The president of the united STATES, Donald Trump, has announced on Sunday the death of the leader of the Islamic State (ISIS, in English), Abubaker al Baghdadi in a military operation in the northwest of Syria. Al Baghdadi, one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, proclaimed in 2014, the caliphate of the ISIS for the next three peak years would span Iraq and Syria, wreaking terror with mass executions and imposing their radical version of islam.
“he Was a man sick and depraved, and already was,” said Trump, in a message televised to the nation. “He died like a dog, died like a coward. The world today is a place much safer,” he added. “The animal that tried to intimidate the rest has finished crying and gimoteando, terrified to see that american forces would come on top”.
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The caliph of terror
The president has assured that there has been no u.s. casualties in the operation, which began “a few weeks” and concluded Saturday with The Baghdadi cornered inside a tunnel, detonate the belt bomb he was carrying. Yes there has been, however, a “good number” of casualties among the companions of the leader of the ISIS. U.s. special forces spent two hours on the ground to gather intelligence, and have seized numerous sensitive information about the terrorist group, has explained the president, in a speech open to questions that have lasted for 45 minutes.
it Was an air attack by night, has secured, in which three children of Baghdadi were also killed after his father detonated his belt explosive. The corpse, has added a Trump, as he has done a DNA test and match with the Al-Baghdadi. “His body was mutilated by the explosion, but the test results give an identification undeniable, and positive,” he assured the president.
The assault on the residential complex in which it was The Bagdadi, less than five kilometers from the border with Turkey, was executed by between 50 and 70 members of the Delta Force and the Rangers of the Army of the united States. The operation also included six combat helicopters that departed from Erbil, capital of iraq’s Kurdistan region.
The fall of Al-Baghdadi marks a milestone in the fight against ISIS. With the operation, Trump points to an indisputable victory in foreign policy, just as his strategy in Syria was being heavily criticized even from within the own ranks, republican. The president, immersed in a major crisis domestic with a process of impeachment launched against his person, reaches one of the clearest targets of his first term.
Trump, Saturday night, watching a live operation in the northwest of Syria. AFP
Al-Baghdadi has led the Islamic State since 2010, when the terrorist association still was a branch of a clandestine Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The fall in 2017 of Mosul and Raqa, the strengths of the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria, respectively, stripped to Al-Baghdadi of your power and became a fugitive. The air strikes carried out by the united States killed most of the main lieutenants of the ISIS and, before that he published in April a video message in which it appears the terrorist leader, there were conflicting reports about whether he was alive or not. Despite losing his last territory to be significant, it is believed that ISIS has sleeper cells all over the world and some of the fighters operating from the shadows in the desert of Syria, and in various places in iraq.
The operation against Al-Baghdadi occurs in a moment in which the united States has shown relentless in his strategy in the region. The decision a month ago to the president Trump to withdraw nearly the whole of the thousand of troops that have deployed in Syria, in the midst of the Turkish offensive against kurdish forces, who have been allies of the united STATES in the fight against ISIS, has been corrected in the past few days. Washington now arises to maintain a presence stronger than initially estimated, to protect from ISIS oil fields in syrian.
The fugitive most wanted on the planet
The fugitive most wanted on the planet, with a bounty of 25 million dollars (22.5 million euros) offered by the U.S. for his head, he is meant to be hidden in some desert lair of the border between Syria and Iraq, where the sleeper cells of ISIS roam, waiting to be woken up by the terror. But also Osama bin Laden was sought in the mountains of Afghanistan, when he was living peacefully with his family near the main military academy of Pakistan.
Idlib province, the last stronghold of the rebellion against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in the north of Syria, seemed a refuge, it is unlikely to Al Baghdadi. The goal of the command of the Delta Force, the village of syria of Barisha located close to the border of Turkey, is located in the heart of a territory where groups of insurgents islamists have made strong for more than eight years of war.
In the struggle for hegemony in the revolt salafist and jihadist groups, the heirs of Al Qaeda, that Al Baghdadi broke away six years ago to undertake the foundation of the Caliphate, had been cornered finally by ISIS in Idlib from a year ago. The powerful militia Hayat Tahrir al Sham controls most of the rebel province, besieged by syrian forces, and Russian, and where the Turkish Army has established a dozen of “military posts of observation.” The presence of the fugitive caliph in Idlib is interpreted as a sign of the weakness of the Islamic State in the region of the Euphrates before the harassment of the Iraqi Army and the progress of the troops of Damascus and of the militia of kurdish-arab Democratic Front in syria.
The leader of the Islamic State reappeared supposedly the last 16 of September in an audio tape in which he urged his followers to liberate the prisoners of the jihadists in the hands of kurdish militias in northeastern Syria. The sound recordings are broadcast through digital portals of propaganda jihadist were its usual means of communication. From that proclaimed in 2014, the caliphate in the mosque of Al Nuri in Mosul, Al-Baghdadi had not been back to be seen. The past month of April, when I had just produce the fall of your last fief of land in the syrian border on the Euphrates river with Iraq, he returned to appear in a video.
The annihilation of ISIS has been the only goal shared by the contendibodies faced in the dash global of the syrian conflict, as Russia and Iran, allies of Assad; Turkey, associated to a sector of the rebellion, islamist, or U.S., which has bombarded the bases of the islamic caliphate for over four years. Trump acknowledged the cooperation between Moscow and Baghdad in the operation, as well as, “to some extent”, that of Syria for allowing to fly over without incident its territory. Kurdish militias in Syria, former allies leave from a breast by Washington following his withdrawal in the conflict, claimed that he had joined in the preparation of the action of intelligence five months ago, despite the fact that their presence in the environment of Idlib is very limited.
A source from the Turkish Government has been limited to pointing out that “Al-Baghdadi came to the location [Barisha] 48 hours before the attack,” reports Andrew Mourenza. Turkey was “coordinated” with the U.S., has added, without confirm or deny the eventual collaboration of the intelligence services to Turkish. “We welcome what happened; it’s a good day for the poor”, concluded the official source of Turkish, who has asked not to be identified.
The intervention of a command airborne us from Iraq to northwest Syria only seems feasible by the willingness of Russia and Syria, who dominate the airspace, in addition to the complicity of the neighboring Turkey. The base of Incirlik, in the nearby southeastern Anatolia, or an aircraft carrier anchored in the gulf of Alejandreta seemed to be, in principle, the points that are more predictable for the special forces of the US launched a covert operation in the hornet’s nest of Idlib, where they are entrenched more than 30,000 insurgents, islamist militants with artillery and surface to air missiles.
as missing on several occasions, Al-Baghdadi was primarily a political symbol and religious more than a chief and military strategist. His death will not have an impact transcendental about the threat of jihadist global. The caliph who came to reign over 11 million people on a territory the size of the United Kingdom, represented the image of the defeat the last time he was seen alive. Surrounded by his commanders in the video released six months ago, his presence alone was a sign of life for the tens of thousands of members and affiliates of the ISIS in the middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe. Cleared the caliphate and the caliph, ISIS still aspires to continue banging with terror through groups of radicals and fanatics who pay him homage in the middle world.
