Analysis
Posted
In a society obsessed with personality politics, we assume that a leader embodies an organisation.
Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi — a rapist and sadist who oversaw especially grotesque
horrors — was an ideal villain to blame for the emergence and success
of the Islamic State terrorist group. Killing him gave Donald Trump the kind of momentary victory that passes for success in our times.
"He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is now a much safer place," said the triumphant Commander-in-Chief.But al-Baghdadi's end should be seen as a gory sideshow.
The Iraqi cleric was not the prominent, compelling leader you might expect of a global movement, nor — as President Trump strangely noted— "tall, handsome, very charismatic" like Al Qaeda's Osama Bin Laden.
While his religious leadership and symbolic importance as the Islamic State's caliph — supposedly descended from the Prophet Mohammed — make his death significant, al-Baghdadi's operational influence over the group is disputed.
But regardless of how big a role he played, his death won't help President Trump, or anyone, stop the "endless wars", especially the war on terror.
That ill-defined conflict — initially a response to the September 11 attacks — has occupied three US Presidents and pitted the Western world against a nebulous enemy, one that fights for ideology rather than territory.
Initially it was a war against the militant Islamist group Al Qaeda, then the Afghan Taliban which harboured it, then it became badly muddied with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the explosion of sectarian violence which followed.
That gave the world the group Al Qaeda in Iraq, which became the Islamic State, and its eventual leader al-Baghdadi.
Instability, injustice and ideology
The Islamic State was a product of three things: instability, injustice and ideology. All of those endure — and the proof is visible across the region.Impoverished, marginalised and oppressed people across the Muslim world have had enough of their corrupt rulers.
People are rising against the mostly secular, Western-backed governments across the Middle East.
The corruption and decadence of the ruling class have become legendary, while the majority of the population lives in poverty under increasing political repression.
In Iraq, at least 240 people have been killed by Western-trained security forces as they demand basic services, an end to sectarianism and corruption and a fair share of the country's huge oil revenues.
In Lebanon, what should be a prosperous, modern, cosmopolitan country is an economic and political basket case, with demonstrators shutting the country down.
Egypt, the region's most populous country and a key US ally, has locked up tens of thousands of political prisoners and holds the ignoble record for the single largest massacre of unarmed protesters in history.
Australia sells weapons to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, countries accused of committing war crimes in Yemen and which brutally suppress domestic dissent.
The lack of political representation and economic justice in the Middle East has helped strengthen the appeal of a supposedly "pure" Islamic alternative.Opposing an ideology, especially one with the deep cultural roots of Islamism, is already very difficult. Not recognising or tackling the terrible conditions and injustice that's grown in the secular alternatives makes it even harder.
Terrorist group flourish under the right conditions
Then there's the extent to which Western intervention and inaction create the conditions for terrorist groups to flourish.The Islamic State spread rapidly across Iraq and Syria because those countries had been weakened and destabilised by US invasion and civil war respectively.
The West's failure to respond to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's horrific human rights abuses turned out to be as devastating as its invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.
Even the conduct of western forces during the campaign against IS has created resentment.Australia — which was involved in a bombing in Mosul in which up to 35 people may have died — is not above reproach.
After 35,502 air strikes across Iraq and Syria, at least 1300 civilian deaths and untold damage to homes and infrastructure, Iraqis say western governments have not provided much money or assistance towards rebuilding.
Whole sections of cities remain in ruins.
Inaction and abrogation
Now the failure to justly deal with the remnants of the Islamic State group is breeding the resentment that many observers warn will create a new terrorist movement in its place.Human rights groups say Iraq's counter-terror courts have been arbitrarily sentencing suspected Islamic State members to death while its security services persecute perceived supporters in Sunni Muslim areas.
IS fighters in Syria languish in appalling conditions without trial.
Their families remain in squalid camps where children die from the poor conditions, while Western countries — including Australia — largely ignore pleas from the US and Kurdish groups to take their citizens back.
Some IS members have been stripped of citizenship, leaving the beleaguered countries of the region to deal with them as well as the legacy of their actions
Instead of the supposedly Western values of justice and rehabilitation, there has been inaction and abrogation.Now the US decision to withdraw its forces from north-eastern Syria, allowing Turkey to attack, has led to escapes, riots and the haphazard transfer of prisoners, some to Iraq.
No-one knows what will happen to those camps and their inmates now the US has gone and the Kurdish guards have turned in desperation to the Syrian regime.
The seeds of alienation are being sewn
Just as IS arose from the sectarian insurgencies after the US invasion of Iraq, the seeds are being sown for the next generation of alienated, mistreated, resentful people, making a new version of IS an inevitability.Abu Bakr a-Baghdadi spent five years in an American prison camp after the second Iraq war.
The next terrorist leader could be a child sitting in the al-Hol camp for IS families in the Syrian desert, a victim of violence doomed to repeat it.
But the focus on figureheads is ultimately misguided. Leaders can't create — or harness — a movement without underlying dissatisfaction to drive it.
Al-Baghdadi was the only name President Trump knew, the only person he wanted to hear had been killed.
He implied that destroying one man would destroy the movement.
"[This] was the big one," he said. "This is the biggest one perhaps that we've ever captured, because this is the one that built ISIS and beyond, and was looking to rebuild it again."
But even if Mr Trump is right to celebrate this victory, the Middle East remains aflame.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Turkey's incursion into northern Syria and the US is now protecting oil fields instead of them.
The President is tweeting about a "hero dog", while Iraq's protesting youth are being shot in the streets.
If the focus on killing terrorists was matched by efforts to rebuild infrastructure and economies and if repressive governments and corrupt leaders were the targets of justice, there would be fewer reasons for people to join terrorist groups.
Without economic opportunity and true democracy the Middle East will continue to be unstable.
Instability creates the conditions for terrorist groups to thrive.
As the West does not fight the cause, while supporting regimes that persecute their own people, we ensure the War on Terror will be the ultimate endless war.
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