Can we believe what the Pentagon tells us? No. So the fact that they’re saying he wasn’t injured means nothing. He may really have been injured. However, if their objective is to make Obama’s airstrikes look good, and it obviously is, then why would they say al-Baghdadi was not injured if he was? It is more likely that the Iraqi government adviser al-Hashimi is trying to make his own government’s actions against the Islamic State look good by running with the injury report.
“Report: A former physics teacher is now leading ISIS,” by Pamela Engel, Business Insider, April 23, 2015 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
A former physics teacher from Mosul has been installed as a new temporary leader for the terror group Islamic State after its leader was reportedly injured in an air strike in March, an Iraqi government adviser told Newsweek.Newsweek describes Abu Alaa Afri as a “rising star” within Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh), and the Iraqi government adviser, Hisham al Hashimi, said he has become even more important that the injured “caliph” of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“More important, and smarter, and with better relationships. He is a good public speaker and strong charisma,” Hashimi told Newsweek. “All the leaders of Daesh find that he has much jihadi wisdom, and good capability at leadership and administration.”
Afri will reportedly become ISIS’s new permanent leader if Baghdadi dies, according to Hashimi. He is reportedly a follower of Abu Musaab al-Suri, a prominent jihadi scholar, and used to teach physics in the northwestern Iraqi city of Tal Afar.
Having a caliph with a background of religious education is important to ISIS, which has shaped its self-proclaimed “caliphate” around a strict interpretation of sharia law. The group recruits people to come live in its territory in Iraq and Syria by marketing it as an Islamic utopia.
Der Spiegel reported recently that early leaders of ISIS, many of whom are former Iraqi intelligence officers from ousted dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, decided to make Baghdadi caliph because he, as an “educated cleric” who “would give the group a religious face.”
Afri reportedly became Baghdadi’s right-hand man after Baghdadi took a step back from decision-making for security reasons, Newsweek reports. He has served as a link between ISIS’s top leaders and its lower ranks and helps with coordination between the upper ranks and the emirs in different regional provinces.
Osama bin Laden reportedly tapped Afri to run Al Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS’s predecessor, after the death of senior officials in 2010, according to Newsweek. Afri became a senior member of the group and was known to be “very strict,” Hashimi said.
Newsweek reports that Afri is thought to desire reconciliation with Al Qaeda and its affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as the Nusra Front, a chief rival of ISIS in Syria….
The Washington Post reported earlier this month that nearly all of ISIS’s leaders are former Iraqi officers, not foreign fighters. The foreign fighters have proved valuable for ISIS’s media strategy – the group used the now-infamous “Jihadi John,” a British extremist, in some of its beheading videos to gain more attention from the West – but seem to have so far been kept out of the upper echelons of leadership.
ISIS’s leaders operate largely in the shadows. Since rising to power as the leader of ISIS, Baghdadi has rarely appeared on video and few photos of him have been released.
The Pentagon has denied reports of Baghdadi’s injury. US defense officials told The Daily Beast that the air strike that reportedly wounded him was not aimed at a high-value target and that they “have no reason to believe it was Baghdadi.”
Martin Chulov at The Guardian reported that the strike targeted multiple cars in the town of Baaj in northwestern Iraq, and that officials didn’t know that Baghdadi was in one of the cars.