Sept.

20, 2018


Editors’ Note [Dec. 18, 2020]: In 2018, The Times released a 12-
part narrative podcast series called “Caliphate” on the Islamic
State terrorist group and its operations. While parts of the series
involved a broad examination of the group’s tactics and influence,
multiple episodes were driven primarily by the confessional tale
of a Canadian man of Pakistani origin who called himself Abu
Huzayfah and claimed to have been a member of the Islamic State
who had taken part in killings in Syria.
During the course of reporting for the series, The Times
discovered significant falsehoods and other discrepancies in
Huzayfah’s story. The Times took a number of steps, including
seeking confirmation of details from intelligence officials in the
United States, to find independent evidence of Huzayfah’s story.
The decision was made to proceed with the project but to include
an episode, Chapter 6, devoted to exploring major discrepancies
and highlighting the fact-checking process that sought to verify
key elements of the narrative.
In September — two and a half years after the podcast was
released — the Canadian police arrested Huzayfah, whose real
name is Shehroze Chaudhry, and charged him with perpetrating a
terrorist hoax. Canadian officials say they believe that Mr.
Chaudhry’s account of supposed terrorist activity is completely
fabricated. The hoax charge led The Times to investigate what
Canadian officials had discovered, and to re-examine Mr.
Chaudhry’s account and the earlier efforts to determine its
validity. This new examination found a history of
misrepresentations by Mr. Chaudhry and no corroboration that he
committed the atrocities he described in the “Caliphate” podcast.
As a result, The Times has concluded that the episodes of
“Caliphate” that presented Mr. Chaudhry’s claims did not meet
our standards for accuracy.
From the outset, “Caliphate” should have had the regular
participation of an editor experienced in the subject matter. In
addition, The Times should have pressed harder to verify Mr.
Chaudhry’s claims before deciding to place so much emphasis on
one individual’s account. For example, reporters and editors could
have vetted more thoroughly materials Mr. Chaudhry provided for
evidence that he had traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State,
and pushed harder and earlier to determine what the authorities
knew about him. It is also clear that elements of the original fact-
checking process were not sufficiently rigorous: Times journalists
were too credulous about the verification steps that were
undertaken and dismissive of the lack of corroboration of
essential aspects of Mr. Chaudhry’s account.
In the absence of firmer evidence, “Caliphate” should have been
substantially revised to exclude the material related to Mr.
Chaudhry. The podcast as a whole should not have been produced
with Mr. Chaudhry as a central narrative character.
A fuller description of what The Times has learned about Mr.
Chaudhry was published on Dec. 18, 2020.

In the war on terror, who is it that we’re really fighting?

“Caliphate” is a documentary audio series from The New York
Times that follows Rukmini Callimachi, who covers terrorism for
The Times, on her quest to understand ISIS. For more information
about the series, visit nytimes.com/caliphate.
The following is a transcript of Chapter 8. The episode was
released on June 7, 2018. The portions in italics were recorded
outside of a studio or excerpted from archival tape.
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The Briefcase
Andy Mills: Can I get you to tell us what day it is and what we’re
up to?
Rukmini Callimachi: It’s Sunday, July 9. We slept in what
appears to be an abandoned villa here on the outskirts of western
Mosul, as we wait for our embed with the counterterrorism
division of the Iraqi security force.
[Sound of car failing to start]
[Chatter]
Callimachi: And we were supposed to take off at 8. We’re now
sitting in the armored car that they provided for us, but [laughs]
the armored car is not — the armored car is not turning on. And
so we have a gaggle of men that are poring over the hood, trying
to figure out how to get this car, this car started.
Mills: There’s a rumor that it may just be out of gas.
Callimachi: There’s a rumor they’re just maybe out of gas.
Great. Great.
[Sound of car failing to start]
Callimachi: Hawk, is it just out of diesel?
[Music]
Mills: Chapter 8. “The Briefcase.” Eventually ——
Callimachi: Mhmm.
Mills: After several hours ——
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: We get a working car.
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: Time to go?
Callimachi: So we suit up. We put on our flak jackets. We put on
——
Mills: This one’s mine.
[Zipper sound]
Callimachi: Our helmets.
Mills: Should I bring this — should I bring this too?
Callimachi: I’ve got several trash bags.
[Car door closes]
Mills: It’s me and you again, eh?
Hawk: Of course.
Callimachi: We’re with the elite counterterrorism force of the
Iraqi Army. We have their permission to go and collect
documents.
Mills: What’s the plan?
