The administration became politically disengaged. “All at once the regular phone calls among senior-level personnel, senior-level visits, basically ceased,” Crocker told PBS Frontline, noting there was only one visit to Iraq by a cabinet-level official between the end of 2011 and mid-2014.
“Given that we were hard-wired into their political system, they wouldn’t be able to function effectively with each other among [sectarian] communities without us,” Crocker said. “I think that [political] disengagement brought them all back to zero-sum thinking.”72
As Crocker was leaving Iraq, he warned the administration about Maliki’s dictatorial and sectarian tendencies, not for the first time. In his view, Maliki was motivated not by the desire to aggrandize himself, but by fear that “sooner or later a coalition of adversaries would overthrow him.”73 Maliki had spent twenty years as a political exile in Syria and Iran, forced by Saddam to flee Baghdad because of his involvement with the underground Shi’a opposition.74
Even before U.S. troops left Iraq, Maliki’s distrust of Sunni Iraqis led to a crackdown on the leaders of the Awakening Movement, who had been so important in reducing the threat of terrorist violence against civilians. One day after the last U.S. troops left Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki issued an arrest warrant for his Sunni vice president, Tariq Hashimi, on charges of terrorism.75
U.S. officials concede that some members of Vice President Hashimi’s security forces may have been corrupt or been involved in plots to assassinate Shi’a leaders, but Hashimi had been one of the first Sunni Arabs in Iraq to agree to participate in the political process, at a great personal cost.76 His removal led Sunni political leaders to boycott the parliament. In addition to costing the Iraqi government the support of the Awakening militias, many disenfranchised Sunni fighters (whose salaries had started to dry up) were now dropped into a boiling cauldron of radicalizing influences.
Rather than attempting to reduce Sunnis’ feelings of disenfranchisement, Maliki began to purge the government of prominent Sunnis, further increasing sectarian tensions.77 He brought terrorism charges against his popular finance minister and a Sunni Arab parliamentarian.78
Large protest camps arose in Sunni neighborhoods, including in Ramadi and Hawija, beginning in December 2012.79 But when al Qaeda’s flag rose sporadically in the protests, Maliki panicked. On April 23, 2013, Maliki sent soldiers into Hawija to clear out the “insurgents and extremists.”80
The Iraqi government reported five civilian deaths, but Human Rights Watch reported much higher numbers.81 Observers, including the prominent reporter Dexter Filkins, reported seeing hundreds of dead bodies.82 In December 2013, Maliki again deployed the army against a protest camp in Ramadi, where some 350 Sunnis were protesting abusive antiterrorism laws, reigniting an active insurgency.83
According to Amnesty International, several Shi’a militias emerged with the encouragement and support of the Iraqi government, wearing military uniforms, and killing Sunni Arabs with impunity.84
Sunni Arabs were left disenfranchised, fearful of their government, and with few options other than supporting insurgency.85 Patrick Cockburn, a longtime reporter on the Middle East, argues, “Mr. Maliki is not to blame for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq, but he played a central role in pushing the Sunni community into the arms of ISIS, something it may come to regret.”86
Conditions eventually deteriorated so far that Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, leader of the country’s Shi’a community, acknowledged that Sunnis had legitimate concerns and that the government had to be more inclusive of Sunni Arab and Kurdish minorities.87
CHAPTER TWO
THE RISE OF ISIS
After the death of Zarqawi, the Islamic State in Iraq had been handed setback after setback. When Abu Omar al Baghdadi, head of the ISI, was killed in 2010, it marked a turning point.
ISI’s new leader was born Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai, but he operated under the nom de guerre Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.
His life story is ambiguous, sparse on details, and few of those uncontested. He was reportedly born in 1971 to a Sunni Arab family in the Iraqi city of Samarra, a city just north of Baghdad. His family was said to be directly descended from the Prophet Muhammad.
