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The most successful leader in the Middle East in 2013?

Every year various publications nominate the person of the year.   Time is well know for doing it - even if its choices are often odd, like this year.    The Pope as against one significant newsmaker? - Edward Snowden.   That aside, writing in The Independent, veteran Middle East correspondent, Patrick Coburn analyses the various players in the region and comes up with his nomination the most successful leader in the Middle East this year.

"Unfortunately, the most successful leader in the Middle East this year is surely Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu D'ua, the leader of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which changed its name this year to the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Isis) and claims to be the sole al-Qaida affiliate in Syria as well as Iraq. The US says al-Baghdadi is based in Syria and is offering $10m to anyone who can kill or capture him.

One of the most extraordinary developments in the Middle East is that 12 years after 9/11 and six years after "the surge" in Iraq was supposed to have crushed al-Qa'ida in Iraq, it is back in business. It is taking over its old haunts in northern and central Iraq and is launching attacks on Shia civilians that have killed 9,000 people so far this year. Yesterday it killed a general commanding a division in an ambush in Anbar province. Al-Qa'ida has benefited from the Iraqi government failing to conciliate the Sunni Arab protest movement that began a year ago, with the result that it is mutating into armed resistance. In July, a carefully planned Isis attack on Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad freed 500 prisoners, many of them al-Qa'ida veterans.

Even more spectacular has been the rise of Isis in Syria, where it is the most effective single military group aside from the Syrian Army. It has taken control of Raqqa, the one Syrian provincial capital held by the rebels, and has started killing off leaders of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army that do not come over to its side. Jessica D Lewis, in a study published by the Institute for the Study of War, writes: "AQI [al-Qa'ida in Iraq] in 2013 is an extremely vigorous, resilient and capable organisation that can operate from Basra to coastal Syria." The resurgence of al-Qa'ida is already a crucial factor in promoting horrific sectarian conflicts in both Iraq and Syria."

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