BIRTH OF THE ISIS
It all began on March 19, 2003, the day the United States decided to attack Saddam Hussein's Iraq. A brief war that ended in the defeat of the Iraqi dictator and of his Baath party. As usual, the US was more worried about the immediate aspects of the conflict rather than its possible aftermaths. The war destroyed the country's main infrastructures; there followed situations of extreme want, with the population left without water, electricity, fuel and, for the former members of the Baath party, without the minimum means of survival. The US thought that they would be welcome, after all, they had ousted a bloodthirsty autocrat; they thought that they had exported democracy.

Saddam Hussein
A fertile ground
Only the Shiite population saw a possible profit to be derived
from the ousting of the dictator. Although they represented the
majority of Iraq's population, Iraqi Shiites had always been
outcasts, persecuted by the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein. After
the conflict, their liking for the US was immediately invalidated
by two elements: one of a practical nature (the worsening
conditions after the war had nullified the people's liking for the
“liberators”) and the other of a political nature (all of the main
Shiite groups opposing Saddam had found refuge and assistance in
Iran, where they had knitted a very tight network).
During the social upheaval caused by the conflict, the Shiites
took over the scepter of power and the Sunni were marginalized.
Surprisingly, this counter-discrimination found fertile ground in
the choices of the person called in by the US to administer the
post-war transition, Paul Bremer. His first directive, on May 16,
2003, stated that former members of the Baath party would not be
allowed to hold public office. The directive number 2 of the
Coalition Provisional Authority (the US-propelled international
group that was supposed to lead the transition), dated May 23,
2003, dismantled the army and the Iraqi intelligence agencies.
In Saddam's days the Armed Forces, made up almost exclusively of
Sunnis, counted roughly 500 thousand men in their ranks.
Additionally, Baath party supporters in Ministries and other
public structures were in the millions. Bremer's directives landed
a few million Iraqi families on the sidewalk and – this is the
dangerous part – forced many to join the ranks of the opposition
while the ones with military know-how tried to find a military
solution to the social conflict. These are the premises for the
birth of the warfare against the new Shiite leadership in Baghdad.

Abu Musab al Zarqawi
The seed of terrorism
It is this context that sees the rise of Ahmad Fadhil Nazzal
al-Khalaileh, also known by his battle name of Abu Musab al
Zarqawi, from Zarqa, Jordan, already known to the local prisons as
a common criminal turned extremist while sojourning up the river.
Once released, around the years 1989-1992, Zarqawi traveled to
Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets, there, he commanded his
own fighting group called “Jund al Sham” (The army of Syria). Upon
his return to Jordan, Zarqawi actively supported subversive
activities against the Hashemite reign. In 1994, he was arrested
for plotting against King Hussein (weapons and explosives were
found in his house). Zarqawi was released five years later thanks
to the amnesty that followed the rise to the throne of King
Abdullah II. Soon after his release, Zarqawi was accused again of
carrying out subversive activity against the Jordanian reign but,
by then, he had fled to Afghanistan. Zarqawi remained in
Afghanistan until, after 9/11, the US decided to wage war against
the Taliban.
Abu Musab al Zarqawi moved to Iraq after the second Gulf War and
was able to use the Sunni resentment against the Shiites in
Baghdad to fuel terrorist activities since April 2003, just a
month after the US invasion took place. During the war, Zarqawi
teamed up first with a Kurd separatist militia called “Ansar al
Islam” (The partisans of Islam), then formed his own group. In
2004, the US Department of State placed a bounty on Zarqawi's head
worth 10 million dollars.
Around that same time, Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali Muhammad al-Badri
al-Samarrai, aka Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, was captured and detained
in the Camp Bucca prison by the US authorities. The US arrested al
Baghdadi because of his connections to Al Qaeda. Inside the prison
of Bucca, however, al Baghdadi made friends with other terrorists,
whom he will later recruit to found the ISIS. Additionally, al
Baghdadi got to know a number of Baathist officials who would
later support him during his military campaign.
In virtue of his Afghan experience, Abu Musab al Zarqawi led his
war with the blessing of Ayman al Zawahiri and of Al Qaeda. He did
so by lending an umbrella organization to a number of terrorist
factions, the “Jama'at al Tawhid wal Jihad” (Association for the
unity and Jihad), later renamed “Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad
al-Rafidayn” (Organization of the Jihad of al Qaeda in the country
of the two rivers, i.e. Mesopotamia). The US had since raised the
bounty on Zarqawi's head to 25 million dollars, as much as Osama
bin Laden and his mentor Ayman al Zawahiri, and added the acronym
AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq) to the terror list.