Hawk: This is very dangerous.
Callimachi: And we’ve told them that we’re specifically trying to
get to one building.
Hawk: The airstrikes are still there, and the risk of the snipers as
well.
Callimachi: But it’s unclear if it’s going to be safe enough to go
there.
Mills: So there’s a sniper risk, and they’re planning an airstrike?
Hawk: Yes.
Callimachi: In fact, they’ve warned us that we’re driving into an
active war zone.
Mills: So are we now inside Mosul?
Hawk: Ah, this is Mosul. This is western Mosul. This is the main
road leading from Mosul to Baghdad.
Mills: There’s huge chunks missing on the road. Is that, are those
airstrikes?
Hawk: Yeah. They’re all airstrikes or VBIEDs.
Mills: Hawk, could you describe what you see? You’re shaking
your head. What do you mean?
Hawk: I mean — yeah. I’m speechless. As you can see, it’s, like,
just cars that was left of — to be known as cars and debris and
rubble everywhere. I can’t tell where am I now. This is my city. I
don’t know where am I.
Mills: You don’t even recognize it.
Hawk: No, it’s not recognizable.
[Music]
[Seatbelt unbuckles]
Mills: We got into the city.
Callimachi: I think I’m gonna, I’m gonna go out as well.
Mills: O.K., let’s all get out.
[Car door closes]
Mills: We got out of the car.
Callimachi: Yeah.
[Footsteps on rubble]
Mills: What do you see?
Callimachi: Yeah. So, we’re, we’re parked on a narrow street in
western Mosul. The houses all around us have been destroyed.
The windows have been blasted out. Coils of rebar — the gates
and windows of the shops are warped from whatever blast they
experienced. We just opened the doors to the car, and
immediately you could smell the, the stench of dead bodies. We
can’t see them, but you can smell them.
Mills: So next we went to — I don’t even know how you describe
it. It’s kind of like a, a makeshift base?
Callimachi: Basically, the closest military position to where we
are trying to go.
Mills: And inside there were all of these young military men.
Callimachi: They were actually all from the CTS, the
counterterrorism service.
Mills: Right.
Callimachi: And they’re the people that we’re embedded with, so
they invited us in.
Mills: And you started talking with some of them.
Callimachi: Yeah.
[Shouting]
Callimachi: And his rank, please?
Hawk: [Arabic]
Callimachi: The commanders all have the same sort of phone and
sort of iPad that has a map ——
Callimachi: Where is ISIS?
Hawk: That’s ISIS.
Callimachi: This thing. Hang on, let me just take a picture.
Callimachi: That shows in great detail ——
[Camera shutter sound]
Hawk: These are friendly spots.
Callimachi: Where the friendly forces are, and where ISIS is.
Hawk: So this is where we are.
Callimachi: And where’s ——
Callimachi: So the building we were aiming for was actually a
church. This is the place that I knew had been the headquarters of
the Hisba — the religious police, the same unit that Huzayfah
used to be a member of.
Callimachi: And the Hisba building?
Callimachi: And ——
Hawk: The Hisba building is right here.
Callimachi: It’s at that point ——
Hawk: This one. You see? You see?
Callimachi: Same thing. This one. Got it.
Callimachi: That Hawk recognized the scenery. And he went,
“Oh, my God. We’re actually here.”
[Music]
Callimachi: Have these buildings been cleared?
Hawk: [Arabic] He says it’s all clear.
Callimachi: So, the officer who was in charge of this forward
base ——
Mills: Did he say that we’re — he’s going to try and find us
something?
Callimachi: He’s going to try to find us an escort to go to the
Hisba building.
Mills: Yes.
Callimachi: Yes.
Callimachi: He assigned a couple of Iraqi soldiers to escort us as
we were going to go into these buildings to look for documents.
Hawk: If I speak about meters, could be like, four to five hundred
meters.
Callimachi: It would have been, I think, a couple of minutes
walking if there was a road.
[Footsteps on rubble]
Mills: Currently walking in each other’s footsteps, just like we
were trained.
Callimachi: But we had to clamber over all of this rubble.
Mills: Rukmini and Hawk and I, climbing over what looks like
used to be a taxi.
Callimachi: We were walking on top of doorways, poking
through windows, curving around the pillars of homes that had
buckled.
[Footsteps and clanging]
Mills: Rukmini’s now climbing over pieces of what was once a tin
roof, I believe. And there’s a ——
[Sound of fighting in the distance]
Mills: Hey. Smoke — you see this?
Callimachi: Smoke where? [Expletive].
