CNN: Khalifa al-Baghdadi is an Iraqi from Tal Afar

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[size=52]CNN: Khalifa al-Baghdadi is an Iraqi from Tal Afar[/size]

[size=45]ISIS has yet to acknowledge the killing of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by US forces in northern Syria on Sunday.
[size=45]It is not clear at this early stage who will succeed him. President Donald Trump said in a tweet on Tuesday that the number one candidate to succeed Baghdadi has been eliminated by US forces. "It is very likely that he was at the top of his list of successors, but he was also killed," he said. Without mentioning his name.[/size]
[size=45]"The president was referring to ISIS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, who was described by a senior State Department official on Monday as the second most close associate of Baghdadi," a US official told CNN. According to the SDF, he was killed in a different place in northern Syria and not in the same place as al-Baghdadi.[/size]
[size=45]While al-Muhajir was considered an important figure in ISIS's media machine, some analysts believe that another person, who has almost three titles or nicknames, is the likely successor to Baghdadi. Several ISIS internal documents refer to him as Haji Abdullah. The State Department's Armed Groups Monitoring Division, which provides rewards for information about the presence of ISIS leaders, refers to him as Prince Mohammed Saeed Abdul Rahman Al-Mawla, better known as Haji Abdullah. In August, this section offered a $ 5 million reward for information leading to his arrest, which he described as Baghdadi's "possible successor."[/size]
[size=45]According to the US State Department, Mawla became a cleric in al-Qaeda before he later became an Islamic State. During 2014, Mawla helped enact and justify the kidnapping, murder and sale of members of the Yazidi ethnic community in northern Iraq, the State Department said.[/size]
[size=45]Analysts believe many Yazidis live in an area close to Mawla's residential area in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar. In 2014, after ISIS captured Tal Afar and Mosul, it took thousands of Yazidi women and children as slaves, with thousands more Yezidi men killed, in what the United Nations called genocide.[/size]
[size=45]Other details about the background of the Sire are all opaque. Daniel Renieri, a counterterrorism expert, noted that he was "the MP who has been able to spend years since 2010 and is out of sight." While other ISIS leaders have been sacked or killed in the battle, he has become one of the organization's biggest ideological ideologues.[/size]
[size=45]The chances of running for the job were also supported by a relative of al-Baghdadi, Muhammad Ali Sajat, who is being held in Iraq during an interview with an Arab satellite TV station. Asked if he might be a successor to Baghdadi, he said: "Yes, I think so."[/size]
[size=45]In a previous interview with another prominent detainee in Iraq, Ismail al-Ithawi, when asked who was expected to succeed Baghdadi, al-Ithawi said: “I think Baghdadi's main candidate is Haji Abdullah Qardash. He is one of the most close in Baghdadi's entourage.[/size]
[size=45]According to researcher Ayman al-Tamimi, who specializes in armed groups and ISIS, this interview provides the most important evidence that Abdullah Qardash is another nickname for Mawla.[/size]
[size=45]Tamimi also referred to an internal ISIS document from 2018 in which an ISIS operative wrote a letter to Mawla to consult him on an intellectual dispute. The letter in which the title, Haji Abdullah, was mentioned repeatedly referred to him as Baghdadi's “deputy”.[/size]
[size=45]However, anyone who will take over the organization again will be like Baghdadi devoting most of his time to alienating all the group's enemies, whether it is deserts in western Iraq or elsewhere in northern Syria. As with Baghdadi and Osama bin Laden, he will have difficulty communicating with other members of the organization, realizing that his spies are always the weakest lines of communication.[/size]
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