FEATURE

The Man Who Could Have Stopped the Islamic State

Almost 10 years ago, an al Qaeda emissary was sent to
tell Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to tone down his terrorism.
The journey, and its failure, gave birth to ISIS.
BY BRIAN FISHMAN

NOVEMBER 23, 2016

The phone in the Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime Directorate of the police
headquarters in Gaziantep, a southern Turkish city, rang at 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 16, 2006. The caller did not
provide a name, and records oddly do not indicate the persons gender. But the caller did oer a wellinformed tip. Several Iranian nationals were traveling through Gaziantep to Kilis, a Turkish town on the
Syrian border. The Iranians were using forged passports, the caller explained, and they were traveling in a
vehicle with the license plate 79 M 0064.
Gaziantep did not penetrate the global consciousness for five years, after the Syrian civil war began. At that
point, the city became a hub for all manner of men and women drawn to catastrophes foreign jihadis,
spies, journalists, and aid workers. For many jihadis traveling to join the Islamic State, Gaziantep is one of
the last stops before they enter the caliphate.
In 2006, however, the caliphate did not yet exist. There were fewer foreigners in Gaziantep then but one
vehicle there had just attracted a lot of attention.
The tip paid immediate dividends. On the evening of Oct. 16, at the southeast corner of Gaziantep
University, police intercepted a vehicle with the license plate the tipster gave them. Inside were two men, a
woman, and four children. The leader of the group introduced himself as an Iranian named Muhammet
Reza Reanjbar Rezaei, which matched the name on the Iranian passport he provided.

The forged passport used by Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi when he was arrested in Gaziantep.

The Directorate of Foreigners in the Gaziantep Police Department found Rezaeis passport highly suspect.
A Turkish entry stamp dated Nov. 1, 2005, matched computerized entry records, but there was no exit
stamp and Rezaei claimed that his group had crossed into Turkey from Iran days earlier. Moreover, there
were no computer records matching three other entry and exit stamps in the passport. Whoever provided
the mysterious tip to the Police Department was on to something.

The man calling himself Rezaei was given a lawyer, searched, and formally interviewed at 11 p.m. on Oct.
16. A search of the prisoners and their vehicle uncovered nearly $10,625, two cell phones, two SIM cards,
and a headlamp.
Most importantly, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his passport, the man conceded that
his name was not actually Muhammet Reza Reanjbar Rezaei. It was Abdulrahman bin Yar Muhammad.
Moreover, he admitted that he was not actually Iranian: He had been born in Takhar, Afghanistan, and
lived in Kabul with his wife and four children.
Muhammad claimed that he was headed to Europe, where he intended to request political asylum. Per
the Turkish police report, he claimed that he wanted to go to a country where [he could] get a better job, to
get a better education for [his] children, and to have a better life. At the end of the conversation, he
requested asylum in Turkey.
But if he was headed to Europe, why was his vehicle stopped en route to Syria? Muhammad explained
unpersuasively that he had planned to do some sightseeing during Ramadan before moving on to
Europe. He said he had crossed into Turkey four days earlier through the Dogubeyazit border crossing with
Iran and, after a brief respite in the Turkish lakeside town of Van, had arrived in Gaziantep the morning he
was arrested. Notes from the deposition of his wife, Sonia, indicate that she was interviewed separately
and told the same story.
Muhammad was most adamant about the point that he did not want to go back to Afghanistan. If he could
not stay in Turkey, he asked to be sent to Pakistan. He also apologized about the forged Iranian passport
and explained that he had purchased it for $500 from criminals in Iran, who promised that it would be
easier to use in Turkey than an Afghan one.

The police arrest report of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi.

