A rchive Date
[ 15-06-2014 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/06/13/brutal-but-mysterious-isis-leader-announces-his-arrival-as-major-jihadist-with-assault-on-iraq/
Brutal but mysterious ISIS leader announces his arrival as major jihadist with assault on Iraq
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was called the next Osama bin Laden
Stewart Bell
June 13, 2014 Last Updated: Jun 13 7:08 PM ET
Email: sbell@nationalpost.com
Since the masked gunmen of the Islamic State of Iraq & Al-Sham (ISIS) captured Mosul this week, raising their black flag over Iraq’s second-largest city, their leader has been called the next Osama bin Laden, the first terrorist to establish an Islamic state and the world’s most dangerous man.
That may be over the top. Brutally overrunning part of a weak nation whose forces discarded their uniforms and fled is no great triumph. But with ISIS fighters advancing toward Baghdad, and military powers scrambling to stop them, there is no denying the arrival of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.
U.S. President Barack Obama warned Friday of the dangers of a jihadist “foothold” in Iraq. Meanwhile, Navi Pillay, the United Nations human rights commissioner, said ISIS was committing “murder of all kinds” amid reports 1,700 Shiite soldiers had been executed.
A 43-year-old cleric, Baghdadi is a man of few words and many names. The U.S. wanted poster offering US$10-million for his capture calls him Abu Dua. The UN, which listed him as a designated terrorist in 2011, says his real name is Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai.
Because he has deliberately avoided exposure, it’s difficult to know who he is. There are only two photos of him in circulation. And although ISIS uses social media to preach and taunt, Baghdadi has mostly kept quiet, earning the nickname the Invisible Sheik. In that sense, he is the antithesis of bin Laden.
That is likely a survival tactic. Baghdadi ascended to his position by a process of elimination after the previous Sunni militant leaders in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi and his successors, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri, were killed.
But it may also reflect his lack of charisma. He is a dour-looking man, and the few of his speeches that have been released publicly are uninspiring, mixing metaphors about butterflies with the usual references to scripture, jihad and the eternal virtues of fighting the “enemies of Allah.”
“Is it not high time for you to dirty your feet with the dirt of jihad in the cause of Allah?” he said in an April 2013 audio that announced the end of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the launch of ISIS. “Is it not time for you to feel the whiz of bullets over your heads?”
His official biography is conspicuously vague, describing him as a married teacher and preacher, with a doctorate from the Islamic University of Baghdad. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it said, he led a local militia until he was captured and held briefly by U.S. forces.
By 2005, however, the U.S. had identified him as a senior AQI leader. Baghdadi’s goal is simple: to impose his ruthless brand of extremist Islam. And his strategy is to kill, kill, kill. After taking control of AQI in 2010, he unleashed a wave of attacks south of Baghdad.
The killing of bin Laden by U.S. Navy SEALs in May 2011 prodded him out of his silence. In a rare coming out, he threatened “blood, destruction and fear” in retaliation, the UN said. Three days later, he claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 24 Iraqi policemen. That August, AQI suicide attacks killed more than 70 people in Mosul.
But it was the civil war next door in Syria that brought him to pre-eminence. The conflict created a vacuum of order that handed him an opening. He sent a delegate to Syria to set up an Al-Qaeda affiliate called the Al Nusrah Front.
Al Nusrah quickly became the armed group of choice for the thousands of foreign fighters arriving for their turn at jihad. But as it grew in strength, Baghdadi felt threatened. In 2013, he tried to consolidate the group into an umbrella he called the Islamic State in Iraq & Al-Sham (Al Sham is an ancient name for the region that includes much of Syria).
“With this declaration, Allah permitting, the name Islamic State of Iraq, as well as the name Al Nusrah Front, will disappear from our use, and become part of our blessed jihadi history,” he said.
But the Al Nusrah Front did not want to be swallowed up by Baghdadi. When Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Zawahiri stepped in to mediate, Baghdadi broke away from Al-Qaeda altogether, accusing Zawahiri of going soft and betraying bin Laden’s legacy.
Many fighters sided with Baghdadi and went with him, seeing him as the future of jihad, compared to the elderly, isolated Zawahiri.
Not since bin Laden “has a leader been held in such reverence among Sunni fighters, scored such stunning and shocking victories, and threatened so much of the established order,” Al Jazeera wrote.
With thousands of armed men under Baghdadi’s command, it was only a matter of time before they stormed across the border from Syria to seize Mosul and began their march to Baghdad. Baghdadi promised as much in his 2013 speech.
“The clouds are about to clear from the skies,” he said, “so the bright sun of Islam can shine, a sun that bears warmth, security, safety, dignity and good living for every Muslim man and woman, and for every boy and girl, and for all of those have a right in the house … of the Muslims.”
Already, ISIS has begun to implement its grim vision of uniformity in Mosul, as it has done in the part of Syria under its control. Women were ordered to cover up and stay at home unless it was absolutely necessary. This in a city where women were judges, lawyers and doctors.
ISIS also vowed to destroy shrines, which offend its narrow religious doctrine, and to amputate the limbs of thieves. “Under our ruling the people are safe and secure,” it said in a statement explaining the new law of the land.
The brief message used the word “kill” three times. Those who wage “war against Allah” shall be killed, it said. “Whoever changes his religion, kill him,” it continued. And those who “disrupt unity” would also die. “Strike him with the sword, whoever he is.”
Killing is what ISIS does best. It has committed mass executions and often beheads its victims — brute force enforcing a simplistic ideology of intolerance. But Baghdadi may have been too ambitious.
The Sunnis he claims to represent are only a minority in Iraq; two-thirds of Iraqis are Shias. And despite his carefully cultivated anonymity, he became a public villain this week, putting him in the crosshairs of the Iraqis, the Americans and the Iranians.
Abdulrahman Hamid Al-Hussaini, the Iraqi ambassador to Canada, said Friday government forces were closing in on Baghdadi and he would soon be captured or killed.
“The Iraqi armed forces will eliminate these terrorists,” he said.
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 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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