Baghdadi’s Death Wouldn’t Be the End of ISIS

Author: Kresta in the Afternoon Published on: July 12, 2017 Published in: Terrorism

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says it has “confirmed information” that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed. Russia’s defense ministry had said last month that Baghdadi may have been killed in a Russian airstrike on an ISIS meeting in Syria in May. It’s not clear from the observatory’s report whether it was that strike or another one that killed Baghdadi. Baghdadi hasn’t released a public statement since an audiotape last November urging supporters to keep up the fight for Mosul, a fight that he himself probably abandoned several months later.

Baghdadi’s death has not been confirmed by any of the governments involved in the fight against ISIS (unless you count President Trump’s tweet about “Big wins against ISIS!” this morning) nor by the group itself. It’s worth remembering that he was rumored to have been killed before, only to reappear. While the observatory is generally reliable and this report seems more substantive than previous ones, it’s probably wise to treat this as unconfirmed.

But if Baghdadi’s death is confirmed this week, it would be remarkably fitting timing, coming just after the Iraqi government’s declaration of victory over ISIS in Mosul. While that announcement was slightly premature—ISIS fighters are still holding out in a few spots—the retaking of Iraq’s third largest city marks a major turning point. It was from the city’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri, which now lies in ruins, that Baghdadi declared a new “caliphate” in 2014, with himself as caliph. When ISIS fighters stormed over the Syria-Iraq border that year, it was a signal to the world that this was more than just another al-Qaida offshoot—a “jayvee team” as President Obama once infamously put it—and was rather a genocidal proto-state controlling significant territory in both Iraq and Syria, posing a challenge to the region’s nearly century-old borders.