Abu Suhayb al-Iraqi's Testimony on Ahmad al-Sharaa (Abu Muhammad al-Jowlani)
Continuing on from the testimonies of former Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani and former Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Syria’s president Ahmad al-Sharaa (Abu Muhammad al-Jowlani), this post presents the testimony of ‘Abu Suhayb al-Iraqi,’ an Islamic State figure who served as a deputy of Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi and came to know al-Sharaa inside prison in Iraq. As Abu Bakr’s deputy, Abu Suhayb was sent by him to Syria to provide assistance to al-Sharaa and monitor al-Sharaa’s activities. Per Abu Bakr’s request, Abu Suhayb wrote this testimony about al-Sharaa at the end of March 2013.
A reader, Owen McKenna, who happened to be reading my translation of a biography of Abu Ali al-Anbari, has very plausibly suggested to me that this Abu Suhayb al-Iraqi is in fact Abu Ali al-Anbari, because the details of his biography match with Anbari’s biography (e.g. age and role as Baghdadi’s deputy) and the name ‘Abu Suhayb al-Iraqi’ was the name that Anbari used in his ‘external correspondences’ (i.e. in messages addressed to jihadist leaders and figures outside of Iraq and Syria, which is what this message is given that it was part of an Islamic State of Iraq address to al-Qaeda’s leadership regarding the conduct of Abu Muhammad al-Jowlani). Abu Suhayb’s main points are as follows: