That Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was found on Turkey's doorstep points to an embarrassing lapse in intelligence
caliphate expanded across Syria and Iraq, Islamic State promised its followers an apocalyptic battle to come. Eager jihadist propagandists predicted that a final victory over the “crusader armies” would usher in the day of judgment and give birth to a new world. The man who was to lead that battle, the self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, instead blew himself up in a tunnel in Syria on October 26th, murdering two of his own children as he died..
It is unclear who might succeed him. The group has yet to acknowledge his death on social-media channels used by followers. Most of his lieutenants are shrouded in secrecy. One of them, Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir, the group’s spokesman, can be ruled out as a candidate: he was killed in a separate raid the following day.is keen to rebuild, which might explain why Mr Baghdadi died in Idlib, far from his former redoubt in north-east Syria and western Iraq. In theory this was inhospitable ground.
Yet the raid that killed Mr Baghdadi took place just a few kilometres from the Turkish border, in a part of Syria crawling with Turkish informers and dotted with Turkish army posts. Mr Muhajir was found in Jarabulus, within a Syrian “safe zone” that Turkey established in 2016. The presence ofAlthough Mr Trump thanked Turkey for its help, officials in Ankara made only a few vague statements about their role.
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