Mills: So, on this walk that we took towards the church ——
[Sound of fighting in the distance]
Mills: It became very apparent just how close we were in
proximity to the front lines.
Callimachi: I mean, in a way, hearing those sounds was
reassuring to me, because it just signaled that we were where we
needed to be.
Mills: What are you doing right now?
Callimachi: I’m trying to get out some trash bags. We’re about to
go into the building.
Callimachi: Finally, we got to the church, and ——
Mills: Could you just tell me real quick, before we walk in, what
sort of things you’re hoping to find?
Callimachi: We know that they kept careful, very detailed and
meticulous records of the people they arrested and the Sharia
punishments that they meted out against them. And obviously,
that would just be the gold mine, if we’re able to find that.
Callimachi: The second we walked in, even though it was
destroyed ——
Callimachi: So look, this is Al-Naba.
Callimachi: I knew right away that this had been an ISIS base.
Callimachi: This is the ISIS weekly newsletter.
Callimachi: They had graffitied the pillars and other walls with
the word “baqiya.”
Mills: What does that, what does that mean?
Callimachi: “Baqiya wa tatamaddad,” which means “remaining
and expanding.” And this is their slogan. This is — think of it as
“ISIS forever.”
[Footsteps on rubble]
Callimachi: Andy, look at this. Bunch of, bunch of computers,
hard drives yanked out.
Callimachi: We found ——
Mills: Well, this way, just to warn you, there’s a couple of dead
ISIS right — they’re right in the door, and they’re rotten.
Callimachi: We found two bodies that the Iraqi military said
were dead ISIS fighters.
Mills: Yes, to get past them we’re gonna have to walk over their
bodies, so just ——
Callimachi: Like, seriously, walk over them?
Mills: Yeah.
Callimachi: I mean, I hate to sound clinical about this, but to me
it was one more confirmation that we’re in the right place. This is
a place that ISIS fighters were in, that they protected and that they
died for.
Mills: He wants us to go this way?
Mills: So, searching for documents, what’s the first thing that
you’re looking for?
Unidentified Speaker: Where are you going?
Callimachi: So, I’m looking for the areas that are related to
papers. I’m looking for furniture, desks, filing cabinets, shelves,
closets. I’m looking on the floors.
Callimachi: Hey, Hawk? I wanted to ask Major Hassan if it’s
possible to pick up that backpack that’s over there?
Callimachi: We saw a pink backpack.
Hawk: It’s filled with C-4.
Mills: Is it safe?
Callimachi: It’s a pink bag that has a kitten on it, and it’s filled
with C-4, which is the explosive that they use in their homemade
rockets.
Mills: The backpack is filled? Don’t bring it over.
Callimachi: In that same area, there were shell casings, remnants
of weaponry. Off to the side, there was a hole in the ground that
looked like it was a tunnel. We know that ISIS uses tunnels as a
way to go underneath a building and come out into another one,
so that they avoid detection from the air.
[Clanging]
Hawk: [Arabic]
Mills: Hawk has found an old sword.
Callimachi: And we found one of the swords that they used —
for executions, right?
Mills: Executions, yeah.
Hawk: This sword used to behead people.
Callimachi: Seriously?
Hawk: Yes.
Callimachi: We were actually able to pick it up and hold it.
Callimachi: It’s not even sharp.
Hawk: Now it’s not.
Mills: That was a surreal feeling.
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: Rukmini, can you describe what you’re doing?
Callimachi: I’m looking at a notebook here and wondering if I
have the courage to pick it up.
Callimachi: And then we started to find the remnants of their
documents.
Mills: Is that the ISIS logo?
Callimachi: Yup.
Callimachi: And you, on the ground, you picked up a torn piece
of paper. It was from the letterhead of the Hisba.
Mills: You see anything, Rukmini?
Callimachi: We found ——
Callimachi: Yeah, we saw folders in there.
Callimachi: Several binders ——
Callimachi: That were labeled “Diwan al-Hisba,” which means
“the Ministry of the Religious Police” — and this stamp that you
found says the same thing. This is the stamp ——
Callimachi: On their spine, the binders had the logo of the Hisba.
Mills: So, do ——
Callimachi: We’re in the right place, but it’s been searched.
Callimachi: But the binders were empty.
Mills: Uh ——
Unidentified Speaker: Where are we going?
[Metal creaking]
Callimachi: And what this place looked like was the scene of a
crime that had already been searched. I don’t know who searched
it before us. Did ISIS come through here and take away all of
these records because they knew that they would reveal the
accounting of the various war crimes they committed? Was it
another security force that was here before the one that we were
with? But no matter what, the records that I was looking for —
they were gone.
