Front Burner - The rise and fall of ISIS leader al-Baghdadi

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

On Sunday President Donald Trump announced that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died during a U.S. raid in Syria. Today on Front Burner, Joby Warrick explains the significance of Baghdadi’s death and what this means for the future of ISIS. Warrick is a national security reporter for the Washington Post and Pulitzer-prize winning author of Black Flags: The Rise Of ISIS.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Last night, the United States brought the world's number one terrorist leader to justice. So that was, of course, Donald Trump on Sunday morning announcing that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed during a raid by U.S. troops in Syria. It was a remarkable and very detailed address from the U.S. president. We landed with eight helicopters, a large crew of brilliant fighters,

blew holes into the side of the building, not wanting to go through the main door because that was booby-trapped. He called ISIS fighters losers and repeatedly said Baghdadi died whimpering. And he died in a vicious and violent way, as a coward, running and crying. According to Trump, Baghdadi took his own life and the life of three of his children by detonating a suicide vest. His body was mutilated by the blast. The tunnel had caved in on it in addition, but test results gave certain immediate and totally positive identification. Joby Warwick is a national security reporter for The Washington Post and Pulitzer Prize-winning

author of Black Flags, The Rise of ISIS. Today, we'll talk about the significance of Baghdadi's death and what this means for the future of the Islamic State. This is From Brunner. Hi, Joby. Hi there. Nice to be with you. Thanks for coming on to the podcast on such a slow news day. Yeah, we all slept in this morning. Yes, I'm sure. Thank you so much for being here. So I actually want to start with that press conference on Sunday from Donald Trump. What was going through your head watching that announcement?

Well, it was interesting to see this performance compared to the one that we saw a few years ago when Osama bin Laden was killed. They were quite different in style and substance. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to Al Qaeda's terror, justice has been done. The last one being, you know, much more somber and subdued, and this one having kind of a bit more of a bragging tone about it

and some more political overtones. These savage monsters will not escape their fate, and they will not escape the final judgment of God. From the first day I came to office, I would say, where's al-Baghdadi? So importantly, many of his people were killed. We lost nobody. They're not into the use of cell phones anymore. They're not.

They're very technically brilliant. You know, they use the Internet better than almost anybody in the world, perhaps other than Donald Trump. Both of them announcing some pretty big news. I mean, we expected this. We knew from last night this was probably coming. But it was big headlines here in the United States and around the world that the leader of the Islamic State has apparently been killed. Right. I remember speaking of Obama's announcement. Back then, there was debate over whether or not it would counter terrorism or leave this vacuum for conspiracy theories and propaganda or another

potentially stronger leader. What do you think about that argument in light of today's announcement from Donald Trump? Well, I think there's no question that this is not the end of the Islamic State. And in fact, in some ways, I think history will show that Baghdadi was probably much less influential of a terrorist figure. Bin Laden was, without question, he was iconic. And he was the man behind the September 11 attacks, sort of the biggest attacks ever on North American soil. You know, Baghdadi was a big deal because he led the rise of this group that started its own country, its caliphate. And the end of that group is something we all witnessed a few months ago,

and that's a big deal. After nearly five years of fighting in Iraq and Syria, the Trump administration signaled today that ISIS no longer controls any territory in either country. So here's ISIS on election day. Here's ISIS right now. However, he did not position himself and was not regarded as a sort of a iconic figure in the way bin Laden was. He was the head of the caliphate. He certainly was accorded respect, but he was not very present, not very visible, almost in a curious way. Right. You know, I feel like a lot of people might have heard of him in 2014. He gave this

speech, I remember this, in front of a marble pulpit, announcing the founding of the caliphate in Mosul in Iraq. And that was really the first time he showed himself on video with his face uncovered. But we haven't seen or heard very much of him since, right? Right. In fact, it's been somewhat frustrating to those of us who try to cover this man, because there were almost no photographs the time that he got up on that podium and did that one speech in 2014. That was the first time we'd heard his voice. photographs, the time that he got up on that podium and did that one speech in 2014, that was the first time we'd heard his voice. And one of only two or three, you know, images that have ever appeared of this man. And so it was striking how reclusive he was then. And then as the caliphate

continued to blossom and then to fade, he didn't really interject himself very much. He was almost invisible. In fact, it got to the point where some of his followers were complaining, saying, look, where's our leader? Why doesn't he show up? Why doesn't he lead the troops or at least, you know, help us psychologically by putting out messages? And yet even in those very, you know, difficult times for the Islamic State, he pretty much was absent in terms of his visibility anyway. This idea that he was absent when the Islamic State was collapsing, essentially, in the last couple of years. Is that true? Like, was he working behind the scenes?

