campaign against Iraqi civilians, orchestrated
audacious jailbreaks of fellow militants and
expanded his hard-line Islamist organization's
reach deep into neighboring Syria.
While his may not be a household name, the
shadowy figure known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has
emerged as one of the world's most lethal terrorist
leaders. He is a renegade within al-Qaida whose
maverick streak eventually led its central
command to sever ties, deepening a rivalry
between his organization and the global terror
network.
Al-Baghdadi's Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
is the main driver of destabilizing violence in Iraq
and until recently was the main al-Qaida affiliate
there. Al-Qaida's general command formally
disavowed the group this week, saying it "is not
responsible for its actions."
Al-Baghdadi took over leadership of al-Qaida's main
Iraq franchise following a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid in
April 2010 that killed the terror group's two top
figures inside Iraq at their safe house near Tikrit,
once Saddam Hussein's hometown. Vice President
Joe Biden at the time called the killings of Abu
Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri a
"potentially devastating blow" to al-Qaida in Iraq.
But as in the past, al-Qaida in Iraq has proved
resilient. Under al-Baghdadi's leadership, it has
come roaring back stronger than it was before he
took over.
The man now known as al-Baghdadi was born in
Samarra, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of
Baghdad, in 1971, according to a United Nations
sanctions list. That would make him 42 or 43 years
old.
FILE – Undated file picture released on Wednesday
Jan. 29, 2014, by the official website of Iraq
Al-Baghdadi is a nom de guerre for a man identified
as Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai.
The U.S. is offering a $10 million reward for
information leading to his death or capture.
He is believed to have been operating from inside
Syria in recent months, though his current
whereabouts aren't known. Iraqi Interior Ministry
spokesman Saad Maan Ibrahim said authorities
believe he was in Iraq's Salahuddin province, north
of Baghdad, as recently as three weeks ago, but he
moves around frequently so as not to be captured.
What little else that is known publicly about al-
Baghdadi comes from a brief biography posted in
July to online jihadist forums. Its claims could not
be independently corroborated.
According to that account, al-Baghdadi is a married
preacher who earned a doctorate from Baghdad's
Islamic University, the Iraqi capital's main center
for Sunni clerical scholarship. The biography linked
him to several prominent tribes and said he comes
from a religious family, according to a translation
by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors
extremist sites.
He rose to prominence as a proponent of the Salafi
jihadi movement, which advocates "holy war" to
bring about a strict, uncompromising version of
Shariah law, in Samarra and the nearby Diyala
province.
FILE – This undated file image posted on a militant
website on Jan. 4, 2014,
The biography linked him to Samarra's mosque of
Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal, which according to one
resident, speaking anonymously for fear of
retribution, was a key hub for al-Qaida decision-
making in 2005 and 2006.
Samarra, like Diyala a hotbed for al-Qaida activity,
was the scene of the 2006 bombing of the Shiite al-
Askari shrine. That attack was blamed on al-Qaida
and set off years of retaliatory bloodshed between
Sunni and Shiite extremists.
Al-Baghdadi's leadership of the Iraqi al-Qaida
operation coincided with the final year and a half of
the American military presence in Iraq. The U.S.
withdrawal in December 2011 left Iraq with a
precarious security vacuum that he was able to
exploit.
"Al-Baghdadi has managed a remarkable recovery
and re-growth in Iraq and expansion into Syria. In
so doing, Baghdadi has become somewhat of a
celebrity figure within the global jihadist
community," said Charles Lister, an analyst at the
Brookings Doha Center.
The group has kept up pressure on the Shiite-led
government in Baghdad with frequent and
coordinated barrages of car bombs and suicide
bombs, pushing the country's violent death toll last
year to the highest level since 2007, when the
worst of Iraq's sectarian bloodletting began to
subside.
FILE – This file image posted on a militant website
on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2014,
A series of prison breaks, including a complex,
military-style assault on two Baghdad-area prisons
in July that freed more than 500 inmates, has
bolstered his group's ranks and raised its clout
among jihadist sympathizers.
That notoriety only grew when his fighters seized
control of the city of Fallujah and other parts of the
vast western Anbar province in recent weeks.
His push into Syria has won him large numbers of
foreign recruits, and is helped by "a slick and
effective propaganda machine, which has had a
truly global reach," according to Lister. Last year,
he added "and the Levant" to the end of his
group's name to reflect its cross-border ambitions.
But its muscling in on other Syrian rebel groups'
territory has created divisions among the militant
ranks. The Nusra Front, an al-Qaida-linked rebel
group in Syria, bristled at the Islamic State of Iraq
and the Levant's unilateral announcement of a
merger — effectively a hostile takeover — last year.
Abu Qatada, a radical preacher who was deported
from Britain and faces terrorism charges in his
native Jordan, is among those who have criticized
ISIL's role in Syria. He warned last week that ISIL's
fighters were "misled to fight a war that is not
holy."
FILE – This undated file image posted on a militant
website on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2014 shows fighters
Many Syrians have been turned off by ISIL's strict
and intensely sectarian interpretation of Islam,
including brutal measures such as the beheading
of captured government fighters and its focus on
establishing an Islamic caliphate.
Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri has tried
unsuccessfully to end the infighting but frictions
between the ISIL and other Syrian rebel factions
erupted into outright warfare in recent weeks. The
London-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights estimates that more than 1,700 people have
been killed in clashes between ISIL and other
factions since Jan. 3.
It was that infighting that likely prompted al-
Zawahiri to ultimately sever ties, setting up a
potential fight over resources and influence.
"Any separation means a split in strength and
resources between the rival wings," said Ibrahim,
the Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman. "This division
between al-Zawahiri and al-Baghdadi is due to only
conflicting personal ambitions between two
people."
___
Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub in
Baghdad and Maamoun Youssef in Cairo
contributed reporting.
___
Sent From David Aniemeka
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