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English Translation of the Arabic text on the Cover is “The Islamic State of Iraq”, followed by the ISIS motto “Enduring”

There are many to whom I owe profound thanks and gratitude for their guidance, help and assistance in the writing of this book. First, I would like to earnestly thank Almighty God for having showered His blessings upon me every moment of my life. I am also deeply grateful to my mother, Ms Zubaida Khan, for her love, care and support through all the trials and travails and to my father, the Late Major Abid Rasheed (May his soul rest in peace).

I am immensely grateful to the United Service Institution of India (USI) for the wealth of intellectual profundity and strategic insight I gained as Senior Research Fellow in this most esteemed and illustrious research centre of India.

It would not have been possible for me to conduct a study of such critical importance to global security without the keen guidance and support I received from the Director of the USI, Lieutenant General PK Singh, PVSM, AVSM (Retd). His intellectual calibre, profound insights and gracious encouragement proved vital in the successful completion of this research.

I cannot thank enough my true mentor in this project, Major General BK Sharma, AVSM, SM** (Retd), who guided me at every step on the way with his astute knowledge and insights, wise counsel and unflinching support. I would also like to particularly thank Maj or General PK Goswami, VSM (Retd) for lending his support and valuable insights to me during the course of this project.

A very special mention here is for Dr Roshan Khanijo, who stood by me as a friend, philosopher and guide on a daily basis throughout the course of this study. I would also like to thank the sincere friendship and guidance I received from all the researchers and colleagues at the USI, with whom I discussed and gained insights on several aspects of the subject. I would like to especially thank Commodore Lalit Kapur (Retd), Group Captain Sharad Tewari, VM (Retd), Colonel Rohit Mehrotra, Colonel SK Shahi, Colonel Sanjeev Relia and indeed Commander MH Rajesh for their invaluable contributions that are too many to be fully acknowledged and thanked. I would also like to thank my other friends at the USI — Naib Subedar Sube Singh, Havaldar Dharambir Singh, Lance Naik Inderjeet Singh, Ms Aparna Roy, Surendra Kumar Tiwari and Rajesh Kumar.

I would also like to mention here the help and support I received from some of my friends and associates outside my place of work. I would like to particularly thank Shweta Desai, Associate Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi, for her valuable insights and suggestions. I am deeply grateful to Mr P. Ramesh Kumar at Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd. (Times Group) for his friendship and genuine support, as well as to my steadfast friends Mr. Ehtesham Shahid, Mr. Mohammed Shiraz and Abdul Naseeb Khan. I have also been very fortunate in receiving support from various research scholars and strategic experts living in West Asia, particularly Dr Ahmed Menassi and Dr Farid Azzi from the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, based in the UAE.

Finally, I would especially like to thank my dear wife Afiya Khan for her love, patience and encouragement and for taking full care of my lovely children, Yousuf and Mariam, even as I was busy writing the book. I dedicate this humble work to my countrymen and to the cause of peace and harmony in the world.

When experts on terrorism first declared the ISIS as more dangerous than Al-Qaeda, it seemed an outrageous claim. Many wondered how the very superlative of extremism and terror could be placed below an upstart group in the comparative degree. But the claim did not take long to validate itself. It was explained that the ISIS is not only richer than Al- Qaeda, but is arguably the richest terrorist organization in human history. The rapidity with which the ISIS forces won territories in Iraq and Syria increased its strength by the hundreds of thousands, thus underscoring the disturbing fact that the group had far more militants than the few thousands that Al-Qaeda could muster even at its peak. But then came the barbarity, the like of which the world had never seen, in that it was even more gruesome than that of Al-Qaeda. Videos of the beheadings and burnings of innocent hostages became part of the ISIS’ perverse public relations campaign to attract global sociopaths to its grotesque cause. In addition, the group openly claimed to be fomenting sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing in Iraq and Syria as part of its ‘nikaya’ program — a strategy of brutally hurting the enemy in order to undermine stability in both countries. In its online magazine Dabiq, ISIS brazenly justified indulging in sex trade and the destruction of the ancient cities of Nimrud and Patra. But these atrocities were nothing compared to its larger design and objective of obliterating nation states (in principle and in practice) in order to establish its dystopian version of a global Caliphate.