Abu Bakr al Baghdadi
The newcomers
Zarqawi's terrorist experience ended on June 7, 2006, when a US
airplane targeted his refuge in Baquba, north of Baghdad. Together
with him died his fourth wife and some of his lieutenants. The
killing of Abu Musab al Zarqawi would not, however, remove the
founding element of the Jihadist rebellion: the resentment of the
Sunni, who were by then united under a Salafite flag against the
Shiite administration in Baghdad. This is why in 2006 the ISI
(Islamic State in Iraq) was born. Only later, in April 2013, will
the final “S” be added; the “S” that stands for Syria or “Sham”:
Damascus.
The ISI was initially headed by Abu Omar al Baghdadi, aka Hamid
Dawud Mohamed Khalil al Zawi. His vice was an Egyptian national,
Abu Ayyub al Masri, who also went by a pseudonym, Abu Hamza
al-Muhajir. The ISI was not made up of Zarqawi's group alone, it
had absorbed several smaller factions, such as the “Council of the
Shura of the Mujaheddin” and the “Jund al Sahaba” (The army of the
companions of the Prophet). Abu Bakr al Baghdadi became a member
of the ISI in virtue of his militancy in the Coordination
Committee of the Council of the Shura of the Mujaheddin and thanks
to the people he had met in Camp Bucca. Al Baghdadi's strengths
were an in-depth knowledge of the Islamic doctrine, which he had
studied in a doctorate at the Islamic University of Baghdad, and a
strong background in Jihadist theory, which was the fruit of his
mingling with the Muslim Brothers and of his reading the works of
the “bad teachers” of the holy war: Abu Mohammed al Maqdisi,
Sayyid Qubt, Abu Mohammed al Mufti al Aali.
Not much is known about Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's personal life. He
has two wives, Asma Fawzi Mohammed al-Dulaimi and Israa Rajab
Mahal Al-Qaisi. The former, a direct cousin of al Baghdadi's, gave
him 5 children, the latter only one. The present location of al
Baghdadi's family is not known, although it is possible that they
followed him to Raqqa, the capital of the Caliphate of Syria and
the ancient capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Al Baghdadi, now
self-proclaimed Caliph, also has three brothers: Jomaa, his
bodyguard and counsellor, Shamsi, who is locked up in an Iraqi
prison and Ahmad, who has a long history of financial fraud and
has recently been released from one. The father of Ibrahim Awwad
Ibrahim Ali Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai was an Imam in a Samarra
Mosque and that is probably where the theological indoctrination
of his son began.
On April 18, 2010, a joint US-Iraqi operation in the region of
Anbar put an end to the lives and times of the leaders of the ISI,
Abu Omar and Abu Ayyub. It is then that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, who
went by the name of Abu Dua, took over. Not everyone was agreeable
with his promotion, but then again, he did descend from the tribe
of Quraish, just like the Prophet.
A step up in class
Abu Musab al Zarqawi and Abu Bakr al Baghdadi had allegedly spent
some time together on the Afghan front, in the region of Herat;
their common traits are a series of homicides, beheadings and
killings of hostages that have kept the international media very
busy. Apart from those, there are no similarities between the two.
Zarqawi fought against the US occupation and, on a second level,
against the Shiites. He had no ambitions for the creation of an
Islamic State. Zarqawi saw himself as an affiliate of al Qaeda in
virtue of his past and mingled with the Afghan and Pakistani
Talibans. Al Baghdadi's ambition, on the other hand, goes well
beyond that of his predecessor. He aims to lead the “Umma”, the
entire world's Muslim community. Also, he wants to replace al
Qaeda at the helm of international terrorism, as stated by Osama
bin Laden in his last written words. It is for this reason that
the ISIS uses an unusual vigor against its enemies within the
Islamic world, such as the Salafite groups in Syria.
When compared to other terrorist groups, ISIS is much bigger and
more dangerous. It started off with 5000 men and now has roughly
30-40 thousand of them. Al Baghdadi's military venture is mantled
with religious overtones more-so than Zarqawi's. The latter had no
theological background, if not that which he had obtained from the
sermons of Osama bin Laden or Ayman al Zawahiri. The goal of the
ISIS is the founding of a Caliphate and they intend to found it on
their own ideological background.
The brutality, the refusal to take prisoners, the unscrupulous use
of the media are all parts of a well-planned strategy that was
started by al Zarqawi and brought to new heights by al Baghdadi.
The brutality and ferociousness serve to scare the enemy and make
the population flee (thus easing the administration of the
“conquered” territories) and to render the war a one-way street
for all those that take part in it. You win or you die; in no case
will the enemy forgive you. This has emerged during the
re-conquest of Tikrit on the part of the Iraqi army. ISIS
prisoners were given the same treatment as that which they had
dispensed on the army.
The recent story of the ISIS and of al Baghdadi is no secret: he
sends two lieutenants to Syria to found Jabhat al Nusra; the
military defeats; the dissociation from al Qaeda and the
disagreement with al Zawahiri. It is difficult to foresee a
conclusion to al Baghdadi's military adventure. His predecessors
have always been defeated. Al Baghdadi himself came close to being
killed on November 8, 2014, while in Iraq. He was wounded but
managed nonetheless to escape to Syria. He lives below the radar
ever since; he doesn't show himself in public and his movements
are secreted. The days of the sermons in the Musol Mosque are now
long gone.