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.”
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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.
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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,
