The Guardian, citing “a source in Iraq with connections to the terror group,” is reporting that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is no longer in day-to-day control of ISIS, and hasn’t been since he was seriously wounded in an airstrike in northern Iraq about a month ago. The astute reader will recall that it’s been about three or four months since the last time Baghdadi was seriously wounded and possibly dying, and it was a scant month before that when Baghdadi was reported to have suffered what I believe was the first of his mortal injuries. Point is, I actually think it’s wise to go with the Pentagon on this one:
US forces have no reason to think Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was wounded in an air strike against an Iraqi target last month, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
British daily The Guardian had earlier reported that the militant, who styles himself caliph of the jihadists’ territory in Iraq and Syria, had been “seriously wounded” in an allied raid.
But Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren told reporters the report appears to have been “recycled” from a March story and that Baghdadi had not been a target of the raid in question.
“We said that there was nothing to indicate that Baghdadi had been wounded or killed,” Warren said. “There’s nothing to indicate that there’s been a change.”
Back in November I wrote that Baghdadi’s eventual death would probably matter a great deal to ISIS, but that it wasn’t clear how it would matter. That was before the recent alleged revelations about ISIS’s origins as an ex-Baʿathist grievance society that only put Baghdadi in charge in order to give their movement broad religious appeal, but I think the point is still valid. It may be inaccurate to report that Baghdadi is “no longer” running ISIS’s day-to-day operations, since it’s entirely possible that he’s never run ISIS’s day-to-day operations, but his appeal as a religious figure and “caliph” has helped ISIS recruit and thrive, and it would be silly to discount the role he’s presumably played in grafting ISIS’s hyper-religious and secular ex-Baʿathist elements so seamlessly when really they could be almost like oil and water. Moreover, I’ve also written in other contexts about the inherent instability of takfiri groups like ISIS, and the risk that the death of a leader will result in multiple claimants to the title and therefore a high risk of infighting and/or splintering. If ISIS has time to establish its “caliphate” and invest a clear line of succession to Baghdadi, then it can hold together when he finally shuffles off, but if not, there’s a possibility that his death could really do a number on ISIS’s ability to hold itself together.
On the other hand, if Baghdadi were succeeded, without major splintering, by somebody who recognized that the decision to publicly declare a caliphate on fixed territory was a strategic blunder, someone who takes ISIS back to a more underground organization that would be a much harder target for the US-led coalition, then his death could actually turn out to be a good thing for ISIS. An adviser to the Iraqi government told Newsweek that Baghdadi’s duties have been taken up by his deputy, Abu Alaa Afri, who is supposedly “even more important” to the group than Baghdadi. Afri used to be a high-up in Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and may support reconciling ISIS with its former parent. That suggests that he might be the kind of heir who would walk back some of Baghdadi’s more excessive moves and potentially make ISIS a bigger threat than it is now, but the notion that he’s running the show right now, or that Baghdadi has actually been hurt, still seems mostly speculative.
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 