WASHINGTON (AP) Eliminating the Islamic State groups elusive leader gives President Donald Trump a new argument for leaving Syria, but the U.S. military campaign against the extremists is far from finished.
The killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by U.S. forces leaves the Islamic State without an obvious leader, a major setback for an organization that in March was forced by American troops and Kurdish forces out of the last portion of its self-declared caliphate, which once spanned a swath of Iraq and Syria.
But the militant group, which arose from the remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq after that groups defeat by U.S.-led forces in 2008, has ambitions to regenerate again. And it remains a dangerous threat in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.
The bottom line is: This puts the enemy on its heels, but the ideology and this sounds so cliched it is not dead, said Chris Costa, a former senior director for counterterrorism for the National Security Council in the Trump administration.
Key to the Islamic States is its kill where you are ethos, encouraging a far-flung network of followers, including those in the United States, to commit violence however and wherever they can. That jihadist message is likely to live on, even with the death of al-Baghdadi.
That means U.S. forces, perhaps in reduced numbers, will continue hunting and attacking key Islamic State targets, even as Trump says hes committed to a 2016 campaign pledge to bring them home and end endless wars started under his predecessors.
Trump earlier this month went from declaring a near-complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria to deciding that some, perhaps several hundred, must stay to keep eastern Syrias oil fields from falling back into the hands of the Islamic State. Trump also agreed to keep about 150 U.S. troops at a base in southern Syria.
In announcing on Sunday that al-Baghdadi had blown himself up after being cornered in a dead-end underground tunnel in Syria, Trump acknowledged that IS, which he often calls 100 percent defeated, still has ambitions to make a comeback. The group is very, very strongly looking to build it again, he said.
This, he said, explains why Baghdadi was in the Idlib province of northwestern Syria, an area largely controlled by a rival group the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham although other jihadi groups sympathetic to Islamic State are also there.
Well, thats where he was trying to rebuild from because that was the place that made most sense, if youre looking to rebuild, Trump said.
Trump suggested that other countries, including Russia, carry on the fight against IS, but there is no indication that U.S. forces will abandon the mission any time soon.
Our job is to stay on top of that and to make sure that we continue to take out their leadership, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on ABCs This Week.
Rep. Mike Rogers, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said five years of U.S. and coalition effort inside Syria have not eliminated the Islamic State threat.
While the death of its leader is a tremendous blow for the group, about 10,000 ISIS fighters remain in the region and will continue to carry out guerrilla attacks and seek new territory, he said.
According to defense officials in Iraq and Afghanistan who study Islamic State and have watched its movements, the group is growing in power and numbers outside of Syria.
