Today, Explained - The death of al-Baghdadi

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

ISIS has lost its leader, but that doesn't mean the world is any safer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode features some descriptions of violence. None of it's terribly graphic, but this is a heads up if you need it. We will start in a moment. Jen Williams, co-host of Vox's Worldly podcast, the president, made a big announcement this weekend. Who died? Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS. His full name is actually Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri, but he goes by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. That's his

kunya, his war nickname, basically. He's the head honcho of ISIS. He was the big guy in charge, and he's dead. Where is he from? He's from Iraq. He grew up in a kind of middle-class family in Iraq. He was very religious growing up. He actually did his master's thesis on this really obscure, like medieval Quranic text interpretation. And then the Iraq war happened. First Bush or second Bush? Second Bush. Got it. Iraq kind of turns into chaos. You have the U.S. basically disbands the Iraqi military, the Baathist regime. They kind of all scatter. There's no structure.

There's no military. There's no security forces. So the U.S. is fighting all these different people on the ground. It actually ends up arresting Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in around 2004 and putting him in Camp Buka, which is this really notorious U.S. prison in Iraq. And it basically became this kind of terrorist training camp. These people were able to network in this facility. And he comes out and basically has a lot more connections and is really pissed off and then goes on to kind of basically exploit the chaos on the ground that proceeded out of, you know, the Iraq War. Flash forward, he creates this kind of really powerful organization.

It kind of morphs out of this other organization, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and kind of turns into this thing. He becomes a rising star and eventually consolidates power and takes over. And then 2015 happens, ISIS takes over entire chunks of Iraq and Syria, and he becomes this monster, this horrific figure who's giving speeches and calling for, you know, the beheadings of people and calling for, you know, the declaration of this caliphate. So he was the figurehead of ISIS. So how does he go from, like, peak caliphate to hiding out in Syria?

Basically, the U.S. decides to fight ISIS because ISIS starts carrying out attacks, takes over, again, entire chunks of Iraq and Syria. And then, you know, ISIS starts inspiring attacks from, you know, homegrown extremists here in the United States and in Europe. So the United States recognizes this is a really serious thing and starts, you know, fighting them. And through the efforts of both the U.S. but also Kurdish fighters on the ground, our Kurdish kind of allies in Syria, basically decimate the caliphate and take it out. So he goes to ground. al-Baghdadi basically goes into hiding. Nobody really knows where he is. Everyone's trying to find him.

The caliphate's crumbling. He was really like not very present. He only would release videos maybe like once a year if that was mostly his spokespeople and the fighters on the ground who were doing that. And he was just kind of like behind the scenes, like the man behind the curtain pulling the strings. But it turns out he was basically hiding in this compound in northwestern Syria. And is this Syria that's controlled by Syria, Syria that's controlled by? It's mostly al-Qaeda controlled area of Syria. It's not the part of Syria we've been talking about in previous episodes where the U.S. is. Is the United States looking for him this whole time? For the past, you know, five months or so,

there's been this kind of effort to try to locate him. Starting this summer, basically, forces captured one of his wives and a courier. So we essentially arrest and interrogate one of his wives and a courier. We get some kind of more general information as to where he is. And then we had this disaffected ISIS member who basically turned on ISIS and started becoming an informant for the Kurds. And I was working with

them for a couple months. These are the Kurds who have been helping the United States fight ISIS who now feel betrayed by the United States. Yeah, they basically ended up in the past couple weeks getting like a very pinpointed location as to where Baghdadi was. And they planned this raid on this compound. So the president described this raid in great detail yesterday during a press conference he gave. He did. What exactly happened as far as we know? So as far as we know, there were basically some Delta Force members.

So these are like the super elite fighting force. We had eight helicopters and we had many other ships and planes. There were basically some Delta Force members. So these are like the super elite fighting force. We had eight helicopters and we had many other ships and planes. There was a military dog or two. There was a robot. Just in case, because we were afraid he had a suicide vest on. And if you get close to him and he blows it up, you're going to die. It's a really small force, like fewer than 100 soldiers on the ground.

These eight helicopters take off from a base in Iraq. They land. It's this town called Berisha. It's in Idlib province in Syria. It's three miles south of the Turkish border. And they tried to call Baghdadi out first and said, hey, you know, do you want to come out and surrender? He basically said no. The U.S. forces blast open a side of the wall. They go in that way. Baghdadi escapes to these, like, tunnels. There's this, like, underground bunker tunnel system that ran underneath this house compound. And he apparently took a wrong turn and went to a dead end. And he had dragged three of his young children with him. They were led to certain death. He reached the end of the tunnel as our

dogs chased him down. He ignited his vest killing himself and the three children. Basically soldiers end up having to dig through the rubble after the smoke clears and they find his remains. They do a rapid DNA test within 15 minutes. Test results gave certain immediate and totally positive identification. It was him. And then finally, as they were lifting off, U.S. fighter jets fired six rockets at the compound and basically just detonated the whole place. Right, I saw a photo of it. It's just like a crater now. Yeah.

It's just like rubble. A lot of this is reminiscent of the raid on bin Laden and the execution of bin Laden. With one glaring difference, which is, of course, we have a different president who handled the announcement a little differently. Yeah. So if you remember, and if you don't remember, I'll bring you back to it. When we found out that Osama bin Laden had been killed, Obama comes out to the podium. He gives this very kind, women, and children.

Gives barely any details about what happened, just that there was this raid on this compound. He talks about how we're not at war with Islam, you know, we're at war with these very specific terrorists, and then he leaves, and that's it. Right. Now Trump, on the other hand, comes out and gives a little bit of a statement. Last night, the United States brought the world's number one terrorist leader to justice. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. And then proceeds to take questions for like the next 40 minutes in which he says all kinds of stuff.

I got to watch it along with General Milley, Vice President Pence, others in the situation room. And we watched it so clearly. Well, I don't want to say how, but we had absolutely perfect, as though you were watching a movie. Called al-Baghdadi a dog, I don't know how many times. He died like a dog. It was intense. Yeah, he describes him as like a coward and crying and whimpering and running down the tunnels and killing himself. And it was basically what you would expect from Trump, but it's not what you would expect from a U.S. president.

He thanks Russia, which people thought was kind of weird, but we actually had to fly over Russian military-controlled territory. It actually makes sense. You know, he divulges all these, like, really complicated details about the raid and, like, talking about the tunnels and the compound. The tunnels were dead end for the most part. There was one we think that wasn't, but we had that covered too, just in case. This was like he was, you know, he had just seen an action movie.

Yeah. And he was super stoked and was like, oh, we totally killed this bad guy. Buy my books. You know, if you read my book, there was a book just before the World Trade Center came down. Right, and buy my books.

I think I wrote 12 books. All did very well. But you also have to remember that, like, the name of the raid, it was named for Kayla Mueller, the U.S. aid worker who was abducted and repeatedly raped by Baghdadi himself before she was killed. So they named the raid after her.

So you would hope at least the president would have a little bit more kind of understanding of the tone and the somber nature of the moment. What does this actually mean for ISIS? Is the death of al-Baghdadi a big blow to the organization? So yes and no. He was the figurehead. He was the founder of ISIS, right?

So symbolically, yes, it's a big deal. But operationally, not so much, right? Because the way terrorist organizations, in particular ISIS, operate is that they devolve power significantly to different cells and to different some troops to protect the oil from ISIS, but we're not going to have like an active force on the ground. We're not going to be working with the Kurds to fight ISIS. So I think that actually even more than Baghdadi is probably the impact that we're going to see on ISIS. The withdrawal of U.S. troops is a net gain for ISIS, whereas this, the killing of Baghdadi, yeah, it's a setback, but it's not necessarily something that is going to cripple the organization. Can I just get your name and how you would like us to identify you for the record? My name is Mona Yakoubian. I'm a senior advisor at the U.S. Institute of Peace. And what does that mean, Mona, specifically with regard to Syria? So I joined the Institute a few years ago, having had extensive experience

working on Syria, both in government and then before in the think tank world. Well before that, I was a Fulbright in Syria back in the mid 80s. So I focus largely on Syria in terms of my analysis, but I also provide a lot of strategic advice and consulting to the vice president who's in charge of the Middle East and Africa. The vice president of the United States? No, no. Wow, that would be interesting. No, the vice president of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a vice president. There are several. My formal title is actually senior advisor to the vice president for Middle East and Africa.

Okay, so we've been talking a lot about Syria in the past few weeks, but we haven't asked a vital question. I'm wondering if we can start with that, which is up until President Trump made this decision with the president of Turkey a few weeks ago to pull out United States troops. Who was in control of Syria? Well, that's a complicated question, because Syria has been, since the onset of this conflict now, almost nine years ago, it's been fragmented with the regime of Bashar al-Assad gaining increasing control over the western part of Syria. So up to three weeks ago, the regime had controlled about two-thirds of the country, close to. Then there was a portion of the country that remains under the control of extremists that are somehow connected to al-Qaeda. Then in the Far East, about 30% of the country was under the control of the Syrian

Democratic Forces, which is a Kurdish-controlled armed group that has been the partner of the United States on the ground. And in addition, you also had a portion of northwestern Syria controlled by Turkey and some of its Syrian proxies on the ground inside Syria. So a very complicated picture with fragmented control. Okay, Syria, Al-Qaeda, Syrian Kurds, and Turkey. And we know Turkey's presence there grows significantly once the U.S. troops pull out. Are there any other big changes in the past few weeks? Well, yeah, a big change was that when the U.S. announced its decision to withdraw from northeast Syria, the Russians, who have been a strong supporter and ally of the Assad regime,

began to almost immediately fill the vacuum left by U.S. troops withdrawing, so much so that you had even Russian journalists videoing themselves at abandoned U.S. outposts just a matter of a day or two after the U.S. had left. And behind the Russians, of course, are also the forces of the Syrian regime. So this has begun to change the picture, if you will, in eastern Syria, where areas that were once controlled by the U.S. partners on the ground, the Kurds, are slowly devolving back to the control of the Assad regime backed by Russia. Does this killing of al-Baghdadi over the weekend in northwestern Syria, a portion of Syria that's controlled by al-Qaeda, does that change anything about the power balance in that country?

You know, it doesn't affect the power balance directly. Obviously, it's a huge setback for ISIS, and ISIS is an actor on the ground in Syria. They no longer control territory, but there has been and continues to be concern about an ISIS resurgence. The organization has been quite decentralized. And so in a lot of ways, it won't have a direct effect on the balance of power in northern Syria or northeastern Syria. There, I think the real issue is going to be the extent to which Turkey and Russia are able to fulfill an agreement that they had negotiated that will allow for joint patrols between Turkey and Russia along a good portion

of the border. And that also allows Turkey to retain control of a portion of the Northeast that its forces had invaded now almost three weeks ago. It's sort of curious to talk about who controls this country in terms of the United States and Turkey and Russia, when so much of our discussions about Syria used to have to do with Bashar al-Assad. How is his power over the country viewed right now? Well, I mean, if anything, the events over the last few weeks have actually redounded to his benefit. With the decision for the U.S. to withdraw, he now, without really having to fire a shot, his regime is able to begin to assume control in eastern Syria. And this begins to fulfill his vow that he would

retake, you know, every square kilometer of the country. So while not much is being said about him, in some ways, Assad is the sort of the silent winner in all of this in terms of being able to regain control of a very important part of Syria. Does that mean that he essentially won this war? Well, it really depends on how you define win. He's won in the sense that his hold on power, at least for the short to medium term, is no longer really contested. And if anything, he has continued, as I said, to consolidate control, to gain access to more territory. But what kind of Syria is he going to be ruling over is a whole nother question. It is a highly fractured, violent, broken country.

The international community remains arrayed against him. There's a vow not to provide any sort of reconstruction funding to this country that's been badly damaged by nearly a decade of war. And he's contending with sort of creeping insurgency and violence, even in areas that he's already regained control over, which suggests that while he does sit firmly in Damascus, his hold on power over the long term, Syria's stability is very much in question. What does that mean for the Syrians who remain in the country? Unfortunately, I think it means that the Syrians who live in Syria continue to live a life of great suffering. A large number of Syrians require humanitarian

assistance. Much of the country has been destroyed, many of their homes and schools. There's no economy to speak of, no jobs. And this is really quite stunning when one thinks about the fact that prior to this conflict, this was a solidly middle-income country. And now there's really no hope or prospect of any sort of peaceful reconciliation in the near term. Do you have any idea how many people have fled the country at this point and how much of the population remains as a percentage? Over half of the country has been displaced. So, it's about 13 million people have been displaced over the course of this war. Of those, about six and a half million are refugees outside of the country. And then the rest have been

displaced internally. Some of those people actually displaced multiple times. And so these are people that really, unfortunately, they have been on the run for years. Many of their children are not able to attend school. Those that are refugees in neighboring countries are living a really, really difficult life. We're finding increasingly that host countries, whether it's Turkey or Lebanon, are in order to return one to two million Syrian refugees from Turkey back into Syria. Hmm. But with Turkey and Russia and al-Assad in control here, what does the future of Syria look like for these people who are still there or might be coming back? Well, I think, you know, in particular, this question of returning Syrian refugees who live in Turkey right now back to this part of Syria, that's very problematic because many of them are not from that part of Syria. And there are portions of this area in Syria that are predominantly Kurd,

while the Syrian refugees in Turkey are predominantly Arab. So forcing them back into this part of Syria, some people are saying, you know, this could lead to a scenario of mass displacement and even ethnic cleansing of Kurds that live in that area. What's clear is that, you know, it's unlikely that this will be a stable area. And that if Syrians are in fact forced back from Turkey into this part of Syria, unfortunately, they may find that they are confronting, you know, yet more conflict, more instability. Yeah. And so, I mean, Mona, you've studied Syria for like decades, it sounds like? Well, my experience goes back to the mid-80s when I was a Fulbright student there. So yes, I've had a long, sort of long-standing experience and understanding of the country.

I guess in your 30 years of experience, where does this country stand right now? protests by Syrians as part of what was once called the Arab Spring. Those drivers of conflict have not been addressed. And in fact, what's happened is the conflict has evolved now into something that is multiplayer, regional, even global conflict. And so we have many now overlapping conflicts in Syria. The one that we've seen most dramatically in the last few weeks is a conflict between Turkey and the Kurds. There's also conflict between Israel and Iran that's being played out in Syria. There's tension between the United States and Russia. And so what started as sort of peaceful protests in 2011 has now evolved into a multifaceted, multilayered, complex conflict

that unfortunately really shows little sign of being resolved anytime soon. Mona Yakoubian is a senior advisor at the U.S. Institute of Peace here in Washington, D.C. She advises a vice president, but not the vice president. I'm Sean Ramos-Furham. This is Today Explained. you