It is not clear how much the local Turkish police knew about Muhammads identity, but a dierent set of
authorities, allegedly including the CIA, knew quite a bit. They knew that two Turkish al Qaeda operatives,
Mehmet Yilmaz and Mehmed Resit-Isik, had traveled to Iran to help him and his family cross the border
into Turkey. They knew that Yilmaz had fought in Afghanistan and may have provided assistance for a
series of bombings in 2003 in Istanbul. They knew that another suspected al Qaeda operative, Mehmet
Polat, had met Muhammad and his family in Gaziantep, and that he was the second man in the vehicle
with the license plate 79 M 0064.
Most importantly, they knew that the man arrested in Gaziantep was neither Muhammet Reza Reanjbar
Rezaei nor Abdulrahman bin Yar Muhammad. And he was certainly not a refugee en route to Europe.
In fact, the man in Gaziantep police custody was best known as Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, and he was on a
desperate mission to reassert al Qaedas authority over its rebellious aliate in Iraq.
As Abd al-Hadi sat in police custody, he must have known that his mission had failed but it is unlikely
that he knew just how badly. With his arrest, al Qaeda had just lost one of its most creative operatives on a
bold mission to establish control over its rebellious Iraqi aliate an organization that would eventually
evolve into its bitter rival for supremacy of the jihadi movement.

The real Iraqi passport of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi.

The Islamic States so-called caliphate would not be declared until 2014, but that is not when the group
established an Islamic state. Indeed, just one day before Abd al-Hadis arrest, al Qaedas aliate in Iraq
announced the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). Its mission was to govern territory and
ultimately re-establish the caliphate.
Al Qaedas leadership, hiding in the tribal lands of Pakistan far from Iraq, was not consulted. The

announcement was therefore a deep challenge to al Qaedas authority and foreshadowed the violent,
public divorce between the jihadi organization and what would become the Islamic State.
This is the story of al Qaedas early relationship with the organization that would become the Islamic State,
and the older jihadi organizations failed eorts to bend the upstart leaders to its authority. The falling out
between the two groups took many twists and turns, but one of the most important occurred in October
2006, long before the Islamic State was a household name. Al Qaedas boldest eort to rein in its rebellious
Iraqi ally, however, would end with one of its most senior commanders in a Gaziantep prison.

Al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaedas Iraqi

Nashwan Abd al-Razzaq Abd al-Baqi arrived in Pakistan in the early 1990s, shortly after the Soviet Union
withdrew from Afghanistan. He was an ethnic Kurd from the Iraqi city of Mosul and had served in the Iraqi
Army during the Iran-Iraq war. His kunya or nom de guerre varied in those years. Sometimes, he was
called Abd al-Hadi al-Mosuli, sometimes it was Abd al-Hadi al-Ansari, but eventually he became best
known as Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi.
Like many jihadis at the time, Abd al-Hadi lived in Pakistan as the civil war
among former Afghan mujahideen factions raged in Afghanistan after the
Soviet withdrawal. He seems to have crossed into Afghanistan for good in

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi

1995 or 1996, as the Taliban seized control of much of the country. He

quickly put his Iraqi military experience to work, becoming an early leader
in the so-called Ansar Battalion, a military unit composed of foreigners who fought alongside the Taliban.
After the 9/11 attacks, schematics of the Ansar Battalions structure, training procedures, and ideological
guidance were discovered alongside Abd al-Hadis copy of an Iraqi Army manual he brought along from his
previous life.
Years later, some analysts argued that the Islamic States use of Iraqi military tactics was evidence that
former Baathists were driving the groups operations. Perhaps. But Iraqi Army doctrine was ingrained in al
Qaeda and jihadi military training years earlier not because Saddam Hussein was supporting these
groups, but because the man who led al Qaedas conventional military eorts had defected to the jihadi
group after a career in the Iraqi Army.
By 1998, Abd al-Hadi was a rising star in al Qaeda. He managed the groups guesthouse in Kabul and was
one of only six Arabs named interlocutors to the Talibans Arab Liaison Committee, which gave him the
authority to intercede on behalf of Arabs in Afghanistan when they had a request of the Taliban
government. He was also on a short list of foreigners included in the Bamiyan Group, which American
investigators allege means he participated in the Talibans infamous operation to destroy the Bamiyan
Buddhas in March 2001. In June 2001, he was one of only 10 members of al Qaedas consultative
committee, an advisory body to Osama bin Laden.
Following the 9/11 attacks and the Talibans fall, Abd al-Hadi was named al Qaedas commander for
northern Afghanistan and seems to have been involved in foreign operations. Richard Reid, the shoebomber who tried to blow up a plane from Paris to Miami in December 2001, listed Abd al-Hadi as his
second beneficiary in his handwritten will.

