Thread by @DanieleRaineri

Now that the territory under the control of the Islamic State is nominally zero, let’s talk about how Abu Bakr al Baghdadi eludes the impressive security apparatus looking for him everywhere – comments most welcome as usual

We are told that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi sleeps every night in a different place and that he travels inside a simple car with a trusted driver and a couple of other guys – all of them in modern clothes, no electronic devices. I’m not entirely persuaded by this version

This is the closest thing we have if we think about Baghdadi traveling. It’s the vehicle of his second in command, Abu Ali al Anbari, intercepted by US Special Forces in March 2016 near Deir Ezzor

This, for reference, is the car of the leader of Taliban Mullah Mansoor – singled out, tracked and hit by an American drone during a long trip from Iran to Pakistan in May 2016

Another visual reference: Abu Muslim al Turkmani aka Abu Mutaz al Qureshi, deputy of Baghdadi for the whole Iraq, tracked and killed while traveling in a car near Mosul in August 2014 (pic found by Zaid Benjamin)

First of all, I think that the supposed “lonely car” of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi is – at least – preceded five minutes on the same road by another car, scouting for surprises and concentrations of security forces

The scout crew arrives first at destination, checks everything is ok and greenlights the “lonely car”. We have to consider Abu Bakr al Baghdadi has internal enemies too and doesn’t trust at all his men

Then, I’d say another car is tailing five minutes later the “lonely car”, just in case the latter has problems. You don’t want Abu Bakr al Baghdadi stranded on the roadside somewhere in Syria or Iraq

Another reason. Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and his associates in the "lonely car" don’t use phones or other devices. A drone strikes or special forces try to snatch him: the tailing crew arrives minutes later and sees what’s happening or what happened

It’s quite important, because the Islamic State chain of command is supposed to react quickly to the elimination/capture of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. If an authorized vehicle is tailing the Lonely Car, they get reliable news in minutes

Here we can see Abu Ali al Anbari traveling near the Iraqi/Syrian border in 2014, at least two vehicles in the picture. Just keep in mind that territory was under the control of the Islamic State, so circumstances were different. Today every place is supposed to be hostile

This ALLEGEDLY is the convoy of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in Raqqa in February 2014 (can’t remember the source, kept this in an old folder), not so lonely – but again: if true, the city was under control, the drone campaign wasn’t active, conditions were completely different

I guess today the three cars keep enough space between them that observing the road from above – for instance the camera of a drone – you don’t see a convoy, you don’t recognize a pattern, you just see a random sequence of traffic

Here a rare witness speaking about Baghdadi and his deputy Haji Bakr together in a car (!) near Idlib, spring 2013. The golden years that won’t never come back (source: "Present at the creation", Foreign Policy August 2016)

Of course today they wouldn’t hold weapons on their laps and they wouldn’t follow such a predictable pattern five days in a row and they would have a plate. But again, different times and places.

Baghdadi travels with “a couple of loyalists”? I don’t think so. Three or four males in a car: not convincing, almost red flag. Women and children would be more natural. A family traveling in a car is the most common thing, you see thousands of them on the move in Iraq and Syria

So, why not a van full of gunmen five minutes behind just in case? They assume to be under surveillance and if too many vehicles/men move from point A to point B then you have a pattern. And they want to avoid patterns

As for the part “he never stays in the same place for more than one day”: probably just a cliché, especially after losing all the ground. As a matter of fact, traveling from point A to point B is the dangerous part, it’s when the leaders are more exposed

The three most important deputies of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, Abu Mutaz al Qureshi and Abu Ali al Anbari and al Adnani, were all killed by Americans in their cars. Osama bin Laden, another most wanted, spent years hiding in the same villa and eluded his hunters just staying there

The guys are not improvising. They have, say, twenty (?) safe houses and they rotate from one to the others but probably slower than we think. I’d say those houses have a gate and a garage or high walls, to get off the car without exposing themselves

They remember that a US drone filmed a tall person taking a walk inside a compound in Abbottabad and that was the end for Usama bin Laden

This is confirmed by an Islamic State leader describing his meeting with Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in a recent article in the WSJ

Probably some of those safe houses are “wild”, meaning placed in the most isolated areas, and some are “urban”, meaning in more populated areas – and their owners are 100% “clean” and bought them many years ago

If you ask me where the safe houses are, well, Trump presented an interesting map (the grey one) by Defense Intelligence Agency a few days ago

My assumptions in brief: a) the frequency of his travels is lower than we think b) he travels in disguise, something better than "three military age males in a car" c) other vehicles provide a security net