[Footsteps on rubble]
[Sound of fighting in the distance]
Mills: Still gunfire. It’s definitely a mortar.
Callimachi: And at a certain point ——
Callimachi: Are we in a hurry to get back?
Callimachi: People were starting to feel nervous about how much
time we had spent in this area, that we had exposed ourselves for
too long.
[Sound of fighting in the distance]
Mills: I could go.
Callimachi: You could what? [Laughs] You ——
Mills: I’m saying I could go.
Mills: I was definitely one of those people who was feeling
nervous.
Hawk: Let’s move out.
Callimachi: So we began to walk back, and two of our colleagues
have already walked off. And you and I and Hawk are walking in
a smaller little group a little bit further behind. And suddenly
Hawk calls out, because he recognized that off to the side of the
church — I hadn’t even noticed it — there was a cluster of
buildings. And he recognized them, because he had worked as a
translator for American forces. He was outed by a neighbor, and
he was hauled off to see one of the qadis, the religious judge, in
this building, who threw him in jail for basically, I think, a night.
Hawk: So the desk was here as I entered. There was a desk, and
there was another cushion here.
Callimachi: And so, we managed to make our way through, you
know, the debris there, and we entered the room.
Hawk: That’s what he wears. He used to wear this.
Mills: This is the judge’s robe?
Hawk: He put, like, a gown over his head.
Callimachi: And the qadi’s robes were still hanging. The robe
that he was wearing when he was judging people like Hawk.
Hawk remembers sitting in that very chair.
Hawk: He wrote my name in his laptop. If the laptop is still here,
I would have seen, you would have seen it — my, my name.
Callimachi: We go through his desk. We see that the drawers
have already been pulled out. And Hawk just took off, and, like,
ended up going into kind of the next set of rooms, and the next set
of rooms.
Mills: How many more buildings do you wanna look at around
here?
Callimachi: And suddenly ——
Callimachi: Hey, Hawk?
Callimachi: He came walking out ——
Callimachi: Oh, ho, wow. Look at this.
Callimachi: With a briefcase.
[Music]
Callimachi: He was patting it down to try to get the dust off of it,
and he unzipped the main zipper. And suddenly I saw IDs,
financial reports, receipts. And I recognized very quickly the
Islamic State logo on those papers: just enough to realize that this
was something really significant.
[Clattering]
Mills: I remember this moment because it actually was so hot,
and we had been out in the sun for so long, that the cable on my
microphone was melting.
Callimachi: Right.
Mills: The microphone was going in and out, and I was fidgeting
with it as you guys were over there talking. And then, it was in
this moment that the New York Times push alert came through.
Mills: The New York — The New York Times just said the Iraqi
government claims Mosul has been taken.
Mills: Saying that the Iraqi government was claiming victory in
Mosul.
Callimachi: Right.
[Music]
Mills: Can you just explain what you’re doing as you do it?
Callimachi: So, we’re putting a towel down because there’s
going to be a lot of crap that is in this, in this trash bag of stuff
that we’re bringing out. It’s really dirty.
Mills: O.K., so you and Hawk and I, we get back to our hotel in a
safe part of Iraq.
Callimachi: All right. I need you guys to take off your shoes.
Mills: We grab one of the garbage bags with some of the stuff
that we’ve gotten in Mosul ——
Callimachi: Yes.
Mills: Including this briefcase.
Callimachi: Right.
Mills: Can you just walk me through? Like, what are the steps
that you take next?
Callimachi: Sure.
Callimachi: Got gloves? Where are my gloves?
Callimachi: So, we put on surgical gloves ——
Mills: Right here.
Callimachi: Thanks, man.
Hawk: Can I go like this?
Callimachi: And we empty out the contents of the garbage bag.
Callimachi: Oof. God, it smells bad.
Mills: How would you describe that smell?
Callimachi: How would you describe — [sniffs]. It’s like what
you would smell if you were in an airstrike and a building was
falling around you.
Callimachi: And we start making piles.
[Music]
Callimachi: O.K. We’re gonna make a pile of important and
unimportant, O.K.?
Callimachi: What we’re seeing right away is ——
Callimachi: This is — I think this must be the zakat that this
person’s paying.
Hawk: Probably.
Callimachi: Yeah.
Hawk: Important?
Callimachi: Important, yeah.
Callimachi: There are books of receipts.