The organizational chart of the Ansar Battalion, a military group in Afghanistan composed of foreigners who fought alongside the
Taliban. Abd al-Hadi was one of the group's early leaders.

Unsurprisingly considering his lineage, Abd al-Hadi also helped drive al Qaedas strategy toward Iraq.
Before 9/11, he remained in touch with family and friends near Mosul, and the camp where many residents
of his guesthouse trained included a so-called Kurds Camp, which suggests some Iraqi Kurds may have

trained there.
Abd al-Hadi also played a key, secondary role in al Qaedas embrace of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the
Jordanian godfather of the Islamic State. Abd al-Hadi fingered the Syrian jihadi Abu Musab al-Suri for
trying to poach recruits from the al Qaeda guesthouse in Kabul and coordinated directly with senior al
Qaeda operatives Sayf al-Adl and Abu Hafs al-Masri to develop a countervailing strategy. Among those
eorts was a strategy to bolster Zarqawi, in part to limit support for al-Suri from jihadi recruits from the
Levant.
Abd al-Hadis ties were important when Zarqawi shifted his operation to Iraq from Afghanistan after the
9/11 attacks. Al Qaeda had helped Zarqawi establish a training camp in Afghanistan, but the young
Jordanian did not swear allegiance to bin Laden while there. This complicated his negotiations with al
Qaeda once he arrived in Iraq. In 2003 and 2004, Zarqawi communicated regularly with al Qaeda,
requesting financial support and negotiating whether he would finally swear allegiance. Abd al-Hadi was
promoted by al-Adl to command al Qaedas forces in northern Afghanistan after 9/11 and was often on the
other end of Zarqawis communiqus. Together with al-Adl, he served as one of the most important early al
Qaeda interlocutors with Zarqawi in Iraq.

A drawing by a jihadi volunteer in Afghanistan of the al-Faruq training camp north of Kabul, where many of the residents of Abd al-Hadi
al-Iraqi's guesthouse trained.

Communicating between Iraq and South Asia was perilous. Geography and hostile intelligence services
made travel risky, and electronic or telephonic communications could always be intercepted. Indeed, when
Zarqawi requested financial support from al Qaeda in 2003, Abd al-Hadi balked, ostensibly out of concern
that scarce financial resources would be seized in transit. Abd al-Hadi did eventually dispatch emissaries
to negotiate with Zarqawi, the most successful of which was a Pakistani from Balochistan named Hassan
Ghul.
When Ghul and Zarqawi met in January 2004, Zarqawi bluntly explained that his strategy in Iraq was to
incite a sectarian bloodletting. He would assassinate Shiite political and religious leaders until that
sectarian war began. Ghul relayed news of that plan to Abd al-Hadi, who, according to summaries of the
conversation published by the Senate Intelligence Committee, replied that he was opposed to any
operations in Iraq that would promote bloodshed among Muslims. After Ghul was captured by Kurdish
counterterrorism forces in 2004 on his way out of Iraq, he told CIA investigators that Abd al-Hadi
counseled al-Zarqawi against undertaking such operations.
Abd al-Hadis concerns were twofold. He objected to Zarqawis brutal and divisive strategic vision, but
because of distance and communication failures did not have a clear picture of events in Iraq. It was hard
to truly assess, let alone criticize, Zarqawis approach.
Fortunately for Abd al-Hadi, there were many al Qaeda members eager to travel to Iraq to fight. The al
Qaeda leader hoped that if he could embed trusted operatives on the ground, he would have a better
picture of the operational environment and therefore more leverage over Zarqawi. So Abd al-Hadi ordered
Ghul to broach this issue with Zarqawi, and develop a route for fighters to make the journey to Iraq.
Zarqawi had a deep independent streak, so this was a sensitive subject, but he was open to the idea and
even requested individuals with specific technical skills.
Perhaps inspired by Zarqawis willingness to collaborate, Abd al-Hadi proposed something more radical:
He would personally come to Iraq. But Zarqawis interest in new recruits did not extend to al Qaeda leaders
more senior than he, even if they were actually Iraqi. Perhaps worried about an implicit challenge to his
leadership, Zarqawi rebued the suggestion, explaining to Ghul, per the Senate Intelligence Committees
report, that this was not a good idea, as operations in Iraq were far dierent than those Abd al-Hadi was
conducting in Afghanistan.
For the time being, Abd al-Hadi did not push the issue.

