On the morning of October 27th, 2019, the Trump administration announced that it had successfully organized a raid on a Northeast Syrian compound where the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was assassinated by American special forces. Trump, aiming to bring as much public attention to this raid, tweeted a day before the announcement of the assassination that “something very big has just happened!” before addressing the press the next day where he stated that he had “brought the world’s number one terrorist leader to justice.”
Though it may seem through the president’s words that this assassination would have a large impact on the United States’ effort in lessening the threat of the Islamic State in the region, his own actions in removing American troops from this same region earlier this month seem to counter this alleged advancement.
With no country willing to hold the masses of Islamic State prisoners which have been captured throughout recent years, the United States critical ally of the Kurdish fighters have taken the responsibility of detaining these individuals – roughly 10,000 to count. Previously, with the position of just a few United States soldiers in the Kurdish Region, the ethnic minority had the capacity to control these masses in their underwhelming underfunded prisons as long as the international security, that comes with United States’ military presence, remained in this area.
Turkish forces almost instantly started an attack on Northern Syria to gain strategic land masses in the Kurdish region, specifically on those areas which contained these Islamic State prisoners. The Ayn Issa camp, which held most of these prisoners, reported shortly after the Turkish assault that the bombings have forced many Kurdish fighters to flee the camps to either protect their families or combat the Turkish threat. As a result, Jelal Ayaf, the co-chair of the Ayn Issa camp, reported to the Rojava Information Center on October 13th that 859 prisoners had successfully escaped the camp so far.
To summarize, in the month of October 2019, the Trump administration made a foreign policy decision which had increased the threat of Islamic State presence by indirectly causing the release of previously incarcerated Islamic State members and then subsequently responded by assassinating the organization’s key figurehead. Confused? Well, you should be because these two decisions directly contrast each other in the United States alleged effort to eliminating the Islamic State threat.
The removal of al-Baghdadi seems to have had a nonconsequential effect on the strength of the Islamic State’s leadership network. According to a Newsweek interview with an anonymous regional intelligence official, al-Baghdadi possessed little influence over the Islamic State’s functions across Syria and Iraq and rather served as a mere figurehead for the organization. Supporting this claim, Abdullah Qardash, head of the Islamic State’s Muslim affairs, was named successor of al-Baghdadi the same day as the assassination.
If Trump was truly dedicated to reducing the Islamic State’s threat in the North and Northeastern Syrian regions, we have not seen any critical evidence of administrative strategic planning over the course of October. Surly the release of hundreds of previously captured soldiers is far more influential to the strength of the Islamic State’s network than a hidden leader who was replaced within mere hours of his assassination. When we look at the difference between Trump’s statements on the concerns of released Islamic States prisoners against his comments immediately following the al-Baghdadi raid the logic becomes clear: Trump wishes to use the al-Baghdadi assassination as a tool for political gain.
By boiling down the Islamic State to a single figurehead, Trump executed a decisive maneuver of framing the killing of al-Baghdadi as a significant hit on the Islamic State. He additionally couldn’t resist comparing himself to his predecessor in stating that “Osama bin Laden was very big [assassination] but Osama bin Laden became big with the World Trade Center,” while al-Baghdadi “built a whole … country, a caliphate, and was trying to do it again.” Within the wake of possible impeachment and media focus on Democrat Presidential nominees, Trump is using this opportunity to compare scalps with Obama.
Continuing the example of the Obama administration’s assassination of Osama bin Laden, significant ties can be drawn between these two raids to somewhat understand why Trump is so interested in key figureheads. Following the attacks of September 11th, 2001, many Americans wished to see their country bring justice to this horrific act of terrorism. Yet, it wasn’t so easy in the beginning at identifying who, necessarily, was behind the attacks. In short, this difficulty can be explained by the nature of terrorist organizations.
