Baghdadi’s death widely reported by US and Western media houses

LAHORE: The 48-year-old Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the key leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or “Daesh” was finally killed along with his two wives and three kids in a raid conducted by the US military in northwest Syria at a time when his militant outfit was on the verge of resurgence.

American President Donald Trump said Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had detonated his suicide vest after being caught at the end of a tunnel by the US Special Forces. His death immediately became a fodder for some of the most well-reputed US and Western media houses, which immediately peeked into his personality traits and background. Having been the subject of an international manhunt for years, Baghdadi had been incorrectly reported dead or injured multiple times. For example, during 2017, Russia said it was investigating whether one of its airstrikes on the city of Raqqa killed him (Baghdadi) and 300 other fighters. Other reports suggested he had been incapacitated by a US-led coalition strike.

The Independent, a London-based British newspaper that was established in 1986 as a politically independent national morning paper, reveals: “Iraq’s intelligence service said it had provided the US-led anti-Isis coalition with the exact coordinates of Baghdadi’s location, paving the way for the raid that reportedly killed him. Special Forces spent around two hours in total in the compound, and scoured the area gathering? “Highly sensitive” information after Baghdadi had been killed. A senior Turkish official, in a statement to journalists, said Baghdadi had arrived in the location 48 hours before the raid took place.

A CNN report says: “Baghdadi was a secretive leader, making only one public appearance in July 2014, when he delivered a sermon in Mosul’s Grand Mosque. During the years when ISIS’ fortune turned, when the group lost control of the cities of Tikrit, Falluja, Ramadi and Mosul in Iraq, and eventually its de facto capital in Syria in autumn 2017, he remained silent. It was only after the fall of ISIS’ last stronghold in eastern Syria he finally released an audio statement”. The Reuters news agency asserts: “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Iraqi jihadist who rose from obscurity to declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims as the leader of Islamic State, has died in a raid by the US Special Forces in northwest Syria. Baghdadi had long been sought by the United States as head of a jihadist group that at one point controlled large areas of Syria and Iraq, where it declared a caliphate. Islamic State has carried out atrocities against religious minorities and attacks on five continents in the name of a version of an ultra-fanatic Islam that horrified mainstream Muslims”.

The BBC News states: “Baghdadi, whose real name was Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri, had a reputation as a highly organised and ruthless battlefield tactician. He was described as the world’s most wanted man. He was born near Samarra, north of Baghdad, in 1971, and reports suggest he was a cleric in a mosque in the city around the time of the US-led invasion in 2003. Some believe he was already a jihadist during the rule of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Others suggest he was radicalised during the time he was held at Camp Bucca, a US facility in southern Iraq where many al-Qaeda commanders were detained”.

The world’s oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, adds: “Baghdadi came to prominence in 2014, when he announced the creation of a “caliphate” in areas of Iraq and Syria. The ISIS carried out multiple atrocities that resulted in thousands of deaths. The jihadist group imposed a brutal rule on almost eight million people in the areas under its control and was behind many attacks in cities around the world. The US declared the “caliphate” defeated earlier this year”.

In its October 27, 2019 edition of an esteemed British newspaper The Guardian reports: “The leader of the Islamic State terror group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is believed to have died in a US raid in north-western Syria overnight, intelligence officials have claimed. The raid followed a month-long intelligence operation that had tracked Baghdadi to the region through a smuggler who had moved the wives of two of his brothers from Iraq to Idlib, two officials told The Guardian.

The newspaper maintains: “For days, the US officials had feared that Isis would seek to capitalise on the upheaval in Syria. But they also saw a potential opportunity, in which Isis leaders might break from more secretive routines to communicate with operatives, potentially creating a chance for the US and its allies to detect them. Baghdadi, who has $25million bounty on his head, was long thought to be hiding somewhere along the Iraq-Syria border. He has led the group since 2010, when it was still an underground al-Qaeda offshoot in Iraq”.

The Fox News chips in: “The State Department increased the bounty value on Baghdadi’s head from $10 million in 2011 to the $25 million mark in 2016. Research conducted by the Jang Group and Geo Television Network shows that Baghdadi was deemed unfit for military service by the Iraqi military due to his nearsightedness. This was revealed by eminent author and one of the BBC’s most experienced correspondents, Andrew Hosken, in his book “Empire of fear: Inside the Islamic State”.

He had written: “Official education records from Samarra High School revealed that al-Baghdadi had to retake his high school certificate in 1991 and scored 481 out of 600 possible points. A few months later, he was deemed unfit for military service by the Iraqi military due to his nearsightedness. His high school grades were not good enough for him to study his preferred subject (law, educational science and languages) at the University of Baghdad”.

While British news agency Reuters had claimed Baghdadi had three wives (Asma Fawzi Mohammed al-Dulaimi, Israa Rajab Mahal A-Qaisi and Saja al-Dulaimi), the Iraqi interior ministry had insisted in December 2014 he had only two spouses.

In 2016, the Fox News had reported that Saja al-Dulaimi was al-Baghdadi’s most powerful wife.