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Islamic State
This Week in AsiaPolitics

Analysis | Who’s the Baghdadi now: after US special forces hunted down Isis leader, who will take his place in Southeast Asia’s terror groups?

  • US special forces may have bagged his body, but the virulent ideology of the Islamic State leader lives on in the disparate groups of militants he inspired
  • Among them are the many female militants in Southeast Asia, to whom he ‘gave agency’

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Islamic State fighters in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armoured vehicle in 2014. Photo: AP
Zachary Abuza
On October 26, Islamic State (Isis) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed himself during a raid by the United States. It is appropriate to reflect on his lasting legacy in Southeast Asia.
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The rapid spread of Isis across Iraq and Syria in 2014 inspired Salafi jihadists across Southeast Asia, who were rudderless at the time. By 2010, Jemaah Islamiah, al-Qaeda’s regional affiliate, was no longer able to perpetrate sustained violence. Isis was a shot in the arm to the archipelago of militant groups in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

Baghdadi was the inspirer-in-chief. Within months, more Southeast Asians travelled to join Isis in Iraq and Syria than had ever travelled to join the anti-Soviet mujahideen in the 1980s. By late 2014, an entire Bahasa-speaking company was formed with over 300 fighters, while a school teaching the language was established to support their families.

Southeast Asia was always peripheral for Isis, and we should not overstate its strength. The group remains resilient in the region, but very fragmented – there is no centralised command and control and the top six militants from the region who were in its leadership have all been killed.

But Baghdadi’s influence loomed large in five key ways.

First, militants in Southeast Asia desperately wanted the declaration of a wiliyat, a province of the caliphate – and for that to happen, there had to be actual control of land. This was manifest in the attraction of militants to the southern Philippines, culminating in the five-month siege of the city of Marawi in mid-2017.
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