In the 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism Report, the CIA admits that it can be often hard to identify leadership as “terrorists can now use the advantage of technology to disperse [their] leadership.” It should be noted that at this time in 2003, the CIA had pinpointed that the funds used in the September 11th attacks came from Afghanistan, the known hub of al-Qaeda activity, and that Osama bin Laden was somewhat high up in their leadership, though less evidence connecting his involvement with the attacks had actually been found. Nevertheless, the American media had painted Osama bin Laden as the mastermind behind the attacks the night of September 11th.
One of the fundamental aspects of organizations like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State is confusion. Confusion on where the money comes from, confusion on how these groups organize their attacks and confusion on how their enemies will define their actions. A significant amount of this confusion comes from the American public’s lack of understanding to the speed which power shifts in these organizations.
Take, for example, John P. Carlin, the past assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, who commented in Politico his need to downplay the threats of Islamic extremist Junaid Hussain so that he would not be elevated “to another global figurehead like Osama bin Laden.”
In an ever changing landscape like the Middle East with so many opportunities for individuals to go into hiding, allowing the media to blow up an individual in the public eye wastes resources as government focus can quickly shift to another area or persons.
In the case of Osama bin Laden, many misunderstand the role that the past al-Qaeda leader played in the organization after the September 11th attacks. Following the United States integration in the Middle East in 2001, Osama bin Laden went into hiding along a long strain of safe houses which span from Kabul, the mountains of Northern Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Yet, in the 2009 Department of State Country Reports on Terrorism, the State Department claimed that Osama bin Laden was now simply an “ideological figurehead” for the organization which his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had transitioned to the role of al-Qaeda’s “strategic and operational planner.”
At the time, it was assessed by the United States government that al-Qaeda remained the most significant terrorist threat to the county. So, why did we still see so much focus on Osama bin Laden when clearly finding Ayman al-Zawahiri would have been a much more significant blow to the organization’s structure? Fueled by thoughts of revenge wanting to get even prevented the American public from shifting its view on who they wanted dead and frankly, Americans only have the capacity to remember one Arab name at a time.
However, President Obama does share part of the blame of Osama bin Laden’s exaggerated diplomatic focus in the late 2000’s. Obama, being the young and savvy candidate he was in the 2008 presidential elections, claimed in a debate against Senator John McCain that the Bush administration had downplayed the significance in catching the FBI’s most wanted terrorist and promised to his country that “We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.”
Notice the choice of rhetoric in this statement of combating Middle Eastern terrorist networks, Obama wishes to eliminate the threat of al-Qaeda, but not by first mentioning the notorious bin Laden.
Obama’s political promises on combating al-Qaeda advises the American public that to topple this terrorist organization their leader must be killed. He suggests that the first must be done before the later and that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are one in the same. In reality, the man and the organization are mutually exclusive and eliminating one has no effect on the functions of the other. The only difference? Osama bin Laden hid away from the world with no power to act while al-Qaeda continued to oppress the Afghani people every day.
I believe that the Obama administration’s hunt for Osama bin Laden is a highly appropriate case to compare to the Trump administration’s assassination of al-Baghdadi because each case follows the same path. Both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have the same overall mission – establish the next great Middle Eastern Caliphate through deeply rooted religious violence – and each disperse their leadership quite widely to confuse their enemies. Each organization was led by a radical individual who, when gained too much attention, shifted their role in their organization to a symbolic purpose and went into hiding. From there, the two were eventually killed by American special forces on a public stage where both Obama and Trump claimed the assassinations were a significant attack on each organization.
Although it has only been a bit of a month since the al-Baghdadi assassination, it seems that the attack has had little effect on the Islamic State’s functions. Furthermore, al-Qaeda continues to threaten the security in Afghanistan every day.
Before the Turkish expansion into the Kurdish region and the resulting Islamic State prison breaks that came with it, the United States only positioned 50 to 100 special operations individuals in the Kurdish region. This small group of soldiers, though armed and ready for combat, functioned quite rarely on a day to day basis as their presence was purely symbolic. For such a small cost to the United States to keep these soldiers in the Kurdish Region, the effect was greatly profound. This approach is the most effective use of our resources and is the direction that we must move if we truly wish to eliminate terrorist organizations in the Middle East.
Seven Star Commentary 