Islamic State Falls

Islamic State Falls

The nightmare of Islamic State may have ended on the ground, but it will take longer to eradicate it as an idea. On Saturday, Syrian Democratic Forces supported by the US-led coalition besieged the Baghouz enclave on the border between eastern Syria and Iraq where several hundred IS leaders and fighters had been cornered. It could have been a bloody last stand ending in martyrdom, but after the escape of over 30 thousand civilians, most of them wives and children of jehadis, the fighters too surrendered. The hunt is on for supreme IS commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and if he is alive, it is only a matter of time before he is captured, carrying as he does a bounty of $ 25 million on his head. But the elusive ‘Caliph’ may well be a carefully manufactured figurehead that various parties propped up for their own ends. Back in 2017, there were rumours the Russians had killed al-Baghdadi in an air strike, but an audio tape later surfaced to prove his survival. There is now talk he may already be in US custody, judging by the success of several covert hits against top IS leaders in recent months. The Islamic State once encompassed one-third of Iraq and Syria with strongholds like Raqqa and Mosul, its war-making capacity funded by oil, smuggling of antiques and sale of sex slaves. A byword for terror with blood-curdling videos of slaughter of opponents, IS arose in the power vacuum in Iraq in 2004 after Saddam Hussain’s fall; it consolidated after al-Baghdadi took over al-Qaeda’s Iraqi operations and then merged it with the Sunni ‘Nusra Front’ in Syria fighting President Bashar Assad. At its peak, the IS enjoyed a powerful hold in the minds of youths across the world attracted to the jehadi cause; some young men from India too joined IS and perished on its killing fields. The ‘Caliphate’ has fallen, but so long as the Middle East remains in chaos, the IS-brand of virulent radicalism could survive as a virus and rise again elsewhere.

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