Baghdadi Is Dead. Does that Mean ISIS Dies with Him?

Daniel R. DePetris

Security, Middle East

Now that Baghdadi is no longer ruining lives, the inevitable question is: what’s next? The Islamic State was in a bad way even before Washington took away its caliph, and it’s hard not to assume that Baghdadi’s removal will deal an even bigger blow to a group already hunkering down to save itself.

Before Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed “after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and screaming and crying all the way” as President Donald Trump put it so eloquently, the Islamic State leader was the world’s most wanted man. With a $25 million price tag on his head, Baghdadi had was in the scope of multiple nations. The United States, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, the U.K., France, and Turkey all had a reason to kill him. The crimes he was ultimately responsible for spread across continents, from the Paris assault four years ago this November to the enslaving of Yazidis in Iraq.

That man is no longer walking this earth, having been surprised by a team of U.S. Delta Force operators descending from helicopters and breaching his Idlib compound at the dead of night. Trump, beaming with pride that he was the one who authorized the operation, boasted about the mission hours later. "The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, and total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him,” Trump announced at the White House Sunday morning. He then went on to briefly thank everybody else who assisted with the mission; U.S. operators were reportedly acting in part on intelligence acquired from the Iraqis, who arrested some of the terrorist leader’s intimate family and associates months earlier.