In a surprise development involving the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, earlier today security officials announced that the Lebanese army had captured the wife and daughter of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as they crossed from Syria nine days ago. According to Reuters, the woman was identified as Saja al-Dulaimi, an Iraqi, by a Lebanese security official and a senior political source. The Lebanese newspaper As-Safir reported she had been detained in coordination with "foreign intelligence."
The official spin is clear: in Reuters' words [6], "the arrest is a blow to Baghdadi and could be used as a bargaining chip against his group, which has captured many foreign, Iraqi and Syrian prisoners and declared a caliphate in territory it has seized in Syria and Iraq." Unless, of course, it isn't, and it merely sets off the ISIS leader even more.
A senior Lebanese security official said Baghdadi's wife had been traveling with one of their daughters, contradicting earlier reports that it was his son. DNA tests were conducted to verify it was Baghdadi's child, the official said.
They were detained in northern Lebanon. Investigators were questioning her at the Lebanese defense ministry. There was no immediate reaction from Islamic State websites.
What is probably more surprising is where al-Dulaimi was coming from: she was one of 150 women released from a Syrian government jail in March as part of a prisoner swap that led to the release of 13 nuns taken captive by al Qaeda-linked militants in Syria, according to media reports at the time.
A source with contacts with Iraqi intelligence said the captured woman was an Iraqi wife of Baghdadi’s, but could not confirm the name. There was cooperation between Iraqi and Lebanese authorities leading up to her capture, the source said.
Then again, since Baghdadi has three wives, two Iraqis and one Syrian, according to tribal sources in Iraq, any leverage that the capture of one of his wives may provide will likely be offset by the dilution of the other two wives who are still out in the wild.
And while Baghdadi's response is still TBD, what is known is that based on an ABC report yesterday, U.S. officials warned military personnel that Islamic State forces may be planning attacks against them in the United States.
A joint intelligence bulletin sent to law enforcement agencies by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security urged members of the U.S. military to erase from their online social media accounts anything would draw attention from "violent extremists," or reveal service members' identity, the news network said.
ABC said the government indicated late Sunday it had obtained intelligence that Islamic State militants, who have taken over parts of Iraq and Syria with the intention of setting up a fundamentalist caliphate, were targeting the United States within its borders.
"The FBI recently received reporting indicating individuals overseas are spotting and assessing like-minded individuals who are willing and capable of conducting attacks against current and former U.S.-based members of the United States military," the bulletin said, according to a Reuters source [7].
Which is to say that someone in the US military complex is surprised that ISIS, which is being hunted down in Syria and Iraq by US "military advisors" on a daily basis, is thinking of retaliating. One can almost see Obama fired Chuck Hegel.
And furthermore, it also seems likely to quite likely that the capture of the immediate familiy of a person portrayed constantly in the media as a bloodthirsty monster, will hardly do much to boost a period of widespread peace and prosperity in the country that was once called Iraq (especially if some 50,000 army members [8]were recently discovered to be "ghosts"). Although stranger things have happened.
