Al-Qaeda’s New Star Rises

The ambition and aggression of the July 21 break into Iraq’s biggest and most heavily fortified prison were trademarks of the man who planned it. It began with a barrage of mortars crashing into the open spaces inside the huge perimeter walls of what was once called Abu Ghraib and is now called the Baghdad Central Prison, on the outskirts of the Iraqi capital. Saddam Hussein had kept his enemies there once, and then the Americans had used it for theirs. Rebuilt and yet forever associated with the abuses that had happened there in the past, it is now the Iraqi government’s main detention facility for extremists and terrorists, including hundreds of al-Qaeda militants. That’s who the mastermind wanted out. He had wars to fight in two countries and a caliphate to establish across the historical lands of Islam, and he needed his fighters back.

The mortars sent the guards fleeing for their lives. Two cars, parked next to the perimeter and packed with explosives, then detonated, punching holes in the exterior walls. Some 50 men, armed with machine guns and grenades, rushed through the breaches. They raced through the corridors of the prison blocks, shooting out the locks of individual cells as they went. Within hours, 500 inmates, many of them high-value al-Qaeda operatives, battlefield tacticians and bombmakers — some arrested by U.S. troops before their 2011 withdrawal — were free. Shaky, green-lit video footage taken that night with a night-vision camera and later posted to jihadist websites shows the men whooping and calling out “Allahu akbar” — God is great — as they spill into the desert. Another video shows several hundred men piling into the backs of Toyota pickup trucks in a convoy destined for neighboring Syria.

The operation was barely noticed outside Iraq: the world was distracted by other horrors in Syria. But in jihadist circles, it greatly elevated the status of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the al-Qaeda leader who planned the breakout. Exactly one year before the Abu Ghraib attack, in an audiotape message to his followers, Baghdadi laid out plans for a yearlong campaign he dubbed “Breaking the Walls.” It was only the second address he had delivered in his two-year tenure at the helm of al-Qaeda’s Iraqi wing. Over the course of that 12-month period, he launched 24 complex car-bomb attacks and broke into eight other Iraqi prisons, liberating scores of al-Qaeda members. Abu Ghraib was his coup de grace. That one operation injected his organization with a vital influx of experienced, committed operatives — and their handiwork is writ large in the Middle East.

In Iraq, a brutal campaign of suicide attacks and car bombings has taken more than 3,000 lives in the past four months. In Syria’s civil war, Baghdadi has become arguably the most feared and powerful man after President Bashar Assad. Counterterrorism analysts say the al-Qaeda inmates Baghdadi busted out of Abu Ghraib have become game changers: their arrival fortified the radical wing of the Syrian rebellion, and weakened the overall anti-Assad movement by frightening off international backers concerned about the growing jihadist influence. The rebels as a whole may be suffering under the sustained offensives of Assad’s military, but Baghdadi’s jihadists are growing in fighting capability and day-to-day influence on civilians’ lives in a way that no al-Qaeda group has since Osama bin Laden’s men enjoyed the freedom of pre-9/11 Afghanistan.

An enigmatic leader who shuns the spotlight — there is only one photograph of him in circulation, a grainy head shot the U.S. State Department uses to advertise the $10 million price tag it has put on his head — Baghdadi’s ambitions match bin Laden’s: to create a new caliphate, or state based on Islamic law, stretching across the Middle East and North Africa. Many jihadist leaders have stated this ambition, but Baghdadi is actually carving out a mini-caliphate in parts of both Iraq and Syria. Not even bin Laden, for all his spectacular international terrorist attacks, came close to holding so much as a square meter of territory in any Arab country.

To make his intentions clear, in April 2013, Baghdadi gave al-Qaeda in Iraq a new name: the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). With operations reaching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, it is al-Qaeda’s most successful affiliate. The war in Syria has made ISIS “the strongest of them all,” says Jessica D. Lewis, director of research at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington and author of a recent report on al-Qaeda’s resurgence in Iraq. “Baghdadi has military momentum, he has taken terrain in Syria, and he has established a governance system,” she says. “He is the one conducting the war that all the foreign fighters are seeking. He is calling the shots, and that will make him a major player in al-Qaeda going forward.”

Pretender to the Throne
The conflict in Syria has devolved into a three-front war. For the moment, al-Qaeda’s affiliates are fighting on the side of the rebels, but their goal of establishing a broad Islamic empire anchored in Syria and governed by Baghdadi’s interpretation of Islamic law puts them at odds with their supposed allies. Already Baghdadi has battled rebel groups he deemed insufficiently Islamic, forcibly taking towns controlled by moderates.

Baghdadi has a large pool from which to recruit. Syria has drawn as many foreign fighters to its battlefields in two and a half years as Afghanistan did in two and a half decades of war, according to senior officials in the Obama Administration. Most of the new arrivals swear allegiance to Baghdadi and join ISIS, say U.S. and Middle Eastern terrorism analysts. ISIS’s well-equipped soldiers, heavy weaponry and sophisticated attacks are evidence of robust funding streams.

And Baghdadi doesn’t just fight: he holds terrain. ISIS has taken over the Syrian city of Raqqa and its environs, where an influx of citizens fleeing the war has swelled the population to 1 million, making it the largest municipality ever administered by al-Qaeda. ISIS controls border crossings to Turkey, a crucial NATO member and U.S. ally, and has captured oil fields and refineries, which help it generate income locally. It even runs a bus service from Raqqa to the surrounding villages.

There’s a similar picture in parts of Iraq. ISIS is so strong in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, whose population is nearly 2 million, that Baghdadi’s operatives collect “taxes” unmolested. The group is now taking control of areas in neighboring Anbar province, its former Iraq stronghold, say Iraqi officials.

Baghdadi’s on-the-ground power base has given him unprecedented authority for an al-Qaeda figure who is not part of bin Laden’s original group, the survivors of which are now mostly based in Pakistan. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s designated successor, still wields influence in the organization, but his ability to direct operations is compromised by having to live in hiding. As a consequence, affiliates like al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Somalia’s al-Shabab and Yemen’s al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) are rising in prominence and vying for leadership roles. But it is ISIS that has the biggest stage, and Baghdadi the biggest clout.

For the moment, Baghdadi has not yet turned his attention to the West in the way that Yemen’s AQAP has, with its technologically sophisticated plots to blow up passenger planes and plans to attack foreign embassies. But if he is allowed to continue unchecked, or if the Syrian civil war continues to serve as a spawning ground for a new generation of jihadists, it may be only a matter of time. U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, says al-Qaeda’s affiliates in Syria are already debating about when to launch an attack on the West. “They’re talking about conducting external operations, which is exactly what happened in Afghanistan, which led to 9/11,” Rogers warned in an address to policymakers at the 2013 Foreign Policy Initiative Forum in Washington in October. “The only thing we think is stopping it now is the fact that there is this struggle between al-Qaeda core leadership saying, ‘Hold off, don’t do it yet.'” U.S. National Counterterrorism Center director Matthew G. Olsen told the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Nov. 14 that ISIS’s “growing cadre of Western recruits probably bolsters the group’s pool of external operatives who could be used to target the West.”

An Elusive Enemy
jihadist websites are full of accounts of Baghdadi’s battlefield exploits, but surprisingly little is known about the man himself. Born Ibrahim bin ‘Awad bin Ibrahim al-Badri ar-Radawi al-Husseini as-Samara’i in 1971 to a religious family in Samarra, Iraq, he claims he can trace his lineage all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is a nom de guerre; he also goes by the name Abu Du’a. He has a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad.

When the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003, Baghdadi joined forces with his mentor Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who went on to found al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Over the years, Baghdadi climbed the ranks, taking AQI’s leadership position in 2010. (Zarqawi was killed in 2006, his successor Abu Ayub al-Masri died in 2010, and a subsequent leader died shortly thereafter.)

Abdul Rahman Hamad, an ISIS fighter from Homs, Syria, who is currently recovering from injuries in a safe house in Tripoli, Lebanon, remembers meeting Baghdadi at a training camp in Diyala province in eastern Iraq in 2004, when he and hundreds of other Syrian jihadists flooded into Iraq to combat the Americans. Baghdadi seldom spoke, Hamad tells TIME, but when he did, “he had a calm and convincing voice,” even in the middle of an air strike. As a commander, Baghdadi stood out for his focus on his men’s safety, planning not only sophisticated attacks but also secure retreats. Baghdadi wanted to keep himself alive too, says Hamad. Early on in the war, Baghdadi started disguising himself, wrapping a scarf around his face even in the presence of close associates. “Abu Bakr knew how men can be seduced by money, so he never shared his secrets with anyone,” says Hamad.

Even his enemies bear him grudging respect for that elusiveness. Members of Hizballah, the Lebanese Shi’ite militia that is fighting on behalf of Assad, call him “the Ghost.” “Only a few people know the face of Baghdadi,” says Sheik Ahmad, the Hizballah intelligence official in charge of investigating ISIS’s fighters in Syria. For example, he says, “You could be sitting with him one day, and when he passes next to you the second day you will not recognize him.” Ahmad, who spoke on condition of not revealing his full name, says his archenemy can slip effortlessly into convincing regional accents, from Lebanese to Syrian to Saudi Arabic, a trait that befuddles his pursuers even as it endears him to his men. He has a habit of showing up unexpectedly on the front lines to boost troop morale.

