Summary

Part 19 tells the story of a scouting party sent by Baghdadi into Syria six months after the uprising against Assad began. There, they encountered an environment much like what Iraq had been at the peak of Zarqawi’s organization – lawless, violent, and chaotic – only this time with no American military presence. The party consisted of less than ten men, but it found a new militia – Jabhat al-Nusra (Support Front for the People of Greater Syria) – an inoffensive-sounding name implying support for the Syrian resistance but designed to expand the Islamic State’s influence.

Baghdadi would regularly communicate with this cell group in Syria, and Part 19 uses his correspondence with them as a window into his personality and world view. Baghdadi, like Zarqawi, differed from al-Qaeda in believing that the foundation of a caliphate came first, before Muslims had expelled non-believers from...