The Breaking Point

Al Qaeda in Iraq leader

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
holds a machine gun in a Zarqawi finally swore allegiance to bin Laden in October 2004, but on his own terms. He was
video found by U.S.
forces during raids on bending the knee, Zarqawi explained, only because his respected brothers in al Qaeda understood
terror safe houses in
[his] strategy and their hearts opened to our approach. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was born, but the
Iraq. The outtakes from
the video were used
strategy of brutality and sectarianism that Abd al-Hadi warned against would continue.
during a brieng by Gen.
Rick Lynch, spokesman
Al Qaedas eort to control Zarqawi continued as well. In a July 2005 letter, al Qaedas then secondfor the U.S. command, to
poke fun at al-Zarqawi in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, warned him not to alienate Iraqis and to avoid scenes of
because he had trouble
ring the gun. (Photo by slaughter.
U.S. Department of
Defense via Getty
Zarqawi was unimpressed. After U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte released a
Images)

copy of the letter in September 2005, Zarqawis spokesman called it a fraud, arguing that it had no
foundation except in the imagination of the politicians of the Black House and their slaves.

The disconnect between al Qaeda and Zarqawi became a crisis in November 2005, when Zarqawis foot
soldiers bombed three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing more than 60 Jordanians. Al Qaedas leadership
was furious. Policy must be dominant over militarism, wrote Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, an al Qaeda
commander in Iran, to Zarqawi three days after the Amman bombing. He ordered Zarqawi to halt all
operations outside Iraq.
Atiyah reiterated Abd al-Hadis concern about al Qaedas ability to manage events in Iraq from afar, and
was alarmed that Zarqawi apparently thought Zawahiris July letter was fraudulent. The document was
authentic, he wrote, and represented the thoughts of the brothers, the sheikhs, and all of the intellectual
and moral leadership here. He argued that improving coordination between al Qaeda and AQI was the
groups highest priority. Preparing [the brothers] to be messengers between you and the leadership here,
Atiyah explained, is more important than sending the brothers for some operations like the hotels in
Amman.
Zarqawi finally fell in line, partially. In January 2006, he established a coalition of Iraqi jihadi groups, the
Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC), which was designed to assuage some of al Qaedas concerns. The group
named an Iraqi as emir, and Zarqawi reduced his public profile.
But the MSC was still mostly window dressing. Most importantly, it did not include the second-largest
jihadi group in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah, which has Kurdish roots and a mistrustful relationship with
Zarqawi. Al Qaedas central leadership was eager to unify the jihadi movement but Zarqawi distrusted
Ansar al-Sunnah, so they engaged Ansar al-Sunnahs leadership directly.

