ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Islamic State (ISIS) has elected a former military official of Iraq’s defunct Baathist regime as its new war minister, to replace its dead commander, Abu Omer Shishani.
Yasin Salam, known as Abu Taha, the new minister of war, is from the Haditha area of Anbar province. During Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq, he was commander of the elite Presidential Guards battalion.
Like many other of Saddam’s former army commanders, Abu Taha pledged allegiance to ISIS after the Iraqi dictator was ousted in the 2003 US-led invasion.
“(Abu Taha) has pledged allegiance to ISIS for five years. He was given the post after several meetings among ISIS leaders,” said Nazim Jighenfi, a leader from the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi.
Jighenfi added that Abu Taha is now “in Anbar province, commanding ISIS attacks on Iraqi security forces.”
ISIS confirmed that Omer al-Shishani, one of its top military commanders, was killed.
But contrary to reports that said he died in Syria in March, the group said he was killed last week in fighting south of Mosul, the last ISIS-held city in Iraq.
Shishani, whose real name was Tarkhan Batirashvili, was originally from Georgia. But his nom de guerre – Shishani – identified him as Chechen.
The US had placed a $5 million bounty on Shishani’s head, identifying him as ISIS’s most senior military commander and the main advisor and “minister of war” to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Shishani had previously fought the Russian Army in Chechnya.
