In 2010, the ISI had come under the leadership of a formerly obscure Iraqi who called himself Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Iraqi government’s sectarianism and corruption offered fertile ground for the ISI to rebuild and grow. In 2010–11, Baghdadi unleashed a wave of terrorist assaults on Iraqi Christians and Shiites. This campaign enraged al Qaeda’s leaders. “I do not understand,” Zawahiri chafed in a letter he wrote to bin Laden a few months before the Abbottabad raid. “Are the brothers not content with the number of their current enemies? Are they eager to add new ones to their list?” He urged bin Laden to write to the ISI’s leaders and instruct them to stop “targeting the Shiites indiscriminately” and to “end their attacks against Christians.” But bin Laden no longer had any influence over the ISI. The Iraqi group had moved on.
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