Hawk: Good guys.
Callimachi: There are financial reports.
Hawk: They are so honest. They are taking receipts. [Explicit].
Callimachi: There are memos.
Hawk: This is some notes.
Callimachi: Ooh, how exciting.
Callimachi: There are letters on ISIS stationery between different
ministries of ISIS.
Hawk: [Arabic] And this is, like, attorney general.
Callimachi: Attorney general.
Callimachi: Having detailed discussions about aspects of the
economy.
Hawk: [Arabic] This is very new.
Callimachi: This is basically evidence of a bunch of departments
I didn’t know existed.
Callimachi: There are people’s IDs.
Callimachi: Keys. I have so many ISIS keys.
Callimachi: There are CD-ROMs. And eventually, everything
that we have is going to be translated. And the best part is going
to be sent to specialists, who are going to help us mine every bit
of the information we have got.
Mills: Can tell me how you feel right now?
Callimachi: I’m feeling really excited. I’m feeling, like, giddy,
you know?
Mills: I will admit that I have never felt more like a detective
finding clues.
Callimachi: Like on ISIS CSI. [Laughs] Right?
Callimachi: You know, when I’m holding these documents, the
thing that’s never far from my mind is that if we hadn’t retrieved
these very papers from the rubble, they very likely would have
been destroyed and would have been lost forever.
Mills: I’m sorry to slow you down, but will you just describe what
the bag looks like?
Callimachi: So it’s a black laptop bag that’s ——
Mills: So when it comes to the briefcase specifically ——
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: What made it so special?
Callimachi: So important — yeah.
Hawk: Each pocket at a time.
[Paper rustling]
Callimachi: So the documents we’re pulling out of the briefcase
——
Hawk: He’s like some kind of accountant or something.
Callimachi: Help confirm and flesh out the reporting I’ve already
been doing up until this point.
Mills: Hawk, will you just describe how it looks?
Hawk: It looks pretty organized. I mean, this is like — Excel?
Excel kind of worksheet, spreadsheet.
Callimachi: And that is, that ISIS is a self-sustaining organism
when it comes to its own finances. Much like the United States
makes money from a million different sources, so, too, ISIS had a
diversified portfolio. They were making money from the fields
that they taxed, from the seeds that they sold to people, from the
flour that went to mills.
Mills: Mhmm.
Callimachi: From the traders who were being taxed as they were
moving flour from one city to another, and from the merchants
who stocked those commodities, who had to pay income taxes
once a year.
[Music]
Mills: And why is that, specifically, important to know?
Callimachi: So one of the major ways that America and
European governments tried to combat terrorism since 9/11 was
to try to starve these groups of cash. In the early years of Al
Qaeda, the way they did this is they would look for their external
donors, and they would freeze their bank accounts. But there are
no major donors in the ecosystem that is ISIS, because the group
is self-financed. There’s no bank account in Saudi Arabia that you
can freeze that would have any meaningful impact on the ledger
of the Islamic State. There’s not even a single source of weapons
that you can cut off, because according to one of the other
documents we found in the briefcase ——
Hawk: The faculty of military manufacturing and development.
Callimachi: Oh, my God! Oh, my God, this is amazing.
Callimachi: They had a division inside of their military that was
dedicated to the manufacturing of weaponry.
Callimachi: I’m kissing this piece of paper! I’m kissing this piece
of paper!
Hawk: Oh, come on. Come on.
Mills: The piece of paper that Hawk will only touch with gloves,
you just kissed.
Callimachi: O.K. We’re gonna create a very important pile.
We’re gonna put that ——
Hawk: Very, very important pile.
Callimachi: Yeah. So basically, this is indicating that within the
Islamic State, there’s a unit that is dedicated to manufacturing
and developing weaponry. We’ve assumed that this is there,
because they’re doing them in such a uniform fashion. But this is
it, finally, you know?
Callimachi: This is a group that was hell-bent on being
independent, on being self-sufficient, on relying on no one.
[Sound of pages flipping]
[Music]
Hawk: This guy who — the owner of this bag ——
Callimachi: And in this briefcase ——
Hawk: Was some guy, some head guy. Some big guy — big shot.
Callimachi: We found transactions totaling $19 million. We
actually took the time to add up the receipts and invoices that we
found inside, and that’s what we came up with: 19 million, right?
So we knew that whoever owned this briefcase had to be
important.
Mills: Like, a high-up, like, a general or something like that?
Callimachi: Not a general. A bureaucrat.
