Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

“We hereby bring the Islamic nation the glad tidings of a long-awaited event,” said Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the man dispatched into Syria five months earlier by the Islamic State’s central branch in Iraq. A call for help had been heard, Julani said, and “what else could we do but answer the call?” By the time the video aired, Julani’s band had been offering its brand of assistance for at least three months. A few weeks earlier, a pair of perfectly synchronized car bombs had exploded outside one of the Assad regime’s security offices in Damascus, killing forty-four people and serving notice that a new type of combatant had entered the fray. The al-Nusra Front later claimed responsibility; terrorism experts had already concluded that the culprit was likely al-Qaeda or someone trained in the group’s methods.