American-led forces stripped the Islamic State of its key territorial holds in Syria and Iraq this year, but uncertainty still looms over the fate of the terrorist group’s evasive leader.
Russian authorities boasted in June that they had killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with an airstrike in Syria. But Washington disputed the claim, and Iraqi authorities have since suggested they have intelligence that the Islamic State leader is hiding somewhere in the desert near the Iraq-Syria border.
Despite the Iraqi claims, American officials remain unwilling to speculate publicly on al-Baghdadi. The National Counterterrorism Center declined to comment Tuesday, as did the CIA’s office of public affairs.
However, two U.S. sources who spoke anonymously with The Washington Times said they couldn’t “confirm or deny” whether American intelligence has a firm assessment on whether al-Baghdadi is dead or alive.
One of the sources said speculation surged through the intelligence community in July, when the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights — a group known for its network of contacts in Syria — announced that it had reports from inside Islamic State-held territory that al-Baghdadi was dead.
“It’s considered a reputable organization, so the announcement really raised suspicions,” said the source. “But even after that, there was evidently nothing conclusive there.”
Many analysts read the lack of certainty as an indication that U.S. intelligence officials want to be 100 percent positive — with DNA evidence — if and when they make a public declaration about the terrorist leader, whose very existence has been questioned by conspiracy theorists in recent years.
Al-Baghdadi has had a State Department bounty on his head since 2011. He has gone to great lengths to remain out of the spotlight and is believed to have made his last public appearance in June 2014 when forces of the Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL, suddenly seized control of Mosul in northern Iraq.
Shortly after the capture of Iraq’s second-largest city, a grainy video circulated on the internet showing the terrorist leader declaring the establishment of his “caliphate” from the minbar, or pulpit, of the 12th-century Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul.
Islamic State operatives reportedly destroyed the mosque as Iraqi and other forces swept into Mosul in June, but the footage has lingered on jihadi websites like a badge of al-Bagdhadi’s elusive mystique.
Where images of Osama bin Laden wearing a signature beard, turban and flowing white robes became known around the globe after 9/11, al-Baghdadi’s rise was more shadowy. Few confirmed the existence of photographs of the Islamic State leader.
One, a passport-style headshot of a youngish Arab man with closely cropped hair and an Al Capone-like smirk on his lips, sits atop al-Baghdadi’s declassified case file at the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program.
He reportedly holds a bachelor’s degree in Islamic studies from the University of Baghdad, as well as master’s and doctorate degrees in Koranic studies from Iraq’s Saddam University for Islamic Studies. He is reported to have two wives and at least six children.
In late August, as U.S.-backed forces were closing in on the Islamic State’s capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend told reporters that American officials were “looking for [al-Baghdadi] every day.”
“I don’t think he’s dead,” said the general, who offered the unusually public comments as he prepared to depart from his role as commander of Operation Inherent Resolve, the name of the U.S. military’s ongoing campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Roughly a week later, on Sept. 7, the Pentagon announced that it had killed two suspected senior Islamic State operatives near Mayadin, an city in eastern Syria that officials said was believed to be emerging as a hub for the terrorist group’s leaders, as they fled Raqqa.
The Long War Journal, a publication that tracks such developments day to day, reported at the time that American forces had been conducting a targeted campaign against Islamic State leaders in the Mayadin area since early this year.
The publication noted that the early-September deaths of Abu Anas al-Shami, a suspected “weapons research leader” for the terrorist group, and Junaid ur-Rehman, a reported “ISIS drone pilot trainer and engineer,” brought to more than 12 the number of jihadis from al-Baghdadi’s inner circle that U.S. military officials claimed to have killed.
But when Raqqa was taken from the Islamic State in October, uncertainty still swirled around al-Baghdadi. Speculation surged anew in late September after the circulation of an audiotape purporting to have the terrorist leader’s voice on it. In the recording, al-Baghdadi called on Islamic State followers to “continue your jihad and your blessed operations.”
While some analysts have said the voice was al-Baghdadi’s, it is not clear when audiotape was made. Questions over its authenticity swirled again in late November, when a top Iraqi military spokesman appeared to reveal intelligence pointing the Islamic State leader’s whereabouts and health.
“We have a lot of information,” Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool told Fox News at the time, asserting that Iraqi intelligence believed a wounded al-Baghdadi was hiding somewhere “between the Iraq and Syria border in desert areas.”
“There are still ISIS sleeper cells scattered in these desert areas,” said the general, who added that authorities were confident the Islamic State leader was lurking somewhere in the vicinity of the western Iraqi city of Al-Qaim, about 230 miles from Baghdad and roughly 50 miles from Mayadin in eastern Syria.
Gen. Rasool said there was intelligence indicating that al-Baghdadi and a clutch of Islamic State operatives were “living like rats” in remote underground shelters, with some using disguises such as farmers or women’s coverings to evade detection, according to Fox News.
The general went on to say that his preference would be for the Islamic State leader to be taken alive.
“Baghdadi should be put in public and face the courts,” he said. “We could get a lot of information from him.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.