Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

It was a remarkable, and strikingly public, feud between branches of the al-Qaeda network, one that not only contained echoes of the dispute between Zarqawi and Bin Laden but also evoked the earlier rift between Zarqawi and his one-time mentor, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. The squabbling continued to play out for months, with Islamist scholars and pundits around the world taking sides in Internet forums and chat rooms, arguing over which leader best represented the movement’s future. Baghdadi dealt with al-Qaeda’s advice just as Zarqawi did: he ignored it. He issued one additional statement, claiming that he was merely following orders from a higher authority. “I prefer the command of Allah over the command that contravenes it,” he said. And then he proceeded to launch his unified Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham as though the al-Nusra Front did not exist. Throughout 2013, bands of ISIS fighters would fan out across nearly every part of Syria, from the lawless eastern desert to the populated corridors along the Turkish and Jordanian borders and to the very suburbs of Damascus. But before the assault began in earnest, Baghdadi had a few matters of business to attend to inside Iraq. He first commenced an organizational overhaul, appointing regional governors, Sharia advisers, and military commanders to oversee operations locally throughout Iraq and Syria. The Islamic State would function like a real government, with flow charts for acquiring approvals and special departments in...