But perhaps the greatest threat that has made the ISIS more problematic for global security than Al-Qaeda is its bloodlust and program to instigate a global apocalyptic war between Islam and the West in order to justify its claim of being the Caliphate. The US President Obama came close to properly identifying the ISIS by calling it as a death cult. In fact, the ISIS is more than that. It is a doomsday cult, which is bent on bringing about the the Biblical Armageddon (what it calls in Arabic as ‘Al-Malhama Al-Kubra’) in our age. This level of ideological perversity and madness has been characterised as the third generation of global jihad, or Terror 3.0 by former CIA Director General Michael Hayden.

This book highlights the ISIS’ plans to initiate ‘Total Confrontation’ with the world from 2016-2020 as part of its ‘Masterplan’ detailed in the book by Fouad Huseein titled: ‘Second Generation of Al-Qaeda by attacking the city of Rome and the Vatican, in order to begin a global inter-religious war. Unlike Al-Qaeda, Iraq is central to its global jihadist aspirations for the ISIS. It follows Al-Zarqawi’s thinking of waging and winning a jihad in Iraq as central because “if jihad fails in Iraq, the [Muslim] nation will never rise again.”¹

Chapter One of this book focuses on the phoenix-like rise of the ISIS on the global stage in 2014 after its virtual elimination following the death of the dreaded Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi in Iraq in 2006. Chapter Two tracks the growth of political Islam or Islamism in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and how its concepts grew distinct from the teachings of mainstream Islam, leading to the Jihadist ideology of Al-Qaeda and the ISIS.

Chapter Three is dedicated to the organization of the ISIS and Chapter Four to the warfare of the terror group and the way it has incorporated and implemented novel strategies of barbarity expounded by post-9/11 jihadi ideologues of Al-Qaeda.

Chapter Five describes how the ISIS has effectively spread its message and built its bases around the world in less than a year and has proven to be ahead of the proverbial curve when it comes to spreading its propaganda on the Internet and in conducting cyber warfare.

It also looks into the strong renunciation of the global Muslim community of the ISIS ideology and its violent atrocities and makes a few recommendations on the measures countries like India should take in order to fight the growing global menace of ISIS’ extremism and terrorism. This book has used the appellation ISIS simply because it is the most popular name of the group in the world and because it finds the moniker ‘Islamic State’ as unacceptable to describe the group, as it is neither Islamic or a state in any which way.

Picture of an ISIS militant on horseback featuring on ISIS online magazine Dabiq

“The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify … until it burns the Crusader armies.”

In June 2014, a breakaway faction of Al-Qaeda with a newly minted moniker — the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — grabbed global media spotlight for capturing vast swathes of the Iraqi Sunni heartland. The world was shocked by the lightning advance of this extremist group, which with less than a thousand marauders² seized roughly a third of Iraqi and Syrian territories by the middle of August³. The ‘four to five divisions’⁴ (with 30,000 to 50,000 soldiers)⁵ of the US-trained Iraqi Army put up little to no resistance, with many of its soldiers deserting their posts, stripping their uniforms and leaving much of the weaponry and sophisticated military hardware behind.

The explosive expansion and extreme brutality of this summer offensive, catapulted the ISIS to global infamy. Clearly, the implications of this largely unforeseen development resonated beyond the territories ISIS seized in Iraq and Syria and the consequences of the establishment of its so-called Caliphate might outlast the eventual decimation of this terrorist organization and its fledgling proto-state.

For one, the ISIS’ sudden emergence on the geopolitical stage and its threat to upset the whole post-Ottoman regional shebang by obliterating the boundaries of nation states (as exemplified by it in Iraq and Syria) in order to reinstate a medieval theocratic empire has shocked the global political system. Various international organizations, government agencies and media outlets remain baffled to this day over the modus operandi and warfare that has led to the ISIS’ spectacular success.

Several causes have been attributed to the rise of the ISIS. The most important of them was the US-led Iraq War of 2003, which destroyed the state of Iraq and led to its virtual trifurcation along sectarian lines.

