Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli (; 25 March 2016), better known as Abu Ali al-Anbari (), was the governor for territories held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria. Considered the ISIL second-in-command (along with Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, his counterpart in Iraq), he was viewed as a potential successor of ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
On 14 May 2014, he was listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S Treasury Department, and on 5 May 2015, the U.S. Department of State announced a reward of up to US$7 million for information leading to his capture or death.
On 25 March 2016, the U.S. Department of Defense announced al-Qaduli’s death as a result of a US Special Operations helicopter gunship raid conducted earlier that week along the Iraq-Syria border.
Names
Abdulrahman Mustafa al-Qaduli used at least seven aliases, including Abu Ali al-Anbari, Abu Ala al-Afri (), Abu Jasim al-Iraqi, Abu Umar Qurdash, Abu Ali Qurdash al-Turkmani, Hajji Iman and al-Dar Islami. The Daily Beast reported that confusion caused by these aliases led Iraqi and American security officials to think that Abu Ali al-Anbari and Abu Ala al-Afri were separate senior ISIL leaders.
Biography
Abdulrahman Mustafa al-Qaduli is believed to have been born in 1957 or 1959 in Al-Hadar, Nineveh, 80 km south of Mosul, to an Iraqi Turkmen family that was Turkified, and were of Arab and Armenian descent. His family was known to be very pious and conservative.
According to his IS biography, he was descended from the Quraysh. Biographical writings by his son, also a jihadist, state that al-Qaduli enrolled in the Iraqi army after completing his studies in sharia at an institute of Tel Afar, fighting in the Iran-Iraq war as a private. During this period, he obtained a degree in Islamic studies at the University of Baghdad in 1982.
After his military service Abu Ali becomes increasingly radicalized. He first taught sharia in the small town of Mujama Barzan. On one occasion he vehemently opposed the organizing of a party at which one of the city's socialites invited Ghajars — an ethnic group closely related to Romanis — renowned for their music and dancing. He was planning on attacking the Ghajars, burning their tents and killing them but he restrained himself to giving very inflammatory sermons. The party was eventually cancelled because of the pressure generated by al-Qaduli's speeches and incitements to violence.
In the mid-1990s, al-Anbari returned to Tal Afar, where he taught in a school and became the imam of a mosque. Tal Afar is a city populated by Shiites and Sunnis. As an imam, al-Anbari violently attacks Shiites, as well as Sufis. He is also beginning to associate with Kurdish jihadists active in the mountains of northern Iraq.
Afghanistan
Al-Qaduli was believed to have travelled to Afghanistan in 1998 and trained with al-Qaeda. It was here he was said to have earned the trust and respect of Osama bin Laden.
Iraq
In 2000, he moved from Afghanistan to the area of Iraqi Kurdistan under control by Ansar al-Islam. He fled to Afghanistan following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, only to return in the summer of 2003 to the Sulaymaniyah province of Iraqi Kurdistan. He soon started his own Islamist insurgent group, Saraya al-Jihad (Squadrons of Jihad or the Jihad Squads), which was active around Tal Afar. During this time he was part of a group along with Abu Muslim al-Turkmani who lead the military training. He later became a member of Ansar al-Islam.
Ansar al-Islam evolved into Jamaat Ansar al-Sunna and Qaduli was a sharia authority in this group. According to his biography, Qaduli was responsible for arranging a meeting between Abu Abdullah al-Shafi'i, leader of Ansar al-Sunnah and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then leader of Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad. The meeting was to discuss a merger, which Shafi declined on the pretense of needing to ask his soldiers. Qaduli pledged allegiance to Zarqawi and most of the members of Ansar al-Sunnah followed him in doing so. Soon after this, he was briefly arrested in late 2003 or early 2004, but was freed after a few months since authorities were not aware of his importance.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq
Following his allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2004, and joining Al-Qaida in Iraq, he was responsible for overseeing the Sharia authorities in northern Iraq and serving as al-Zarqawi's local leader in Mosul.
He is often said that he was one of the founding members of the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC) which was formed by al-Zarqawi in January 2006, but in fact he was elected the leader of the MSC under the pseudonym Abu Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi.