Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

On November 10, the CIA’s Baghdad station chief sat down again to describe the unraveling security situation in a formal report to headquarters. The images Gerry Meyer sketched this time were even more dire. The insurgency he described was not only real, it was winning. The terrorists, with help from Baathist allies, were well supplied and appeared capable of moving freely, with little fear of either American troops or the hastily reconstituted but ineffective local police departments. In the eyes of ordinary Iraqis they appeared to be powerful and “largely unchallenged,” he wrote, eroding any lingering hope that American military might be able to stabilize the country. “The ease with which the insurgents move and exist…is bolstering their self-confidence further,” Meyer wrote, according to a version of the “aardwolf” obtained by American journalists soon after it was transmitted to Langley. As for the terrorists’ supporters—disaffected Sunni Muslims and former officers of Saddam Hussein’s security establishment—they had been handed a perfect opportunity to regroup, the station chief said. “The continued sense of isolation in the Sunni heartland, the complete dissolution of the army and other institutions of security, rigid de-Baathification, and the lack of economic opportunities or political direction gave these regime elements the confidence they needed to repair their networks and reestablish themselves,” the report said.