A major blow to IS
The US air strike believed to have killed Abu Mohammad al-Adnani has deprived Islamic State of the architect of its attacks on the West, as it faces the loss of swathes of its heartlands.
One of the last survivors of the al-Qaeda militants who originally formed Islamic State last decade in Iraq, including its self-appointed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Adnani had risen to become one of its most influential leaders.
Not only did Adnani orchestrate Islamic State's propaganda effort, an undertaking at the heart of its quest to lay waste modern nation states, but he also served as one of its principle military planners.
If his death is confirmed, those skills will be hard to replace, even in a group as resilient as Islamic State, after a series of territorial losses and killings of top leaders.
In recent months Islamic State's losses in Iraq and Syria have mounted. Fallujah has fallen in the west and Iraqi forces have captured key approaches to Mosul.
Meanwhile, advances by a US-backed coalition in Syria have all but cut Islamic State off from the Turkish border, after the loss of the key town of Manbij, and started to press into its Euphrates valley heartland.
These advances have all but cut off Islamic State from its last foothold on the Turkish border, its link to new foreign recruits, while a steady push from the north has brought its enemies to within 30km of its Syrian capital Raqqa.
The losses has pushed it to adopt a strategy of attacks overseas. Adnani was the man behind that policy, demonstrating an ideological and tactical flexibility that allowed the group first to capitalise on its seizure of land, and then to adapt as it was forced to retreat.
In doing so, Islamic State has made a switch in emphasis from its dreams of unifying all Muslims under a single, militant caliphate, to an older jihadist strategy of striking terror into its enemies by attacking them in their own countries.
But it has done this partly by harnessing shock tactics and social media to inspire and guide attacks by radicalised amateurs, rather than rely solely upon the highly trained but cumbersome militant cells of an earlier era. This, in part, was Adnani's legacy.
Adnani's presence in the Aleppo countryside may reflect its strategic and symbolic importance to Islamic State.
But Islamic State's interest in the Aleppo countryside is more than that: just 30km northwest of al-Bab, where Adnani was reportedly killed in an airstrike after arriving to tour the battlefield, is the village of Dabiq.
A few streets surrounded by fields, it will be the site, says Islamic prophecy, of a final battle between Muslims and infidels that will herald the apocalypse.
So important is this event in Islamic State propaganda, of which Adnani was the chief, that Dabiq was the name chosen for its online magazine that sought to inspire new recruits to its militant cause and instruct them in the ways of global jihad.
Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based security analyst that advises the Iraqi government on IS affairs: said:`As a military target, Adnani is less important than (ex war minister Omar) al-Shishani...(killed earlier this year in Iraq). His death is mainly a blow to their morale, he is the one who inspires the fighters to join in Syria.''
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