With 250,000 officers and soldiers finding themselves without work overnight, they became easy recruits for the then still tiny group called “al-Qaida in Iraq,” led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian street thug who had been radicalized into militant jihadism during his imprisonment in the 1990s. Battalions defected to al-Zarqawi en masse. bringing with them tanks, artillery and thousands of rifles. About half of IS’ top commanders are said to have been former officers in Saddam’s army.