Daily Times

After months of speculation as to whether he is dead or alive — the most wanted man in the world has reportedly been spotted in Syria. It seems that ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi fled the Iraqi border town of Rawafor Boukamal (also known as Abu Kamal).

The most immediate question that springs to mind is this: why would al-Baghdadi leave the relatively safer Anbar province in Iraq for the border town of Boukamal? After all, the latter is being strongly contested by Syrian troops aiming to reclaim it from ISIS. It is a veritable war zone with regime forces and allied militias engaged in heavy shelling while the jihadists are employing a large numbers of VBIEDs (vehicle-bound improvised explosive device).

It just doesn’t make sense. Unless, of course, al-Baghdadi has become tired of life on the run. Meaning that he has therefore chosen to fight to the bitter end in what is now the last major stronghold of the so-called ISIS caliphate that at one time spanned one-third of Syria. It may be a calculated move to die as a ‘martyr’ and thus preserve his legacy.

Even if there is some truth to this, it may not automatically signal the end of ISIS. For there is the small matter of succession in terms of the group’s command structure. And while al-Baghdadi has not publicly announced to whom the baton should pass — two likely candidates have emerged; both of whom are among his closes aides and served as in the Iraqi army during the Saddam regime. They are: Iyad al-Obeidi, the outfit’s war minister and Ayad al-Jumaili, in charge of ISIS security. The latter, however, was reportedly killed in an airstrike earlier this year.

In order to create the illusion of objectivity and fairness, American policymakers appear willing to admit to making mistakes. But here comes the twist. They are only inclined to do so when rewriting the present; suggesting that the latter will have absolutely no bearing on how events will shape up

Which brings us to the point that, aside from al-Baghdadi and a handful of his hardline Islamist aides — the top ISIS leadership is comprised of Saddam-era military and intelligence officials. And these are the men who are believed to be charged with planning operations and directing strategy. This raises an important point. The CIA, in collaboration with Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies, had been training and arming local Sunni Arab militants — the so-called Syrian rebels — in the training camps located in the Turkish and Jordanian regions bordering Syria to act against the Assad regime. This logistical and material support has now stopped, thus giving a boost to ISIS. But what of the group’s ideology? Meaning does it enjoy an invisible presence on the battlefield? The outfit follows the Takfiri tradition that sees one group of Muslims declare another non-Muslims or apostates. This has its roots in the puritanical Wahhabi-Salafi ideology of Saudi Arabia.

Yet this alone is not sufficient to win the war. In other words, if we look at the astounding gains enjoyed by ISIS in Iraq and Syria from early 2013 through to mid-2014 — it throws up the issue of who is arming who; who is providing it with training and state-of-the-art weapons that are imperative not only for hit-and-run guerrilla warfare but also for capturing and holding large swathes of territory? Particularly, those fancy Toyota pick-up trucks? The ones with mounted machine-guns at the back, referred to as ‘the Technicals’ in jihadist parlance? At the end of 2013, there were reports that along with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and other military gear — the Saudis were also providing these Toyota pick-ups to every batch of five jihadists who had completed their training in camps located in the border regions of Jordan. This is question that has long bothered Syria watchers, never more so than when ISIS overran Mosul in Iraq.

And once these militants cross over to Daraa and Quneitra in southern Syria from the Jordan-Syria border — then those Toyota pickups can easily travel to ISIS strongholds in Iraq and Syria. Moreover, there have been reports of Syrian rebels receiving arms and training through a secret command centre known as the Military Operations Centre (MOC) based in the intelligence headquarters’ building in Amman. This is home to high-ranking military officials from 14 countries, including the US, European nations, Israel and the Gulf Arab States. They have but one objective: to wage a covert war against the Assad regime.

In order to create the illusion of objectivity and fairness, American policymakers and analysts appear always and forever willing to hold their hands up and admit to making mistakes. But here comes the twist. They are only inclined to do so when rewriting the present; suggesting that the latter have absolutely no bearing on what is happening now. And all facts to the contrary are conveniently brushed aside. Thus when it comes to the creation of ISIS — US policymakers concede that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was an erroneous move that led to the radicalisation of that society, exacerbated sectarian divisions and gave birth to an unrelenting Sunni insurgency against the heavy-handed and discriminatory policies of the Shia-dominated post-Saddam government.

It was the same story regarding the initial phases of the war on terror. Political commentators ‘graciously’ accepted that Cold War-era practice that saw the nurturing of the mujahedeen that would go on to become Al Qaeda as well as the myriad of Afghan ‘freedom fighters’ to run the Soviets out of Afghanistan was a misstep. Yet they mulishly refuse to link any of this to current policy in the region.

And the spin doctors of the corporate media are no better. They continue to conveniently overlook the legacy of the Obama administration and its impact on what is happening in Syria today. For since the start of the so-called civil war — the Obama White House had been funding, arming, training and internationally legitimising the Sunni Arab militants that it suddenly recast in the role of ‘rebels’ to fight the predominantly Shia Syrian regime. (It was under Hafez al-Assad that any efforts were made to integrate the Alawites into the wider Shia community.)

Thus it would be no exaggeration to say that Obama’s insistence of waging a proxy war in Syria has been directly responsible for strengthening such groups as ISIS, al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and numerous other Sunni Arab militant groups in Iraq and Syria. The border between these two countries is highly porous and poorly guarded. Meaning it was only a matter of time before the inevitable blowback came. And sadly, that time is now.

The writer is an Islamabad-based lawyer, columnist and geo-political analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism

Published in Daily Times, November 17^th 2017.