Return to Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, birthplace of ISIS

Return to Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, birthplace of ISIS
By Rudaw 12 hours ago
Camp Buca prison in Um Qasir in Basra province, south of Iraq. Photo: Rudaw
Camp Buca prison in Um Qasir in Basra province, south of Iraq. Photo: Rudaw
A young jihadist in shackles and chains was brought into Camp Bucca prison in the town of Um Qasir south of Iraq by the US Military Police Corps. They did not realize at the time what a dangerous subject they held in their custody. He was in his early 30s and had been captured in the town of Fallujah in Anbar. His name was Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri. His imprisonment only lasted for 10 months before his release. Years later that same person reemerged, this time known as Abu Bakir al-Baghdadi, who by now had become the caliphate of the Islamic State, known as the strongest jihadi organization in the world.

Most media outlets agree that the turning point of laying the foundation for ISIS by al-Baghdadi was when he had been imprisoned at Camp Bucca. Here, he had seized the opportunity to meet with his co-prisoners, jihadists and high-ranking Baath regime officers and officials of the Republican Guard Force and Intelligence Agency in the camp’s open yards.

Camp Bucca is located in a dry and spacious desert area on the Iraq-Kuwait border. Though it has been closed down for eight years now, its strong fences, concrete barriers, pillars, high watch posts and mazes of wire corridors are still intact which have all become the major hallmarks of the prison. The halls and rooms where more than 24,000 horrendous jihadists and former Baath regime officials had been imprisoned still looks hazardous to anyone who walks through them.

The prison consists of two well-fortified fences. One is built and erected with soil which is 18 meters high and its ends are sharpened in a way which makes it dangerous to climb. On top of the fence, two more barriers are in place, one with two barbed wire fences and the other with a tall concrete structure. There is a wide space between the two fences. There are also watch posts between each 100 meter space to guard the security of the camp.

“Camp Bucca was the perfect environment for the emergence of the initial ISIS cells as thousands members of extremist groups had been compiled there to freely contact other prisoners, communicate and exchange their ideas. Many of the prisoners spent much of their time there with each other which initiated the groundwork of creating a hazardous group like ISIS,” Ammar Salim, a journalist from Basra who was aware of the prison’s history, told Rudaw.

The world media’s concerns over the risk of compiling extremists together at a dangerous prison were finally justified as large numbers of the prisoners who were eventually released joined ISIS and now have important roles within the group, above all al-Baghdadi.

With the exception of al-Baghdad, 10 more high ranking leaders of the group had been in Bucca, most notably, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi and Abu Hajar al-Iraqi.

Salih pointed out that the biggest mistake the Americans made was mixing the jihadists with the former Iraqi army officers, leading to the creation of an effective force like ISIS.


Detainees in Camp Bucca. Photo :AFP


Rudaw visited the prison as the first Kurdish media outlet, telling terrifying stories within the remnants of the different units and yards of the jail.

The foundation of Camp Bucca was laid in 2003 by British forces, initially to jail what they had described as prisoners of war. The prison used to be called Camp Freddy. In late 2003, the camp was handed over to Americans. They expanded the camp and changed the name to Bucca as a sign of respect to Ronald Bucca, a member of the US Military Police Corps who was killed in the September 11 attacks.

After the revelation of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal against Iraqi prisoners at the hands of the US military, many detainees were transferred to Bucca. Later, the US military hailed Camp Bucca as an example of how a model detention facility should be run.

Bucca did not look like a prison in the true sense. The prisoners were distributed over 24 independent units. To some extent the prisoners were free to talk to each other and meet in the giant units. This hallmark made the prison a relaxed place for the jihadists to communicate and exchange ideas.

Inside Bucca, al-Baghdadi had met with Haji Bakir, the leading officer of the Baath regime’s Republican Guard Forces. Bakir later convinced many other influential members of the Guard Force to join ISIS.

As they were experienced in warfare, Haji Bakir and his team managed to make the military wing of ISIS strong enough to fight against a global coalition of 60 countries alongside the armed forces of Iraq and Syria and multiple Kurdish forces.

The person who guided the Rudaw team through the prison, who asked for anonymity, revealed that al-Baghdadi had been imprisoned at the TH709 unit.

Though Rudaw cannot confirm this information, the place was surrounded by corrugated plates containing tens of tents. Some places in the halls were separated by barbed wire, proving that prisoners had easy access to meet one another.


Abu Ahmed, one of the senior ISIS leaders who had been jailed there spoke to The Guardian, a British newspaper, admitting that Camp Bucca was the birth place of ISIS.

“If there was no American prison in Iraq, there would be no IS now. Bucca was a factory. It made us all. It built our ideology,” the Guardian had quoted Abu Ahmed as saying.

Camp Bucca was eventually shut down on September 17, 2009 by the US army. A vast majority of prisoners jailed there were released and others were distributed among other Iraqi prisons.

Novak Aram Bitrusian too echoed the sentiment that ISIS came into existence from the belly of the prison. He said Camp Bucca was what he described as a “failed experiment” in Iraq at the hands of the Americans.

Camp Bucca has now been given to three Iraqi, Jordanian and Kuwaiti companies to turn it into a free trade area.