Intelligence agency: Baghdadi is over and ISIS continues

Ahmed Sultan

ISIS will continue despite the killing of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, intelligence agency Sufan Group said on Monday.

Al-Baghdadi’s death is a tactical success, but the beheading of the leadership will not lead to the disappearance of ISIS, the group said in an analysis released on Monday, noting that terrorist organizations can survive despite the deaths of their leaders.

The Islamic State will continue to be a “sign of global terrorism,” with several branches in Afghanistan, Yemen, West and Central Africa, and South and East Asia.

The organization considered that the world has become a better place after the death of the leader of Daesh, but the structure of the terrorist organization remained and the circumstances that led to the emergence of the terrorist organization still exists, and it is still able to operate its external branches, and communicate with them permanently.

Soufan Group described the hiding of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the province of Idlib “not surprising”, because the province is crowded with millions of refugees, and Idlib is the last province controlled by the Syrian armed factions.

Between Daesh and Al-Qaeda

The foundation – headed by Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent in charge of pursuing al-Qaeda – said that the killing of Baghdadi is a major achievement in the war on global terrorism, pointing out that he was a source of terrorism around the world and responsible for attacks in a number of European countries since 2014.

According to Sufan Group, the issue of declaring the caliphate from inside Syria and Iraq was one of the points of controversy between both Daesh and Al Qaeda as the Al Qaeda currently led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, rejected the declaration of Daesh Caliphate.

Al-Qaeda also seeks to declare a global caliphate, but believes that the timing is not appropriate, and should continue the terrorist operations until the exhaustion of all the countries fighting it, and then declare the caliphate at a time when countries are unable to confront global terrorism.

Soufan Group said that Ababakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a village belonging to the province of Idlib on the Syrian-Turkish border, an area where there is a number of terrorist groups.