US general warns of ‘Isil 2.0’ as jihadists report leader’s death

Once expelled from urban bases in Iraq and Syria, these fighters may form a deadly terrorist diaspora

THE Iraqi government must do something “significantly different” to prevent Isil from reforming, a senior US commander said yesterday.

The warning was issued as the jihadist group recaptured a village close to the newly liberated city of Mosul.

Lt Gen Stephen Townsend, commander of the Us-led coalition to fight Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), said that despite the historic victory in Iraq’s second city, the war was not over.

“If we’re to keep Isis 2.0 from emerging, the Iraqi government is going to have to do something pretty significantly different,” he said. “They’re going to have to reach out and reconcile with the Sunni population, and make them feel like their government in Baghdad represents them.”

Isil militants seized huge swathes of northern Iraq in the summer of 2014 after the Iraqi army retreated. The group was welcomed by many of Mosul’s Sunni residents who had felt marginalised and persecuted by the Shia-dominated government in the capital and believed the Islamists would offer some protection.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights yesterday said it had been told by senior Isil commanders that the group’s leader Abu Bakr albaghdadi had been killed, but they did not specify when or where.

Responding to the claims of Baghdadi’s death, Gen Townsend said it was his “fervent hope” he was but that he had no confirmation. The self-appointed caliph’s death had been announced many times before but the Observatory has a track record of credible reporting on Syria’s civil war.

“We don’t have proof of life” for leader Baghdadi, Gen Townsend said. “But I hope he’s deader than a doornail.”

Haider al-abadi, Iraq’s prime minister, declared the mission complete in Mosul, the birthplace of Baghdad’s caliphate, in a TV address on Monday, marking the end to a nine-month offensive which left much of the city shattered and thousands of civilians dead.

Rooting out sleeper cells has proved difficult, however, and counter attacks have plagued liberated parts of Mosul and the surrounding area. Over the weekend, jihadists seized most of the village of Imam Gharbi, 40 miles south of Mosul, in the kind of guerrilla-style strike it is expected to deploy now as Us-backed Iraqi forces regain control over territory the group once held.

The good news about the heavy defeat that Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) has suffered in Mosul is that the Islamist terror group will no longer be able to use Iraq’s second city as a base to launch attacks against the West.

And there will be even better news when, as seems increasingly likely, Isil is evicted from Raqqa, its last stronghold in northern Syria, which security officials believe has been used to orchestrate many of the recent terrorist atrocities in Europe.

While there are many reasons to congratulate the Iraqi and other coalition forces for destroying Isil’s operational infrastructure, the bad news is that the war against Isil is far from won.

On the contrary, the conflict is about to enter a new and infinitely more challenging phase as Isil militant fighters disperse across the four corners of the globe, many of them inspired by the achievements of their self-proclaimed but short-lived caliphate.

While much of the world’s attention has been focused on Isil’s barbaric practices, its adherents will take heart from the fact that, for a brief period, they managed to establish many of the attributes of statehood, including their own economy and bureaucracy.

By so doing, they have shown that creating a caliphate is not a pipe dream, but an achievable reality. The ferocity of the estimated 3,000 Isil fighters, who chose to battle to the death in Mosul rather than surrender, could also motivate a new generation to join the jihadi cause.

All of which makes the task of destroying Isil much more difficult.

So long as Isil fighters were corralled in enclosed urban areas such as Mosul, it was a relatively straightforward job for Western security officials to monitor their activities, thereby enabling them to thwart potential terrorist attacks. It also made it easier for coalition forces to identify and eliminate the key ring-leaders, thereby degrading Isil’s ability to spread terror throughout the rest of the world.

Coalition forces will no longer enjoy these advantages. Instead, as the survivors of Isil’s caliphate seek new bases from which to propagate their perverse creed, security agencies will have their work cut out trying to monitor the constantly-changing global jihadi landscape, from as far afield as South East Asia to North Africa.

And if Western countries are to prevent further atrocities such as those recently experienced in Manchester and London, then governments around the world will need to raise their game.

A good first step would be to support the efforts of Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-abadi to rebuild his country after the devastation caused by Isil’s rise and fall. There are still several Isil-held strongholds that need to be cleared in places such as Tal Afar. But the far greater challenge for Mr al-abadi will be to reconcile Iraq’s alienated Sunni population.

The fact that many Sunni supporters of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s former secular dictator, have joined forces with the Islamist fanatics of Isil is indicative of the failure by the country’s Shia-dominated government in Baghdad to accommodate Sunni concerns. This is mainly due to the malign influence Iran, the region’s main Shia superpower, exercised over the previous regime of Nouri al-maliki. Mr al-abadi, by contrast, has indicated that he wants a more inclusive government, one that can unite the country rather than exacerbate sectarian tensions, and the West would be well advised to provide him with every assistance. For a unified Iraq is undoubtedly the best way to prevent an Isil comeback.

Isil’s collapse in Iraq and Syria means that security agencies around the world must now look closer to home to see whether the current range of counter-terrorism measures in place is sufficient to deal with the changing nature of the threat. Theresa May used last week’s G20 talks in Hamburg to announce that one of her top priorities is to disrupt terrorist groups from accessing finance, and one of the Government’s first tasks should be to examine whether foreign-owned banks in the City of London are being used to finance Islamist militants.

Charities are another area that could do with closer scrutiny, with many of Britain’s Arab allies in the Gulf questioning whether donations are being used for genuine charitable initiatives in the Muslim world, or being diverted towards far more nefarious ends.

And then there is the altogether more problematic issue of how to handle the hundreds of men and women who will make their way into Britain after Isil’s collapse.

An effective de-radicalisation programme will be needed if they are to be prevented from poisoning the minds of impressionable young Muslims, and for that we will need better cooperation with mosques and Muslim community leaders.

Otherwise, rather than celebrating the defeat of Isil in Iraq and Syria, we will find ourselves fighting another war against its fanatics. Only this time it will be on the streets of Britain.