Post-Baghdadi Islamic State

The curtain of the Islamic State's Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi leadership came to a close on Sunday night (October 27, 2019) in a U.S. airstrike involving warplanes and surprise drones, during which a special US force killed al-Baghdadi in the northwestern province of Idlib.

A number of questions have been raised about the future of ISIS after Baghdadi, the significance of the timing of the assassination, the identity of the new leader, what strategies and combat mechanisms the IS will resort to after losing its leader, and the credibility of US President Donald Trump's claim to eliminate the 100% ISIS succession.

Any accurate reading of the nature of the future scenarios of the Islamic State after Baghdadi must be based on an understanding of the nature of the organizational structure, the ideological narrative of the Islamic State compared to other jihadist organizations, and the nature of its elements.

When Baghdadi assumed the leadership of the Islamic State in Iraq, nearly nine years ago, succeeding Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, he inherited a besieged, dispersed, weak, fragile, crumbling and near-collapse organization, and soon rose to four in four years to become a terrifying fighting force that dominates large swaths of Iraq, Syria and expands. In many countries, halting its expansion and ending its spatial control has required the formation of an international coalition of more than 75 countries led by the United States.

In a conspiracy-minded environment, there is a common conviction that America, as well as other powers, was not serious about Baghdadi's assassination, and that it employed him to achieve a political agenda and strategic goals. This conspiracy theory explains the success of the assassination of Baghdadi by the end of his career. The assassination of Baghdadi has not been an easy task. Since the rise of his star, the pursuit of his assassination has continued from many local, regional and international parties, and Washington has put a big financial reward ($ 25 million) for those who give information to his place.

Baghdadi survived a long series of assassination attempts with air strikes, and was wounded at least once - according to intelligence reports - and announced his death many times. The Iraqi government claimed that it was able to kill him more than once, and the recent successful assassination was the culmination of a long series of previous failed operations.

Al-Baghdadi's death was announced several times by various parties, the most famous of which was the announcement by the Russian Defense Ministry on June 16, 2017 that there was information indicating that al-Baghdadi was killed in a Russian air force strike on Raqqa in Syria. Mosul 2014, culminating in March 2015.

The Islamic State is one of the most sophisticated jihadist organizations in terms of coherence in organizational structure and ideological rigidity. It constituted an unusual development in the activity of global jihadi groups, and its structure and ideology seemed innovative in many of its characteristics and strategies.

Despite the expulsion of ISIS from its urban urban areas in Iraq and Syria, and the loss of its last spatial pocket in the town of Baghouz in Deir ez-Zor governorate on March 23, 2018 by the SDF, with the support of the US-led coalition forces; The organization still has significant fighting, financing and media capabilities.

The facts of the field revealed the rapid adaptation of the organization to the developments in the field, and enjoyed a very flexible shift from the centralized approach to the state of decentralization, where he was able to carry out organizational restructuring at the military, security, administrative, forensic and media, with the end of the political project of the organization as a "succession", returned to The case of the "organization", he returned to rely on his traditional combat tactics based on the attrition approach and guerrilla warfare.

In this context, the announcement of US President Donald Trump to eliminate the Islamic State after the killing of Baghdadi, is only a blatant ignorance, and a clear lie, and justification for his decision to withdraw from Syria. Trump had previously declared the Islamic State 16 times defeated, which no one in the world shares in his assessment, and so has responded widely to his claims.

Biden's rival Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination to compete with Trump in the 2020 election said: "ISIS continues to pose a threat to the American people and our allies, and we must continue to press to prevent it from regrouping or threatening the United States again." "The killing of Baghdadi is important," Pelosi said in a statement. "But it does not mean the death of ISIS."

"Baghdadi is an early retirement of a terrorist but not for organizing it," French Defense Minister Florence Barley tweeted. "The killing of Baghdadi is an important moment in our fight against terrorism, but the fight against ISIS has not Over yet. " French President Emmanuel Macron said Baghdadi's death was a "severe blow to IS, but it is only a stage."

