Izzat Ibrahim ad Douri

Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri was an Iraqi politician and army field marshal. He served as Vice Chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council until the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and was regarded as the closest advisor and deputy under President Saddam Hussein. He led the Iraqi insurgent group Naqshbandi Army. Ad-Douri was the most high-profile Ba'athist official to successfully evade capture after the invasion of Iraq, and was the king of clubs in the infamous most-wanted Iraqi playing cards. Ad-Douri continued to lead elements of the Iraqi insurgency such as the Naqshbandi Army against the then-occupation forces and waged an insurgency against the current regime in Baghdad. Following the execution of Saddam Hussein on 30 December 2006, ad-Douri was confirmed as the new leader of the banned Iraqi Ba'ath Party on 3 January 2007. Ad-Douri was reportedly killed in action —along with his nine bodyguards —on 17 April 2015 in a large-scale military operation by Shiite militias and Iraqi forces near the Al-Alaas oil fields in Hemreen east of Tikrit. However, the following month the Ba'ath party’s TV station released an audio recording by him referring to contemporary events and distancing himself from Isis. ² Ad-Douri died of a heart attack on 25 October 2020. Ad-Douri was born to a Sunni Muslim family in Ad-Dawr, near Tikrit. He joined the Iraqi Ba'ath Party in 1958, the same year he graduated from the Iraqi Military Academy. He participated in the 1963 and 1968 coups that brought the Ba'athists to power. He became a member of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council in 1969 and was appointed as the vice chairman in 1979, when Saddam Hussein became the president. He was also the deputy secretary of the Regional Command of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, the highest decision-making body in the country. ¹² Ad-Douri was one of Saddam's most loyal and trusted aides, and was involved in many of his political and military decisions. He played a key role in the Iran–Iraq War, the Al-Anfal Campaign, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and the 1991 uprisings in Iraq. He was also in charge of the northern front during the Iraq War in 2003, and managed to escape capture by the US-led coalition forces. He became the leader of the Naqshbandi Army, a Sunni insurgent group that fought against the US occupation and the Iraqi government. He allied with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in 2014, when they captured Mosul and Tikrit, but later broke away from them due to ideological differences. He continued to lead the resistance against the Iraqi authorities until his death in 2020. ¹²⁴