Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's Legacy

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Legacy

Posted: October 29th, 2019

By Emile Nakhleh

Dr. Emile Nakhleh is a retired Senior Intelligence Service Officer, a founding director of the CIA's Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program and the Global and the National Security Policy Institute at the University of New Mexico. Since retiring from the government, Nakhleh has consulted on national security issues, particularly Islamic radicalization, terrorism, and the Arab states of the Middle East. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The demise of Osama bin Laden in 2011 did not end al-Qaeda. Nor will the apparent demise of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi end the terror of the Islamic State. Al-Baghdadi’s death is a major psychological blow to the so-called Islamic State (the terror group also known as IS, ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh), but it does not spell the end of global terrorism under its black banner.

The removal of these global terror organizations’ leaders—including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006, Bin Laden in 2011, and al-Baghdadi this past Saturday—was a setback to these organizations’ fortunes, but did not cripple their activities. In fact, by the time Bin Laden and al-Baghdadi faced their ultimate fate, they had already become almost irrelevant to the actual operations of their respective groups.

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