How the US tracked down Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Sunday 03rd November 2019 06:20 EST
 
 

The five-year fight against ISIS culminated on October 26, Saturday night in what President Donald Trump termed as “dangerous and daring nighttime raid” that killed the group’s founder and leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Put together, the overall Baghdadi operation is one of painstaking intelligence work, ending with a complicated military mission. It was a crowning, cinematic achievement for the United States. It was “as though you were watching a movie,” Trump told reporters at the White House after announcing the mission’s success. Cornered by an American military dog in an underground tunnel before he detonated a suicide vest, Baghdadi killed himself and two of his children. Above ground the long-time confidant who betrayed him watched as US Delta Force commandos loaded Baghdadi’s body parts on to a helicopter.

Baghdadi took extensive measures to conceal his whereabouts for nearly a decade. The self-declared caliph of ISIS had long been believed to be hiding in safe houses along the Iraq-Syria border, mostly in Iraq, where he was born. In January he travelled to Isis’s last stronghold in the Syria border town of Baghouz but left before the final battle in which it fell in March, heralding the end of the territorial caliphate.

The US got actionable intelligence over the summer

As far back as February 2018, Ismail al-Ithawy, a top aide to the ISIS leader, offered information to Iraqi intelligence about how gatherings with Baghdadi would go, giving agents their best glimpse into his movements. “Ithawi gave valuable information which helped the Iraqi multi-security agencies team complete the missing pieces of the puzzle of Baghdadi’s movements and places he used to hide,” an Iraqi security official said. But US officials needed concrete, credible information regarding his location so they could act on it. Early this summer, they got just that. They were won over after Ithawy smuggled out a piece of underwear that was DNA matched with samples taken when Baghdadi had been a US prisoner in Iraq’s Camp Bucca in 2004.

According to multiple reports, a disaffected ISIS member tipped off Kurdish forces in Syria to Baghdadi’s general location. Mazloum Abdi, the commander of those Kurdish fighters, tweeted that there had been joint intelligence cooperation with the Americans for five months. The US also got information from an ISIS courier and one of Baghdadi’s wives, both of whom had been arrested and questioned. Over the next few months, the CIA worked with Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence to pinpoint Baghdadi’s location, even placing spies in the region to track his movements. In this case, according to Trump, they found him. “A couple of weeks ago, they were able to scope him out,” he said at the White House without going into detail.

It turned out that Baghdadi was in the northwestern Syrian town of Barisha in the home of Abu Mohammed Salama, another extremist group commander. The distinctively bearded Baghdadi is believed to have never left the compound after his arrival.

Here’s how that operation - which took place 6,000 miles from the White House Situation Room - played out.

“Jackpot”

An assault force of 30 Delta Force commandos and 60 Rangers began training for a raid on a replica of the Barisha compound built on the US airbase outside Arbil in Kurdish northern Iraq. The informant reported that Baghdadi was about to move to a safe house in Jarabulus, to the east. American military commanders visited the White House to ask President Trump to sign off a Saturday night raid named in honour of Kayla Mueller.

About 50 to 100 US commandos took off in eight helicopters - mostly CH-47 Chinooks - from a military base near Erbil, Iraq. It was a dangerous flight, and the aircraft took fire while they flew low to the ground for roughly 70 minutes. They also had to fly over airspace controlled by Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Russia, which increased the possibility someone might miscalculate because they believed the US was attacking them.

At midnight eight Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters, supported by Apache attack helicopters, took off from Arbil and al-Asad airbase in Iraq for a staging post in Syria. Six armed Reaper drones and fighter aircraft took off from Kuwait and five naval guided missile cruisers and destroyers were placed on standby in the Gulf. It was a dangerous flight, and the aircraft took fire while they flew low to the ground over enemy territory before arriving above Barisha for roughly 70 minutes. However, the Russian and Turkish militaries, which controlled the airspace over western Syria, were warned to hold fire. “There was a chance that we would have met unbelievable fire,” Trump said.

The clatter of the helicopter blades brought local fighters running, believing a regime attack was under way. They fired at the aircraft; the Americans shot back, killing them all. After landing, the Rangers fanned out to encircle the compound, pushing civilians back as Delta Force commandos rushed the wall with explosives, blasting a hole. An Arabic translator called for non-combatants to surrender and 11 children and two men ran out.

The commandos were confronted by five fighters running towards them, wearing suicide vests. All five were shot dead. Four were women, believed to be Baghdadi’s wives and relatives. But Baghdadi, strapped with an explosive vest, grabbed three of his children and took off into a series of tunnels underneath the compound. Conan, a Belgian Malinois dog with four years of combat experience, followed Baghdadi’s scent to the tunnel entrance. He entered the hole and was confronting Baghdadi when the Isis leader detonated his suicide vest.

The commandos discovered that Baghdadi had dragged two of his children, both under the age of 12, into the tunnel with him. In the explosion, his head came off whole. A commando looked at it and radioed back: “This is Baghdadi. Jackpot.” A field DNA test proved a match. The assault forces were on the ground for two hours, collecting Baghdadi’s body parts and laptops, USBs and phones, a potentially valuable cache of information.

The US troops loaded the helicopters with their booty, two prisoners, believed to be Abu Mohammed and his son, and the informant. After they took off missiles were fired, flattening the compound to ensure it wouldn’t become a shrine to the dead ISIS leader. Baghdadi’s remains were also taken into custody and were flown to a naval vessel in the Gulf for burial at sea, just as Osama bin Laden’s remains had been disposed of, and the US forces returned to their bases in Iraq. The disposal was “complete and was handled appropriately,” according to Army Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The remains of at least two of his wives, who were also strapped with explosive vests, were left behind.


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