Ask any combat veteran of the Iraq War—any veteran who spent serious time “outside the wire” (outside the American bases)—about our enemy there, and the stories will flow. In one small region in one year alone, jihadists in Iraq committed the following atrocities:
• Packed explosives in a small boy’s backpack (without his knowledge) and detonated the backpack while he was wearing it at a family wedding;
• Put explosives inside the tubing of a child’s bicycle and detonated it after the child rode it to a local market;
• Shot a seven-week-old baby in the face, in front of the baby’s mother, as a “warning” against collaborating with American forces;
• Raped women and then told them the only way to redeem their honor was to blow themselves up as suicide bombers;
• Used those female suicide bombers (who wouldn’t be stopped and frisked because of cultural and religious prohibitions against male police officers touching women) to blow up restaurants, hospitals, and open-air markets;
• Faked surrenders inside mosques and then used the cover of the mosque to ambush American soldiers;
• Put bombs on handicapped children, knowing that American soldiers showed particular compassion for mentally handicapped or physically impaired kids; and
• Killed entire villages for the crime of resisting Sharia law or allegedly cooperating with the Iraqi government.
That’s a partial list.
And the crimes didn’t stop with murder. When AQI—the forerunner to ISIS—took over a region, it would implement the most draconian Sharia law imaginable, requiring women to cover themselves from head to toe, prohibiting most forms of education for women, and even regulating the kinds of foods women were permitted to purchase. The repression was so intolerable, so violent, that even as far back as 2007 and the increase in U.S. troops in Iraq known as the Surge, the rift between AQI and al-Qaeda headquarters in Pakistan emerged. Yet AQI persisted, convinced that its killing spree would usher in the new Caliphate, a new government.
This new Caliphate is crucial to ISIS. Here’s why: Islam purports to be a universal religion. In other words, its teachings encompass all aspects of life and its ultimate goal is the establishment of a global Islamic state.1 This political idea of Islam is embodied in the concept of the ummah (community), which is the idea that all Muslims, wherever they reside, are bound together through a common faith that transcends all geographical, political, or national boundaries.2 This common bond is formed through Muslims’ allegiance to Allah and to the Prophet Muhammad.3 Because Muslims believe that Allah revealed all laws concerning religious and secular matters through the Prophet Muhammad, the entire ummah is governed by the divine law, or Sharia.4 Sharia is applicable at all times and places and, therefore, transcends geographical boundaries and supersedes all other laws.5
Traditionally, Islam divides the world into two spheres: the house of Islam (dar-al-Islam) and the house of war (dar-al-harb).6 The house of Islam includes nations and territories that are under the control of Muslims and where Sharia law is the highest authority.7 The house of war includes nations and territories that are under the control of non-Muslims and that do not submit to Sharia.8 Consequently, under the jihadist interpretation of Islam, there will be constant conflict between the house of Islam and the house of war until the house of war is transformed into the house of Islam.9 The conflict will not end until all land is conquered for Allah,10 thereby establishing a single, global, Islamic State, also known as the Caliphate.11
The Caliphate is envisioned to be a unified, transnational government ruling over the entire Muslim Community, ummah.12 It is to be governed pursuant to Sharia and enforced by a supreme leader, the caliph.13 Because Allah alone is the lawgiver, there is no place for a legislator; in Islam, human government exists only to enforce Allah’s law.14
The caliph’s position is to administer and enforce the divine law.15 The caliph is seen as the “vicegerent of Allah upon earth, charged with the duty of judging righteously, i.e., of applying [Sharia], between men.”16 Accordingly, the “caliphate is the highest type of political organization on earth” and its subjects can derive their highest welfare through “absolute obedience to its ordinances.”17
Going back to the founding of the Muslim faith, Muslims believed that Allah had delegated to the Prophet Muhammad authority to rule the people with justice.18 Yet, when Muhammad died, he had neither designated a successor nor provided guidance regarding how to choose a successor.19 The lack of explicit guidance on how to determine Muhammad’s successor has been a prime source of the long-standing, bloody divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims.20 Shias believe that the caliph must come from the bloodline of the Prophet Muhammad, whereas Sunnis maintain that any believer may qualify for the office of caliph, regardless of his lineage.21
