Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

In explaining the change, Baghdadi recounted a history of the group’s previous incarnations, starting with the early days under Zarqawi, the founder and esteemed “mujahid sheikh.” He told a story of how Zarqawi, when he first swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden, explained privately to his followers that he did so for strategic reasons, and not out of some genuine devotion or need. “I swear by Allah, I didn’t need from him money or weapons or men, but I saw in him a symbol,” Baghdadi quoted Zarqawi as saying. Now, in a similar vein, it had become strategically important for the Syrian offshoot organization to unite symbolically with its parent, he said. “Al-Nusra Front was only an expansion of the Islamic State of Iraq, and part of it,” Baghdadi said. “So we declare, keeping our trust in Allah, the abolishing of the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the abolishing of the name of al-Nusra Front, and joining them under one name—the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham—and also uniting the banner, which is the banner of the Islamic State.”