On Tuesday, Mosul, the third-largest city in Iraq, fell to members of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the new face of al-Qaida-linked insurgency in the Arab state. Under its black flag, ISIS has retaken large swaths of territory in the north and west of the country in a campaign that began in January with the taking of Fallujah and Ramadi.
What makes the collapse all the more shocking is its instigator, a shadowy figure who goes by the name of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Born Ibrahim Ali al-Badri in a city along the Tigris and north of Baghdad, he was arrested by US forces during a sweep in 2005 and detained at Camp Bucca, an American base, for a period of several years. At the time, US intelligence reports depicted him as al-Qaida’s point man in Qaim, a town in the western Iraqi desert. According to one Pentagon document, The Telegraph reports, he was connected to the torture, murder and intimidation of civilians in Qaim prior to his arrest.
All of which makes his eventual release in 2009 even more of a puzzle. The exact reason why he was turned loose remains unknown. Some believe that he was one of the thousands of suspected insurgents who were granted amnesty as the US began to draw down its operations in Iraq. Others have suggested that perhaps Al-Baghdadi is a nom de guerre shared by several different individuals, with a new man picking up the mantle upon the death or capture of one of his comrades.
In addition to recapturing much of Iraq from US-backed security forces, al-Baghdadi is also credited with transitioning al-Qaida from a hierarchical organization of cells who worked together in order to pull off large-scale attacks — such as the London train bombings or the 9/11 attacks — to a splintered collection of individuals and autonomous groups who sought only to spread chaos and terror. His tactics have proved brutally effective. After the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011, al-Baghdadi pledged to avenge him with 100 terrorist attacks in Iraq, a total which he has already far exceeded.
