Despite the death of the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State (Daesh) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed last weekend in an American raid in Idleb province (Syria), the jihadist ideology is still attractive, said journalist and jihadist movement specialist, Wassim Nasr.
“The jihadist ideology remains attractive because it responds to very real grievances of European youth and in most African countries,” Wassim Nasr said in an exclusive interview with APA.
“The answers must be found at the educational, social and economic levels, not just at the military level,” warned the French analyst, who believes that the military solution will only generate a military setback.
Even though al-Bagdhadi’s death is a moral blow that will disrupt Daesh in the immediate future, Wassim Nass stressed that in the medium and long term, the terrorist group will find a new leader whose “choice will be decisive.”
Moreover, according to his compatriot Romain Caillet, a researcher on Islamist issues, it is necessary to “wonder what the authority of al-Baghdadi’s successor” will be especially in Africa where there is a “divide” between the Nigerian jihadists Abu Mosab Al Barnaoui and Abubakar Shekau, both self-proclaimed Boko Haram leaders.
Even if he late Daech leader had “decided in favour” of the former, Shekau still have troops that are “always loyal to him,” Caillet told APA.
In this context of a global divide, Professor Abdou Latif Aïdara of the Centre for Diplomatic and Strategic Studies (CEDS) argued that Baghdadi’s death will therefore have no “positive” impact on international security.
“Jihadist movements are like a hydra, every time you cut off one head, others grow in its place and sometimes in a more dangerous form,” he said.
According to him, Aboubakar al-Baghdadi no longer commanded the Islamic state troops, but rather had ideological leadership. And through such leadership the Daesh leader “ achieved something extremely important and subtle, even insidious: to inoculate into the social fabric individuals who obey only themselves,” the international expert in geopolitical analysis noted.
Based on this observation, he pointed out that “there was no horizontal or vertical organization to which al-Baghdadi gave orders” and that the movement had time to “make its transformation” to obtain the global scope it has today.
All these things make the lecturer say that “the death of Aboubakar al-Baghdadi does not mean the end of Daesh, far from it; just as Bin Laden’s death did not mark the end of Al Qaeda.
ARD/Dng/lb/APA