How ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became the world’s most powerful jihadist leader
More on ISIS and ’the new Bin Laden’, Abu Kakr al-Baghdadi.Both al-Baghdadi and Bin Laden maintained mysterious personalities and shadowy backgrounds, to be manipulated by globalists and steered by money and power.
The less known of Baghdadi and the more violence and death attributed to him, the more powerful a narrative is created.
It is interesting the group is named ’ISIS’, a word most associated with the Goddess, whose name means "throne". She was the representation of a pharaoh’s power.
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How ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became the world’s most powerful jihadist leader
By Terrence McCoy | The Washington Post
For all his power and newfound notoriety, there are only two authenticated photos of a man now called the world’s “most powerful jihadi leader.” One shows a serious man with an olive complexion and round countenance. The other, released by the Iraqi government in January, depicts an unsmiling bearded figure in a black suit. The image is cracked and blurry, as though someone had taken a picture of a picture.
The murkiness of the photo of the man who calls himself Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is appropriate. Though he’s “the world’s most dangerous man” to Time magazine and the “the new bin Laden” to Le Monde, the man who orchestrated the sacking of northern Iraq’s largest city and today controls a nation-size swath of land, is a relatively unknown and enigmatic figure.Much of what is known of Baghdadi’s history is unconfirmed, while other information is disputed to such a degree that it’s nearly impossible to discern where fact meets Baghdadi’s rising myth.
Several facts, however, are clear: Baghdadi leads the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He is a shrewd strategist, a prolific fundraiser and a ruthless killer. The United States has a $10 million bounty on his head. He has thrown off the yoke of al-Qaeda command and just took his biggest prize yet in Mosul, an oil hub that sits at the vital intersection of Iraq, Turkey and Syria. And in just one year of grisly killing, he has in all likelihood surpassed even al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in international clout and prestige among Islamist militants.
“The true heir to Osama bin Laden may be ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” wrote The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. He is “more violent, more virulent, more anti-American,” a senior U.S. intelligence official told the columnist, while the cautious and uncharismatic Zawahiri “is not coping well.” In fact, Baghdadi is now recruiting fighters from other Zawahiri affiliates, including al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch and the Somalia-based al-Shabab.
“For the last 10 years or more, [Zawahiri] has been holed up in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area and hasn’t really done very much more than issue a few statements and videos,” Richard Barrett, a former counterterrorism chief with the British foreign intelligence service, told Agence France-Presse last week. “Whereas Baghdadi has done an amazing amount — he has captured cities, he has mobilized huge amounts of people, he is killing ruthlessly throughout Iraq and Syria…. If you were a guy who wanted action, you would go with Baghdadi.”
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Read the full article at: washingtonpost.com
