Since its creation, we have learned about the Islamic State from its enemies. Its story has largely been told by those fighting the group in Iraq and Syria, traumatized civilians who have escaped its brutal rule, and the occasional defector. That is about to change. This is the story of Abu Ahmad, a Syrian operative for the Islamic State who witnessed the group’s lightning expansion firsthand and spent months among its most notorious foreign fighters. In this series of three articles, he provides unique insight into how Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s political scheming paved the way for its expansion into Syria, al Qaeda’s efforts to stem the group’s rise, and the terrifying weapons in the arsenal of the self-proclaimed “caliphate.” Some names and details have been omitted to protect Abu Ahmad. Read part one here and two here. READ MORE PART ONE:

Present At the Creation CLICK HERE PART TWO:

How the Islamic State Seized a Chemical Weapons Stockpile CLICK HERE PART THREE:

The Greatest Divorce In the Jihadi World CLICK HERE It was May 2013, and the newly formed Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant was intent on cementing its status as the world’s most fearsome jihadi force. But before it could do so — or use the new cache of chemical weapons it had obtained — it would have to contend with a new challenge from senior al Qaeda figures. Al Qaeda’s senior leadership was not about to accept Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s claim to authority — particularly in light of his brazen lie that he had been instructed to do so by al Qaeda leader Ayman-al Zawahiri. One month after the historic meeting between the ISIS chief and other jihadi leaders in Kafr Hamra, a small group of men, including a few armed guards, secretly traveled in a couple of vehicles through Syria. Fearing that they might be discovered by Baghdadi’s loyalists or targeted by the Syrian regime, they moved quietly and carefully. This group was called Lajnat Khorasan, or the “Khorasan Committee.” Its members had emerged from their underground lairs in Afghanistan and Pakistan and come to Syria on behalf of Zawahiri, who remained in hiding. One of the Khorasan Committee members, a Syrian by the name of Abu Osama al-Shahabi, told his associates to be extremely cautious during their travels. “I have information [Baghdadi] was planning to assassinate [Nusra] emir Abu Mariya al-Qahtani,” Shahabi said to the others, according to Abu Ahmad. “So we too should be careful.” The mission of the Khorasan Committee was to investigate Baghdadi’s expansion into Syria. Their findings were to be given to Zawahiri, who would then decide al Qaeda’s response to the situation in Iraq and Syria, where the rivalry between ISIS and the al Qaeda-affiliate Nusra Front clearly had gotten out of control. The Khorasan Committee’s existence would only become public knowledge in September 2014, when the U.S.-led coalition targeted its members in the first airstrikes in Syria. By then, the al Qaeda veterans who made up the committee had moved on from investigating Baghdadi’s maneuvering to planning attacks abroad. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said about the group, “in terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic State.” But back in summer 2013, the Khorasan Committee was directing its attention not to the United States, but its jihadi rival. The task could not have been more urgent: Each day, it seemed, another jihadi opposition group switched loyalty from al Qaeda to ISIS. If Zawahiri couldn’t regain the loyalty of some groups in Syria, or at least stop this mutiny in its tracks, the al Qaeda leader ran the risk of becoming a general without soldiers. Six members of the Khorasan Committee visited the headquarters of ISIS in Kafr Hamra, which previously served as the headquarters of the Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen. Abu Ahmad personally met four of them: Abu Osama al-Shahabi; the Kuwaiti Muhsen al-Fadhli, born in Kuwait (killed in a U.S. airstrike on July 8, 2015, in the Syrian town of Sarmada); Sanafi al-Nasr, a Saudi also known as Abu Yasser al-Jazrawi (killed by a U.S. drone in the northern Syrian town of al-Dana on Oct. 15, 2015); and Abu Abdel Malek, another Saudi national (killed in the same October strike in al-Dana). Muhsen al-Fadhli

Abu Ahmad said that the members of the Khorasan Committee were all friendly and had good knowledge of the Quran. All of them had spent years with bin Laden or Zawahiri in “Khorasan,” an old Islamic historical term for a region covering parts of Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.

Abu Ahmad didn’t spend much time with Fadhli. They spoke briefly during a meeting in the northern Syrian town of Sarmada; at the time, Abu Ahmad did not know that he was such a senior figure in al Qaeda. But two years later, after the airstrike killed Fadhli, Abu Ahmad saw a picture online of the man he had met. The photo was part of a Reuters article that quoted a Pentagon spokesman describing him as “among the few trusted al Qaeda leaders that received advanced notification of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.” In 2012, the U.S. State Department had even issued a $7 million reward for information leading to finding Fadhli.

Abu Ahmad knew the two Saudi members of the Khorasan Committee better. He once traveled in a car with both men, and knew Malek rented a house in the northern Syrian town of al-Bab. Jazrawi, meanwhile, was the head of the Nusra Front’s political bureau. He was based in Latakia countryside, in northwestern Syria.

When Abu Ahmad heard the news that the duo was killed by an American strike, he felt sad. “They looked and behaved like normal guys,” said Abu Ahmad. “Although they were leaders, they did not behave in an arrogant fashion.”

Among all the Khorasan Committee members, Abu Ahmad was closest to Shahabi, a Syrian in his forties from al-Bab. Shahabi was in direct contact with Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s commander in chief. It had taken him one and a half months to move unnoticed from Afghanistan to Syria. He traveled with his pregnant wife, which made the trip even harder. He said to Abu Ahmad: “I’m already 20 years in jihad, so hardship is nothing new to me.”

The Khorasan Committee’s goal was fundamentally political. They were tasked with convincing jihadi commanders who had already pledged allegiance to Baghdadi during the five-day meeting in Kafr Hamra to change their minds.

Baghdadi’s claims were nonsense, they told everyone. Zawahiri had never sent Baghdadi from Iraq into Syria. Zawahiri had never said that other commanders could pledge allegiance to ISIS and to Baghdadi himself.

But the Khorasan Committee had a tough sell ahead of them. Shahabi managed to convince an important commander who had recently joined ISIS to meet in a town close to the Turkish border.

“It is very clear,” Shahabi told him, “that Baghdadi only created ISIS because he felt Nusra was becoming very powerful. He knew that [Nusra chief] Julani was becoming too big of a leader.”

“We thought Baghdadi was acting on orders from Zawahiri,” replied the commander. “What you are telling me comes as a shock.”

Shahabi suggested that he should immediately rescind his allegiance to ISIS. But the commander wasn’t ready to do that. “I pledged my allegiance to him [Baghdadi],” the commander said. “Give me time to think and discuss this with others. But I just cannot undo this all of a sudden.”

“Anyhow, we have sent most of the messages and letters [about the investigation] already to al-Zawahiri,” replied Shahabi, according to Abu Ahmad’s recounting of the conversation. “He will rule in favor of Nusra, not ISIS.”