In the chain of events that led to the Oct. 26 demise of the ISIS leader, every link tells a story. But even as it crystallizes what the war on terrorism looks like 18 years after 9/11, al-Baghdadi’s death may mark the beginning of an uncertain new chapter.
The first link begins with the government of Iraq, which in September arrested one of al-Baghdadi’s wives and a courier. Intelligence pointed to Syria, where the CIA was already working with the Kurdish militia. Both Iraq and the Kurds are committed enemies of ISIS. Iraqis suffered tens of thousands of casualties pushing ISIS out of their country from 2014 to 2017, and Kurdish militias lost some 11,000 fighters finishing the job in Syria, where the group’s claim of a caliphate was erased.
Their involvement underscores that this is a global fight: the U.S. is not going it alone. The people actually prosecuting the war on terror are overwhelmingly local and Muslim—in Iraq and Syria, but also in Libya, Niger, Chad, Mali, Somalia, southern Yemen and much of Afghanistan, where more than 58,000 Afghan national military and police forces lost their lives through 2018. Typically the U.S. military role in these missions is restricted to half a dozen or more special- operations commandos working with local forces by providing intelligence, training and air cover. The local forces are mostly Muslim.
Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Syria continued to battle ISIS and hunted al-Baghdadi even after American forces retreated from those countries. On Oct. 6, Trump ordered U.S. troops to pull back from territory held by the Kurds, who were left alone to face an attack by Turkey. “I don’t think we could have done this without the help we got from the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds,” a U.S. official told TIME, speaking of the operation against the ISIS leader. The official quickly added that Iraq military and intelligence officers “kicked the whole thing off.”
This story is from the November 11, 2019 edition of Time.
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This story is from the November 11, 2019 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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