Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Biography

Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri was born in Samarra, Iraq in 1971 and earned a doctorate in Islamic studies from the University of Baghdad. After the US invasion of Iraq, he became radicalized and was detained at Camp Bucca, a US detention facility, from 2004 to 2004 or 2009 — accounts vary — where he reportedly met and recruited other jihadists who would form the core of ISIS leadership. He assumed leadership of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2010 after a US airstrike killed its previous leaders, renaming the group the Islamic State of Iraq and gradually rebuilding it as US troops withdrew. When the Syrian civil war erupted, Baghdadi sent fighters across the border who established Jabhat al-Nusra before asserting ISIS's dominance over all jihadist factions in Syria, triggering a bitter split with Al-Qaeda. After ISIS seized Mosul in June 2014, Baghdadi appeared at the Grand Mosque in a black robe and turban to declare himself caliph — the first video footage most of the world had seen of him. At the height of the caliphate, he commanded an organization with territory, revenue, a bureaucracy, and an unprecedented global propaganda operation that inspired attacks on six continents. He was killed on October 27, 2019, in Barisha, Idlib, when US special operations forces raided his compound; he detonated a suicide vest as troops closed in.

Key Battles