Ahmed was born in 1949 in al-Mowall in the Kingdom of Iraq's Mosul Province,[2][a] and rose in the ranks of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

[10] Furthermore, it is reported that Younis' organization is focused on securing political rehabilitation, amnesties and the repatriation of Baathist exiles, unlike the Naqshbandi Army which wants to violently overthrow the Iraqi government.

[14] Despite this, Iraqi and American security forces had reported no signs of Baathists illegally crossing the border in the recent months[15] and responsibility for the August bombings was later claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq.

[13] al-Ahmed was first mentioned in a report in the Iraqi government-owned al-Sabah newspaper, which reported on 6 December 2004 that a captured insurgent, Muayyad Yaseen Aziz, the leader of Jaysh Muhammad, had claimed that Ahmed had recently been elected Secretary of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party at a conference held by a group of Ba'athist fugitives in Al-Hasakah, Syria.

[citation needed] Ahmed's attempts to recruit support in Syria from former Iraqi Ba'athists is meeting some success, particularly among the poorer Sunni Arab segment of the refugee population, due in part to Ahmed's ability to offer cash incentives and Syrian residency permits due to their closeness to the Syrian government.