According to a disputed but widely distributed biography published under a pseudonym by Turki al Binali, a Bahraini national who joined ISIS, Baghdadi was born into an observant Salafi family and “his brothers and uncles include preachers and teachers.”1
According to Abu Ali, a neighbor of the family, Baghdadi remained in Samarra until he was eighteen, when he moved to Tobchi, a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdad.2 He lived in a run-down apartment attached to the local mosque and reportedly enrolled in the Islamic University of Baghdad, eventually receiving a doctorate in Islamic culture and Shariah law. Abu Ali described him as a “quiet person, and very polite,” but also a “conservative practitioner of Islam.” He was said to have led prayers at the local mosque from time to time.3
During this period, Baghdadi was also a classmate of Ahmed al Dabash, who later became the leader of the Islamic Army of Iraq, a Sunni Arab insurgent group. Dabash remarked that the young Baghdadi “did not show much potential.” He described Baghdadi as “quiet, and retiring. He spent time alone. . . . He was insignificant.”4
Baghdadi reportedly led a quiet life until the United States and its allies invaded Iraq. In 2003, Baghdadi is believed to have begun on the path of jihad.5
Jamaat Jaysh Ahl al Sunnah wa-al-Jamaah (the Army of the Sunni People Group) was an insurgent group operating in Samarra, Diyala, and Baghdad. Baghdadi was a cofounder and the head of the group’s Shariah committee.6
In late 2004 or early 2005, an American-led raid on a home near Fallujah led to the capture of many high-level insurgents and a man who was described as an “apparent hanger-on.” The latter was registered at Camp Bucca detention center as Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al Badri.
There are conflicting accounts of Baghdadi from his time in Camp Bucca. A Pentagon official described him as “a street thug when we picked him up in 2004,” a characterization that seems inconsistent with his background.7
Andrew Thompson, who served at one of the U.S.-run detention centers in Iraq, wrote an article with Jeremy Suri, a professor at University of Texas at Austin, arguing that the structure of Camp Bucca facilitated further radicalization among the prisoners.
Before their detention, Mr. al-Baghdadi and others were violent radicals, intent on attacking America. Their time in prison deepened their extremism and gave them opportunities to broaden their following. At Camp Bucca, for example, the most radical figures were held alongside less threatening individuals, some of whom were not guilty of any violent crime. Coalition prisons became recruitment centers and training grounds for the terrorists the United States is now fighting. . . .
Small-time criminals, violent terrorists and unknown personalities were separated only along sectarian lines. This provided a space for extremists to spread their message. The detainees who rejected the radicals in their cells faced retribution from other prisoners through “Shariah courts” that infested the facilities. The radicalization of the prison population was evident to anyone who paid attention. Unfortunately, few military leaders did.8
In 2007, Major General Douglas Stone became the deputy commanding general of Multi-National Forces in Iraq with responsibility for in-country interrogation and detention. In this capacity, he was responsible for detainees at Camp Cropper, Camp Bucca, and Camp Ashraf. He spent the following year reforming prison conditions and installing innovative deradicalization, rehabilitation, and reintegration techniques, which expedited the release of low-risk prisoners and appeared to reduce recidivism.9
Most of the individuals taken into detention did not need to remain for long periods of time, or in many cases should not have been there in the first place, he told us. Many were not jihadists, but were unemployed citizens paid or coerced into joining the resistance. More than 80 percent of
the detainees tested illiterate and were largely ignorant about Islam, which made them particularly susceptible to recruitment while in prison.