As a result of the war, Baghdad came under the dominance of the Shiite marsh Arabs for the first time in Islamic history, as the Sunnis of Iraq were completely sidelined from the power equation. The perceived sectarian policies of the Maliki regime and its inability to check the violence perpetrated by Shiite militias against the Sunni community forced the marginalized Sunni tribes to support extremist jihadist groups of Al- Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq.

The unease of Sunni Gulf monarchs, in the wake of rising Shiite influence in Iraq, the Levant, Yemen and even in Gulf countries, led them to support Salafi jihadist militias in Syria and Iraq.

The large-scale civil war and violence perpetrated by the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad to quell the country’s democratic forces of the Syrian National Coalition (particularly the Free Syrian Army) proved helpful for Islamist groups to gain ground in Syria and Iraq, mainly Al-Qaeda and the ISIS.⁶

The US decision to withdraw from Iraq before completing its promised nation-building and its inability to take a tough stance against the Syrian regime were instrumental in the rise of the ISIS and Jabhat Al Nusrah.

The disbanding of the Iraq army and the widespread resentment among former Baathist soldiers, along with the large-scale unemployment of youth and the failure of the Arab Spring facilitated the rise of the radical Sunni jihadism in Iraq and Syria.

The ISIS follows an eschatological variant of Salafi-jihadist school of Sunni Islam and employs terrorism in the name of jihad (condemned by most Islamic scholars as religiously proscribed) by targeting all non-Muslim and most Muslim communities under the doctrine of ‘takfeer’ (which legitimizes killing of people after declaring them infidels), as part of its global campaign to “purge” Muslim-dominated countries and then the world for restoring its version of a theocratic Caliphate.

The group’s motto is ‘Baqiyya wa Tamaddad’ which means ‘Enduring and Expanding’⁷ It controls vast swathes of territory in Sunni-dominated regions of Syria and Iraq, a stretch larger in area than the United Kingdom⁸.

The city of Raqqa (in Syria) is considered to be the administrative center of the ISIS and Mosul in Iraq is the largest city in its grip.

The group also claims to be holding territories in Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen Afghanistan and Pakistan. However since January 2015, ISIS has reportedly lost about 5,000 to 6,000 square miles of territory, according to Pentagon sources.⁹

The Logo of the ISIS is purportedly borrowed from the Seal of the Prophet. The message on the ISIS’ black standard is Islam’s first article of faith (the ‘Shahadah’ or Testimony). It reads: “There is no God Except The God and Muhammad is His Messenger”

There has been about 25 percent reduction in the areas under its control in Iraq. In early April 2015, ISIS was expelled from the city of Saddam Hussein’s birth, Tikrit, by Iraqi government forces and the US-led coalition’s airstrikes.

However, the ISIS managed to seize control of the strategically important city of Ramadi in Al-Anbar province and was reportedly advancing toward Iraq’s biggest oil refinery in Baiji.

The threat posed by the ISIS to global peace and security can hardly be overstated. ISIS poses a threat to the entire global community, including the Muslims of the world.

While announcing US-led global campaign against the ISIS on September 10, 2014, US President Barack Obama rightly observed: “ISIL (ISIS) poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East … If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region.”

He added “ISIL is not ‘Islamic’. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.”¹⁰ For his part, the Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al Sheikh has called the ISIS, “the number one enemy of Islam.”¹¹

Several factors have contributed to the emergence of the ISIS as a major threat to global political order and for being deemed as more dangerous than Al-Qaeda. First, by running over the Iraq-Syria border, the ISIS has sought to erase not only the boundaries of the two countries (as first established by the West under the Sykes-Picot agreement), but in doing so it categorically declared its repudiation of the Westphalian concept of the nation-state.

