most part been driven out, leaving a vast number of local brigades, military councils, and militias, at their height somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand different groups, vying for power. It made for a vulnerable balance: No one was strong enough to seize power; everyone was strong enough to prevent another from taking it.

  Perfect anarchy, which Haji Bakr knew how to exploit.

  Syria was a means to achieving an end: Sunni-dominated control of Iraq. First, Syria was to be conquered bit by bit and appropriate territories put to use as bridgeheads into Iraq. In the village of Tal Rifat, Haji Bakr put the finishing touches to his plan. The key to success was a mix of strategic calculations and fanatical believers. The colonel himself was far from an Islamist; he was a nationalist and an opportunist.

  In all the cities and towns that the Free Syrian Army or other rebels had captured, missionary, or dawa, offices were to be opened. These would serve as recruitment posts. Among those who came to listen to lectures and attend courses, a couple of men would be selected and instructed to spy.

  “We will train them for a while and then dispatch them,” Haji Bakr wrote.

  The spies were to do as follows:

  Make lists of powerful families and their most important men

  Find out their sources of income

  Record activities forbidden according to sharia

  Gather information on illicit affairs and homosexual activity

  Provide details about rebel groups

  Find out the identity and familial background of brigade leaders

  Note political and religious orientation

  In this way, ammunition for threats and blackmail would be stockpiled.

  The spies would enable the structure of the local populations to be understood, who supported democratic ideas, who were loyal to the regime, which families were religious, which direction within Islam they followed, what kind of sermons the imam gave, what his views on jihad were, how much he was paid, who paid him, what other sources of income people had, how many wives a leader had, and how many children he had and their ages.

  All this knowledge would provide an overview of where any crac
ks existed. Wedges could then be driven in, widening these cracks into cleavages, gradually fracturing the structure of the society until it split and fell apart. Even though the word of God was scarcely mentioned in Haji Bakr’s detailed written plans, the colonel had a conviction that the faith of others could and should be exploited.

  The intricate, thorough structure of Haji Bakr’s method was created to spread fear. Each provincial council was to be led by an emir in charge of espionage, extortion, abduction, and murder. He was also in charge of all communication and its encryption. Meanwhile, another emir would monitor him and several other emirs “in case they did not do their job properly.” Who was monitoring whom would not be clear to any of the individuals involved.

  The provincial system was to be supervised by an intelligence department. This would in turn report to a security emir in each region, who was responsible for deputy emirs for individual districts. A head of secret spy cells reported to each deputy emir, sometimes bypassing several chains of command. At the local level, the spy cells would report to the district emir’s deputy. Haji Bakr, who by now was nicknamed “Lord of the Shadows,” had spun a sticky web, with the goal of everyone keeping an eye on everyone else.

  From early 2013, a large number of dawa offices opened up in rebel-controlled towns across the whole of northern Syria. The offices could easily be mistaken for charitable organizations: Everyone was addressed as brother, and there was no mention of any Islamic State. Haji Bakr’s men quietly rented rooms and lodgings. He had expressly forbidden any Iraqi soldiers from being among their number, and neither did he want to recruit too many Syrians. They might have strong local allegiances that could lead to a conflict of loyalties. The strategist wanted men from outside, and ISIS intensified their recruitment of muhajirin, foreign fighters. These newcomers knew no one outside their own camp, had no reason to show mercy, and could be quickly redeployed as needed. They were given a couple of months of training and religious instruction before being sent out to fight or being assigned a position within the state. Spies were also instructed to attempt to “penetrate” the most powerful families by marrying into them.