Callimachi: So, unlike the United States, which went into Iraq in
2003 and immediately dissolved the Baathist state of Saddam
Hussein, and essentially threw all of these people, these
administrators, into unemployment, and created the conditions
that eventually led to the rise of terror groups in Iraq, ISIS did the
exact opposite. They came to Mosul, and they built their state on
the back of the one that already existed.
Mills: Hmm.
Callimachi: And so, the civil servants who had worked in the
Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Sanitation and the
Electricity Division, they kept doing the same job that they had
done before.
Callimachi: To Brother Abu Ja — sorry. This guy ——
Hawk: Brother Abu Jarrah.
Callimachi: He’s this guy.
Mills: So we know that whoever it was who owned this briefcase,
they worked as a bureaucrat.
Callimachi: That’s right. And beyond that, what we’re able to
figure out from looking at the papers ——
Hawk: So you see? It’s all the same name.
Callimachi: Is that the person’s name is Abu Jarrah. We’re
seeing paper after paper signed with this name. But that doesn’t
actually help us identify who this human being is, because Abu
Jarrah is a code name. It’s a kunya, it’s a nom de guerre, and the
whole purpose of having a kunya is to hide the identity of the
person who’s using it.
Callimachi: O.K., so this guy maybe — O.K., he has ——
Callimachi: But in the briefcase, in one of the folds of the
briefcase, we pulled out a color Xerox of an ID belonging to a
man named Yasir Issa.
Callimachi: [Laughs] Awesome.
Callimachi: You see his picture. It’s a man with a receding
hairline, with a bulbous nose, bushy eyebrows and kind of a
Saddam Hussein-style mustache. And we then pull out the
marriage certificate of Yasir Issa.
Hawk: Important?
Callimachi: I’m putting this in important.
Callimachi: But finally, the document that we pull out that seals
the deal is Yasir Issa’s pledge of allegiance to ISIS.
[Music]
Callimachi: I’m going to put that in important.
Callimachi: We see that in 2014, not long after Mosul fell, in
Mosul, he pledges allegiance to the Islamic State. It has his full
name, and it says that his kunya, or his nom de guerre, is Abu
Jarrah.
Mills: Hmm.
Callimachi: So we now know Yasser Issa is Abu Jarrah, O.K.?
And Abu Jarrah is the administrator of the trade division.
Mills: So now you know his job title.
Callimachi: Well, now we know his job title.
Mills: You’ve got, you’ve got his marriage — so you’ve got his
real name.
Callimachi: We’ve got his real name.
Mills: You know his wife’s name.
Callimachi: We know his wife’s name.
Mills: You know his title.
Callimachi: We know when he got married.
[Phone rings]
Callimachi: Hang on, let’s put that — maybe we can find this
guy.
Hawk: O.K.
Mills: What do you do next?
Callimachi: Right. So now that we have all this information,
we’re looking for somebody who might have interacted with him.
And in the briefcase, we found a whole bunch of documents from
local mills in northern Iraq, and especially from the Mosul area.
Callimachi: Does he remember an ISIS guy — does he remember
an ISIS guy called Abu Jarrah?
Callimachi: And so Hawk and I ended up driving from mill to
mill, trying to find people who might remember a man named
Abu Jarrah.
Unidentified Speaker: Abu Jarrah? [Arabic]
Callimachi: And the employees of the mills and the silos and the
granaries ——
Callimachi: And, uh, thin?
Callimachi: The very people who had dealt with ISIS leadership
——
Callimachi: Thin or fat?
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Callimachi: They recognized his name.
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Hawk: He was, like, average.
Callimachi: Average?
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Callimachi: And they knew him specifically as one of ISIS’
money men.
Hawk: He says they would go to the accounting division.
Callimachi: He was a person who was ——
Hawk: Because he was an employee.
Callimachi: Ah.
Callimachi: Deputed by ISIS to come and collect cash.
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Hawk: “We were very careful not to blend with them. We would
keep our distances. The more keep away from them, the more
safer you are.”
Callimachi: They said he was very taciturn, really kind of just
business as always. And one of the people who interacted the
most with him, he said ——
Hawk: Oh, a laptop.
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic] Laptop.
Hawk: He thinks it’s a laptop.
Callimachi: A laptop? Laptop briefcase. Amazing.
Callimachi: He always had a black laptop briefcase with him.
[Music]
Callimachi: So on his ID, there’s a couple of clues that led us to
be able to identify his address. It lists the name of his parents, his
mother and his father. And crucially, it lists his tribal affiliation.
Mills: Hmm.
