By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
aymennjawad.org
December 17, 2018
The study of the life of Abu Ali al-Anbari arguably embodies the biggest misconceptions about the Islamic State, largely because so many claims related about him have turned out to be erroneous. In a popular telling back in 2015, Anbari represented the case-in-point of the Islamic State as the 'ghost of Ba'athist Iraq'. Depicted as the wali (governor) of the Islamic State's Syrian provinces, it was claimed that Anbari was the one who "boosted al-Baghdadi up ISIS's greasy pole."
As for his background, Anbari supposedly represented the fusion of Ba'athist intelligence skills with jihadist zealotry, with the claim that he had "been an intelligence officer in Saddam's army as well as a graduate of the Islamic Faith Campaign...[he] is known to have attained the rank of major general before 2003. He also distinguished himself by remaining at his post until the final days of the regime, something held against him by pro-al-Qaeda agitators." Besides being overlord of the Syrian territories, Anbari was also portrayed as heading the "Security and Intelligence Council, which, as its name suggest [sic], handles all espionage and clandestine operations for the organization."
Virtually none of those details (which relied in part on the Iraqi writer Hisham al-Hashimi) turned out to be correct, as the authors of that account later acknowledged. Anbari is hardly the only major Islamic State figure to be misidentified. Another case is that of Abu Ayman al-Iraqi, who first became notorious among Syrian rebels for his presence in the Latakia region of Syria after the Islamic State expansion into Syria in 2013. It was claimed that Abu Ayman was once an intelligence officer in the Iraqi army. In fact, Abu Ayman turned out to be an individual called Ali Aswad al-Juburi, who grew up in the Mosul area and studied English at Mosul university, taking up arms against the U.S. following its invasion of the country.
Though some facts have emerged about the life of the real Anbari, misconceptions still circulate. For example, the Wikipedia account of Anbari cites a report claiming that he travelled to Afghanistan in 1998 and trained with al-Qa'ida. Those claims are untrue.
The most comprehensive account we have about Anbari comes in the form of a biography written by a now deceased son of his. This biography was leaked in July 2018 by Mu'assasat al-Turath al-'Ilmi, one of the 'dissident' pro-Islamic State media outlets.
In summary, the real Anbari was a native of the Ninawa countryside (not Mosul) and he had no military background in the Ba'ath era apart from performing obligatory military service. Instead, his working background was as a religious education teacher and preacher of sermons in a mosque. He had some contact and involvement with jihadi circles in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion in 2003 (including a meeting with Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi in Baghdad). After a time of leading his own formations, he then became involved with Ansar al-Sunna, which emerged out of the Iraqi Kurdistan-based Ansar al-Islam following the U.S. invasion.
However, Anbari subsequently joined Zarqawi's al-Qa'ida in Iraq, following the failure of a merger initiative between Ansar al-Sunna and al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Imprisoned for a period in 2005, Anbari travelled to Waziristan by delegation from Zarqawi to meet with members of the al-Qa'ida leadership. Then, when the Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen was formed as a merger between al-Qa'ida in Iraq and other jihadi groups, Anbari became its overall leader and spokesman. He was then imprisoned between 2006 and 2012, and was not around to witness the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq in October 2006 or the appointment of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as its overall leader in 2010 following the death of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.
Following his release from prison he returned to jihadi work in the ranks of the Islamic State of Iraq. Serving as a deputy of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Anbari was dispatched to Syria, where the Islamic State of Iraq would expand to become the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Eventually, with the ISIS conquests of summer 2014, Anbari was able to participate in the capture of Telafar from the Iraqi government. Anbari in fact then turned to his long-standing passion of da'wa work, no longer serving as a deputy to Baghdadi. Though Baghdadi tried to have him made the overall governor of the Islamic State's Yemeni provinces, the initiative did not work out for logistical reasons. Instead, Baghdadi appointed him as head of the Diwan Bayt al-Mal (financial department), and as such Anbari moved frequently between Iraq and Syria. In March 2016, Anbari was killed while on the roads between Iraq and Syria, as a coalition air-raid team descended on him and his companions and clashed with them. Anbari then supposedly blew himself up with an explosive belt he had been wearing.
Besides his administrative and military activities, Anbari also had a prolific audio and written output, as documented in an appendix at the end of the biography. Some of these works (e.g. Anbari's statement on the tomb of Suleiman Shah in Syria) have also been published by Mu'assasat al-Turath al-Ilmi.
This biography of Anbari is of considerable interest to historians of the Islamic State, though some criticisms can be made of how much detail the biographer devotes to different sections of Anbari's life. For instance, readers hoping for detailed stories of what Anbari was up to in Syria in 2012-2014 will be disappointed. Indeed, in a footnote, the author concedes that he is being very terse, with vague commitments made to publish more details in future. Likewise Anbari's management of the Diwan Bayt al-Mal is only described in the most general terms. There are no inside accounts of how the Diwan Bayt al-Mal was run, statistics and comments on the various sources of revenue and expenditure, tales of corruption and mismanagement etc. Stylistically, the text is on the whole an easy read, though it is very far removed from being a fine work of literature. Some grammatical errors can be found in the text, as well as one notable error of chronology: specifically, the biographer headlines the formation of the Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen as having occurred in December 2006, when it was actually formed in January 2006.