We would get glimpses of it. And the things we would hear was that, well, he's maybe he's wounded or maybe he's in this place or that place. There's a lot of speculation about that. Right. The Russians said they killed him in 2017. The Russian Defense Ministry says that it has investigated reports that Baghdadi was among those killed in an airstrike on an ISIS command post in Syria. Exactly. So he was a homeless leader with multiple lives where he kept being killed off in reports.

So whether he was injured or incapacitated in some way, we don't really know that. But we see little glimpses of him doing things like, you know, small things, like helping with the curricula for schools in the Islamic State or offering sort of religious guidance on various questions. But we didn't see him, at least in any detectable way, you know, leading operations.

That was something that he would defer to other people, including, frankly, people who were more qualified than he was. Because the other thing about Baghdadi is he was not a military man by training or by background. He was a religious scholar. They assumed that this was Baghdadi. They thought visually it was him, but they assumed it was him. And they did a site, an on-site test. He was killed and it was positive. It was, it's, this is a confirmation, sir. What else do we know about him, where he came from, how he came to lead this state? So this is, it's really interesting to me. And it's, you know, something that was fascinating when I began to look at this man in his life is this is not someone that you would have picked to be, you know, a future leader of anything and particularly a terrorist group.

Because as a young man, you know, he's kind of a geeky, you know, studious kid whose ambition was to be an Islamic scholar. And that's a, you know, that's a serious discipline. It involves years and years of training and memorization of the Quran. His plan was to go to the University of Baghdad and become, you know, essentially a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence. And that was his track until the U.S. invaded in 2003. We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization, and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.

And as a faithful Muslim, he felt it was his duty to resist the invader. And that's how he ended up getting involved in insurgent groups in his area, one of which was run by this notorious Jordanian terrorist named Abu Musab al-Zarq Iraq. And this is a group, this was an organization that tried to be an Al-Qaeda franchise. It called itself Al-Qaeda in Iraq. That's one of its early names. And yet it was always a bit too rough around the edges, a little too brutal even for bin Laden. So bin Laden allowed them to take the name, but he wasn't too happy with these people because they were a little bit too violent and just a little bit too strong-willed in terms of their own ideas and theology. And there was this running fight between the leaders of this Iraqi group and bin Laden over whether they should do things like

behead people, which the Iraqis seem to really want to do. Just like Baghdadi, the founder of the Islamic State's predecessor in Iraq, this man, Zakakaoui, had a tense relationship with al-Qaeda. He was famed for indiscriminate bombings and videoing beheadings of his captives, tactics al-Qaeda criticized for being too extreme. So this is this organization that young Baghdadi glommed on to in the early 2000s. And then how does he move from this al-Qaeda fraction group to the helm of the Islamic State? This is a really interesting story because we have a young man who, like I said, wanted to fight, wanted to resist. And so he joins these little cells and he ends up getting

arrested pretty quickly because he's not a fighter. He's not trained at all. And he gets scooped up by the U.S. forces and put into this notorious prison in the south of iraq called camp buka and this is this huge place where it essentially became a warehouse in the desert for you know all the suspected jihadists and bad guys that the u.s would scoop up right sometimes it would have 15 16 20 000 people all confined within barbed wire. And there wasn't much supervision or just anything except for essentially warehousing. And this became kind of a university for terrorists. At least 12 of the top leaders of ISIS served time at Camp Buka. We obtained photos of 10 of them in Buka's yellow prison jumpsuits.

It became the place where Baghdadi made connections, where he won some respect from others because of his knowledge of Islam and his ability to lead prayers and that kind of thing. So he came to the attention of this organization as somebody who could be a spiritual advisor or leader. And that's who Baghdadi became. Once he got out of prison, he was released a few months after he got in, he began rising through the ranks of this group as sort of the spiritual man, the guy who would issue fatwas or tell the others what was allowed and what wasn't allowed. And that really was his role. So he naturally fit into this role as the Islamic State started to form in around 2014. Yeah. And as it happened, he was coming into sort of the leadership ranks at a time when this group was under a lot of pressure.