The wave of widespread criticism of Trump's successive declarations of the Islamic State's defeat has always been met with condemnation, indignation, and surprise after Baghdadi's death, rightly seeing his attempt to alleviate criticism and try to divert attention from his domestic problems. Trump's sudden announcement created a withdrawal from Syria in January. On 1 December 2018, chaos and confusion led to the resignation of former Defense Secretary James Matisse in protest.

When Trump announced this month that he would pull US troops out of northern Syria to make way for a Turkish attack on the Kurds - Washington's allies at one time - many warned that Trump was weakening the thorn of the campaign to defeat the Islamic State. According to experts and analysts; Trump gave the Islamic State by withdrawing the biggest victory in more than four years and secured the prospects for his future.

The assessment of the capabilities of the Islamic State, and the prediction of its possible return, has proliferated recently. A recent report issued on August 6 by the Pentagon indicated that the Islamic State has rearranged its ranks to reappear in Syria, taking advantage of the American withdrawal. However, ISIL has strengthened its armed capabilities in Iraq.

A day after the Pentagon report, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a report to the Security Council on the threat posed by the organization that the latter had sums up to $ 300 million, remained with him after the demise of the "succession" in Iraq and Syria, and that the frequency of attacks Waged by "may be temporary".

He expressed confidence in the organization's ability to channel these funds to support terrorist acts inside Iraq, Syria and abroad through informal money transfer companies, stressing that it enjoys financial self-sufficiency through a network of supporters and groups affiliated elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Analysts and military experts argue that the elimination of the "caliphate" does not mean that the danger of the "organization" has been eliminated; the declaration of defeat of the organization, confusion between the defeat of the political project of the organization as a "caliphate" imposes control over large areas of geography and ruled over several million The population, and the state of the organization operating in a different way, did not defeat the Islamic State as an organization.

According to a report by the Institute for War Studies in Washington, `` ISIS's Second Return: Assessing the Next ISIS Insurgency '' issued at the end of June 2019, IS is stronger today than it was during the era of the Islamic State of Iraq, which inherited al-Qaida in Iraq. When America withdrew from Iraq in 2011, the group had about 700 to 1,000 fighters in Iraq, while the number of its fighters in Iraq and Syria in August 2018, according to estimates by the Military Intelligence Agency, 30 thousand fighters.

ISIS was able to establish a large army that enabled it to recapture Fallujah, Mosul and other cities in Iraq, and control most of eastern Syria in just three years. The organization will recover much faster than the first return, and will reach a more dangerous level of strength in its birth. the second.

If Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi inherited a weak and fragile organization from his predecessor, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, he would inherit his successor from a structurally coherent and geographically extended organization. After the military, security, administrative, financial, legal and media restructuring is complete, the military plans to resume the "war of attrition."

"Monthly reports" of the organization's 12 branches were reviewed, and the organization officially announced its presence in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Algeria, in Khorasan (Afghanistan and Pakistan), the Caucasus and East Asia, and is active mostly in the Philippines and Somalia. "West Africa" ​​is often active in Nigeria.

The data compiled by the BBC's media follow-up section show that although ISIL lost much of its territory in Syria and Iraq by the end of 2017, it was behind 3,670 attacks worldwide in 2018 (about 11 a day). In addition to 502 attacks in the first two months of 2019 during the siege of the pagos.

However, ISIS remains frugal in its preferred tactics of suicide and immersive and complex attacks, and has relied - since May 31, 2019 - on new tactics in the framework of the "war of attrition", based on the principle of "temporarily overthrow cities as a mode of action for the Mujahideen". His al-Nabaa newspaper published a four-part series to explain the new tactic, calling on its fighters to avoid direct clashes with the enemy.

The series also explains how guerrillas - through guerrilla warfare - can weaken the enemy without incurring casualties.

Comparing the birth of the first "IS" with his second birth shows the organization's ability to revive; the Islamic State of Iraq witnessed a clear decline in early 2009, after Washington relied on the strategy of General David Petraeus for the influx of forces and the momentum of the Awakening in Iraq, and the numbers of the organization decreased to nearly 700 to 1,000 fighters in isolated and remote areas.

By 2010, the Islamic State of Iraq had issued an assessment and assessment of the situation, and outlined its future vision in Iraq as US forces were due to withdraw. It had issued a strategic document entitled "Strategic Plan to Strengthen the Islamic State's Political Position."

Following the departure of US forces from Iraq in 2011, ISIS announced the start of the “Wall Demolition” plan in July 2012, and then a new plan, “Harvesting the Soldiers”, on July 29, 2013, which ended with the control of Mosul in June 2014. .

ISIL's military, financial, and media capabilities indicate that whoever succeeds al-Baghdadi in the organization's leadership will be in a position superior to al-Baghdadi than the organization's leadership; the organizational structure is quite clear, and the organization will have no difficulty in choosing the new leader.

It seems that Abdullah Qardash is the frontrunner in the succession of Baghdadi; according to the information available about him, "Qardash" nicknamed "destroyer" and also known as Abu Omar Turkmani. Despite attributed to the "Turkmen"; leaders within the organization - including Ismail al-Ithawi detained in Iraq - emphasize "Qardash Qrash." In a televised interview after his arrest, al-Ithawi was likely to take over the leadership of Qardash in the absence of al-Baghdadi.

Qardash was the Amir of the General Security Bureau in Syria and Iraq, one of the most powerful bureaucracies within the organization. He also oversaw the Board of Grievances, which is one of the service departments established by the organization during its control of the cities, and assumed the position of booby-trapped and suicide bombers in the organization.

In the event that Qardash could not take over the leadership of the organization, in part because of the possibility of killing him according to sources in the organization; Haji Abdul Nasser al-Iraqi is the second candidate, and was listed by the US State Department on the lists of terrorism at the end of 2018. The Iraqi leadership of the so-called "commission delegated" responsible From the management of the organization, and previously assumed the position of general military of the so-called former state of the Levant, and supervised himself to lead the battles of the organization in Raqqa.

Al-Baghdadi's successor in the leadership of ISIS will inherit an organization that clearly outperforms the organization that Baghdadi inherited during the era of the Islamic State of Iraq.Its identical figures - released in 2018 by the United Nations, the CIA, and the US Department of Defense - indicate that the number of ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria Between 20 and 30 thousand fighters.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, this number does not include the fighters of the organization in its other branches, the map of the organization's activity and its spread in many areas and countries, where the organization has a large presence in Afghanistan, and the organization is still launching attacks in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, and maintains its ability Operational in Yemen, Southeast Asia and Central Asia.

The African continent is an alternative arena for the organization of the state with its insistence on multiple fronts and sanctuaries, especially the Sahel and Saharan Africa as well as West and East Africa. The organization's networks, coordinated groups, dormant individual cells and "lone wolves" continue to pose a threat to America and Europe.

In sum, the post-Baghdadi Islamic State will have no difficulty in appointing a new leader, and the organization will rally around and support it. Since its inception, the group has revealed a remarkable ability to adapt to developments and has, within a short period of time, been expelled from its control areas. Restructuring and acting as a decentralized organization, its ideological appeal remains high, its financial capacity is good, and its ability to attract local fighters is growing.

In contrast, the political, economic and security situation in Iraq and Syria remains fragile, and local official forces lack the competence and resources to pursue ISIS operatives, with ISIS becoming a war of attrition and guerrilla tactics.

Poor stability, declining reconstruction processes, poor governance, the prevalence of corruption, tyranny, and pervasive sectarianism are sufficient incubators for IS. In a loose region suffering from outside interference and the struggle of regional and global powers, the return of the Islamic State is only a matter of time.