The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
⏩ Islamic state leader leaves legacy of terror,
BEIRUT — Abu Bakr alBaghdadi sought to establish a new Islamic “caliphate” across Syria and Iraq, but he might be remembered more as the ruthlessly calculating militant leader of the Islamic State group who brought terror to the heart of Europe and set up a shortlived organization so extreme that it was shunned even by alQaida.
With a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head, alBaghdadi steered his chillingly violent and surprisingly disciplined followers into new territory by capitalizing on feelings of Sunni supremacy and disenfranchisement at a time of tumult that followed the Arab Spring.
One of the few senior IS commanders still at large after two years of steady battlefield losses, alBaghdadi died Saturday when he detonated his suicide vest in a tunnel while being pursued by U.S. forces north of Idlib, Syria, killing himself and three of his children, U.S. President Donald Trump announced Sunday. He was believed to be 48.
“He didn’t die a hero, he died a coward, crying, whimpering and screaming,” Trump said at the White House, adding that the U.S. had alBaghdadi under surveillance for weeks.
Militants under his command were some of the first jihadis to grow up with the internet, and they deftly exploited social media to tout their military successes, document their mass slaughter, beheadings and stonings, and promote the Islamic State to a global audience.
The announcement of his death came nearly two years after Iraq announced the defeat of IS and five years after the group humiliated its armed forces and seized nearly a third of the country.
In April, U.S.backed Kurdishled forces in Syria declared the group’s territorial defeat after liberating the village of Baghouz in eastern Syria, its last bastion. The Islamic State saw its territory shrink from an area the size of Britain to a speck in the Euphrates River valley.
Though at minimum a symbolic victory for Western counterterrorism efforts, it is unclear what impact his death will have on possible future attacks.
He was largely regarded as a figurehead of the global terror network, and was described as “irrelevant for a long time” by a coalition spokesman in 2017.
Also unclear is who will replace him as leader. The group has lost many of its senior commanders in U.S.led airstrikes, including Fadhil Ahmad alHayali, described as the group’s No. 2 who was killed in Iraq by an August 2015 U.S. airstrike, and Abu Ali alAnbari, the extremist group’s leading finance official, who was killed in 2016. Abu Mohammed alAdnani, the IS spokesman and one of the group’s bestknown commanders, also was reported to have been killed in 2016 by a Russian airstrike.
AlBaghdadi was born as Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali alBadri alSamarrai sometime in 1971 in Samarra, Iraq, about 95 kilometers north of Baghdad, according to a U.N. sanctions list. His hometown later would be the site of a 2006 bombing by Sunni militants on a revered Shiite shrine — an attack that sparked a wave of sectarian violence that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.
Details of his early life are murky. A brief biography posted to online jihadi forums in 2014 traced his lineage to the Prophet Muhammad’s Quraysh tribe. Its claims, which cannot be independently confirmed, describe alBaghdadi as coming from a religious family and earning a doctorate from Saddam University for Islamic Studies, the Iraqi capital’s main center at the time for Sunni clerical scholarship. It says he promoted the Salafi jihadi movement, which advocates “holy war” to bring about a strict, uncompromising version of Islamic law, or Shariah.
According to ISaffiliated websites, alBaghdadi was detained by U.S. forces in Iraq and sent to Bucca prison in 2004 for his antiU.S. militant activities, although he was considered a civilian detainee and his jailers were unaware of his jihadi role. He was released 10 months later and joined the alQaida branch in Iraq of Abu Musab alZarqawi.
AlZarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike north of Baghdad in 2006 and alBaghdadi became a trusted aide of its two most senior figures, Abu Omar alBaghdadi and Abu Ayyub alMasri. AlBaghdadi assumed control of the group, known at the time as the Islamic State of Iraq.
The group he inherited, alQaida’s official franchise in Iraq, already had been weakened by years of U.S. and Iraqi raids and the mobilization of large numbers of Sunni fighters opposed to its extremist ideology. But alBaghdadi was playing a long game.
Deploying suicide attackers, roadside explosives, car bombs and Kalashnikovtoting gunmen, he increased the tempo of assaults against Iraqi forces and Shiite civilians as the U.S. military drew down its troops ahead of their December 2011 withdrawal. Prison breaks, including a militarystyle assault on two Baghdadarea jails in July 2013 that freed more than 500 inmates, bolstered his group’s ranks.
The chaos of the uprising against President Bashar Assad in Syria provided an opportunity to expand his influence. AlBaghdadi sent comrades to create a likeminded Sunni extremist group known as the Nusra Front, which more moderate Sunni rebels initially welcomed.
Over time, more of his fighters and possibly alBaghdadi himself relocated to Syria, pursuing their plans to restore a medieval Islamic state, or caliphate, spanning both Iraq and greater Syria, also known as the Levant. In April 2013, alBaghdadi announced what amounted to a hostile takeover of the Nusra Front, saying he was merging it into a new group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The move caught both the Nusra Front and alQaida’s central command off guard.
Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammad alGolani refused to accept the takeover. Ayman alZawahri, alQaida’s top leader, tried to end the squabbling and ordered alBaghdadi’s group to be abolished.
AlBaghdadi, however, would not compromise, and alQaida eventually had enough. In February, it formally distanced itself from alBaghdadi, saying it had no connection with his group and “is not responsible for its actions.”
But alBaghdadi’s organization was well on its way to achieving the protostate it coveted, taking control of key cities such as Raqqa, Syria, and Fallujah in Iraq.