Examination of this biography has provoked debate among some analysts. How important was Anbari to the evolution of the Islamic State and its predecessors? Also, to what extent were ideas and trends that gave rise to the Islamic State already present and growing in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion?
On one side, Hassan Hassan argues that Anbari "defined the Islamic State's radical approach more than any other person." That is, Anbari was supposedly more influential than Zarqawi in the evolution of the Islamic State, and Zarqawi himself "was likely influenced by Anbari, not the other way around." More generally, Hassan argues that what became Islamic State "grew organically for at least a decade before the U.S. invasion, and before Zarqawi's arrival," and as such "the group has deeper roots than has previously been acknowledged."
Conversely, Cole Bunzel and Sam Heller argue that Hassan's claims regarding Anbari are not supported in light of the biography. In particular, Bunzel argues that while it is possible for Zarqawi's influence to be overstated, he still remains the most important and influential figure in the evolution of the Islamic State.
I am inclined to agree with Bunzel and Heller on this debate about Anbari. The biography also provides an important corrective to the narrative that the Faith Campaign of Ba'athist Iraq in the 1990s was responsible for the religious trends that gave rise to the Islamic State. In the case of the latter sort of assertions, a certain climate-change denying fraud has an ideological agenda to downplay the role the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq had in galvanizing jihadism, both within Iraq and on a wider scale.
Consider the history of Anbari's own ideological evolution as presented in the biography. Rather than portraying him as someone who had from his youth supported the theological outlook as espoused by the Islamic State, the biographer gives a picture of a gradual evolution of Anbari's outlook. In the biography's telling, Anbari was always religious and devoted to religious learning. An 'epiphany' moment occurs in an incident involving girls for dancing and prostitution being brought on one occasion to the village of Mujamma' Barzan in Ninawa province where he was teaching. This incident makes Anbari realize that a problem in Iraq was that the government permitted this kind of debauchery. At this point then, Anbari can be seen as an Islamist of some kind. In the 1990s, he moved to the city of Telafar and in 1997 became a preacher at one of the mosques. At this point, according to the biography, he began to come into conflict with the Shi'a in the city (partly rooted in his invective against the 'idolatry' of seeking help in one besides God). Anbari studied the Shi'a creed and wrote a book under a pseudonym refuting it. Anbari is also portrayed as increasingly alienated from the Ba'athist regime, seeing the regime as embodying 'Taghut' ('idolatrous tyranny'). In 1999, Anbari was supposedly removed from his position of preaching at the mosque.
While it might be the case that some of the specific stories related about Anbari's tensions with the Ba'athist establishment (e.g. the incident at a school where he does not clap for Saddam Hussein during the morning assembly) are embellished or even outright fiction, the biography's portrayal of the Ba'ath regime's hostile perceptions of anything considered to be 'Wahhabi' thought is consistent with the historical evidence. Likewise, the portrayal of the Ba'ath regime as hostile to Sunni-Shi'i sectarian agitation (especially in a mixed town like Telafar) is consistent with the historical evidence. The Ba'ath regime would not have had patience for someone preaching concepts like the Wahhabi 'nullifiers of Islam' (a key concept promoted by the Islamic State, as can be seen from a basic doctrine book like 'Course in Tawheed') and takfir of the Shi'a (i.e. declaring them to be non-Muslims). Hence, it is credible that Anbari might have been a preacher in one of the Telafar mosques and was then removed from his post on account of reports of his alleged 'Wahhabi' sympathies being referred to the Ba'athist security services.
The biography does not portray Anbari's religious outlook as being influenced by the Faith Campaign. Indeed, if the Faith Campaign had promoted the kind of ideological and religious trends that gave rise to Islamic State, the biographer would certainly have mentioned the campaign and slammed it for hypocrisy, while portraying Anbari as criticizing the hypocrisy of a Ba'athist regime claiming to promote Islam and the rule of Islamic law. Instead, the Faith Campaign is not mentioned at all.
In fact, the biography portrays Anbari's growing 'radicalization' as stemming from two things. First, he began to hear reports by the end of the 1990s/beginning of 2000 from the wider Muslim world of militant jihadi activity, most notably Chechnya and Afghanistan. At this point, he could be justifiably described as an Islamist opponent of the Ba'athist regime. However, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Anbari is able to gain access to some works of modern jihadist thinkers, such as Qawa'id fi al-Takfir by Abu Baseer al-Tartusi, al-Jami' fi Talb al-'Ilm al-Sharif by Sayyid Imam al-Sharif and some books by Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. According to the biography, the circulation of these works helped to correct Anbari's understandings of certain issues like takfir of the one who does not rule by God's law. As such, he fell out with the Iraqi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was outlawed in Ba'athist Iraq. Significantly, the biographer says that prior to 9/11, Anbari and his companions were in "one rank" with the Iraqi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (the Iraqi Islamic Party). This does not of course mean that Anbari considered himself a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Iraqi branch or agreed with the group on every detail, but rather that in general he saw the organization as working for the same honourable goal of a state ruled by Islamic law.