On Jan. 26, 2006, Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote to Ansar al-Sunnah on behalf of al Qaedas Special Committee
for Iraqi Aairs that the committee favored unification between AQI and Ansar al-Sunnah. More strikingly,
it acknowledged that such a step was possible only after reforming the situation of AQI. Three days later,
the committee sent another note urging that all the obstacles standing in the way [of unification] must be
removed.
One of those obstacles may have been Zarqawi himself.
Al Qaeda quickly moved to resolve that problem: It reported to Ansar al-Sunnah that it had taken a step to
improve the conditions needed for unification by sending an honorable brother and a virtuous sheikh to
Iraq. Al Qaeda did not name its emissary, but noted you know him very well.
There is little doubt that al Qaedas letter to the Kurdish leadership of Ansar al-Sunnah indicated that Abd
al-Hadi al-Iraqi, the ethnic Kurd from Mosul, was headed home.
In late 2003, Abd al-Hadi had asked Zarqawi whether he should travel to Iraq. Zarqawi said no. In January
2006, Zarqawi was not oered a veto.
The leadership of AQI would change long before Abd al-Hadi made it anywhere near Iraq. Zarqawi was
killed in June 2006 by a U.S. airstrike and was replaced by an Egyptian called Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir.
Despite his long ties to al Qaeda, Abu Hamzah continued AQIs drift away from the central leadership. On
Oct. 15, 2006, the Mujahideen Shura Council announced that all of its component groups were being
dissolved and folded into a new jihadi government named the Islamic State of Iraq. Long before the Syrian
civil war and the Islamic States rise to global prominence, the ISIs explicit goal was to govern and
ultimately re-establish the caliphate.
Al Qaedas leadership was blindsided. They had not been consulted about the declaration, and the ISI
leadership failed to create unity among Iraqi jihadis by refusing to incorporate Ansar al-Sunnah, which
remained wary of the ISI despite Zarqawis death. For a moment, al Qaedas leaders might have been
heartened that Abd al-Hadi was nearing Iraqs border and might be able to sort things out. But that
moment was brief; Abd al-Hadi was arrested in Gaziantep one day after the ISI was declared.
With that arrest, al Qaedas boldest eort to finally control the jihadi movement in Iraq fizzled and the
movement that Zarqawi birthed was moving further out of its orbit. The rest, as they say, is history.

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi is

The Kurdistan Brigades

arraigned in a military
commission at the U.S.
Naval Base in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
on June 18, 2014. Hadi
listened calmly as the
charges were listed, and
did not enter a plea
during the half-hour
session. (AP
Photo/Janet Hamlin,
Pool)

According to the prominent Turkish journalist Rusen Cakir, the CIA was deeply involved in the
surveillance and capture of Abd al-Hadi. A story Cakir published in November 2014 reported that
Turkish al Qaeda members Yilmaz and Resit-Isik crossed into Iran to help Abd al-Hadi and his
family across the border and then ushered him to Gaziantep for the final leg to the Syrian border.
Abd al-Hadi was allegedly tracked electronically throughout this journey, but Turkish ocials
would apparently not arrest him based on such surveillance data. The anonymous tip to the
Gaziantep police, which asserted that he was traveling on a fraudulent passport, allowed for him to
be detained legally.
It is easy to imagine the American ocials angst as Turkey considered Abd al-Hadis asylum

