By This Strike Do I Declare Your Replacement Caliph

"This strike demonstrates the pressure we continue to place on the ISIL [ISIS] terrorist network and the group's increasingly limited freedom to maneuver, communicate and command."
U.S. Central Command

Should the 'caliph' of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham indeed have been crucially wounded as was reported on Saturday by Iraqi authorities, there will be many in the neighbourhood who will be rejoicing, and others, among whom are unnamed and influentially affluent backers of ISIS, who will not be exultant the way that Iraq, Iran and Syria will most surely be at this news.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was said to be meeting with high-ranked ISIS members when a U.S.-led strike targeted where he was expected to be, close to the western Iraqi border town of al-Qaim. Reports were swift in being made public that a ten-truck ISIS convoy was hit outside Mosul, injuring top ISIS leaders, among them Caliph Baghdadi.

According to local tribal witness reports as relayed by Anbar povince MP Mohammad al-Karbuli, many people were killed and wounded. The raid left ISIS members frantically picking up the pieces, transporting wounded to the al-Qaim hospital put to the ultimate stress test of any hospital to deal with an overwhelming number of critically wounded patients.

The successful air strike had targeted a building where senior ISIS officers had arranged to meet, close by al-Qaim. Such dedicated intelligence cannot be established without having in place reliable advance notification by someone intimately knowledgeable about the plans of the group at those senior levels, intimating that indeed a mole has infiltrated ISIS to report back to Iraqi authorities the results.

ISIS fighters urged al-Qaim residents to come to the their aid and donate blood. Reports, as yet unconfirmed, arose that the local ISIS leader in Anbar province and his deputy were killed in the attack. High value targets, and hugely successful high value strikes, taking out in one fell swoop a large swathe of leadership.

Did al-Qaeda shrivel and die as an ideological-religious movement when Osama bin Laden was dispatched?

He may not have been connected to a rebirth of Islamic territorial imperialism in the same way that Caliph Baghdadi is, but in his time and place he initiated, fostered and guided an Islamist jihadi movement that motivated and incited the fundamentalist faithful to their guerrilla-inspired terrorist acts of defiance of meek Islam, and its Western masters.

And which led eventually to a jihadist group whose exploits have been dauntlessly violent.

While the shock-and-terror effect of beheading Western journalists and humanitarian aid workers is not quite in the territory of 9/11, the cold-blooded beheading of a westerner displaying the utter contempt held by Islamofascists for the West and particularly the United States predated ISIS' videos so proudly disseminated by the inflated egos of ISIS leaders.

The televised beheading of Daniel Pearl led the way. There is in fact nothing new under the scimitar and the crescent moon. The resurrection of beheading as an Islamic device to inspire fear in the hearts and numbed minds of their adversaries simply reflects Islamic conquest in the historical past, just as the declaration of Baghdadi's caliphate represents a reflection of that same past.

Should he not survive, or survive in a condition not conducive to continuing his leadership, someone from among his retinue will surface to be anointed, if not by him then by his trusted lieutenants; failing that, a brief convulsion of inner-circle bloodletting will conclude with the most brutally bloodthirsty among the bunch surviving to declare himself Baghdadi's successor and their show will go on.

Labels: Conflict, Intervention, Iraq, Islamic State, Shia, Sunni, United States

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, November 09, 2014