Callimachi: He’s from the Al-Aswadi tribe ——
Mills: O.K.
Callimachi: Which is an important tribe from central Iraq. Using
those clues, we were able, through our colleagues in the Baghdad
bureau, to track down his family in a suburb of Samarra.
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Mills: So this was after I had already flown back to the States,
when you and Hawk and our bureau manager, Abu Malik — you
guys actually went to the house of the owner of the briefcase.
Callimachi: Right.
Unidentified Speakers: [Arabic]
Callimachi: He used to what? He used to do what?
Hawk: He used to ——
Unidentified Speakers: [Arabic]
Callimachi: So we walk in, and first of all, it had all of the
trappings of this aristocratic house. It — it’s enormous high
ceilings, chandelier in every single room, beautiful tapestries in
this enormous, like, banquet hall sort of space.
Unidentified Speakers: [Arabic]
Callimachi: He said what? He said that ——
Hawk: He said that’s the guy.
Callimachi: That’s the guy.
Mills: Who’s there?
Callimachi: Uh ——
Hawk: [Arabic]
Callimachi: And he’s the older brother or younger?
Hawk: [Arabic]
Callimachi: It’s the family of the owner of the briefcase. It’s his
uncle, it’s his brothers, it’s several of his cousins.
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Callimachi: Basically, a lot of men.
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Callimachi: And they immediately begin playing on that. They
raise their voices. They’re angry at our suggestion that Abu Jarrah
was a member of ISIS. And they say to us: “How can this even be
possible? This is the scion of an important family. He had all of
his needs taken care of. He had no need for money.”
Mills: Why is it you think they would be pointing to their money
in this way?
Callimachi: There’s almost an accepted hypothesis — I would
call it a cliché, or even a meme — that members of ISIS have
joined for material gain, that they did it for the money.
Mills: ’Cause they were poor, and these new people came in ——
Callimachi: That these were — they were poor, they were
shepherds, they were these kind of hapless people who had no
other outlet, and the big bad terrorist group comes along and
basically buys them off.
Mills: Right.
Callimachi: I have found that that hypothesis is mostly hollow,
and if you dig even slightly below the surface, you’ll find that
people that joined did so because they had some ideological
affinity for them.
Hawk: Yep.
Callimachi: Yep.
Hawk: And he was employed by the directorate of the agriculture
here in Samarra, Samarra.
Callimachi: Up to this point, they don’t know that I have the
records in my backpack showing exactly how Abu Jarrah joined
this terror group. And as I mention that, they begin to tell us a
story that goes, I think, a long way to explaining why this young
man would have joined the Islamic State.
[Music]
Callimachi: The family describes to us that soon after the U.S.
invasion in 2003, in the middle of the night, their door was beaten
down by U.S. soldiers who came in with their, with their muddy
boots, and dragged the elderly patriarch of the family, Abu
Jarrah’s grandfather, out of his bedroom, and took him away to be
questioned because of an I.E.D. that had gone off on a nearby
road.
Mills: You’re saying that they, they blamed him for
masterminding it or something?
Callimachi: They blamed the grandfather for having planted a
landmine that took the lives of several U.S. Marines. As it turned
out, he must not have been guilty, because the family told us that
he was released the next day.
[Music]
Callimachi: This is a wealthy, affluent family that is used to
people kowtowing to them, that is used to people taking their
shoes off when they come in, that is used to getting flattered, you
know, getting gifts, getting talked to in a polite way.
Mills: Mhmm.
Callimachi: And this was an incredibly humiliating incident. And
one of the details that stuck with the family that they told me
about is the grandfather was actually an invalid. He walked with
crutches. And when the soldiers came in, they screamed at him to,
you know, to follow them. He didn’t understand what was going
on. And as it was, he couldn’t walk. And so they grabbed him by
his arms and literally pulled him down the stairs and then up the
driveway. The family remembers his feet bobbing and hitting the
stairs ——
Mills: Oh, wow.
Callimachi: As he was going down.
Mills: Mhmm.
Callimachi: And then seeing him dragged through the dirt, up
their inclined driveway, as neighbors came out to gawk.
Callimachi: Was Yasir a small boy when this happened? Or how
old was he when this happened?
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Callimachi: It was bad enough that the American commander in
the area came and apologized to the family. And we got that
account not just from the family but also from the police station
up the street.
Unidentified Speakers: [Arabic]
Callimachi: So, um ——
Unidentified Speakers: [Arabic]
Callimachi: At a certain point, we hear a woman’s voice from the
hallway.
