Behind the figure of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State is composed of numerous first-level elements that served under Saddam. The staff of ISIS is made up of former soldiers among officers, secret agents and anti-terrorism officials of the rais.
The appalling spread of ISIS in Iraq and Syria cannot certainly be justified by the religious fervor that drives the fundamentalists. Neither hatred for Westerners could support such a widespread organization that it proved to be far more efficient than the one put in place by the loyalist government. The main directives given to the guerrillas by the former elements of Saddam now seem clear and effective. A powerful mix of organization and discipline, elements necessary to keep the jihadist fighters of the whole world together, supplemented by terrorist tactics, as well as suicide bombings during military operations.
According to the CIA, Saddam's officials were "indispensable ingredients in the successes of the Islamic state on the battlefield and in its transformation from a terrorist organization to a proto-state. Last year's victories are not to be interpreted as terrorist acts, but exclusively as military successes ".
One of the main figures of al-Baghdadi, he is a former major of Saddam's army. Saud Mohsen Hassan, known by the aliases of Abu Mutazz and Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, was arrested in the 2000 and held prisoner in the 'Bucca' camp, the main detention center for members of the Sunni insurgency, run by the United States. Al-Baghdadi was also held in the same prison.
What American analysts ignored was that those prisons became huge incubators that allowed terrorists to get in touch with Saddam's former soldiers, including members of the Republican Guard and the Fedayeen paramilitary force. Right in the Bucca prison, al-Baghdadi forged relations with former soldiers. Today, those same men make up the leadership of the Islamic State.
Abu Alaa al-Afari, former veteran soldier of Saddam, previously affiliated with al-Qaeda, is believed to be the head of "Beit al-Mal", the treasury of the terrorist movement. The veterans of the Saddam era were called back from al-Baghdadi to serve as "governors" in seven of the twelve provinces established by the Islamic State in the territory conquered in Iraq.
In May of 2003, Paul Bremer, then head of the US employment authority in Baghdad, disbanded the Iraqi army. Thousands of well trained Sunni officers found themselves out of work and robbed of their lives with a stroke of the pen. At that moment, America created its most bitter enemies. Perhaps at that time the Islamic State was born.
To date, they oscillate from the 100 to the 160, Saddam's former veterans placed in a key caliphate position. According to the CIA, the "new" officials of the Islamic State come from areas with a Sunni majority. The former secret service officers would all be from the western province of Anbar. Most of the former regular army officers would be from the northern city of Mosul, while members of the security services belonging to Saddam's clan would all be from Tikrit, the dictator's hometown.
Assem Mohammed Nasser, also known as Nagahy Barakat, former brigadier general of the special forces of Saddam, would command jihadist troops since the 2014 and would have distinguished himself in the assault on Haditha, in the province of Anbar, where 25 policemen were killed. After the collapse of Saddam's regime, hundreds of Iraqi army officers, enraged by the US decision to dissolve the Iraqi army, consecrated themselves to the Sunni cause. Such as, for example, Sameer al-Khalifawy, a colonel in aviation killed in Syria in 2014 and Abdullah el-Bilawy, a former intelligence officer killed in Mosul by the Iraqi military in May last year, a month before the city surrendered to the Islamic State. The most emblematic case is perhaps that of Samir Abd Mohammed al-Khalifa, also known as Haji Bakr, former colonel of the intelligence services of Saddam Hussein's air defense force.
The story of Haji Bakr begins at the end of the 2012, when he moves to Syria. Until then the words "Islamic State" are not in the public domain. The man's plan was already well defined: to conquer as much territory as possible in Syria, the future bridgehead for the invasion of Iraq. Bakr buys a small house in Tal Rifaat, a town north of Aleppo. The choice of the city is not accidental. Since the 80 years, the city has provided labor for the Gulf countries, particularly for Saudi Arabia. Once they returned home, in many of them the radical conviction was already strong. Those were the men who served to found the Islamic State.
In the 2013, Tal Rifaat becomes an Isis stronghold with hundreds of fighters. It was there that the "Lord of Shadows", as some called him, outlined the structure of the Islamic State: from the local level to the progressive infiltration into the villages.
Using a ballpoint pen, he drew the future Caliphate chain of command on a piece of paper. Not a manifesto of faith, but a technically elaborated plan for an "Islamic Intelligence State" a caliphate managed by an organization that resembled the infamous Stasi, the East German internal intelligence agency.
