The Islamic State’s Deputy and the Ghost of Saddam Hussein

Kyle Orton Wordpress ^ | August 22, 2015 | Kyle Orton

[OddLane]

Fadel Ahmad Abdullah al-Hiyali (a.k.a. Haji Mutazz or Abu Muslim al-Turkmani), the Islamic State’s (ISIS’s) commander in Iraq and overall deputy to the “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a drone strike in Mosul on August 18, according to a U.S. spokesman for the National Security Council yesterday. Al-Hiyali was reported to have been travelling in a car with a media operative named Abu Abdullah when he was killed.

The first thing that this means is that the reports from the end of last year, based on statements from senior American officials, that al-Hiyali had been killed between Dec. 3 and Dec. 9, 2014, were wrong. It also means that this report, even with White House confirmation, should be taken with a degree of scepticism. ISIS is well-known to disseminate false reports that its members have been killed and injured. Being already dead is pretty good operational security (OPSEC), after all; it means nobody is looking to try to kill you again.

Dead or alive, al-Hiyali is a very good demonstration of the fact that ISIS’s military prowess—especially in intelligence, planning, and logistics—is being provided by the former (Saddam Hussein) regime elements (FREs). As I pointed out back in April, al-Hiyali “had been right at the core of Saddam’s military-intelligence apparatus in Special Forces,” personally close to Saddam and his long-time deputy, Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri, a key organizer of the post-Saddam insurgency and somebody without whom ISIS could not have risen to its present stature.