For a generation, al-Qaeda has been the undisputed leader of global jihad. Even as its founder was killed and its leaders forced on the run by drone strikes, it metastasised through affiliates and franchises from Algeria, to Yemen, to Iraq. But one of the hydra's heads is taking on a life of its own.
The pretenders to al-Qaeda's throne, now blitzing through Iraq, have been through more name changes than Prince. Their origins lie in a small Jordanian-led extremist group founded in 1999, which re-branded as al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2004 and again as the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006. Although Americans and Iraqis largely defeated the group by 2008, they picked themselves up.
The shadowy Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became their leader in 2010. He was born in the Iraqi city of Samarra in the early 1970s and studied for a doctorate at the University of Baghdad.
At the time of the US invasion, he was a cleric in his early 30s. He reportedly founded his own armed group, facilitated the flow of foreign fighters from Syria into Iraq and later governed the town of Rawa near the border. He imposed a vicious form of sharia that would become the hallmark of al-Qaeda in Iraq and he quickly rose through the ranks.
Baghdadi was detained as an insurgent by American forces from 2005 to 2009. It might seem surprising that the US released the man who would go on to lead the world's most ambitious terrorist group. But the US was awash with prisoners at that time. Indeed, it was only two years later, in 2011, that the US designated him a terrorist. Throughout this period, Baghdadi assiduously avoided any public declaration of allegiance to al-Qaeda's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.