The Islamic State’s Deputy and the Ghost of Saddam Hussein
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 22, 2015
Fadel Ahmad Abdullah al-Hiyali (a.k.a. Haji Mutazz or Abu Muslim al-Turkmani), the Islamic State’s (ISIS’s) commander in Iraq and overall deputy to the “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 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 was reported to have been travelling in a car with a media operative named Abu Abdullah when he was killed.
The first thing that this means is that the reports from the end of last year, based on statements from senior American officials, that al-Hiyali had been killed between Dec. 3 and Dec. 9, 2014, were wrong. It also means that this report, even with White House confirmation, should be taken with a degree of scepticism. ISIS is well-known to disseminate false reports that its members have been killed and injured. Being already dead is pretty good operational security (OPSEC), after all; it means nobody is looking to try to kill you again.
Dead or alive, al-Hiyali is a very good demonstration of the fact that ISIS’s military prowess—especially in intelligence, planning, and logistics—is being provided by the former (Saddam Hussein) regime elements (FREs). As I pointed out back in April, al-Hiyali “had been right at the core of Saddam’s military-intelligence apparatus in Special Forces,” personally close to Saddam and his long-time deputy, Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri, a key organizer of the post-Saddam insurgency and somebody without whom ISIS could not have risen to its present stature.
With Abu Ali al-Anbari, the ISIS commander in Syria, al-Hiyali was a key planner of ISIS’s invasion of Iraq from Syria last summer. Al-Anbari is an FRE and was a member of Ansar al-Islam, a joint enterprise of al-Qaeda and the Saddam regime, as early as 2003. Ansar al-Islam was a key component of ISIS’s early post-invasion incarnation, and is now formally pledged to ISIS. Interestingly, al-Ansari is also like al-Hiyali in being an ethnic Turkoman (his other nom de guerre is Ali Qurdash al-Turkmani). Al-Hiyali is from Tal Afar and al-Anbari is from Mosul.
The Turkoman have been particularly important in ISIS’s financial leadership council, especially those from Tal Afar, and this goes back to cross-border networks set up under Douri’s direction in the 1990s to evade the sanctions. Those networks are now under ISIS’s auspices, not coincidentally in ISIS’s heartland—the Ninawa province in Iraq and the contiguous territories of southern Hasaka and ultimately Raqqa in Syria.
Al-Hiyali and al-Anbari help demonstrate that the rise of the FREs within ISIS not a post-2010 phenomenon, as some have argued, and is not some kind of “Ba’athist” coup. It is true that ISIS was virtually decapitated in 2010, leaving the leadership in the hands of those most skilled at OPSEC and counterintelligence were left alive—inevitably the FREs. But that merely helped complete a process of Iraqization and the FREs’ dominance of ISIS’s leadership that was already underway. Thanks to Saddam’s Faith Campaign, the FREs had been fanatics way before Saddam’s fall, and the most important of them had been within ISIS since 2003-04.
Samir al-Khlifawi (pseudonym: Haji Bakr), a former colonel in Saddam’s intelligence services, masterminded ISIS’s expansion into Syria, notably by using ISIS’s Dawa (Missionary) Offices as fronts for intelligence, to penetrate communities and recruit so that ISIS had already conquered an area before it openly moved in. Adnan Ismail Najem al-Bilawi (pseudonym: Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi), a former captain in Saddam’s army, led ISIS’s Military Council, believed to be the most important military institution in the organization, until he was killed right before the Mosul offensive in June 2014. Al-Bilawi was replaced by Walid Jassem Mohammed (pseudonym: Abu Ahmad al-Alwani), also an FRE (a soldier); reports that Mohammed was killed in late 2014 remain unconfirmed. If Mohammed is dead, his replacement is likely Adnan Hamid as-Suwaydawi, a former intelligence colonel in Saddam’s army*. Al-Khlifawi, al-Bilawi, and as-Suwaydawi are all known to have been important members of ISIS before the October 2004 baya to al-Qaeda.
Al-Hiyali helps demonstrate that ISIS is best thought of in many ways as the afterlife of Saddam Hussein’s regime—”Saddam’s ghost,” as Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan put it. This matters because, as I explained recently,
The FREs … highlight the hybrid nature of ISIS—its fusion of elements of Ba’athism with Salafism—and also how difficult ISIS will be defeat. The FREs are the products of a military-intelligence service trained by the KGB. They have brought to ISIS unique military and counterintelligence skills, directly in battle and in propaganda. Their skills are aiding ISIS’s military effort, bringing in fanatical foreigners to use as shock troops, and helping ISIS restructure the identities of local populations who have joined ISIS only out of necessity or convenience (as a means to restore order or against Iran’s proxies, for example).
Since most of the FREs are now dead, they also highlight the fact that ISIS has a mature bureaucracy capable of retaining intellectual capital and putting it to use in long-term planning.
Another possible importance of the story might well be this:
One U.S. official told CNN the strike was based on “actionable intelligence,” meaning the Pentagon knew Mutazz was in a particular area at a particular time. That type of information suggests the United States has some ability to target and strike some of the most senior officials in ISIS.
Assuming this is correct and is not some form of psychological operation, it suggests that perhaps—at long last—the U.S. has some worthwhile human intelligence sources in the war against ISIS.
- As-Suwaydawi’s identity has been subject to a minor controversy. According to Romain Caillet, “Since February 2014 Abu Muhannad al-Suwaydawi has been presented by the Iraqi authorities as Abu Ayman al-Iraqi, one of IS’s senior leaders in Syria. In reality, however, they are two different people.” By Caillet’s account, the picture of as-Suwaydawi from his time in U.S. prison is of somebody too old to be al-Iraqi. There seems to be little doubt who Adnan as-Suwaydawi is but, if Caillet is correct, the wrong pseudonym is being applied to him by the Iraqi government—and now much of the Western media.
https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/08/22/the-islamic-states-deputy-and-the-ghost-of-saddam-hussein/
