Sunday morning, Donald Trump confirmed the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after a multination operation in Syria.
“Last night, the United States brought the world’s number one terrorist leader to justice. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. … U.S. special operations forces executed a dangerous and daring nighttime raid in northwestern Syria and accomplished their mission in grand style. … He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way.”
Trump thanked Russia, Turkey, Syria, Iraq and… the Syrian Kurds who the United States all but turned their backs on the past couple weeks for their assistance in the operation. Kurdish commander Mazloum Abdi tweeted on Saturday night: “For five months there has been joint intel cooperation on the ground and accurate monitoring, until we achieved a joint operation to kill Abu Bakir al-Bagdadi. Thanks to everybody who participate in this great mission.”
According to further reports, the Kurds had been providing intel to the United States on al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts over the past five months.
That in and of itself is an interesting aspect to tall of this considering it was Donald Trump who decided to essentially turn his back on Kurdish forces in northern Syria thus opening the door for Turkey to engage in genocide of the Kurdish people. Curiously enough too, this operation continues to highlight the complexity in the region when you apparently had the United States, Russia, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and the Syrian Kurds all working on an operation together.
Nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to see how the United States continues to handle that pull out of Northern Syria as Donald Trump also had a glimpse of the difficulties when it comes to pulling out that knife that is U.S. imperialism.
