By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on November 25, 2015
Today, my first report with The Henry Jackson Society was published: “Destroying Islamic State, Defeating Assad: A Strategy for Syria“. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on November 10, 2015
Samir al-Khlifawi (Haji Bakr): in Saddam’s intelligence service, in American prison, as a commander of the Islamic State
In the last few months I’ve increasingly focussed on the former (Saddam) regime elements (FREs) within the Islamic State (IS). There’s now an entire section on this blog about it, and Aaron Zelin over at Jihadology recently gave me time to elaborate in a podcast.
In studying this topic there is one inescapable name: Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, better-known by his pseudonym Haji Bakr, and sometimes by his kunya, Abu Bakr al-Iraqi. Al-Khlifawi is a former colonel in an elite intelligence unit of the Saddam Hussein regime—focussed on air defence at Habbaniya airbase, though what exactly that entails is murky. Al-Khlifawi was also apparently involved in weapons development.
Al-Khlifawi came to international attention in April when Christoph Reuter published an article in Der Spiegel naming al-Khlifawi as the “architect” of IS’s expansion into Syria, and the man who had been “pulling the strings at IS for years.” Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 22, 2015
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
In August 2015’s Perspectives on Terrorism, Truls Tønnessen writes about the evolution of the leadership of what is now the Islamic State (I.S.) from its origins in al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) under the heading, “Heirs of Zarqawi or Saddam?” Tonnessen makes the obvious point that AQI’s leadership was largely comprised of foreign Salafi-jihadists with al-Qaeda histories, while I.S. is led by Iraqis, most of them former (Saddam) regime elements (FREs). But Tonnessen’s argument that I.S.’s leaders had not been AQI members is mistaken (they had), which erodes his arguments that AQI’s influence diminished over time as I.S. formed from various mergers, and that this diminution of influence came about because I.S.’s post-2010 leadership purged the veteran AQI elements within I.S. (I.S.’s leaders are veteran AQI elements.) The main difference between AQI’s leaders and I.S.’s is that AQI’s leaders had background connections to al-Qaeda Central (AQC) networks, and I.S.’s largely do not. While Tonnessen sees Jabhat al-Nusra as linked to these shifting dynamics, this argument does not stack up. Ultimately, Tonnessen’s contention that I.S.’s leaders are more heirs of Saddam than Zarqawi fails in the terms Tonnessen presents it. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 22, 2015
Fadel Ahmad Abdullah al-Hiyali (a.k.a. Abu Muslim al-Turkmani a.k.a. Haji Mutazz)
Fadel Ahmad Abdullah al-Hiyali, the overall deputy to the “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who heads the Military Council of the Islamic State (ISIS) and is the direct commander of ISIS’s forces in Iraq, was killed in a drone strike in Mosul on August 18, according to a U.S. spokesman for the National Security Council yesterday. Al-Hiyali, who also goes by the pseudonyms Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, Abu Mutaz al-Qurayshi, and Haji Mutaz, was reported to have been travelling in a car with a media operative named Abu Abdullah when he was killed.
Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 9, 2015
Left to Right: (1) Fadel al-Hiyali (Haji Mutazz or Abu Muslim al-Turkmani); (2) Adnan Ismail Najem al-Bilawi (Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi); (3) Samir al-Khlifawi (Haji Bakr)
Nearly a year ago I wrote that in crude terms the Islamic State’s (ISIS’s) “military strength comes from the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s military-intelligence apparatus and the Caucasus’ Salafi-jihadists.” Since then I have dug up some answers for why this is so that did not seem to be widely shared. This might be about to change.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 20, 2015
Published at National Review
After long neglect, the media has finally recognized the role of the FREs—former (Saddam) regime elements—within the Islamic State (ISIS). But the pendulum has now swung too far: Some reports are now claiming that the FREs have transformed the leader of the terror army, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, into nothing more than a front man for the Baathists.
These suppositions are mistaken. Most FREs within ISIS have not been ideologically Baathists for a long time. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 21, 2015
Having presented the evidence that Saddam Hussein Islamized his foreign policy and then Islamized his regime, above all with the Islamic Faith Campaign, beginning in June 1993 that tried to fuse Ba’athism with Salafism, encouraging (and keeping under surveillance) a religious revival in Iraq that redounded to the benefit of the regime’s legitimacy and support, I wanted to look at what this history means for Iraq and the wider region now.
I pointed out in October that the “military strength” of the Islamic State (ISIS) “comes from the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s military-intelligence apparatus and the Caucasus’ Salafi-jihadists.” Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 8, 2014
Before the account, first published in April 2014, by an ostensible Islamic State (IS) defector, “Abu Ahmad”, there was the Twitter account @WikiBaghdady, which released a lot of information in the same vein about the alleged impiousness of the jihadist organization. @WikiBaghdady’s testimony, as collected by Yousef Bin Tashfin, is republished below, with some editions for transliteration and syntax, to ensure its preservation. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 2, 2014
A purported defector from the Islamic State, known only as “Abu Ahmad,” released testimony online on 5 April 2014 via the Syrian opposition news site al-Durar al-Shamiya under the heading, “The Concealed Truths About al-Baghdadi’s State”. Abu Ahmad describes himself as “one of the mujahideen in Khorasan [Afghanistan-Pakistan] and Iraq, and now in al-Sham [Syria],” and it is quite clear that Abu Ahmad has defected to al-Qaeda. On 25 September 2014, an English version of this testimony was posted on the Fund for Fallen Allies website. It has been reposted below—with some editions to transliteration and syntax—to avoid it being lost. Continue reading
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