Losses in Syria could push Daesh into Al Qaeda’s arms

Territorial losses won’t necessarily limit the group’s ability to inspire supporters far and wide

Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the self-described Daesh, might have been killed. Again.

In announcing last week the air strike that may have felled the Daesh’s leader, Russia wisely hedged its bets. If Baghdadi’s death is confirmed, though, this would be a positive development. The resulting leadership vacuum, and the scramble to fill it, would no doubt hasten the coming disintegration of Daesh. In truth, however, the handwriting was on the wall long before last week’s announcement.

From its inception, the Daesh’s real power resided not in religious extremists like Baghdadi but in a corps of former Saddam Hussein loyalists behind the scenes who had linked up with convicted extremists when they were together in American-run prisons in the mid-2000s. These ex-Baathists, with a talent for eye-catching violence and unsurpassed knowledge of the inner workings of Iraqi society, kept Daesh alive through lean years before leading it to sweeping victories following the American departure from Iraq.

Now almost all of the ex-Baathist leaders are dead, as are most of their immediate lieutenants. This represents a key difference between Daesh today and Al Qaeda in 2011: When Osama bin Laden died, many of his deputies were around to keep the organization running.

Daesh, by contrast, has been robbed of any strength in depth it may once have possessed. With Mosul mostly back in Iraqi hands and the United States-backed forces encroaching on Raqqa, Daesh’s de facto capital in Syria, it is only a matter of time before the group will cease to be.

The real question is what happens next. One fact can be taken for granted: Its thousands of fighters will not melt away. Instead, like generations of extremists before them, they will seek alternative outlets for violence. As previously demonstrated by Al Qaeda, territorial losses don’t necessarily limit a group’s ability to inspire supporters far from the battlefield.

Daesh’s most obvious successors might seem to be its network of affiliates. The biggest of these, based in Eastern Libya, has several thousand members and may have helped train the Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi. There is precedent for an extremist group morphing from a protostate into a global network: Al Qaeda managed just that after the fall of the Afghan Taleban. Again, however, Al Qaeda had the benefit of a surviving cadre of senior leaders capable of providing continuity and centralised direction; Daesh does not. At this point, it seems unlikely that its web of franchises, always loose to begin with, will hold together without the “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq.

Unfortunately, that is far from the end of the matter. The impending destruction of the caliphate raises another dangerous possibility: reconciliation between Daesh and Al Qaeda. The dispute between the two groups has always been both ideological and personal. Ideologically, Daesh claims to represent the reborn caliphate, and therefore demands the allegiance of all Muslims — fealty that Al Qaeda refuses to offer. Once there is no caliphate, this ideological dispute will fall away.

On a personal level, Daesh loathes Ayman Al Zawahri, the current leader of Al Qaeda, whom it views as a usurper. They never forgave Zawahri for supporting the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, when it broke from their group.

A popular trope among Daesh members is their claim to represent “bin Laden’s Al Qaeda,” as opposed to “Zawahri’s Al Qaeda.” But the day may not be far off when Al Qaeda’s emir will once again bear the name of its founder. In an audio message in 2015, Zawahri introduced a man he called “a lion from the den” of Al Qaeda. The next voice on the tape was that of bin Laden’s son Hamza, now in his late 20s.

On audio messages Hamza sounds remarkably like his father, with the same hushed intensity and much of the same phraseology. Recently, Al Qaeda has begun according him the title of “sheikh,” a mark of his growing power. Perhaps most significantly of all, while Zawahri continually rails against Daesh’s leadership, Hamza is careful not to say anything that might antagonise Baghdadi’s followers.

We should not be surprised if Hamza replaces Zawahri as emir. With the caliphate consigned to history and a bin Laden once again at the top of Al Qaeda, the door would be open for former Daesh fighters to rejoin the fold, bringing with them months or years of front-line experience. With or without Baghdadi, Daesh in its current form is doomed. Bin Laden’s ideology, however, is destined to survive well into the future. —NYT Syndicate Ali H. Soufan is the author, most recently, of “Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State.”

The impending destruction of the caliphate raises another dangerous possibility: reconciliation between Daesh and Al Qaeda. The dispute between the two groups has always been both ideological and personal.