Black Flags (50 page)

“I prefer the command of Allah”:
Baghdadi statement as translated by Middle East Media Research Institute,
Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor
(blog), June 16, 2013.

freed more than five hundred inmates:
Mushreq Abbas, “Al-Qaeda Militants Raid Iraq’s Abu Ghraib, Taji Prisons,”
Al Monitor
, July 2013.

“These were the hardest days”:
Author interview with Abu Ibrahim al-Raqqawi. For his blog, see Abu Ibrahim al-Raqqawi, “Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently,”
http://www.raqqa-sl.com/en
; retrieved April 2015.

“Some are boys younger than sixteen”:
Author interview with al-Raqqawi.

“What’s that [video] game called”:
“British Jihadi Compares Syria War to Call of Duty,”
BBC News
, June 13, 2014.

“I’m here to represent the Islamic State”:
Author interview with Mouaz Moustafa.

“Am I supposed to throw pizzas”:
Author interview with congressional official present at the meeting.

“We need to have a game-changing action”:
Chris Wallace, “Sen. McCain Talks US Action in Syria,”
Fox News
, May 5, 2013.

“something that the civilized world has recognized”:
President Barack Obama news conference, May 16, 2013, White House; retrieved from
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/16/joint-press-conference-president-obama-and-prime-minister-erdogan-turkey
.

“Increase the assistance”:
Author interview with Robert S. Ford.

McCain questioned Ford’s grasp:
Syria Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, Oct. 31, 2013).

Chapter 22

“The ones who are leading now were thieves”:
Author interview with Zaydan al-Jabiri.

“This is a tribal revolution”:
Hamza Mustafa, “There Is a ‘Tribal Revolution’ in Iraq: Anbar Tribal Chief,”
Asharq Al-Awsat
, June 17, 2014.

“They stole everything”:
Author interview with Abdalrazzaq al-Suleiman.

“ISIL probably will attempt to take territory”:
Transcript, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, director, DIA, Statement Before Senate Armed Services Committee, Feb. 11, 2014.

“These are children of Zarqawi”:
Author interview with Michael Flynn.

“In my entire battalion”:
Ned Parker, Isabel Coles, and Raheem Salman, “Special Report: How Mosul Fell,” Reuters, Oct. 14, 2014.

“As for your mujahedin brothers”:
“English Subtitles of Full Sermon by ISIS’s Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, Caliph of the ‘Islamic State,’ ” transcript,
YouTube.com
, July 2014, retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxJSm7XwxqA
.

“Unfortunately, from the beginning”:
Author interview with a senior Jordanian official.

“There’s a snowball effect”:
Ibid.

Epilogue

“I am First Lieutenant Muath Safi Yusef al-Kasasbeh”:
“ISIS Burns Hostage Alive: Raw Video,”
Fox News
, Feb. 3, 2015.

“This counterterrorism campaign”:
President Barack Obama, “Statement by the President on ISIL,” retrieved from
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/10/statement-president-isil-1
.

“Only God punishes by fire”:
Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, “Muslims Condemn ISIS Killing of Jordanian Pilot,”
The Islamists Are Coming
(blog), Feb. 5, 2015.

“Henning worked with a charitable organization”:
“Jihadi Ideologue Calls for Freeing British Hostage,” Associated Press, Sept. 20, 2014.

“I am concentrating now on trying”:
“Daesh Releases New Audio Recording of Pilot Negotiation Attempts,”
Al-Bawaba News
, Feb. 18, 2015.

“They lied to me”:
Maqdisi interview with Jordan’s Roya TV, Feb. 6, 2015, translation provided by Middle East Media Research Institute at
http://www.memri.org/clip_transcript/en/4767.htm
.

“The radicalization of many of the actors”:
Rami Khouri, “ISIS Is About the Arab Past, Not the Future,” lecture, May 11, 2015, at Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.

“We are waging this war”:
Suleiman al-Khalidi, “Jordanian King Vows ‘Relentless’ War on Islamic State’s Own Ground,” Reuters, Feb. 4, 2015.

“Islam has nothing to do with ISIS”:
Ranya Kadri and Anne Barnard, “Jordan, Unabashed, Announces Latest Bombing Raid on ISIS Targets,”
New York Times
, Feb. 5, 2015.

“This is the beginning”:
William Booth and Taylor Luck, “Jordan Rages Against Islamic State As Military Vows to Expand Airstrikes,”
Washington Post
, Feb. 6, 2015.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joby Warrick has been a reporter for
The Washington Post
since 1996. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, and the author of
The Triple Agent
.

A young Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayleh—the future Zarqawi—poses with his mother and a younger sibling in an undated family photo. (Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan)

Zarqawi as he appeared around the time he left Jordan for Afghanistan in 1989 to join the mujahideen. (Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan)

A foiled terrorist plot landed Zarqawi in a Jordanian prison in 1994, but he was released in a general amnesty in 1999, around the time this photo was taken. (Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan)

A young Prince Abdullah in army uniform presents a gift of cermonial daggers to his father, Jordan’s King Hussein. (Royal Hashemite Court)

Jordan’s king and Queen Rania pose for an official portrait in 2010. (Royal Hashemite Court)

King Abdullah II meets with President George W. Bush at the White House a month after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Though relations are cordial, Abdullah warns that the coming U.S. invasion of Iraq would open a Pandora’s box in the region. (White House photo; Courtesy of George W. Bush Presidential Library)