In interviews for this book, General Stone recounted the reintegration process:
We studied the detainees: their tribal affiliations, their education level, their employment skills, their purported crimes, their leadership skills, and the extent to which they subscribed to jihadi principles. We decided to separate the hard-core jihadists from the casual insurgents. Our biggest worry was that the real jihadists were using the prison as a terrorist training camp. We wanted to release the individuals who shouldn’t have been there, or who could be easily reintegrated into Iraqi society, as quickly as possible. We hired hundreds of teachers to train detainees to read. We hired one hundred and fifty imams from around the globe to preach mainstream Islam. We offered them job training. After a couple of years, we were able to release most of the prisoners, with less than two percent ever returning to the fight. That left only the true problem cases. Only about five thousand were left. The majority were either former regime Baathists, former criminals, or serious takfiri ideologues, followers of Zarqawi’s extreme beliefs regarding declaring other Muslims to be apostates. Even in American detention these takfiris were killing other detainees, cutting their eyes out, and trying to impose a version of Shariah that most Muslims would find quite abhorrent.10
Baghdadi’s time in detention would only have made him more effective, General Stone said, pointing out that the individuals who spent time in Guantanamo pose a similar problem. Jihadists who get out of U.S. detention develop a kind of aura when reintegrated into their home communities, he said, making it easier for them to recruit others, or to symbolize defiance against a Western power.
Baghdadi was probably systematically organizing while he was in detention. Building up IOUs, getting to know whom to trust. He must have been plotting while he was incarcerated—he must have planned the whole rollout of the Islamic State. . . .
If you look at how Baghdadi has set up the top leadership of ISIS, you can see how skilled he is. The guys at the top are all very skilled managers. Many of them are former Ba’athists. And to me a most important thing—he’s actually designated someone to run ISIS detainee operations. He learned, from being in detention himself, that if you don’t manage the prison well, the detainees will just organize themselves against you. And sure enough, his strategy has been to recruit his cadres from the prisons where jihadis were detained. He knows that’s where to find hard-core radicals. But even if Baghdadi is ultimately replaced, the ideas that he is promoting will be with us a long time.
Baghdadi left Camp Bucca as an outspoken jihadi and immediately joined the ranks of the ISI, then under the leadership of Abu Omar al Baghdadi.
When a United States–Iraqi joint air strike targeted and killed Zarqawi’s successors in April 2010, it wiped out the ISI’s senior leadership. With its leadership in disarray and its relevance waning, ISI sought out a leader with both religious authority and a track record of strategic successes.
Abu Bakr al Baghdadi fit these criteria. His education in Islamic law far exceeded the leaders of al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden studied business in college; his degree was reportedly in public administration.11 Ayman al Zawahiri was a surgeon.12 And the strength of Baghdadi’s strategies would soon become clear.
In May 2010, he ascended to lead the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI).13 Baghdadi’s first priority after becoming leader was his own personal safety. With ISI in shambles, Baghdadi set out to rebuild the organization, eliminating potential critics and replacing them with trusted allies, many of whom had spent several years with Baghdadi in Camp Bucca.
Among them were several Ba’athist leaders. Although AQI and ISIS are motivated by an ideological commitment to reviving an Islamic state based on their understanding of Shariah, they formed an alliance with the former Ba’athists,14 who had lost their jobs and status thanks to de-Ba’athification. According to some reports, the “Ba’athification” of ISIS may have been the brainchild of a former colonel in Saddam Hussein’s army who spent time with Baghdadi at Camp Bucca.15
“In the early days of the alliance, the Ba’athists may have had the upper hand as they brought military and organization skills and a network of experienced bureaucrats that AQI and then ISI lacked,” says Richard Barrett of the Soufan Group.16
The Ba’athists became a critically important part of ISIS. Baghdadi chose many of them to fill top organizational positions, including Abu Muslim al Turkmani, who became Baghdadi’s second in command (until he was reportedly killed in late 2014), and the senior leader of the military council, Abu Ayman al Iraqi. According to Barrett, at least eight of ISI’s senior leadership members are former inmates at Camp Bucca.17