The ISIS then called itself the seed Caliphate, instituted on its own ultra-extremist, non-orthodox interpretation of Islam that does not conform to any of the four orthodox juristic schools of Sunni Islam, let alone of other Muslim sects. It also announced a five-year plan of expanding its boundaries to all Muslim-majority countries and beyond by building a legion to conduct a mythical end-time war between the West and Islam.¹²

Second, the so-called Islamic State has amassed enormous wealth and resources, greater than any terrorist or insurgent group in human history and has used it to expand its operations around the world. Third, the ISIS has developed its own jihadist mythology by concocting vague eschatological claims (as if to gain legitimacy on the basis of religious prophecy) through dubious and ambiguous reinterpretations of end-time predictions found in Hadeeth literature. In the words of US Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint-chiefs-of-staff, “This is an organisation that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated.¹³

Fourth, the organization has been able to win over followers and converts from across the world and from various national, ethnic and religious affiliations with the help of a powerful social media campaign.

Thus, it has attracted over 20,000 fighters from over 90 countries, according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (February 2015).¹⁴ Its total force strength is said to be in excess of 200,000. This is a much larger number than any jihadist or terrorist organization till date.

The organization is also said to rule over an area of the size of Britain. Thus, the threat posed by the ISIS to global security has in a short time emerged as far greater than that of Al- Qaeda.¹⁵

The fighters of the ISIS include foreign migrants, former soldiers of the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein and the poor and disposed Sunni youth in Iraq and Syria, who have suffered a steep decline in their standard of living over the tumultuous years of the last decade.

The foreign fighters are generally well-educated and come from middle-class, even upper middle-class families of Europe and Asia, many of whom are engineers, doctors, lawyers and PhDs.

Former members of the Baathist regime are generally soldiers and former high-ranking officials, who suffered the most following the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, and who bear deep resentment against US-led coalition forces and the Iraqi regime following the disbanding of Saddam’s military as part of the de-Baathification program of the new political dispensation. Their military expertise and knowledge of warfare in the region have greatly benefitted the ISIS and many of the former Baathist military personnel, like the now deceased Haji Bakr, played a pivotal role in the rapid rise of ISIS in recent years.

The third group of ISIS fighters belong to the poor and dispossessed Sunni Iraqis who joined the group, either through conviction of belief and/ or compulsion of circumstance.

Till date, there remains a lot of confusion and mystery surrounding many aspects of the ISIS - its secret patrons and benefactors, its modus operandi and highly adaptive style of warfare, the size and composition of its forces and even its actual influence and control over territories.

The confusion extends to the very name and identity of the group, which was known by several names in the past and even today is called by different appellations, as the ISIS, ISIL, DA’ISH or by its latest self-proclaimed moniker “the Islamic State” (abbreviated as IS). It is ironic that the group’s new acronym, when read as a word underscores this ontological confusion.

The Arab world has stuck to the acronym DA’ISH for ISIS. DA’ISH is the Arabic abbreviation for Al-Dawla al- Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham (the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham). It purportedly has a derogatory connotation in the Arabic language as it implies a bigot who enforces his views.

This book has used the acronym ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham) for the group, simply because it is the most popularly known acronym associated with the group, and has been in vogue ever since it first came into global media spotlight with the capture of Mosul in June 2014.

In fact, it is not uncommon to find criminal and terrorist organizations deliberately having a number of names and aliases. By constantly changing their identities, criminal and insurgent groups seek to operate in secret and remain intractable for their opponents. Therefore, it is only natural that the ISIS has changed its name several times in recent years.¹⁶ On several occasions, the change was ostensibly brought about by a merger with or separation from other jihadi groups, while sometimes it simply added the names of its newly acquired territories, or areas it aspired to take control of in its title.

Born in Samarrah (Iraq) as Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Al-Badri, the so-called ‘Caliph Ibrahim’ has a reward of upto $10m for information leading to his capture or death.

A lover of football in his teens, the reclusive Baghdadi is also nicknamed ‘The Invisible Sheikh’. A Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad, he was interned by the US in Camp Bucca (2004).

Baghdadi got seriously injured in a raid led by US-led coalition on March 18, 2015, and Iranian Radio has even claimed that he has succumbed to his injuries and died. Before getting injured, it is rumored that Baghdadi married a German teenager.

The group’s earliest incarnation can be traced back to 1999, when Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi founded the Jamat-al-Tawheed-wal-Jihad (JTJ), translated as the “Organization of Monotheism and Jihad”.

