[But countering these
successes are trends that emphasize the daunting challenge still facing the allied
effort to defeat the organization. With thousands of Islamist militant fighters
on the ground in Syria and Iraq seizing new territory faster than the
international coalition arrayed against them can push them back, a meeting in
Paris by coalition members last Tuesday seemed unlikely to reverse the momentum
anytime soon.]
By Eric Schmitt
 |
|
Sources: Non-Islamic
State insurgents, Institute for the Study of War
|
WASHINGTON — American intelligence
agencies have extracted valuable information about the Islamic State’s
leadership structure, financial operations and security measures by analyzing
materials seized during a Delta Force commando raid last month that killed a
leader of the terrorist group in eastern Syria, according to United States
officials.
The information harvested
from the laptops, cellphones and other materials recovered from the raid on May
16 has already helped the United States identify, locate and carry out an
airstrike against another Islamic State leader in eastern Syria, on May 31.
American officials expressed confidence that an influential lieutenant, Abu Hamid,
was killed in the attack, but the Islamic State, which remains resilient, has
not yet confirmed his death.
New insights yielded by
the seized trove — four to seven terabytes of data, according to one official —
include how the organization’s shadowy leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, operates
and tries to avoid being tracked by coalition forces.
Mr. Baghdadi meets
periodically with regional emirs, or leaders, at his headquarters in Raqqa in
eastern Syria. To ensure his safety, specially entrusted drivers pick up each
of the emirs and demand that they hand over their cellphones and any other electronic
devices to avoid inadvertently disclosing their location through tracking by
American intelligence, the officials said.
Wives of the top Islamic
State leaders, including Mr. Baghdadi’s, play a more important role than
previously known, passing information to one another, and then to their
spouses, in an effort to avoid elude electronic intercepts.
“I’ll just say from that
raid we’re learning quite a bit that we did not know before,” a senior State
Department official told reporters in a telephone briefing last week. “Every
single day the picture becomes clearer of what this organization is, how
sophisticated it is, how global it is and how networked it is.”
But countering these
successes are trends that emphasize the daunting challenge still facing the allied
effort to defeat the organization. With thousands of Islamist militant fighters
on the ground in Syria and Iraq seizing new territory faster than the
international coalition arrayed against them can push them back, a meeting in
Paris by coalition members last Tuesday seemed unlikely to reverse the momentum
anytime soon.
The group of 24 ministers
did not embrace any major changes and appeared set to continue on its present
course, even though over the past few weeks Syria’s government lost control of the
strategically important city of Palmyra and the Iraqi government lost control
of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, to the Islamic State, also known as
ISIS, ISIL or Daesh.
And American
counterterrorism officials acknowledge that questions remain about how
effectively even this trove of materials can be exploited, given the nature of
the Islamic State’s secrecy and ability to adapt.
“Daesh remains extremely
resilient, ruthless, and capable of taking the initiative,” Deputy Secretary of
State Antony Blinken said at the conference.
The raid on the
multistory residence of Abu Sayyaf, described by American officials as the
group’s top financial officer, illustrates that American intelligence on
Islamic State leaders is improving. At least one informant deep inside the
group played a crucial role in helping track Abu Sayyaf, said a senior military
official who was briefed on plans for the raid.
Abu Sayyaf’s wife, Umm
Sayyaf, who was captured in the operation, has also provided information to
investigators, one senior American official said.
Defense Secretary Ashton
B. Carter said last month that the killing of Abu Sayyaf dealt a “significant
blow” to the group. The militant leader was said to be involved in the Islamic
State’s kidnap-for-ransom activities and helped direct its oil, gas and financial
operations that raised the funds necessary for the organization to operate.
Since the raid, senior
administration officials and top military officers have dropped only broad
hints about the value of the materials that were scooped up in the predawn operation,
which was carried out after weeks of surveillance from satellite imagery, drone
reconnaissance and electronic eavesdropping, American officials said.
“In the recent raid on
Abu Sayyaf, we collected substantial information on Daesh financial operations,”
John R. Allen, the retired general who now serves as the diplomatic envoy
coordinating the coalition against the Islamic State, told a conference in
Qatar on Wednesday. “And we’re gaining a much clearer understanding of Daesh’s
organization and business enterprise.”
At the Pentagon on
Friday, Lt. Gen. John Hesterman III, the top allied air commander, told reporters
by phone from his headquarters in Qatar that “there is a whole bunch of
targeting that is opening up here, as we gain and learn more about this enemy.”
He did not specifically refer to the raid.
Against this backdrop,
five senior American officials provided additional details about the materials
recovered from the house of Abu Sayyaf, a nom de guerre for a Tunisian militant
whom American authorities have since identified as Fathi ben Awn ben Jildi
Murad al-Tunisi. But these officials did so only on the condition of anonymity
to discuss confidential intelligence assessments.
These officials described
details they said would not necessarily provide any advantage to the Islamic
State, and might even sow fear in their ranks that the United States and its
allies were beginning to crack their shield of secrecy.
Over the past decade in
Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military and intelligence agencies have
developed vast expertise in analyzing materials seized in commando raids,
sometimes quickly enough to generate new raids within a matter of hours.
“We’ve gotten very good
at document exploitation,” said Matthew Levitt, a former Treasury Department
official who is director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and
Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Once they grab
a computer and comb the drives, this moves very quickly.”
Within two weeks of the
raid, American officials were able to use information gathered from the
materials to attack Abu Hamid in the vicinity of Ash Shaddadi, near Hasakah in
northeast Syria. American officials described him as the emir of Shariah and
tribal affairs.
The materials also
revealed new details about how the Islamic State has allocated revenue from oil
production. About half goes to the group’s general operating budget; the
remainder is split roughly between maintaining the oil-field production facilities
and for salaries to the workers, American officials said.
These workers, once
thought possibly to be conscripted locals, are now believed to be salaried
Islamic State employees, thus making them legitimate targets, officials said.
American counterterrorism
analysts have learned new information about the Islamic State’s hierarchy. One
leader, Fadel al-Hayali, also known as Abu Mu’taz, who had been believed to be
the head of the Islamic State’s military council, appears to have played an
even more important role than previously known.
Abu Mu’taz, a former
lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi military intelligence agency of President
Saddam Hussein, led the council of six to nine military commanders who directed
the Islamic State’s military strategy, according to Laith Alkhouri, a senior
analyst at Flashpoint Global Partners, a security consulting firm that tracks
militant websites.
The military council has
a subgroup known as the Security Council, which is in charge of leading Islamic
State assassinations, kidnappings, interrogations and other attacks, Mr.
Alkhouri said. There were reports in November 2014 and again in February that
Abu Mu’taz died in coalition airstrikes but the Islamic State never put out a
confirmation, he said.
Although Abu Sayyaf
himself was not well known, he was important as much for who and what he knew
about the Islamic State’s hierarchy and operations as for his actual job,
American officials and independent analysts said.
“Considering Abu Sayyaf’s
role, he presumably would have been familiar, and in contact, with Abu Mu’taz,
possibly as the point of contact to the central leadership,” Mr. Alkhouri said.
“Abu Sayyaf’s role as financing man is important because he managed large
amounts of money; funds that the central leadership would want to keep tabs
on.”