Learning from past leaders’ mistakes, Baghdadi disguised his identity from the earliest days, even in the presence of his closest advisors. Abdul Rahman Hamad, an ISIS fighter who spoke to Time magazine, stated, “[He] knew how men can be seduced by money, so he never shared his secrets with anyone.”18 He became known among his men as the “invisible sheikh” or the “Ghost.”19 With between 800 and 1,000 fighters in his ranks,20 Baghdadi would lead Iraq into its deadliest years since 2008.21
Under Baghdadi’s leadership, ISI escalated its violence throughout 2010 and 2011, including using coordinated suicide attacks in several locations on the same day. In October 2011, the U.S. Rewards for Justice Program instated a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest or capture of Baghdadi.22
By July 2012, in an atmosphere of growing sectarianism fueled in no small part by the policies of Prime Minister Maliki, Baghdadi had rebuilt the organization so substantially that he apparently felt no qualms about publicly pre-announcing his next move—a campaign called “Breaking Down the Walls,” in which Baghdadi promised to liberate Iraqi prisons overflowing with insurgents and jihadists.23
Using covert channels to communicate with prisoners in advance, ISI spent the next year making good on Baghdadi’s promise. The insurgents attacked eight prisons using improvised explosives. They freed hundreds of prisoners, many of whom were senior leaders of ISI and its predecessors, or experienced fighters who subsequently joined the organization.24
During the same one-year period, Baghdadi had courted the wrath of al Qaeda by declaring an expansion of the ISI into neighboring Syria, which was now engulfed in civil war. In defiance of al Qaeda’s emir, Ayman al Zawahiri, the Islamic State in Iraq was to be known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, using the now notorious acronym ISIS.
From the ashes of near-total defeat, a new and virulent jihadist idea had emerged, and it aimed to terrorize the world with its brutal ambition.
SYRIA AND THE WAR WITH AL QAEDA
The “Arab Spring” protests began in Tunisia in December 2010, and from there spread throughout the Arab League and beyond. By December 2013, rulers had been replaced in Tunisia, Egypt (twice), Libya, and Yemen; there were uprisings in Bahrain and Syria, and large-scale protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and beyond.25
The protests were fueled by inequality, corruption, and frustration with injustices suffered under long-standing dictatorships.26 What began as popular movements turned violent in some countries, but no one had ever seen anything like the civil war that erupted in Syria.
For more than fifty years, the Syrian people have lived under a military dictatorship. A single family has ruled the country since 1970, starting with General Hafez al Assad and his son, Bashar al Assad, who succeeded him in 2000. Speech is extensively censored and those whose words displease the regime are subject to harassment or arrest. Members of the elite have lived very well. But there has been high unemployment, especially among youth.27
When popular protests helped unseat the long-standing dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia in early 2011, young Syrians were inspired to follow suit. For the crime of spray-painting antigovernment graffiti in the town of Daraa, fifteen teenage boys were arres
ted and brutally tortured. Thousands turned out to protest this vicious act, and the regime responded by opening fire on the assembled crowds.28, 29
Soon afterward, a Facebook page called for nationwide protests and thousands flooded the streets to protest the brutality of the Assad regime. In response to these protests, Assad offered concessions, including ending the “state of emergency” that had been in place for nearly fifty years. Still the protests continued to spread. By May of that year, more than a thousand people had been killed by the regime, according to Syrian human rights groups.30
On May 28, 2011, the corpse of a thirteen-year old child was delivered back to his family in the town of Daraa, where the protests began.31 The child’s genitalia had been removed, and his corpse was burned and riddled with gunshot wounds. Some fifty thousand protesters gathered outside Daraa. The Syrian government responded by again firing on the protesters and disconnecting the Internet.32
Western governments called on Assad to step down, and the Arab League condemned the crackdown. According to Human Rights Watch, the Syrian government has taken tens of thousands of detainees into custody, solely on the basis of their peaceful opposition to the regime.
Many of the detainees were brutally tortured. Even the hospital staff treating wounded protesters were arrested and tortured.33 Human Rights Watch and others have reported that Syrian security forces were using rape systematically to torture men, women, and children, some as young as twelve years old.34
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