What about the question of Anbari's supposed influence on Zarqawi? One should bear in mind that this biography is written by a son of Anbari. He has a motive to credit his father as a key influence on the evolution of the Islamic State and its approach. Thus, for instance, Anbari is portrayed as an important driving force behind the formation of the Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen. So, if Anbari had influenced Zarqawi and encouraged him to adopt ideas like utilizing brutal tactics and specifically targeting the Shi'a in a bid to stir up bloody sectarian warfare, it surely would have been mentioned in the biography. In fact, there is no mention or hint of Anbari influencing Zarqawi's ideological and sectarian approach in the biography, and it is not as though it can be explained away on grounds of condensation of detail and brevity as is the case with the chapters on Anbari's Syria activities.
According to the biography, Anbari had a meeting with Zarqawi in Baghdad prior to the U.S. invasion, but apart from the fact that Anbari thought highly of Zarqawi and his piety, there is nothing remarkable about the encounter. In terms of the early insurgent activity that Anbari and his companions engaged in after the U.S. invasion, there is nothing about it that suggests an antecedent or inspiration for Zarqawi's gruesome methods and attempts to stir up sectarian war. Rather, Anbari and his companions targeted the U.S. occupation forces as well as Iraqis working with those forces. As the biography notes, they made no distinction between the Shi'a and Sunnis working with the U.S. occupation.
In 2004, Anbari became involved in talks for a merger between Ansar al-Sunna and Zarqawi's Jama'at al-Tawheed wa al-Jihad, which pledged allegiance to al-Qa'ida to become the organization's Iraqi branch in October 2004. Following that allegiance pledge by Zarqawi's group to al-Qa'ida, the biography says that Anbari became all the more keen for a merger. The biography is eager to portray Zarqawi as thinking highly of Anbari, such that Zarqawi supposedly offered a deal in which he and al-Shafi'i (the leader of Ansar al-Sunna) would become deputies to Anbari in a united group. Anbari refused the offer on the grounds that he could not have Zarqawi as his deputy. In the end, the merger talks failed because al-Shafi'i stipulated that al-Qa'ida should withdraw from Iraq, but Anbari objected to this stipulation and so in the end he left Ansar al-Sunna and became a deputy to Zarqawi in al-Qa'ida in Iraq. By the chronology of the biography, Anbari would have joined al-Qa'ida in Iraq in late 2004, many months after Zarqawi outlined his strategy for provoking sectarian warfare between Shi'a and Sunnis in a January 2004 letter. In this regard, it should be noted that there has been confusion in chronology in the analytical debates: to be clear, Zarqawi's letter on his strategy to target Shi'a preceded the allegiance pledge to al-Qa'ida by 10 months.
Another data point that likely tells against the idea that Zarqawi was influenced by Anbari in his approach is the series of attacks that his network is suspected of carrying out in 2003. Among these attacks was a bomb attack in Najaf in August 2003 that killed over 100 people, including Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim. That attack, which cannot be seen as anything other than an attempt to kill Shi'a en masse and incite sectarian violence, was most likely the work of Zarqawi's network. There is nothing analogous to it in the early insurgent operations ascribed to Anbari in the biography.
More generally, any tendencies to overstate the role of Anbari in the evolution of the Islamic State and its predecessors need to be avoided in light of the fact that the biography shows that he was imprisoned at key periods: first from early/April 2005-October 2005, and then April 2006-March 2012. During the latter period in particular, Anbari had contact with his family, but no evidence suggests that he was able to direct any operations of the Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen and the Islamic State of Iraq. He was not around in the field to witness the Islamic State of Iraq's decline in fortunes in the 2007-2009 period, the group's deliberations about how it could resurge, and the rise of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his early tenure as amir of the group in 2010-2011. Instead, the biography vindicates a point that has been previously discussed in literature: namely, the role of the U.S. prison system in Iraq in enabling jihadists to indoctrinate others.
Did jihadist ideas and activity exist in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion in 2003? Undoubtedly, though that is hardly a new fact. The Anbari biography however does not support the contention that the "ideological contours" of the Islamic State and its predecessors had already been defined prior to the U.S. invasion. It was the U.S. invasion and the occupation aftermath that galvanized jihadism and provided the environment in which the phenomenon took on a particularly ugly form as embodied in Zarqawi's group. Of course, Zarqawi was not acting alone, and he did not come up with his ideas and approach in isolation. Nonetheless, the notion that Anbari was the real key figure behind the evolution of the Islamic State rather than Zarqawi is highly tenuous.
On a final note, I have a couple of peripheral observations;
- The text seems to imply that a Jazeera province (wilaya) and governor (wali) existed before the declaration of the Caliphate. In the propaganda, this Jazeera province, spanning the borders of Iraq and Syria, was not declared until after the Caliphate was announced.
- The activities of the Prisoners and Martyrs division of the Islamic State and its predecessors.
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