Tag Archives: Abdallah Najem al-Jawari

Islamic State Profiles the Leadership

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 6 April 2019

Islamic State flag in front of the main gate of Saddam Husayn’s palace in Tikrit, 5 April 2015 // AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED SAWAF

A lengthy document—roughly sixty pages and 12,000 words—was published online on 21 February 2019 containing biographies of twenty-seven senior Islamic State (IS) officials, past and more recent. Those bios that are dated were written between October 2018 and the time of publication, with one exception that was written in the summer of 2018. The author claims to be an IS veteran. While longevity is difficult to prove, the fact that the author provides heretofore unseen images of some of the IS leaders suggests that at a minimum he is an IS operative. Continue reading →

The Leader of the Islamic State in the 2004 Fallujah Battles: Umar Hadid

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 30, 2017

Umar Hadid [right] (source)

Umar Hadid [right] (source)

Umar Hadid was a native of Fallujah, hence his kunya, Abu Khattab al-Falluji,[1] and a part of the extremist thread of the Salafist underground in Saddam Husayn’s Iraq. Working as an electrician for a time, Hadid had gone into internal exile years before the invasion after attacking Saddam’s security forces. In the aftermath of Saddam’s toppling, Hadid quickly joined with Ahmad al-Khalayleh (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), the Jordanian founder of the Islamic State (IS) who had been in Baghdad from May 2002. Hadid rose swiftly in the ranks of the IS movement, and led the insurgency during the two battles with American forces in Fallujah in 2004, being killed during the second of them. Continue reading →

The Islamic State’s Profile of Umar Hadid

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 30, 2017

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A profile of Umar Hadid, published on an Islamic State forum, is reproduced below with some interesting and important sections highlighted in bold. Hadid—variously known as Abu Khattab al-Falluji, Abu Khattab al-Ansari, and Abu Khattab al-Iraqi—was a native of Fallujah who took up Salafism in the late 1990s during the rule of Saddam Husayn, leading to clashes with the security forces and Hadid going into internal exile. After the fall of Saddam, Hadid quickly linked up with the elite circles of the nascent Islamic State movement, including its leader Ahmad al-Khalayleh (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), his deputy Umar Yusef al-Juma (Abu Anas al-Shami), the military leader Mustafa Ramadan Darwish (Abu Muhammad al-Lubnani) and Abu Raghd who set up the Rawa Camp in Anbar Province, said to be the first terrorist training facility of the Iraqi jihad, and Abdallah Najem al-Jawari (Abu Azzam al-Iraqi), the chief financier and Anbar governor in 2004 before being appointed emir of Baghdad in 2005. Hadid was the leader of the insurgency in the two battles at Fallujah in 2004, being killed during the second of them. Continue reading →

Abdallah Najem al-Jawari: A Key Early Leader of the Islamic State

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 28, 2017

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Abdallah Najem al-Jawari (Abu Azzam al-Iraqi) was something like the Islamic State (IS) movement’s first Finance Minister and a senior regional official, first in his native Anbar—he was from Fallujah—and later in Baghdad. Joining the group quickly after the collapse of the Saddam Husayn regime, al-Jawari was killed in 2005. Al-Jawari remains among those commemorated by IS as founders who set the stage for the current rise of “the State”.
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The Islamic State’s Media Apparatus and its New Spokesman

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on December 16, 2016

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The Islamic State (IS) has named a new official spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir. Abu Hassan is the fourth man to hold the position of spokesman within the IS movement, and the third since it declared statehood in 2006. Very little is known about Abu Hassan but assessing the history of IS’s media enterprise offers some hints about his profile. In this regard, a new paper by Dr. Craig Whiteside of the International Centre for Counter Terrorism Terrorism is instructive. Looking forward, examining Abu Hassan’s inaugural speech offers some clues about the direction IS’s messaging and behaviour will take now as its statelet shrinks under pressure from the U.S.-led Coalition. Continue reading →