Because around 2008, 2009, this old AQI, this old al-Qaeda and Iraq group, is really being hammered by American forces, by this sort of tribal movement that arose that was called the Anbar Awakening. The tribes are sick of these terrorists and they're trying to get rid of them too. And so it was almost completely wiped out. And many leaders of this organization were killed one after another until Baghdadi essentially was the only senior one left. He ended up sort of rising through the ranks just because everybody else around him was being knocked off. Oh, he essentially finds himself in the number one position by process of elimination in a way, right? Exactly, almost accidentally. So weirdly, he finds himself in this leadership position,

and it happens right at a time when lots of interesting things are happening in the region. 2011, just as he's really getting his hold on the organization, that's when Arab Spring breaks out. And Arab Spring is a phenomenon in Iraq. There's lots of unrest. Sunnis are upset with Shia. There's fighting and insurgents have a way of getting involved in that and trying to win allies. And then next door in Syria is like the big kahuna. There's this huge civil war that's

breaking out. There's lawless regions. There's guns. You know, weapons are being shipped from other countries in the Middle East. So it's a perfect environment for this Iraqi organization to sort of colonize and essentially reinvent itself. Right. And essentially fill this vacuum. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

At its height, remind me, like, what did the Islamic State look like? What was Baghdadi presiding over here? Over here, like, it's millions of people, right? Exactly. So in its heyday, and this is really, we have to stop and think about how remarkably fast this all happened. You have this group that was almost dead in 2009, 2010. It moves into Syria at just the right time. It's got military training.

It's got professional people who've been killing very well for a long time. It quickly becomes very big, the most powerful, the most effective military group within the country. It gets all kinds of followers from around the world. Just in a very short period of time, it has the equivalent of an army that's able to march across eastern Syria, take over cities, and then kept going straight into Iraq, took over, you know, the second largest city in Iraq, Mosul, in just a matter of weeks. IS has launched a campaign to destroy all Shia mosques and shrines,

and even Sunni sites deemed to contravene their ideology. College student Abdulrahman Yassin fled with his family. I see everything destroyed, everything, cars, the city, all the city destroyed. And so by the time Baghdadi really hits his stride, The city, all the city destroyed. And so by the time Baghdadi really hits his stride, he's the leader of a small country, essentially, that's the size of Great Britain.

It's got not only a huge amount of land, but it commands millions of people. It's got universities. It's got military bases, weapons, money, whole bank vaults full of cash. So suddenly he's sitting on what is really the most powerful and richest terrorist group the world has ever known. And, you know, I know for a lot of people listening, we've all come to know ISIS as this brutal regime for things like beheading U.S. journalist James Foley, the burning of a Jordanian pilot alive in a cage. The pilot was First Lieutenant Muaz al-Qassaspe, 26, just married in July.

In a cage soaked with gasoline and trying to keep his composure, an ISIS executioner ignited a trail of fuel. The last seen, a front-end loader buried the cage and the corpse under rubble. Women stoned for adultery, people having their hands cut off for alleged thievery. Like what role did Baghdadi play in this brutality? So that's where the kind of the this religious scholar background comes into it, because he was an extremely conservative Islamist who believed in, you know, kind of going back to the very early days of the founding days of Islam, and believed in some of these, what we would consider now by 21st century standards, really brutal methods of punishment. And there was also this idea, it's called takfiri among

these groups. It's this notion that if you do not adhere to these very strict views about Islam, then you're a heretic. And as a heretic, you deserve to be killed. We essentially have a right to kill you. And so all these really draconian, very severe views of Islam, that was what he brought to the organization. And that's why it suddenly became okay to behead someone or to stone someone because that's how they how they did it back in the old days and um and of course to all of us in this day and age it's very shocking to our sensibilities

i know also there was this widespread sexual enslavement of women and and what role did baghdad play in that so here's where the sort of the nimbleness of baghdad comes into play because there are some things that even by the standards of, you know, other radical jihadis around him seemed, you know, a bit too much. But he would find ways to justify them using some obscure passage from the Quran or from some, you know, a saying here or a clause there that he would use to justify almost anything. As you mentioned, it is this state that was medieval in its thinking, right? It went so far back in history, and yet it also used technology quite successfully to recruit people from all over the world.

You might think this is a commercial from the Tourism Board of Canada. It's actually a video from ISIS, posted on social media, aimed at convincing wannabe jihadis to join ISIS in Syria. I'm your brother in Islam here in Syria. I originally come from Canada. Did Baghdadi play a role in that as well? You know, you mentioned before he used other people like with expertise. I had heard he hadn't even had a cell phone for 10 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think he embraced these sort of technological advances because they were good for the organization. And I think he was good at delegating to people who knew how to exploit them.

