ISIS Leadership and Governance April 2016
Knowledge of ISIS leadership is hard to come. This is due to their own security and the fact that the group is being killed in action or removed due to internal actions to reduce their authority. The top 5 leaders to the best of my research as of April 2016 are as follows:
1. Abu Bakr al Baghdadi
2. Abu Ali al-Anbari
3. Abu Mohammed al Adnani
4. Abu Arkan Al Amiri
5. Abu Ayman al Iraqi
Little is known about the leadership or members, as most use assumed names and many fight or appear in video with covered faces.
Baghdadi, his Cabinet advisers and his two key deputies comprise the executive branch of the government, known as “Al Imara.”
ISIS has probably split the governance of the “Islamic State” into Syrian and Iraqi branches simply to make it easier to run, according to Jasmine Opperman, TRAC’s Southern Africa Director.
“They see the caliphate as one state, yet there are two different governments,” CNN News. “I believe this split is purely administrative at this time. They don’t want to be seen as downplaying the caliphate, but to make it easier to govern they were forced to make a separation between Syria and Iraq.”
Abu Mohammed al Adnani
Abu Muhammad al-Adnani al-Shami, whose original name is Taha Subhi Falaha, is the official spokesperson and a senior leader of ISIS. He is also the emir of ISIS in Syria.
The U.S. State Department Rewards for Justice Program announced a reward up to USD$5 million for information leading to his capture on May 5, 2015.
On January 4, 2016, Abu Mohammad al-Adnani was reportedly severely injured by an Iraqi airstrike on Barwana, near Haditha, Iraq. It was reported that he had lost a large amount of blood and had been moved to Mosul for recovery. It was also reported that he was still recovering from his injuries.
On 18 August 2014, the US State Department listed al-Adnani as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
On 22 September 2014, al-Adnani released a speech entitled “Indeed, Your Lord Is Ever Watchful”, which was significant because it was the first official instruction by ISIS for its supporters to kill disbelievers in Western countries Al-Adnani said in his speech:
“If you can kill a disbelieving American or European – especially the spiteful and filthy French – or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him.”
Abu Ali al-Anbari
Abu Ali al-Anbari is a nom de guerre for the ISIS governor for territories held by the organization in Syria. Considered the second-in-command (along with his counterpart Abu Muslim al-Turkmani (KIA) who held a similar position in Iraq), he played a political role of overseeing the local councils and acted as a kind of political envoy. His military role included directing operations against both other Syrian rebels who oppose President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the Syrian government itself.
An ethnic Turkmen, al-Anbari is believed to be from the Iraqi city of Mosul. He was said to be a Ba’ath party activist before 2003 and was also a former Iraqi Army officer under Saddam Hussein during the 1990s. He attained the rank of Major General up until the regime’s fall in 2003.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he was briefly a member of Ansar al-Islam, a Sunni insurgent group, until he was ejected amid financial corruption allegations.In 2004 or 2005, he eventually joined al-Qaeda in Iraq under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and rose through the ranks of the organization before Zarqawi ordered that neither he nor any of his associates would be assigned to an emirate due to an apparent power struggle over the emirship of Mosul.
Al-Anbari’s role within the group became clear after a raid in 2014 on the home of another ISIS figure, Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, al-Baghdadi’s military chief of staff for Iraqi territory. Memory sticks found during the raid, in which al-Bilawi was killed, identified al-Anbari as the head of all ISIS military and non-military operations within Syria.
According to one ex-member of the group, al-Anbari was also a member of the Shura Council. Another account put him as head of the powerful Intelligence and Security Council. He appears to have appointed Abu Yahya al Iraqi, who is with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at all times, to act as a channel between them.
In March 2015, there was speculation that al-Anbari would ascend to the role of deputy of the group—or Viceroy. As a former Major-General, Head of the ISIS Security Council and leader of ISIS operations in Syria, this makes al-Anbari appear as a potential contender for the position. However, his previous experience in Saddam’s military might make al-Anbari an unpopular choice among foreign fighters and more militant Salafists inside the group.
In November 2015, the New York Times reported that al-Anbari had recently arrived in Libya by boat, where the group has established a powerful branch centered in the city of Sirte. On 12 December 2015, al-Anbari was reported by Iraq media to have been killed in an airstrike by the Iraqi Army, near the border with northeastern Syria. However, later reports indicate that he is still alive, and hospitalized for injuries.
Abu Arkan Al Amiri
Few personal details are known about Abu Arkan al-Amiri. Nonetheless, al-Amiri is reportedly a critical cog within the ISIS leadership structure and even a strong candidate to assume the role of caliph in the event of self-appointed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s capture or death.
Selected by al-Baghdadi himself, Abu Arkan presides over the Shura Council, the key consultative and advisory council of ISIS, comprised of nine to 11 members with traditionally religious backgrounds.
