The terrorist organization Islamic State was born in a prison in Iraq, right in front of the American security services, a senior commander of that group told the British "Guardian". This once young jihadist, with the military nickname Abu Ahmed, arrived ten years ago in Camp Buka, a prison in the south of Iraq, and today he is a high-ranking official of the Islamic State.
He recalls that, like other prisoners, he came to the camp with great fear, but that soon everyone realized that the American prison actually offers an exceptional opportunity.
"We would never have been able to gather like this in Baghdad or anywhere else. It would have been dangerous. Here, not only was it safe, but we were only a few hundred meters away from the Al Qaeda leadership," he says.
It was in Camp Buka that he met Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the current leader of the Islamic State, who is claimed to be the most dangerous terrorist leader in the world. The American occupation which, as he and his ilk believed, was trying to impose a change of government in Iraq in favor of the majority Shia population, to the detriment of the ruling Sunnis, actually encouraged the militant activities of Abu Ahmed and his ilk.
His early role in what would later become the Islamic State has now secured him a senior position in the "reawakened insurgency" that has spilled over its borders into Syria.
He agreed to speak for "The Guardian" only after two years of persuasion and after he himself began to doubt the correctness of ISIL's ideology. Namely, ISIL's brutality began to conflict with its views, which softened over time.
Al-Baghdadi, as the interlocutor of "The Guardian" tells, was initially at a distance from other prisoners who considered him mysterious, while the guards had the impression that he had a calming effect on the environment and turned to him with a request to help resolve the conflict between prisoners.
Al-Baghdadi was arrested by American forces in Fallujah in February 2004, when he was already leading a militant group. Most of the prisoners - 24.000 of them divided into 24 camps - did not even know who Al Baghdadi was.
The prison was run along strict hierarchical lines where the color of the uniform maintained the status of the prisoner. Green was worn by those sentenced to long sentences, red by those who committed crimes in prison, while yellow and orange were for ordinary prisoners.
The small militant group that al-Baghdadi led before his arrival in prison was one of many that arose in the wake of the Sunni insurgency, many of which later fell under the banner of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and then the Islamic State in that country.
"Al Baghdadi was quiet and charismatic. You had the impression that he was an important person. But there were others much more important, frankly, I didn't think he would make it this far. During all this time, the new strategy of building the Islamic State that he led was growing is under the noses of the Americans. If there was no American prison in Iraq, there would be no Islamic State today. Camp Buka was the factory that created us all, built our ideology," says Abu Ahmed.
As time passed, al-Baghdadi found himself at the center of every problem in the prison from where he was released in December 2004. He was well respected by the US forces and, unlike other prisoners, al-Baghdadi was able to go to other camps and visit people .
Prisons became a hotbed of radicalization and all leaders met there regularly. The most important figures in Buka were those close to former Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was recognized as a jihad leader in 2004. Despite his reservations, by 2006, Abu Ahmed, he says, had already become part of the "killing machine" that worked full steam for the next two years. Iraqis, he says, are the most important people in the current Islamic State because they have been preparing for it for years.
"I underestimated al-Baghdadi. And America underestimated the role it played in making him what he is today," he says.
Abu Ahmed is still a member of ISIL, active in the group's operations in Iraq and Syria. And although he admitted in an interview with "Guardian" that he reluctantly stays in her, he still does not want to risk leaving her. Life within the Islamic State means power, money, women and status - all attractive charms for these young men obsessed with it - but it also means killing and dominating a worldview in which Abu Ahmed no longer believes so fervently.
"The biggest mistake I made was joining them. It's not that I don't believe in jihad. I do. But what options do I have? If I leave, I'm dead and so is my family," he says.
His life's journey is similar to many other members of ISIL: first fighting the occupying army, then conflict with an old sectarian enemy, and now war.
"There are others who are not ideologues. People who started in Buka like me. Then everything became much bigger than us and it cannot be stopped. It is beyond the control of any individual, and Al Baghdadi, and anyone in his environment," concludes Abu Ahmed.
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