Former Saddam loyalists now help ISIS
Everything seemed to be going right for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003.
Baghdad had fallen. Saddam Hussein was on the run. The Iraqi army had surrendered. Former U.S. president George W. Bush went on live television, declaring the Iraq war a victory while standing in front of a banner that read Mission Accomplished.
On May 11, Paul Bremer was named head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the body created to serve as a transitional government for Iraq.
His first order of business called for the de-Baathification of the new government: anyone associated with Saddam’s Baath political party was to be removed from their post and banned from serving again. The second order, issued on May 23, dissolved the Iraqi military and intelligence services.
An American senior coalition official at the time told CNN the order to stand down the army was “part of a robust campaign to show the Iraqi people that the Saddam regime is gone and will never return.”
The reality turned out to be far more complicated. The order, which many blamed for the violent insurgency that followed, became one of the most disputed decisions of the U.S. postwar occupation. Now, 12 years later, there are signs the decision continues to haunt U.S. efforts in Iraq, with increasing evidence that former members of Saddam’s military have helped to fuel the rise of ISIS, also known as ISIL.
Although a majority of ISIS’s foot soldiers has been recruited from around the world, reports and personal accounts suggest its leaders are predominantly Iraqis, many of whom were affected by the 2003 dissolution of the Iraqi Armed Forces.
“(ISIS) as an organization would not exist without former Baathists,” says Iraq analyst Sajad Jiyad, a senior researcher at the al-Bayan Center for Studies & Planning in Baghdad.
He estimates more than 25 of ISIS’s most prominent 40 leaders in the last two years were previously Baathists.
Brig. Gen. Hassan Dulaimi, a former intelligence officer who lost his job after the 2003 dissolution, made a similar claim in an interview with The Washington Post this year.
“The people in charge of military operations in (ISIS) were the best officers in the former Iraqi army, and that is why (ISIS) beats us in intelligence and on the battlefield,” he said.
In April, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri was reportedly killed in battle. Formerly Saddam’s right-hand man, he led a militia that is believed to have cooperated with ISIS from 2014 onward, during its greatest gains.
Last year, Adnan al-Asani, Iraq’s deputy interior minister, told Al Arabiya three of ISIS’s top six military commanders at the time, Haji Bakr, Abu Ayman al-Iraqi and Abu Ahmad al-Alwani, were former high-ranking Baathist party members.
Shashank Joshi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, says the Baathists’ significance to ISIS goes beyond numbers.
“It’s less important in terms of the contribution to manpower, or sheer heft or size, and more important in terms of the specific skills, connections, linkages and technical expertise that the Baathists bring to the table,” he says.
He cites a range of skills former Baathists have used to propel ISIS’s rise, including knowledge of smuggling networks, familiarity with advanced military technology and significant experience in terrorizing civilians.
ISIS has used intelligence expertise to “systematically profile, manipulate and then dominate population centres by assessing the weak points of the population, and assessing potential collaborators,” Joshi says.
“That’s the kind of thing professional intelligence officers in authoritarian states, specifically in psychopathic authoritarian states like Saddam Hussein’s, are well trained to do.”
J.M. Berger, a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institute and co-author of ISIS: The State of Terror, also emphasizes the connection between Baathists and ISIS.
“Former Baathists have played a very significant role in the leadership of ISIS, and their contributions can be seen especially in the local organization and strategy of the group,” Berger says.
Just how they became tied to ISIS, and how committed the secular Baathists are to its religious goals, is uncertain. Immediately after the order to disband the army, more than 250,000 soldiers and officers were put out of work overnight.
Those below the rank of colonel were able to enlist in the new army; higher-ranking officers were barred from both.
Jiyad calls the decision a “catastrophic” mistake that “gave every reason to a vanquished enemy — battled-hardened Baathist officers — to fight the U.S. and further destroy Iraq.”
Thousands of the old professional and well-trained soldiers, unemployed and bitter, went on to drive a violent insurgency that saw guerrilla attacks, suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices used to kill thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops, as well as Iraqi officials and civilians.
The post-invasion insurgency involved a tactical alliance between terrorist groups, such as al-Qaida in Iraq, former Baathists and Sunni tribes.
Despite substantial ideological differences, the partnership was driven by a shared interest in reclaiming control of Iraq from U.S. forces.
Connections between the former Baathists and ISIS in its current form seem to have increased since Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became the group’s leader in 2010 — it is believed he embarked on an aggressive campaign to recruit elements from Saddam’s regime.
Ex-Baathists were largely kept out of prominent positions before Baghdadi’s reign because of their secular outlook, says Ahmed Hashim, a professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University researching the ties between Baathists and ISIS.
Many former Baathists still do not adhere to ISIS’s professed ideological stance.
“A lot of them view the jihadists with this Leninist mindset that they’re useful idiots who we can use to rise to power,” Hashim told the Washington Post.
But even so, Berger cautions against viewing the terrorist group as simply a front for Baathist puppet-masters.