How former Baathists, Saddam's men help DAESH rule

Saddam Hussein-era officers have been a powerful factor in the rise of DAESH, in particular in the Sunni militant group's victories in Iraq last year. DAESH then out-muscled the Sunni-dominated Baath Party and absorbed thousands of its followers. The new recruits joined Saddam-era officers who already held key posts in DAESH. The Baathists have strengthened the group's spy networks and battlefield tactics and are instrumental in the survival of its self-proclaimed Caliphate, according to interviews with dozens of people, including Baath leaders, former intelligence and military officers, Western diplomats and 35 Iraqis who recently fled DAESH territory for Kurdish Regional Government.

Of DAESH's 23 portfolios, equivalent to ministries, former Saddam regime officers run three of the most crucial: security, military and finance, according to Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi analyst who has worked with the Iraqi government. Iraq's Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who spent years opposing Saddam's regime, said the ex-Baathists working with DAESH provide the group with highly effective guidance on explosives, strategy and planning. "They know who is who, family by family, name by name," he said. "The fingerprints of the old Iraqi state are clear on their work. You can feel it," one former senior security official in the Baath Party said. In many ways, it is a union of convenience. Most former Baathist officers have little in common with DAESH. Saddam promoted Arab nationalism and secularism for most of his rule. But many of the ex-Baathists working with DAESH are driven by self-preservation and a shared hatred of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. Others are true believers who became radicalized in the early years after Saddam's ouster, converted on the battlefield or in U.S. military and Iraqi prisons.

One former intelligence commander who served in Iraq's national intelligence service from 2003 to 2009 said some ex-Baathists pushed out of state agencies by Iraq's government were only too happy to find new masters. "ISIS pays them," he said. A few Sunni lawmakers hope that former Saddam-era officers might be persuaded to abandon their DAESH allies. But a senior official close to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said dealing with them was difficult because the Baathists are so deeply split, with some supporting DAESH and some opposed. "Who are they?" he asked. "Some wave olive branches. Others still wave a gun." A spokesman for Abadi, Saad al-Hadithi, said the Iraqi government opposes negotiations with the Baath Party. "There is no space for them in the political process," he said. "They are banned under the constitution."

Baathists began collaborating with al-Qaida in Iraq, the early incarnation of what would become DAESH, soon after Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003. Saddam had run a brutal police state. The U.S. occupation dissolved the Baath Party and barred senior and even middling party officials from joining the new security services. Some left the country, others joined the anti-American insurgency. But then the Baathists and militants disagreed over who should be in charge. Many ex-Baathists struck an alliance with the U.S. military and turned on the militants. By 2014, the Baathists and the militants were back to being allies. As DAESH fighters swept through central Iraq, they were joined by the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, a group of Baathist fighters. The Naqshbandi and smaller groups of Saddam-era officers made up the majority of fighters in the initial stages of last year's military onslaught, according to Sunni tribal leaders, Baathists and an Iraqi security commander. It was the Naqshbandi who rallied locals in Mosul to rise up against Baghdad, and who planned and commanded many of last year's military advances, according to Iraqi officials and Abdul al-Samad al-Ghrairy, a senior official in what's left of the Baath Party. Within days, though, DAESH "took the revolution from us," said Ghrairy. "We couldn't sustain the battle."

In Tikrit, DAESH fighters opened a jail and released up to 200 followers. More DAESH fighters poured into the city, many of them with heavy machine guns. These men "took all the army's weapons and didn't give the Naqshbandi any. They kicked them aside," a senior security official in Salahuddin said.

Soon after the fall of Tikrit in June 2014, leaders from the main factions of the Sunni rebellion met in the house of a Baath Party member. According to the senior security official, Tikrit tribal leaders and Baath officials, DAESH told Baathists they had a choice: Join us or stand down. Some Baathists abandoned the revolt. Others stayed, swelling the ranks of DAESH with mid-level security veterans. That has boosted DAESH's firepower and tactical prowess. "This is not the al-Qaida we fought before," said a prominent Sunni from Mosul who battled DAESH's forerunners. "Their tactics are different. These are men educated in military staff college. They are ex-army leaders. They are not simple minds, but men with real experience." Both Ghrairy and Khudair Murshidy, the Baath Party's official spokesman, told Reuters that the party's armed wing is frozen in the aftermath of its defeat. DAESH, they added, had killed some 600 Baath supporters and Naqshbandi fighters. "Their policy is to kill everyone, destroy everyone," Murshidy said. "They create fear and death everywhere and control areas. Many people have joined them now. At first they were a few hundred, now they are maybe more than 50,000."