The death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is a new blow to the extremist group that once controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria but in no way marks an end to the threat posed by the jihadists.
Analysts said IS and the extremist jihadist movement have over the last one-and-a-half decades repeatedly shown resilience after the death of key leaders and their militants, battle-hardened by years of fighting, remain in place around the world.
The group may have been ready for the death of Baghdadi and after an initial adjustment period of a few months could even use it as a rallying case for launching new attacks, they added.
President Donald Trump said the .
Deakin University Professor of global Islamic politics Greg Barton said Baghdadi had been one of the terrorist group's most effective leaders, although it was unclear what sort of influence he had behind the scenes.
The leader of IS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during his first public appearance at a mosque in Mosul, July 5, 2014. Source: ABACA
"Wishful thinking would say that, in the words of President Trump, a great monster has been destroyed and it will make a great difference," Professor Barton said.
"Now that may well be the case. One certainly hopes it makes a difference for a period of time. I think it obviously depends on who replaces Baghdadi."
The ultimate impact of Baghdadi's death depended on how the organisation responded in the coming weeks and months, Professor Barton added.
"In any case, the Islamic State insurgency isn’t going away.
"It’s a question of how quickly it accelerates and how effective it is.
"There’s the awful possibility that it may end up having learned from its lessons and evolve into something much more effective than we saw under Baghdadi’s leadership."
The former chief of IS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Source: ABACA
Macquarie University counter-terrorism expert Dr Mariam Farida told SBS News through the evolution of IS, Baghdadi's leadership had become less and less pivotal.
"We've seen his leadership throughout the starting years of ISIS, but after that, because of the development of the lone wolf attacks - which was quite a successful tactic for ISIS - we saw that it was drifting them away from reaching out for one leader," Dr Farida said.
While most IS fighters in the region have been captured, Dr Farida warned the ongoing threat goes beyond Syria and Iraq.
File photo of the Islamic State group. Source: AAP
"Unfortunately even if we say on ground ISIS fighters have no longer any strength, you still have to think about the silent cells around the world, in western countries etcetera," she said.
"So even on grounds in Syria, they have been captured, but you have to think about the cells around the world."
Dr Farida said the timing of Baghdadi's death was "definitely a tactical move" by the Trump administration.
"To portray to the American people and to the world that their job there is done and that they no longer needed to be in Syria," she said.
IS media showed eight men purported to be the Sri Lankan attackers.
'Re-activate operations'
Bin Laden, who masterminded the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States, was killed in an American raid in Pakistan in May 2011.
But his death did not stop Al-Qaeda affiliates staging attacks and taking part in conflicts across the world, such as the Al-Nusra front group in northern Syria, or the development of IS itself into a global extremist network.
"The most likely outcome is that the death of Baghdadi leads to a moment of silence and a pause in terror attacks" Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based specialist on extremist movements, told AFP.
This was the case after the killing in 2010 of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the former head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, from which IS emerged, he said. The Al-Qaeda group needed some four months to "re-activate its operations".
US soldiers walk next their armed trucks as they headed toward the Iraqi borders in northeastern of Syria, 20 October 2019. Source: AAP
One public appearance
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi built up the IS group from 2003 while he was jailed in the giant US-run Iraqi prison of Camp Bucca. There, he met several former army and security officials from the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein who would form the initial core of the group.
The extremists he led initially worked within the framework of Al-Qaeda but then Baghdadi distanced himself from the extremist network founded by bin Laden.
After reaching a peak of success in 2014 the territory under its control in Iraq and Syria was gradually eaten away, as anti-jihadist forces staged a comeback. The so-called caliphate was declared defeated in Syria by a coalition of forces including Kurdish militia in March 2019.
Baghdadi made his only confirmed public appearance in July 2014 at the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in the captured Iraqi city of Mosul, urging Muslims around the world to pledge allegiance to the caliphate.
He then disappeared from sight, only resurfacing in a video in April. Wearing a wiry grey and red beard and with an assault rifle at his side, he encouraged followers to "take revenge" after the group's territorial defeat.
'Operational resiliency'
While welcoming Baghdadi's death as a milestone in the fight against terror, European leaders emphasised that his group had not been entirely vanquished, in contrast to Trump's gung-ho rhetoric.
"The battle against the evil of Daesh is not yet over," warned British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. French Defence Minister Florence Parly vowed to "continue the fight relentlessly" against the group.
Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group which follows jihadist media, said the history of the jihadist movement showed it was able to overcome the deaths of leaders such as the former chief of Al-Qaeda in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed by a US airstrike in 2006.
"ISIS has illustrated its operational resiliency, and will definitely capitalise on Baghdadi's death for recruitment and calls for attacks," she wrote on Twitter.
With AFP
