{"id":9391,"date":"2014-06-15T17:08:49","date_gmt":"2014-06-15T17:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=9391"},"modified":"2014-06-15T17:08:49","modified_gmt":"2014-06-15T17:08:49","slug":"who-is-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-the-notorious-leader-of-isil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/who-is-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-the-notorious-leader-of-isil\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the notorious leader of ISIL"},"content":{"rendered":"
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) \u2013 an al-Qaeda offshoot — has been careful to reveal little about himself and his whereabouts.<\/div>\n
\n

There are only two authenticated photos of him, and unlike al-Qaeda leaders such as Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, he does not appear in video messages.<\/p>\n

Even his own fighters reportedly do not speak about seeing him face to face.<\/p>\n

The ISIL chief also appears to wear a mask to address his commanders, earning the nickname “the invisible sheikh”.<\/p>\n

But Baghdadi – a nom de guerre, rather than his real name – has good reason to maintain a veil of mystery.<\/p>\n

One of his predecessors, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi who headed the most violent terrorist group in Iraq until his death, was a high-profile showman whose secret location was eventually tracked down. He was killed in a US bombing raid in 2006.<\/p>\n

The leader of al-Qaeda’s current incarnation in Iraq may be a shadowy figure, but his organization ISIL is pulling in thousands of new recruits and has become one of the most cohesive militias in the Middle East, reports say.<\/p>\n

Baghdadi is believed to have been born in Samarra, north of Baghdad, in 1971.<\/p>\n

Reports suggest he was a cleric in a mosque in the city around the time of the US-led invasion in 2003.<\/p>\n

Some believe he was already a militant during the rule of Saddam Hussein. Others suggest he was radicalized during the four years he was held at Camp Bucca, a US facility in southern Iraq where many al-Qaeda commanders were detained.<\/p>\n

He emerged as the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, one of the groups that later became ISIL, in 2010, and rose to prominence during the attempted merger with another terrorist group, al-Nusra Front in Syria.<\/p>\n

He has not sworn allegiance to the leader of the al-Qaeda network, Zawahiri, who has urged ISIL to focus on Iraq and leave Syria to al-Nusra.<\/p>\n

Baghdadi and his fighters have openly defied the al-Qaeda chief, leading some commentators to believe he now holds higher prestige among many Islamist militants.<\/p>\n

“The true heir to Osama bin Laden may be ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” David Ignatius wrote in The Washington Post.<\/p>\n

Zawahiri still has a lot of power by virtue of his franchises in Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, reports claim.<\/p>\n

But Baghdadi has a reputation as a highly organized and ruthless battlefield tactician, which analysts say makes his organization more attractive to young terrorists than that of Zawahiri, an extremist theologian.<\/p>\n

In October 2011, the US officially designated Baghdadi as “terrorist” and offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture or death.<\/p>\n

It notes Baghdadi’s aliases, including Abu Duaa and Dr Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai.<\/p>\n

As well as the uncertainty surrounding his true identity, his whereabouts are also unclear with reports he was in Raqqa in Syria.<\/p>\n

So there remain more questions than answers about the leader of one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source: Al Alam\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) \u2013 an al-Qaeda offshoot — has been careful to reveal little about himself and his whereabouts. There are only two authenticated photos of him, and unlike al-Qaeda leaders such as Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, he does not …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[946,50,676,905,349,22,167,163],"class_list":["post-9391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-islamic-research","tag-abu-bakr-baghdadi","tag-iraq-2","tag-isil","tag-isis","tag-middle-east-2","tag-takfiri","tag-terrorist","tag-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9391"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9396,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9391\/revisions\/9396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}