By Dr. Adil Rasheed, Senior Research Fellow, USI
As confusion swells over Baghdadi’s unconfirmed death, the question over the future of the ISIS’ self-declared Caliphate may become a major stumbling block for the terrorist group in the days ahead.
It is to be noted that several news reports, mainly by Iranian radio and Iraqi news agencies, have claimed that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the head of the ISIS and self-proclaimed Caliph Ibrahim, has died after succumbing to injuries that he reportedly sustained in a March 18 raid by US-led coalition forces.
Even if the report of his death proves incorrect, ISIS has confirmed that the self-proclaimed Caliph is bed-ridden and is not calling the shots, as it were, as of now. If the so-called “temporary replacement” of Baghdadi, former physics teacher Abu Alaa Al-Afri, ends up heading the organization for the long haul, the ISIS may feel hesitant in naming him the new Caliph of the ummah (‘the Muslim nation’) for a variety of reasons.
To begin with Al-Afri is not a religious scholar like Baghdadi, nor is he apparently from the Hashimiite tribe of the Prophet. His real name Mustafa Al-Qurdashi, which suggest his Kurdish origins.
In addition, Al-Afri seems to be in favor of reconciliation with Al-Qaeda and its affiliate Jabhat Al-Nusrah, which being the parent organization of the ISIS, will never swear allegiance to its new head as the Caliph, just as it rejected Baghdadi in the first place.
It is said that Al-Afri is widely respected in ISIS cadres as a person of great wisdom and is likely to become its formal head on Baghdadi’s death. However, the recent setbacks and military reversals suffered by the ISIS, such as in Kobane in Syria and Tikrit in Iraq, may force the ISIS to come closer to Jabhat Al-Nusrah and Al-Qaeda. This may compel it to rethink some of the policies of the past, which had made it unpopular even among fellow jihadist organizations, particularly the issue of the Caliphate.
But a complete volte-face would undermine the dubious prestige the group had built for itself in recent months and would make it unpopular among the many converts and recruits it has been weaning away on the Internet and social media.
Clearly, the ISIS is currently struggling with a lot of issues at the battlefront, at the level of leadership and on matters of its carefully calibrated ideological discourse, which it thought would catapult it into becoming a major global threat in coming years.
By declaring the Islamic State as the Caliphate, the ISIS thought it could trump all other jihadist organizations by realizing their coveted dream, but has in the process only isolated itself from the Muslim mainstream and caused more acrimony and hatred towards it in the process. Virtually unknown within the global jihadist community until recently, it was presumptuous on the part of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi to call on the entire Muslim world to acknowledge him as its Caliph and to declare that whoever does not recognize him as such is an apostate. In this instance, the only claim to legitimacy would have been its success in gaining important Muslim territory, which the ISIS has been unable to gain since about September of 2014.
The ISIS has put itself into a corner by openly criticizing many Jihadi organizations like Al-Qaeda and calling many prominent Muslim leaders like Hamas leader Haniyeh and former Egyptian leader Mohammed Mursi hypocrites. There is no major Islamic or jihadi organization that supports the group today, with the exception of the upstart Boko Haram in Nigeria and factions of the Tehreek-e-Taliban in Pakistan. Even extremist ideologues like Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi (the mentor of ISIS’ founding father) and Abu Qatada Al-Filistini have been outspoken in their condemnation of ISIS and its horrible atrocities.