Al Qaeda in Iraq Duped Into Following Foreigners

al-Mashadani created an imaginary leader to fool Iraqis into following foregners

A captured al Qaeda in Iraq leader has admitted the network’s followers have been duped into following the direction of foreign leaders, not Iraqis, a military spokesman in Baghdad said today.

Coalition forces captured Khalid Abdul Fatah Daud Mahmud al-Mashadani, thought to the most senior Iraqi in the al Qaeda in Iraq network, in Mosul on July 4, Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, said. Bergner said Mashadani is in coalition forces custody and providing “significant insights” into the al Qaeda in Iraq network.

Mashadani, who rose through the al Qaeda network ranks directing media and communications operations, helped create a virtual organization, called the Islamic State of Iraq, on the Web in 2006, Bergner said.


It turns out, Bergner said, that the organization is simply a front for foreign influence into al Qaeda in Iraq. Mashadani partnered with Abu Ayub al-Masri, the Egyptian-born head of al Qaeda in Iraq. The two went as far as creating a fictitious leader, Umar al Baghdadi, as a symbolic political head the ISI, whose role is played by an actor. This allowed the two to work in conjunction with foreign leaders to funnel direction to al Qaeda in Iraq, while its followers believed they were following the directions of Iraqi leaders.


“The rank-and-file Iraqis in (al Qaeda in Iraq) believed they were following the Iraqi al Baghdadi, but all the while they have actually been following the orders of the Egyptian Abu Ayub al Masri,” Bergner said.


“Mashadani has said in his own words that the Islamic State of Iraq should be free of foreign influence, but that is not the case.”