The Sunnis had three caliphs before Ali (Muhammad’s son-in-law and cousin), who became the fourth caliph.22 Contending that Ali was the first legitimate successor, Shias dispute the first three Sunni caliphs.23 Most Shias “consider belief in Muhammad’s designation of Ali as his successor a religious duty alongside belief in the oneness of God.”24 Shias therefore believe that the imam, which is the Shia version of the caliph, must be a descendant of Ali.25 Most Shias are “twelver Shia,” who believe that there were twelve imams. The last one is supposed to come back as “Mahdi.”26 (In fact, a number of Shia leaders have claimed to be the Mahdi over the past ten centuries, igniting multiple bloody conflicts, including the Mahdist War against the Egyptians and British in the late nineteenth century.) “Until the Mahdi returns many Shia[s] believe that there will be just ayatollas (a more recent designation) and other levels of Shia scholars in hawzas (scholarly systems) to help explain the religion.”27
Beginning with the first Caliphate, the caliph would select a place to base the empire.28 And while the Shias looked for the Mahdi, the Sunnis were busy establishing their own caliphs, including Caliphates ruled from Damascus, Baghdad, and Istanbul.29 The last Sunni Caliphate was ruled by Ottoman sultans for five hundred years, during the Ottoman Empire.30
When the Ottoman Empire collapsed following World War I (the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany in the war, against Great Britain and France),31 the titles of sultan and caliph were rendered mere names with no real power.32 “On November 1, 1922, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (who later took the name of Atatürk), the newly formed Turkish Grand National Assembly abolished the sultanate, and the last sultan, Murad VI Vahdeddin, fled from Istanbul aboard a British battleship.”33 Atatürk ultimately persuaded the Turkish Assembly to abolish the Caliphate, which it did on March 24, 1924.34 Abolition of the Caliphate removed a significant symbol of universal Islamic authority, a symbol many Sunni groups wish to restore.
Reestablishment of the Caliphate has been a long-standing goal of Sunni Muslims.35 The Muslim Brotherhood, for example, was founded in Egypt in 1928 with the goal of reestablishing the traditional Caliphate.36 Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other jihadist groups also seek to reestablish a new Caliphate.37 ISIS has gone further than any other to make that radical dream a present reality.
The new Caliphate in Iraq and Syria is not the first Caliphate proclaimed by jihadists. In 2007, they tried to launch a Caliphate in Diyala Province, Iraq. Calling their new “nation” the Islamic State of Iraq, AQI controlled a vast section of the province and maintained that control until they were finally crushed in 2008.
Why bring this up? Why speak of years past?
Because America has seen this enemy. We have fought this enemy. And we know it can be defeated.
On July 4, 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, newly proclaimed “Caliph Ibrahim” and leader of the so-called Islamic State (also known as ISIS38 or ISIL39), delivered a sermon at the Grand Mosque in Mosul, Iraq. In his sermon, al-Baghdadi claimed the mantle of caliph—Allah’s vicegerent on earth—and called on fellow Muslims to obey him as they would Allah and Muhammad. Here is the key section of his sermon. It makes for chilling reading:
Verily your brothers the Mujahidin, Allah Blessed and High be He, has favored them with victory and conquest. And he established for them after long years of jihad and patience, and meeting in combat with the enemies of Allah, he granted them success, empowered them in order to fulfill their purpose. Verily they hastened to announce the Caliphate and appointing [sic] a leader, and this is an obligation upon Muslims. An obligation which has been made lost for centuries and was absent upon earth’s existence, and so many Muslims were ignorant of it. And those who commit sin; where Muslims are sinning by abandoning and neglecting it, for verily they have to always strive to establish it and here now they have established it, praise and favor is due to Allah.
Verily I am in a trial by this great matter. I am in trial by this trust, a heavy-weighted trust. And so I was put in authority over you, and I am not the best of you nor am I better than you. If you see me upon truth, then support me; and if you see me upon falsehood, then advise me and guide me and obey me as long as I obey Allah in you. Verily if I disobey Him, then obey me not. I am not to promise you as how the kings and rulers promise their followers and their citizens from luxury, prosperity, security and wealth; but instead, I promise you by what Allah, Blessed and High be He, has promised His believing servants: Allah has promised those who have believed among you and done righteous deeds that He will surely grant them succession upon the earth just as He granted it to those before them. Just as He granted it to those before them and that He will surely substitute for them, after their fear, security, they worship Me, not associating anything with Me. But whoever disbelieves after that—then those are the defiantly disobedient.40 (Emphasis added.)
Who is this man? Who is making such grandiose proclamations, using the language of a crazed, self-proclaimed prophet?