And this has been sort of the recipe for success for this group as well. If they had been just another militant group in Syria doing terrible things. We might not have heard of them. But these people were brilliant at putting their messages out there in a compelling way to their potential followers. And that's not just by sermons, the kind of stuff that Osama bin Laden used to do. Every now and then he would try it out with some long-winded sermon about what good Muslims around the world should be doing. what good Muslims around the world should be doing.

These guys would create really compelling videos, and we've seen the awful shocking ones that you just can't get out of your mind as much as you'd like to. But the others that they would continually cycle out would be very slickly produced, showing the Islamic State doing, you know, wonderful things on the battlefield or sort of giving out blankets to poor people. And they pumped this stuff out every week until it sort of saturated the market with it.

And so, you know, I know you mentioned earlier in this conversation that you don't think Baghdadi's death is really a death blow to ISIS. So what are you looking for in the coming weeks and months? What should we be concerned about here? Well, here's the thing. So if he is a figurehead and not a very, you know, visible figurehead, then his sort of his day-to-day impact on ordinary followers of the Islamic State around the world is pretty minimal anyway. So taking him out of the picture, that's a psychological blow for the organization, but it doesn't really affect what they want to do or what they can do.

And what we've seen in the last few years, and even more so since the fall of the caliphate, is this has become a very decentralized operation. They have nodes in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, in other countries around the world, and they can act pretty much independently and sometimes without any direction at all. You just have your marching orders is to kill people or blow up something, and that's what you do, and you don't wait for anyone to tell you to.

I think right now we're going to see a moment when Baghdadi's followers are going to want to project themselves as successful and powerful and relevant, despite the fact that their leader is dead. Because I think this is a key moment for them to, you know, are we still effective? Are we not? They're going to try to show us that they are. They're going to try to prove that they're relevant, even though they've lost their territory. They've lost Raqqa. They've lost Mosul. Is it fair to say, you know, we saw this earlier this year with the bombings in Sri Lanka? The attackers struck three churches in the middle of Easter services.

Five other targets were also hit, including luxury hotels. In all, more than 200 people died in eight separate explosions. Yeah, exactly. It only takes, you know, lone gunmen with, you know, in a stadium or a theater or whatever they come up with. And God knows they have millions of ideas. The shooting in San Bernardino, California, for example. Yeah, exactly. Tashfeen Malik posted her allegiance to the Islamic State on Facebook the same day she and her husband opened fire on a holiday party, killing 14 and wounding 21.

And it's amazing how many of these things are not necessarily coordinated with the central organization. And that's kind of the power of the Islamic State today. It's really kind of a crowdsourced, cloud-based movement that you become a member of the Islamic State by committing an atrocity. Right. And I realize this story is moving and we're talking on Sunday afternoon, but have we heard anything from the Islamic State so far? There has been. So we've kind of mixed things. Sometimes it's hard to tell what's official and what's not official in their cyberspace because there have been some statements out saying that Baghdadi is a martyr. It's hard to tell if that's really coming from central ISIS or if that's one cyberspace because there have been some statements out saying um that that baghdadis are martyr it's

hard to tell if that's really coming from central isis or if that's one of its kind of these pro-isis groups that are saying it what i am seeing um consistently on social media pages that they promote is a sense that this is business as usual and if it's true that baghdadis dead then it doesn't affect our vision it doesn't you know diminish at all what we're planning to do. And the caliphate is not just one man. So they're trying very much to promote that message right now. Okay. Joby Work, thank you so much.

That's terrific. Thank you so much for your time. One thing Joby and I didn't get to in our conversation. The death of Baghdadi comes just weeks after the U.S. abruptly withdrew its forces from northeastern Syria, causing instability in the region. We've talked about this on the podcast before. You can find those episodes in our feed. Much has been said about the future of camps in this area currently holding ISIS fighters. Apparently hundreds of them have already escaped. And Trump took the opportunity on Sunday to take a jab at his foreign allies. Here's some of what he had to say. The European nations have been a tremendous disappointment because I personally called, but my people called a lot, take your ISIS fighters. And they didn't want them. And I actually said to them, you don't take them. I'm going to drop them right on your border.

And you can have fun capturing them again. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and see you tomorrow.