Who killed ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani? The assassination, which took place near Aleppo, Syria, on Tuesday, has the key elements of a classic whodunit: multiple suspects with motive, means, and opportunity to have killed him. The difference is that they all want to be identified as the killer.
The U.S., Russia, Turkey, and the Syrian government have all conducted airstrikes in Aleppo recently and there are several rebel groups as well as Kurdish militia on the ground around the embattled city. Russia was first out of the gate to claim credit Wednesday, in typically subdued fashion:
The Russian defense ministry said Adnani was one of 40 militants killed in a bombing by one of its own jets on Tuesday. This would make him the first major ISIS figure killed by Russia and would bolster Russia’s case that its intervention in Syria is aimed at combating the group rather than, as its critics charge, merely propping up Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
But U.S. defense officials dismissed the Russian claim as “a joke” and “garbage.” The Pentagon hasn’t officially confirmed Adnani’s death yet but stopped just short, saying it “conducted a precision strike” targeting the spokesman near the ISIS-held town of al-Bab.
ISIS itself has put out a statement saying that that Adnani “was martyred while surveying operations to repel the military campaigns against Aleppo,” but hasn’t provided any details on how he was killed. According to Syria-watcher Charles Lister, there’s also a theory floating around the jihadist internet that the killing was an inside job: an IED attack carried out by supporters of Abu Luqman, another senior ISIS figure and potential rival of Adnani for succeeding Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the group’s leader.
The fact that the U.S. and Russia can’t even agree on basic facts about what’s happening on the ground in Syria isn’t unusual. The competing claims for Adnani’s scalp are also emblematic of how, despite months of diplomacy, including yet another marathon round of U.S.-Russia talks in Geneva this week, the foreign powers involved in fighting ISIS in Syria aren’t even close to being on the same page when it comes to overall aims and tactics. Just Thursday, Russia and Syrian government jets launched heavy airstrikes in Hama to counter an offensive by rebels including both jihadists and the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army.
Meanwhile, the FSA is frustrated with what it sees as a lack of U.S. support and is cooperating with the Turkish armed forces, who launched an operation across its border with Syria last week. In addition to wiping out a jihadist threat on the border, the operation is also aimed at pushing back gains by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces. A failure by the U.S. to back up the Kurds will be seen as a betrayal by one of Washington’s most effective allies in the conflict.
Anyway: Whoever did the deed, the killing of Adnani, whose description as “spokesman” doesn’t quite do justice to his importance within ISIS leadership, is another major setback for a group that has been steadily losing territory on multiple fronts. This is good news, but the ISIS threat was also the one thing that the many powers that have been drawn into the Syrian mess could agree on. Its elimination from the battlefield, which to be clear is still a ways off, could simply mark the beginning of a new and even more complex phase of the conflict.