“Caliph Ibrahim” was born Abu Du’a in 1971.41 His most recent nom de guerre (many jihadists take on a “war name” to build their legend and strike fear in the hearts of their enemies) is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He grew up in “a religious family in Samarra. . . . He studied Islamic history as a student and . . . gained a doctorate from Baghdad University in the late 1990s.”42 In other words, like many jihadists, he was hardly the desperate, poverty-stricken warrior that the media imagines. “It is likely al-Baghdadi held a religious position in the Sunni community when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.”43 Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, al-Baghdadi joined the armed resistance to coalition troops in Iraq, but he was captured and detained in a U.S.-run Iraqi prison in 2006.44 Following al-Baghdadi’s release in the late 2000s, he joined the predecessor to ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).45 In 2010, al-Baghdadi became the leader of ISI.46 He changed the name of the organization to ISIS in 2013.
While al-Baghdadi began his terrorist career in Iraq, he truly prospered in Syria. By the end of the Surge, AQI/ISI was largely a spent force, unable to inflict casualties on Americans or Iraqis. The numbers tell the story. For example, in late 2007 in Diyala Province (the heart of the Islamic State of Iraq), 25 percent of all American convoys came under some kind of armed attack. In other words, every time an American soldier rolled out of the gate, he faced a 1-in-4 chance of an IED strike, ambush, or other kind of attack. By the end of 2008, that chance had dropped to 1 in 100. Fewer than 1 percent of all convoys faced combat.
And those improvements were nationwide. For American soldiers, the height of the Surge—2007—was the bloodiest year of the war, with 961 soldiers lost. In 2008, that number shrank to 322, then 150 the next year, 60 the next, and 54 in 2011, the final year of significant American combat operations. Civilian casualties faced a similar sharp drop. From July 2006 to August 2007, no fewer than 1,006 Iraqi civilians died every month, with the casualties peaking in the dreadful month of September 2006, when 3,389 Iraqi civilians died. But by the end of July 2011, when America was ending its involvement, the number had dropped to 121.47 In other words, jihadists no longer had the power to threaten the Iraqi nation.
These gains happened primarily through sheer force of American courage and will. In my coauthor’s area of operations alone, the stories of heroism were legion:
There was the sergeant first-class who helped rescue a convoy from an ambush despite being shot in the neck, refusing medical evacuation until we was certain that every other American casualty was on their way.
There was story after story of young soldiers, seriously injured, who literally fought back at medics who tried to hold them down and take them out of the fight—they were that determined not to leave their brothers behind on the battlefield.
There was the sergeant who literally wrestled two terrorists to the ground with his bare hands, saving his platoon leader from a surprise attack.
Then there were the stories of these same warriors showing kindness to impoverished Iraqis, in one instance, literally braving hostile gunfire to deliver sheep to a community that had lost everything due to the constant combat.
The stories could go on, but it’s vital to understand that a dry recitation of numbers does not do justice to the courage of Americans who fought in Iraq and turned the tide. Many paid the ultimate price, and their sacrifice must be remembered.
In the spring of 2011, however, just as the Iraq War seemed to be winding down, a rebellion broke out in Syria against Bashar al-Assad, the country’s brutal Ba’athist dictator (Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was also a Ba’athist, a socialist Arab nationalist party that arose in the immediate aftermath of World War II). As the rebellion gained strength, Sunni jihadists—like the remnants of AQI/ISI—flowed into Syria, eager to take another chance to establish a true Islamic state.
And they succeeded.
Facing a corrupt dictator’s army rather than courageous and well-equipped American soldiers, jihadists soon dominated the battlefield in much of northern Syria, ruling entire cities and regions. It was in this fight that al-Baghdadi distinguished himself as a skilled battlefield commander and tactician.48 His battle tactics and leadership skills appealed to young jihadists, to the extent that ISIS may now hold greater appeal for young jihadists than al-Qaeda.49
Moreover, under al-Baghdadi’s leadership, ISIS prospered financially. ISIS previously relied on donations from wealthy individuals in the Gulf Arab states who were supporting ISIS in the Syrian conflict50 (donations to terrorists are not unusual in the Muslim world; Saudi Arabia once held a telethon to fund the families of Palestinian suicide bombers). But ISIS now has cash and assets of its own. Al-Baghdadi has secured two primary revenue streams: oil sales from ISIS-controlled oil fields in Syria and sales of antiquities from looted historical sites.51 ISIS accumulated cash and assets worth an estimated $2 billion, making it arguably the wealthiest terror organization in the world.52 When ISIS overran Mosul, Iraq, its forces looted banks of cash and precious metals.53
Flush with new-found wealth and empowered by his military success, on June 29, 2014, al-Baghdadi declared himself to be “Caliph Ibrahim.”54 A statement published by ISIS to support al-Baghdadi’s designation as caliph listed his qualifications as follows: “The mujahid, the scholar who practices what he preaches, the worshipper, the leader, the warrior, the reviver, the descendant from the family of the Prophet, the slave of Allah.”55