In 2004, the group took on the title ‘Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rifidadayn’ (The Organization of Jihad’s Base in the Country of the Two Rivers), but was then more commonly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). It merged into the Majlis al Shura al Mujahideen (MSM) in 2006 and after its virtual decimation by 2009, re-emerged as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in 2013.

Then in April of 2014, the ISI renamed itself as the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (the ISIS) and after declaring itself as the Caliphate in June that year it called itself the Islamic State (the IS), in keeping with its pan-Islamist and globalist ambitions.

For their part, various governments and media outlets around the world also added to the confusion by naming the group differently. After its capture of the Iraqi city of Mosul, most governments and international organizations used to call the terror group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as its area of influence spread across the countries referred to in the name.

However, there was disagreement over whether the word ‘Al-Sham’ in the Arabic full form of ISIS could be correctly translated as modern-day Syria because that word referred to the historical Syria, or what the French knew as the ‘Levant’ and reflected the ISIS’ aspiration to take that whole region under its control.

Therefore, the United States as well as a few other countries have preferred to use the abbreviation ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) as the more appropriate name of the group.¹⁷

Meanwhile, the Arab world stuck to the acronym DA’ISH - the Arabic abbreviation of the group’s original name, which can be transliterated as Al-Dawlat al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham¹⁸ (the English translation being the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham).

The Arabic abbreviation DA’ISH when joined and read as a word in Arabic has a derogatory connotation in that language, as it is known to mean a bigot who enforces his views on others. It is for this reason that many Arab detractors of the ISIS started using the word ‘Da’ish’ to insult the group and in response the ISIS prohibited the use of the word and punished those who uttered it. In February, 2015, the ISIS reportedly (according to the newspaper Daily Mail) flogged a boy 60 times in a town square for calling the terror group ‘Da’ish’.¹⁹

In fact, when it declared itself as the seed Caliphate in June 2014, the ISIS removed the words ‘Iraq’ and ‘Al-Sham’ from its full version Arabic name and simply became ‘Dawlat-al-Islam’ (transliterated), which can be translated into English as the ‘Islamic State’. The new name attempts to underscore the group’s transnational approach and reiterates its emphasis of being both quintessentially ‘Islamic’ as well as a full-fledged ‘State’. It is an attempt to emphasize that the group is not being limited to just Iraq and ‘Al-Sham’ (or Levant) but has global territorial ambitions, which is presently seen with its occupation of some territories in Libya and Nigeria.

However, most international organizations continue to refrain from using the name ‘Islamic State’ or the abbreviation ‘IS’ as the legitimate name of the group because it gives the wrong impression that the areas under the ISIS’ control are the territories of a new found ‘state’, and that its form of draconian governance is in any way related to Islam.

In September 2014, the French government announced that it would use the derogatory Arabic acronym DA’ISH as the name of the militant group, instead of ISIL (which it previously used).²⁰ Curiously, the word Levant that is represented as ‘L’ in the abbreviation ISIL is of French origin, but because of its colonial association the country chosen to discard the abbreviation ‘ISIL’. Meanwhile, the US Government continues to officially call the group as ISIL.

Similarly, some major English news agencies - such as Reuters, the Associated Press, Agence France-Press and Al-Jazeera – have opted to call the group the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Levant’ or ‘ISIL’. Others like the New York Times have persisted with the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ (and in some cases Greater Syria).

However, several news agencies like the Guardian²¹ and Financial Times²² appear confused as they use the full form as ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Levant’ but opt for the acronym ISIS.

For its part, the BBC uses the recent variant, i.e. Islamic State or IS²³. The confusion even exists in the non-English European media. In Spain, the newspaper El Pais calls the group El Estado Islámico en Irak y el Levante (EIIL). However, its rival newspaper El Mundo has gone with the name ‘El Estado Islámico en Irak y el Syria’, and uses the English acronym ISIS.

