The end of Baghdadi

Self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. According to reports, Baghdadi blew himself up in a tunnel in Syria, along with three of his children, after being cornered by US special forces. There was little doubt that US President Donald Trump would use the moment for self-promotion and to promote quite a few myths that might need to change in the coming days. The trouble is that Baghdadi’s demise comes at the weakest point of the IS’s reign over Iraq and Syria. In the military battle, the IS was always likely to eventually lose. What was more worrying is how easily much of US-controlled Iraq fell when faced with the haphazard army of IS militias. For almost three years, Mosul was abandoned to IS terror before liberation. The question of how millions of people were left to their fate under the hands of the Islamic State remains unanswered. But the ease at which so many people were abandoned remains a cause of major resentment in Iraq and Syria. The death of Baghdadi is a reminder of the tragic legacy of the US war in Iraq and how it set into motion the rise of a new face of Islamist terror.

Millions of Muslims have suffered the most under the reign of terror of the IS. It is not clear that the death of Baghdadi will bring this to an end. In Baghdadi, the IS has lost its ideologue, but that will not mean an end to the terrorism it has inspired. It will need an alternate political project for the Middle East and North Africa, which has showed signs of happening in Iraq when street protests returned, but the brutal response of the Iraqi state will continue to push the public towards militancy. The same story played out in Syria, Libya and Yemen were ruling elites pushed the public to resort to militancy after protests were brutally quashed.

There is a need for a political alternative that can accommodate the voices calling for participation and democracy across the region today. This is the only way to stop the IS terror, which has morphed into a group of loosely affiliated terrorist cells, whose members choose their own targets, some of them in Europe, but most of them still in the Middle East and North Africa. The region requires a political solution, which will need to be based on the will of the people. This is the only recipe for lasting peace and prosperity in the region. Baghdadi’s death was inevitable, but the fate of the region is not sealed yet. There must be hope for those who have suffered decades of authoritarianism, war and terrorism.