Kurds vital in ridding the world of Baghdadi terror

America’s tremendous achievement in ridding the world of the barbaric Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi underlines the importance of Donald Trump ensuring that the US stays engaged and continues to play a powerful role in Syria and the wider Middle East. The US President deserves credit for sanctioning the successful military operation near the Syrian town of Idlib, close to the Turkish border, which ended, he said, when the jihadist chieftain regarded as the world’s most wanted individual “died like a dog … whimpering and screaming and crying” as he tried to escape along a tunnel before detonating a suicide vest.

After the monstrous reign of terror committed by Islamic State under his command — including countless beheadings of Western hostages, among them many Arab Christians, sex slavery and indiscriminate bombings — few will dispute Baghdadi deserved his inglorious end. But in expressing satisfaction over his death at a time when US policy in the Middle East is surrounded by such uncertainty following Washington’s declared intention to pull all American forces out of Syria, Mr Trump must not overlook the lessons that flow from it.

When he abruptly announced US troops were being withdrawn from northeastern Syria to clear the way for the Turkish invasion earlier this month, thereby abandoning Washington’s close alliance with the Syrian Kurds who did so much to help defeat Islamic State, Mr Trump raised serious doubts about ongoing US commitment to the Middle East. Reiterating his determination to finally end America’s involvement in “endless wars” and cease “nation-building” abroad, he declared “we’re getting out … let someone else fight over this long bloodstained sand”. Within days, gleeful Russian troops, working in concert with Turkey and the murderous Assad regime in Syria together with its Iranian allies, had moved into US bases in northern Syria, taking the place of departing American forces who were pelted with stones and rotting vegetables by Kurds of the Syrian Democratic Forces angered over being “stabbed in the back”. Yet it was the SDF allies that played a pivotal role, alongside Iraq, in tracking Baghdadi for a period of five months and providing the intelligence that enabled the US to launch the attack that killed him.

Amid signs that escaping Islamic State prisoners among the 11,000 who were being held by the SDF may be regrouping, Mr Trump must rethink his Syria pullout abandonment of the Kurds. As The Wall Street Journal said, the success of the operation to bring Baghdadi to book owed much to the presence on the ground in Syria and Iraq of US forces able to co-ordinate and work with allies who know the area, thereby enabling the fight to be taken to the terrorists on their own ground. David Kilcullen notes raids of the kind that killed Baghdadi “demand detailed intelligence, painstaking preparation, close co-ordination with local ­allies and bases within striking distance of targets. All these will be harder now that the US has abandoned its Syrian-Kurdish allies and pulled out of the area. For that reason, as Islamic State reinvents itself for life after Baghdadi, it may prove even harder to defeat in its next incarnation.”

Already, the deployment of extra US forces to protect Syria’s oilfields against possible attempts by a resurgent Islamic State to take control of them suggests a welcome change of heart by Mr Trump. Given the extent to which the Islamic State caliphate survived largely on the estimated $87m a month it got from illicit oil sales, it is important Mr Trump maintains his commitment to protect the oilfields.

It is not difficult to understand the President’s frustration with Middle East politics and his desire, ahead of next year’s election, to make good on his promise to bring home US forces. But as Yaroslav Trofimov noted in the Journal, the past decade has shown the US can’t wish away the Middle East, no matter how tempting that may be for American voters. The operation that killed Baghdadi shows how vital it is for the US to stay fully involved, not retreat. Barack Obama’s disastrous, premature withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in 2011 and the growth of the Islamic State caliphate should be a constant reminder of what happens when leaders, driven by electoral imperatives, do the wrong thing and pull out too soon.