Terrorist’s death ends 10-year manhunt
Al-Baghdadi led caliphate in Mideast
WASHINGTON — The U.S. special forces operation in Syria that led to the reported death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group, brought to a close a manhunt that lasted nearly a decade and dealt a significant blow to a jihadi group known for its extremism and brutality.
President Donald Trump announced the terror leader’s death in a televised statement Sunday from the White House.
“He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone,” Trump said, vowing that the U.S. would “continue to pursue the remaining ISIS terrorists.”
Al-Baghdadi had a spectacular rise and fall in the violent world of Islamic extremism, forging elements of the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. in Iraq into Islamic State, which in 2014 conquered a swath of Iraq and Syria the size of Britain that he declared to be an Islamic caliphate. For more than two years, he ruled over some 12 million people, employing brutal, publicized killings, rapes of captive women and enslavement of non-Sunni minorities to enforce his theocratic brand of Islam.
Even before those conquests, al-Baghdadi had been among the world’s most wanted men, hunted by the CIA and the intelligence services of Iraq, and several of its neighbors. He eluded pursuit in part by stringent security procedures, seldom appearing in public and communicating even with his own followers only through intermediaries.
His death came when he detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and three children with him, according to Trump and U.S. military officials. It capped a U.S. commando raid Saturday in Syria’s Idlib province in the northwestern part of the country.
No U.S. personnel were killed in the raid, Trump said. In addition to the three children, two women, believed to be wives of al-Baghdadi, also died in the raid, he said. An additional 11 children who survived the raid were turned over to local forces.
After reading his prepared remarks from a teleprompter, Trump stayed at the White House podium, taking questions during what ended up being a nearly 50-minute exchange with reporters. Trump revealed an extraordinary level of operational information about the raid — details normally withheld — with much of it aimed at driving home the argument that al-Baghdadi was not a powerful militant leader, but a weak and evil man.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on
Sunday called on the White House to brief lawmakers on the raid that targeted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, noting that Trump informed the Russians of the Islamic State leader’s apparent death before telling congressional leadership.
The statement from Pelosi, D-Calif., came after Trump told reporters that he did not inform the House speaker of the raid because he “wanted to make sure this kept secret.”
U.S. presidents typically follow the protocol of contacting congressional leaders, regardless of their political party, when a high-level military operation is conducted.
In the operation’s aftermath, regional allies of the U.S. — including Syrian Kurds, Iraq and Turkey — rushed to claim credit for helping U.S. commandos launch the attack. Trump said the raid was carried out with “cooperation” from Russia, Iraq, Turkey and Kurdish forces in Syria. The Kurds provided “information” that was helpful, he said.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper, interviewed on several Sunday television programs, was far more tight-lipped than the president about the intelligence that led to the raid and the way it played out, but confirmed that the Islamic State leader had committed suicide by detonating an explosive vest after being pursued into a tunnel.
“The aim was to capture,” Esper said on CNN. “We tried to call him out and asked him to surrender himself. He refused.”
According to Esper, Trump gave the go-ahead for the raid Thursday. U.S. forces had alBaghdadi under surveillance for the “last couple of weeks,” Trump said, as the militant leader repeatedly changed his plans.
The president, who has been under intense criticism from lawmakers in both parties in recent weeks for his withdrawal of U.S. troops from a different part of Syria — the Turkey-Syria border in the northeastern part of the country — teased the news Saturday night, tweeting, “Something very big has just happened!”
He released the tweet as soon as the U.S. troops landed safely, he said, but ordered his aides not to inform senior Democratic members of Congress.
“Washington is a leaking machine, and I told my people we will not notify them until our great people are out,” he said.
Leaks happened anyway. Within minutes of Trump’s tweet, reports quickly began circulating that al-Baghdadi had been targeted in the raid and had died, but military officials could not confirm the death until they conducted DNA tests.
The raid took place in or near Barisha, a small town in northwestern Syria not far from the border with Turkey.
Syrian activists posted video on social media showing large explosions and the sound of smallarms fire in the Barisha area. In one video, the roar of warplanes is punctuated by a series of massive blasts. Another video shows some of the results of the attack: A cameraman walks in the village, filming the burned husk of a car as well as charred corpses.
The region is dominated by jihadist groups hostile to Islamic State, making al-Baghdadi’s presence there surprising. The radical Islamic group in that part of Syria fought pitched battles against Islamic State, which they saw as a rival, since 2013.
Al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi believed to be in his 40s, joined the Islamist insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq following the 2003 invasion of that country. As a relatively lowlevel member of the insurgency, he was captured in 2004 and held for close to a year by the U.S. in the Abu Ghraib detention facility. He was released in late 2004, and rejoined the militants.
He was publicly declared the leader of Islamic State in 2010 and survived several attempts by the U.S. and its allies to kill or capture him. The chaos spread by Syria’s civil war allowed the group to take root in the eastern part of the country, along the border with Iraq, which provided a springboard for its sweeping conquests in 2014.
In 2015, under former President Obama, the U.S., working with the Iraqi government and Kurdish allies in Syria, began the effort to roll back Islamic State’s gains. An offensive to retake Mosul began in late 2016. The military continued that strategy under Trump.
Over the years al-Baghdadi was reported killed several times — each time resurfacing.