In Germany, Deutsche Welle uses ISIS in both English and German versions but writes Islamic State in Iraq and Levant on its English website, but Islamischer Staat im Irak und Syrien (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) on its German one. Other German publications like Der Spiegel, Die Zeit and the Frankfurter Allgemeine have chosen the acronym ISIS, and yet Die Welt prefers ISIL.²⁴

To some security experts like Marc Peirini²⁵ (Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Europe) no purpose is served in settling ‘mundane controversies’ over the name of this group, while for others like French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius the name is important as it reflects aspirations that the US and its allies unequivocally reject.²⁶

The southern town of Garma in Iraq has been home to a sprawling detention center in Iraq called Camp Bucca, which is known as the early hotbed of ISIS extremism. Many ISIS leaders, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, were once incarcerated in Camp Bucca and likely met there.

Former prison commander at the camp, James Skylar Gerrond remembers many inmates at the camp and says, “Many of us were concerned that instead of just holding detainees, we had created a pressure cooker for extremism.” He worked at the prison between 2006 and 2007, when it was glutted with approximately 24,000 radicals, which reportedly included Baghdadi.

It is said that prisoners at Camp Bucca were divided along sectarian lines to ameliorate tension and that inmates settled their disputes by implementing Islamic law. It was in Camp Bucca that many former members of Saddam’s Ba’athist military, like Haji Bakr, were radicalized and became members of the ISIS.

The origins of the terror group ISIS can be traced back to the founding of Jamat-al-Tawheed-wal- Jihad (JTJ), translated as the ‘Organization of Monotheism and Jihad,’ by the notorious Iraqi militant Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in 1999.

Al-Zarqawi had established contacts with Bin Laden while he was commanding his own group of fighters in Herat, Afghanistan, in the late 1990s.²⁷ Then in 2001, he moved to northern Iraq and joined Ansar Al-Islam and formed a group (JTJ) of militants who had fought in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir²⁸ with the aim of deposing the Jordanian monarchy. However, after the US-led invasion of Iraq, JTJ focused primarily on fighting US-led coalition forces in Iraq. Here, the terrorist group was not only involved in carrying out attacks on US-led coalition forces but also conducted suicide attacks on civilian targets and the beheading of hostages.

Then on October 17, 2004, Al-Zarqawi and the JTJ organization issued an online statement pledging allegiance to Al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden.²⁹ Al-Zarqawi also changed the name of his organization to Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rifidadayn (The ‘Organization of Jihad’s Base in the Country of the Two Rivers’), but from here on was more commonly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

After swearing ‘bayah’ (pledge of allegiance) to Osama bin Laden, the group launched major attacks on US-led coalition and emerged as the largest armed group in Iraq. Soon, the AQI became successful in clearing out US and Iraqi forces of some critical Sunni regions, beginning with Al- Anbar province.³⁰

However, tensions reportedly grew between Al-Qaeda central and AQI, as the latter was seen as acting more independently and was accused of indulging in gruesome acts of violence that even Bin Laden did not approve of, for example the 2005 bombings by AQI of three hotels in Amman³¹. Although the AQI succeeded in gaining territories in Iraq’s Sunni regions from the US and Iraqi forces, it also faced criticism from local tribes of being more foreign in its composition and for having fewer Iraqi members in its leadership.

In order to address these grievances, AQI decided to assemble smaller Iraqi insurgent groups under an umbrella organization called the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC) in January 2006.³² After the formation of the Council, the AQI became the dominant group in Azamiyah, Kazimiyah and Abu Ghraib neighborhoods of Baghdad.³³

After Al-Zarqawi’s death in a US airstrike on June 7, 2006, the leadership of the group passed on to Abu Ayyub Al Masri, also known as Abu Hamza Al Muhajir.

On October 12, 2006, the MSC brought the Soldiers of the Prophet’s Companions (Jund Al-Sahaba), the Army of Conquerors (Jaish Al- Fatiheen) and the Army of the Victorious Sect (Jaish Al-Taif Al-Mansura) led by Umar Al Ansari into its fold by swearing the traditional Arab oath of allegiance – Hilf Al-Mutayyabin (Oath of the Scented Ones).³⁴ Following these mergers, the Council rebranded the AQI by declaring the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) on June 8, 2006. Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi was announced the Amir of this self-proclaimed state, while Al-Masri accepted the title of Minister of War in a 10-member cabinet.³⁵