request. Abd al-Hadis lawyer, Osman Karahan, had a history of representing jihadis in Turkey and had
been charged there with supporting terrorism himself. But the Americans need not have worried. Abd alHadis request for asylum was denied and, at 2 a.m. on Oct. 31, 2006, he was ushered on a Turkish Airlines
flight from Istanbul to Kabul. American ocials were waiting for him when the plane landed.
Today, Abd al-Hadi awaits trial at a military tribunal in Guantnamo Bay, where he is listed as one of 17
high-value detainees. In January 2010, the Guantnamo Review Task Force recommended him for
prosecution and many of the raw documents cited in this article were declassified and released so they
could be submitted as evidence in that prosecution.
It remains unclear what Abd al-Hadi aimed to do if he made it to Iraq. He was senior enough to challenge
implicitly or explicitly either Zarqawi or Abu Hamzah, but it is not clear if his mission was to seize
control of the ISI or whether that groups leaders endorsed the journey. Perhaps he aimed to carry out a
coup? Perhaps he aimed to build a better-behaved al Qaeda aliate out of Ansar al-Sunnah? Perhaps he
really would have just served an advisor? Or perhaps his arrival would have precipitated the sort of open
warfare between jihadis that emerged years later in Syria.
The nature of Abd al-Hadis mission raises as many questions as it provides answers, but his route toward
Iraq tells us a great deal about al Qaedas logistics network in 2006. He did not try to cross directly into Iraq
from either Iran or Turkey, but added at least two risky border crossings and detoured through hundreds of
miles of Turkish and Syrian territory. His itinerary reflected a path ultimately trod by thousands of foreign
fighters who joined AQI/ISI in 2006 and 2007, and that was made famous during the Syrian civil war.
Abd al-Hadi was not the last al Qaeda commander to try to reach Iraq. After his capture, at least two other
senior al Qaeda leaders Atiyah abd al-Rahman and Muhammad Khalil al-Hakaymah attempted
similar journeys. For all the talk about digital communications, al Qaeda understood that it could not drive
events in Iraq without putting trusted operatives on the ground.
There are few details about their journeys, but both spent extensive time in Iran after 9/11 and likely would
have traveled a similar route as Abd al-Hadi. Internal al Qaeda communications suggest they both ran into
trouble, but it is not clear if al Qaedas Turkish network faltered (Abd al-Hadis driver in Gaziantep,
Mehmet Polat, was killed in a shootout with Turkish police in early 2008) or if authorities in Iran restricted
their movement.
Despite the growing rift with the ISI, al Qaeda did have some loyalists in Iraq. Many jihadis from Ansar alSunnah remained aligned with al Qaeda for years, even though they never took the groups name.
Meanwhile, Abd al-Hadis Turkish facilitators, Yilmaz and Resit-Isik, fled to Iraq, where they started a
short-lived jihadi group known as the Kurdistan Brigades, which tried to bridge the growing divide
between ISI and al Qaeda. The Kurdistan Brigades is the only group that publicly pledged allegiance to
both bin Laden and the emir of ISI. That conciliation eort dissolved when Yilmaz and Resit-Isik were
killed by U.S. troops in June 2007.
Al Qaedas ability to move senior jihadi commanders to the battlefield improved after the Syrian civil war
began. Numerous senior jihadis linked to al Qaeda have reached their destination, which says something
about the aggressiveness of security services in Turkey and elsewhere. Collectively, these core al Qaeda
representatives in Syria have become known as the Khorasan Group, a nod to their experience in

Afghanistan.
Following in Abd al-Hadis footsteps, these leaders initially tried to build bridges with the Islamic State,
but ultimately condemned it in favor of more al Qaeda-friendly militants in Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and
Ahrar al-Sham. Unlike during the Iraq war, when surrounding countries generally objected to the free
movement of al Qaeda operatives, the members of the Khorasan Group were able to enter Syria relatively
easily and build up local credibility due to their opposition to the Islamic State. Regardless, the Khorasan
Group has not definitively reasserted al Qaedas authority over the Islamic State any more than Abd alHadi was able to. Proximity is important, but it is not everything.
Indeed, al Qaedas success inserting senior commanders into Syria has helped it build close ties with many
rebel groups, but the split with the Zarqawiists has escalated into full-fledged war with the Islamic State. Al
Qaeda failed to understand that the movement Zarqawi created was fundamentally populist it was never
looking for long-established leaders and authority figures. Whereas jihadi leaders have for decades rejected
established political and religious hierarchies across the Middle East and beyond, the Zarqawiist
movement is built to reject even the jihadi establishment.
Abd al-Hadis mission to Iraq ended when he was arrested in Gaziantep, but al Qaedas campaign to seize
back control of the global jihadi from the heirs of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi goes on.

Brian Fishman is a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation.