What history can tell us about the future of ISIS after the death of al-Baghdadi

Over five years after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a caliphate from Mosul’s Great Mosque, the most-wanted terrorist in the world has been declared death. An elite special forces unit of the US Military, with intelligence support from its Kurdish and Iraqi-government allies, reached al-Baghdadi in a dead-end tunnel in a small village near the Syrian-Turkish border, where he detonated a suicide vest.

The death of al-Baghdadi is a setback for the Islamic State­­—his ability to remain alive despite the recent military losses of ISIS and despite an intense counterterrorism campaign symbolized ISIS’ ability to persist, even under the harshest conditions. Against this background, first and foremost, al-Baghdadi’s death is a huge symbolic loss: already deprived of its “caliphate”, the group has now also lost its top leader who claimed direct descendance from the Prophet Muhammad’s Quraysh tribe, and who had been the architect behind ISIS’ dramatic rise in Syria and Iraq. Certainly, the significance of this should not be underestimated. Yet, there are reasons to remain cautious against overestimating the detrimental impact al-Baghdadi’s killing will have for ISIS in the future.

A legacy of assasinations

The conditions out of which the group originally emerged in Iraq serve to illustrate the risks that still exist with regards to a possible ISIS resurgence, even after al-Baghdadi’s death.

After the 2003 US-led military invasion of Iraq, a jihadist group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi emerged as the local al-Qaeda affiliate in 2004 and became known under the name “al-Qaeda in Iraq”, after Zarqawi’s death calling itself the “Islamic State of Iraq” (ISI) from 2006 onwards.

While this group had managed to cause thousands of casualties during its first years, its power was in fact on a steady decline from at least 2007 onwards, as it had come under pressure from the US and a local armed Sunni resistance movement known as the “Anbar Awakening”.

Yet, at the same time under then Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, the marginalization of large parts of Iraq’s Sunni population created grievances upon which the Islamic State would later build its upsurge. Moreover, with the US withdrawal from Iraq underway, which begun in 2007 and was completed in 2011, increasing numbers of ISI detainees were released from prison camps from 2009 onwards. Today it is known that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was one of these detainees at the US-maintained Camp Bucca in Southern Iraq.

Still, when the Obama administration completed the withdrawal of its troops from the country in 2011, the levels of ISI-related violence were at the lowest point ever since the group’s emergence in 2004. With the regional destabilization that emerged from the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, widespread Sunni frustration both in Syria and Iraq, and the completed withdrawal of US forces, ISI was able to resurge under its new leader al-Baghdadi, who had followed upon al-Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, after the latter had been killed in 2010.

Adaptable

What the history of ISIS tells us is, first, that the killing of its leaders has not stopped the movement in the past. Neither was this the case when al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006, nor when his successor Abu Umar al-Baghdadi died in 2010. Moreover, the current situation for ISIS in Syria and Iraq resembles the group’s conditions at the time of the US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.

From an operational perspective, although ISIS is militarily severely weakened, the group is far from dead, and has long begun a process of transforming back into an underground terrorist network.

Since the group lost its last pocket of land in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March this year, it focused its operational tactics on decentralized activities carried out by small cells of dispersed fighters. These operations, which include night-time kidnappings, assaults, bomb attacks, and extortions of the local civilian population, are carried out autonomously, which means that al-Baghdadi’s death is unlikely to have an immediate impact on them.

Similarly, when al-Baghdadi assumed the group’s leadership in 2010, ISI had adapted its tactics and given up on the immediate goal of controlling land and imposing Sharia law, which it had attempted earlier in parts of Iraq’s Sunni triangle, and instead focused on engaging in an underground terrorist campaign.

Thus, al-Baghdadi did not create the movement from scratch, but rather could build on the fundaments of an existing jihadist organization in Iraq that had already proven remarkably adaptable to changing circumstances and seemingly devastating military defeats.

How loyal are other groups to ISIS?

Another parallel can be drawn with regards to the recent retreat of US forces from strategic areas in Northern Syria, which prompted a Turkish-led military intervention. Substantial numbers of fighters managed to escape from abandoned prisons previously held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as the latter shifted priorities from containing ISIS towards countering the Turkish intervention. Both the release of prisoners from detention sites and the security void left behind by a US withdrawal already helped ISIS to re-surge eight years ago.

Moreover, ISIS’ followers were primarily attracted by the group’s ideology and the idea of creating a “caliphate”—a jihadi proto-state governed by a radical interpretation of Sharia law. This ideology persists independently of a single person such as al-Baghdadi.

Importantly, ISIS’ global reach extends far beyond Syria and Iraq: local branches are operating in several Western African countries, in the Sinai, in Afghanistan as well as several other places. These groups have local leaders and fighters who adhere to the same transnational jihadist ideology, and their activities were never depending on concrete instructions from ISIS’ core leadership around al-Baghdadi.

Yet, it is unclear to what extent their formal allegiances to ISIS, which were usually pledged by local leaders to al-Baghdadi himself, will remain unaffected.

Popular support has decreased

Onecritical question for ISIS’ future of course regards al-Baghdadi’s successor. He and his close aides had plenty of time to prepare for his death and it would be highly unlikely for him not to have taken precautions with regards to his succession. However, it is yet unclear whom he designated to take over his position.

Will his successor manage to secure wide support from within the movement or will there be internal splits and divisions? The latter could destabilize the organization from within, should ISIS leaders or units split-off and join rivalling groups.

Finally, one important difference in comparison to the situation in 2011 regards the Sunni populations in Syria and Iraq, who now share the experience of having lived under ISIS. When the group rose to power, many ordinary Sunni Arabs who had suffered from political and economic marginalization were at first welcoming and optimistic towards their new rulers.

After the violent excesses of ISIS against the civilian population public opinion is now much less in their favor, and many Sunni Arab Syrians and Iraqis explicitly resent the sectarian instrumentalization of existing social grievances.

While these conditions will make it more difficult for ISIS to regain the trust and support of local Sunni populations, the group’s history reminds us of the risks of prematurely assuming its end.