The Council delivers orders from the trio of top ISIS leaders, namely al-Baghdadi and his two lieutenants-in-chief, Abu Ali al-Anbari and Abu Muslim al-Turkmani. Hypothetically, al-Amiri and the Shura Council have constraining powers over decisions made by the caliph, and can even depose him. The Council also has the responsibility of selecting the successor to the current caliph and makes recommendations for candidates for Military Council roles and to governorships
Abu Mohammad al-Julani
Abu Mohammad al-Julani was born as Osama al-‘Absi al-Waahdi. He is the leader and emir of al-Nusra Front, also known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and sometimes called Al-Qaeda in Syria. Al-Julani was listed by the US State Department as a “specially designated global terrorist” on 16 May 2013.
Little is known about Abu Mohammad al-Julani, which is his nom de guerre.[7] The phrase “Al-Julani” is a reference to Syria’s Golan Heights, occupied by Israel during the war in 1967.
A Jordanian security official says only the top echelon in al-Qaeda know al-Julani’s real name, but he’s commonly known to them as “al-Sheikh al-Fateh” (meaning the Conqueror Sheikh in Arabic).
Al-Julani was born in Al-Shahil, near Deir ez-Zor in Syria. After completing formal education, he entered the Faculty of Medicine at University of Damascus, where he studied for two years, before leaving for Iraq in his third academic year.
Once al-Julani moved to Iraq to fight American troops after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he quickly rose through the ranks of al-Qaeda, and reportedly was a close associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of the militant group al-Qaeda in Iraq. After al-Zarqawi was killed by a US airstrike in 2006, al-Julani left Iraq, briefly staying in Lebanon, where he offered logistical support for the Jund al-Sham militant group, which follows al-Qaeda’s ideology. He returned to Iraq to continue fighting but was arrested by the US military and held at Camp Bucca on Iraq’s southern border with Kuwait. At that camp, where the US military held tens of thousands of suspected militants, he taught classical Arabic to other prisoners.
After his release from Camp Bucca prison in 2008, al-Julani resumed his militant work, this time alongside Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq. He was soon appointed head of al-Qaeda operations in Mosul province in Iraq, officially known as Nineveh Province.
Abu Ayman al-Iraqi
Abu Ayman al-Iraqi was a top commander in ISIS and the rumored head of its Military Council following the death of Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi.
Abu Ayman previously served under the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein as a colonel in the Iraqi Army. He also operated in Iraq’s Air Defense Intelligence.
In 2007, he was detained for three years by U.S forces in Iraq, presumably at Camp Bucca. Following his release in 2010, he re-located to Syria where he coordinated ISIS fighters in the cities of Idlib and Aleppo as well as the mountains of Lattakia, as a senior ISIS commander. The Syrian Armed Opposition accused Abu Ayman of being responsible for the assassinations of FSA and opposition figures in Latakia.
Late on 7 November 2014, a US airstrike targeted a meeting of top ISIS leaders in Mosul, Iraq, killing 20 ISIS militants, including Abu Ayman al-Iraqi. He was replaced by ISIS War Minister Abu Suleiman al-Naser as ISIS’s Military Chief.
Sharia Council
The Sharia Council is “one of the most vital entities within the Islamic State, given its theological nature.” Soufan Group sums up role of the Sharia Council: “With help from the Sharia Commissions, headed by Abu Mohammed al-Aani, it is responsible for ensuring party discipline, providing rules and deciding penalties for their infringement, supervising the sharia police and courts and overseeing ideological outreach (dawa), both in areas under the State’s control and beyond. The imposition and enforcement of religious observance in behavior and appearance is both a symbol and instrument of Islamic State power.” Importance of the Sharia Council illustrates the fact that in theory it has power to impeach the Caliph.
The Sharia Council and its activities and institutions on the lower level of organizational structure belong to the second stream of leadership. This stream is not dominated by Ba’athists or even Iraqi nationals but employs number of prominent foreign clerics to boost ISIS’s religious legitimacy: “(…) The Islamic State has sought endorsement from religious scholars elsewhere and is reported to have recruited a Saudi officer, Bandar bin Sha’alan, to enlist respected preachers on its behalf.
Conclusions
It’s hard to come up with the top 5 ISIS leaders at any one time. The makeup of that group is constantly changing due to deaths in combat and reorganizations in the group internally. Many of the leaders are taken down internally due to political battles won or lost.
My list of the top 5 ISIS leaders as of April 2016 is as follows:
1. Abu Bakr al Baghdadi
2. Abu Ali al-Anbari
3. Abu Mohammed al Adnani
4. Abu Arkan Al Amiri
5. Abu Ayman al Iraqi
ISIS has to operate militarily and also has to govern the territories and cities that it controls through successful military operations. The organization is constantly recruiting new leaders and administrators and adjusting those groups due to their wins and losses on the battlefield.
Recent Comments