Baghdadi’s expansion into Syria has rejuvenated a waning al-Qaeda, inspired new recruits and, with ISIS’s dominance in the north, brought the organization the closest it has ever been to its goal of establishing a caliphate. That success may have made Baghdadi too arrogant for al-Qaeda’s old guard, says Seth Jones, a counterinsurgency specialist at the Rand Corp., a security-policy think tank in Washington. “He is the naughty son, the one who keeps pushing the line. For the moment he still has a relationship with his parents in Pakistan, where al-Qaeda Central is based, but he is giving them a huge headache.”

In May, Zawahiri was forced to publicly intervene in a spat between Baghdadi and his onetime deputy, Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani, head of the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, over Baghdadi’s attempt to merge the two organizations. In a letter followed by an audio recording, Zawahiri abolished ISIS and ordered Baghdadi back to Iraq. Baghdadi didn’t listen, snapping back in a terse audio recording that ISIS would stay intact. “I have to choose between the rule of God and the rule of Zawahiri, and I choose the rule of God,” he said. Though the two groups maintain an uneasy alliance, almost all the foreign fighters and many of al-Nusra’s top commanders defected to ISIS, pledging allegiance to Baghdadi.

The blatant indifference to instructions from al-Qaeda’s top leader may presage more conflicts to come, says Jones. “The fact that Baghdadi has disregarded Zawahiri’s instructions suggests that he may view himself as potentially more important than Zawahiri is.” The rift has caught the attention of counterterrorism officials in the Obama Administration, who believe it could herald the splintering of the global jihad movement. But like an employer confronted with a talented but troublesome employee, Zawahiri recognizes that for the moment, at least, it’s not practical to let Baghdadi go. In Syria, al-Qaeda has an opportunity to gain territory, win recruits and spread to neighboring countries. Disciplining Baghdadi could unravel it all, says Lewis of the Institute for the Study of War.

Not only that, it might render Baghdadi even more dangerous: unchecked by other central directives, he could lash out with high-profile terrorist attacks in neighboring Israel or Turkey, provoking powerful enemies that al-Qaeda has so far avoided attacking. Already he has mastered multiple streams of funding, from kidnapping for ransom and capturing oil fields to courting ideologically minded donors in the oil-rich Persian Gulf states, says Lewis, who believes that this has enabled Baghdadi to cut his financial ties to his mentors in Pakistan. “If al-Qaeda were sending funding, I wouldn’t expect Baghdadi to push back so much. That’s an indication that he can be financially independent.”

A Global Gaze
The city of Raqqa offers the most concrete example of Baghdadi’s views on governance. Captured by the rebels on March 5, the city was soon taken over by ISIS, which quickly set up Islamic courts and controlled the distribution of humanitarian aid. ISIS has tapped oil wells and captured refineries, handing out fuel to residents and using it to keep electricity supplied to the city. The group also set up a school in the city. It’s an effective hearts-and-minds campaign, designed to prove that ISIS can govern as well as it can fight.

But those carrots come with sticks. Billboards promoting Islamic law and the veil for women have blossomed throughout the city. Roving bands of ISIS police pluck cigarettes from the lips of smokers and tear from rearview mirrors the dangling talismans traditionally used to ward off the evil eye — an affront to the true Islam, say the enforcers. Local activists and journalists who speak out against ISIS’s draconian rules are tried in Islamic courts for apostasy. Others simply disappear.

Baghdadi’s ambition for an Islamic state is openly stated. During Ramadan celebrations in Raqqa in August, ISIS displayed a map that showed a borderless country stretching from the edge of Iran to the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula and across North Africa — a near re-creation of the 8th century Abbasid Caliphate, the first Islamic empire. The fact that Baghdadi already has a foothold in Raqqa, one of the capitals of Islam’s golden age, has inspired a millenarian fervor among his followers, and strengthened his claim to prominence, says a Western aid worker based in Turkey who has close dealings with ISIS representatives. “At this point Baghdadi is saying, ‘We are the real jihadis, we have actually won territory, and we are closer to having a caliphate than any other al-Qaeda group before.'”

ISIS, with its estimated 5,000 to 6,000 fighters, is significantly smaller than many of the other major fighting groups in Syria today. But most of ISIS’s men have fought in other wars, from Afghanistan to Iraq and Libya. And it can direct and fund operations from Syria to Iraq, says Lewis. “Its military campaigns are very well crafted. I see border crossings taken purposefully and oil fields taken and exploited for financial gain. These are thoughtful terrain objectives indicating a long-term vision of territorial gain,” she says. “This is not the enemy we saw in the Iraq War, which simply massed explosive attacks. The organization has evolved.” And the man who made all that possible is Osama bin Laden’s true heir.

—with reporting by Michael Crowley / Washington, Piotr Zalewski / Istanbul and Rami Aysha / Beirut