Unidentified Speakers: [Arabic]
Callimachi: And ——
Callimachi: She’s the mother?
Callimachi: It’s explained to me that this is the mother of Abu
Jarrah. She’s very curious about what’s happening because she
understands that we’re talking about her son. But because this is a
conservative family, she did not feel that it was appropriate for
her to join us. But she has her ear to the door and hears something
that upsets her, and suddenly, she’s yelling through the door.
Callimachi: She’s upset? She thinks we’re accusing him? Yeah?
Tell — address her directly, and say ——
Callimachi: So what we did is, Abu Malik invited the mother
——
Unidentified Speakers: [Arabic]
Callimachi: To come with me and with him and, and Hawk to a
table that was essentially at the other end of this cavernous parlor.
Callimachi: I’ve come all this way not because I want to taint her
son, but because I want to try to get the truth. Please tell her this.
Yeah?
Abu Malik: [Arabic]
Callimachi: And we sat across from her at this beautiful teak
table covered in lace. I remember that there was a, you know, a
crystal bowl in the middle. And one by one, we started pulling out
the documents.
[Sound of paper rustling]
Callimachi: And then she started ——
[Sobbing]
Callimachi: Habibti, please. Please, please, please.
[Music]
Callimachi: Hitting her own face with her palm.
Callimachi: It’s O.K. It’s O.K. It’s O.K.
[Sobbing]
Callimachi: And then very soon after that, she started weeping.
Yassir Issa Hassan’s Mother: [Arabic]
Malik: “This is not how I brought him up.”
Callimachi: Of course. Of course. Yeah. I know. Yeah. Yeah.
Mother: [Arabic]
Malik: “I was afraid. I was afraid, just in case one of the people
would wash his brain. And that’s what happened.”
Mother: [Arabic]
Malik: “I was afraid from the bad friends.”
Callimachi: She had concerns about the people he was hanging
out with when ISIS took over.
Callimachi: Before he left in 2014, did he show any extremist
tendencies?
Callimachi: And then the second thing she said is ——
Mother: [Arabic]
Callimachi: Of all of my sons, he is the one who took the
humiliation of his grandfather the worst.
Mother: [Arabic]
Callimachi: Yeah. It’s O.K. It’s O.K. It’s O.K. Yeah. Yeah.
Malik: [Arabic]
Callimachi: Yeah. Tell her — Abu Malik, tell her I cover ISIS. I
have — I don’t know how many mothers I have spoken to. O.K.?
Tell her it’s not her fault, O.K.?
Callimachi: And here is where you see the Catch-22 of using
military power to try to address terrorism. We know that the U.S.
invasion created Abu Jarrahs, created people, like this young man,
who were humiliated, who were angry, and who turned that anger
into affiliation with this terror group. And it’s because of that very
phenomenon that the Obama administration put off the eventual
intervention that only reached Mosul in the fall of 2016, because
they wanted local forces to lead the fight. They didn’t want to
have U.S. troops on the ground, fearing that this would just
perpetuate the cycle. But if you don’t use military might, what
you have is the rise of Mosul.
Mills: So, both avenues, in different ways, can lead to ——
Callimachi: The further spawning of this group, right. The world
is divided into the interventionist camp and the pacifist camp.
And what I have seen through my reporting is the intervention
leads to the Abu Jarrahs. The non-intervention, leaving the Syrian
civil war to drag on for years, leads to Abu Huzayfahs.
[Music]
Mills: So, where is Abu Jarrah now?
Callimachi: I don’t know. I repeatedly asked the family where he
is, and although they were very clear in saying that they knew that
he’s still alive — which led me to think that they must be talking
to him — they were incredibly vague about his whereabouts now,
going so far as to say that they have no contact with him, they’re
not sure where he’s at, etc. I mean, for all I know, he could have
been upstairs the whole time that we were talking. I mean,
regardless of whether or not he really was upstairs, what we do
know is that thousands of members — thousands — have
managed to escape. They shaved off their beards, they cut off
their hair, they changed their clothes, they slipped into refugee
camps, they managed to get back into Europe. And they’re out
there.
[Music]
Callimachi: But what we also know is that some of them were
captured.
Unidentified Speakers: [Arabic]
Callimachi: Why are they tying his wrists?
Hawk: They don’t feel comfortable with him.
Callimachi: Do you think that’s necessary, Hawk?
Hawk: Sorry?
Callimachi: Do you think that’s necessary?
Hawk: Yes.
Callimachi: O.K.
[Music]