On October 26–27, 2019, the United States conducted a military operation codenamed Operation Kayla Mueller that resulted in the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then-leader and self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State. The operation took place in the outskirts of Barisha, Idlib Governorate, Syria. According to General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) commander who oversaw the operation, Baghdadi killed himself along with two children when he detonated a suicide belt while fleeing from U.S. forces during the raid.
The U.S. operation was named for Kayla Mueller, an American aid worker who had been captured by and died in the custody of the Islamic State.
Background
The raid was launched based on an intelligence effort to locate the leader of IS by the CIA's Special Activities Center. The New York Times reported that, according to two U.S. officials, the CIA obtained the original intelligence on Baghdadi following the arrests of one of his wives and a courier, after which the CIA worked closely with Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence officials in Iraq and Syria.
The Guardian, however, reported Iraqi officials as saying that the break came after a smuggler (who had smuggled the wives of two brothers of Baghdadi and Baghdadi's children in the past), a woman thought to be his wife, and Baghdadi's nephew provided information on the routes and destinations.
Iraqi officials also stated that the arrest of Muhammad Ali Sajid al-Zobaie, Baghdadi's brother-in-law, helped them in finding a desert tunnel leading to two well-stocked hideouts near Al-Qaim, Iraq, and thereby penetrate a smuggling ring to find Baghdadi. A U.S. official disputed the Iraqi account that Iraq had provided the exact location of Baghdadi, and stated that the operation was triggered when he appeared in a monitored location.
Location
Reuters reported Iraqi intelligence officials as stating that the arrest of several Islamic State leaders was the key behind learning about Baghdadi's movements and hiding places. They said that Ismael al-Ethawi, believed to be a top aide to Baghdadi, was found and followed by informants in Syria, apprehended by Turkish authorities, and handed over to Iraqi intelligence agents to whom he provided information in February 2018. The Iraqis then gave the information to the CIA, who kept surveillance on the discovered location through a satellite and drones. They also said that in 2019 the United States, Turkish and Iraqi intelligence conducted a joint operation in which they captured several high-ranking IS leaders, including four Iraqis and a Syrian, who provided the locations where they met with Baghdadi inside Syria, after which they decided to coordinate with the CIA to deploy more sources inside these areas. An Iraqi official remarked that Baghdadi's "last moment to live" was when he and his family left the location that they were in for the first time in five months.
Ethawi and the other aides in an interview to The New York Times stated that they were blindfolded before being taken to meet their leader, in order to keep his whereabouts secret, they were then kept at the location for hours before being blindfolded again and driven away from the site.
Baghdadi's compound was located near GPS coordinates 36.1660, 36.6274, in Syria's Idlib Governorate. Although Idlib was dominated by the Islamic State's rival jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which had connections to al-Qaeda, the Institute for the Study of War warned that Idlib was nevertheless the focus of an IS strategy to raise the next cohort of IS and al-Qaeda recruits. HTS operatives had themselves been hunting for al-Baghdadi in the days prior to the US operation, raiding the town of Sarmin and eventually capturing a close aide to al-Baghadi, Abu Suleiman al-Khalidi, further reducing the IS leader's safety network.
In July 2019, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford explained that there were around 20,000–30,000 rebels in Idlib by that time in the ongoing Syrian civil war, many of them jihadists. U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East Michael P. Mulroy said that "Idlib is essentially the largest collection of al-Qaeda affiliates in the world." In regard to Baghdadi's possible rationale for choosing the location, "We assess that he was hiding in Idlib province to avoid the intense pressure that had been put on ISIS in other areas of Syria," operational commander General Kenneth McKenzie later stated.
Documents later obtained by Al Aan TV's Jenan Moussa reportedly revealed that, from 1 February 2019 until the day of the U.S. raid, Baghdadi's compound had internet access and that the owner of the site paid the equivalent of an $8 monthly fee in cash to the regional ISP for service. According to Moussa, the username Baghdadi used was "mhrab."
Baghdadi's compound was destroyed after the successful operation to be sure it would not become a memorial.
SDF role
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) reported that they provided direct and extensive support to the operation. Prior to the raid, the SDF, working with the U.S. government, had spent five months gathering intelligence on Baghdadi's location. A senior U.S. State Department official said that the Kurdish-led SDF "played a key role" in the raid on Baghdadi's compound and that the United States was in close communication with SDF commander General Mazloum Abdi about every aspect of their operation, and Abdi's statements about the raid, in reference to the joint intelligence cooperation on the ground, were accurate. Abdi said the operation had been delayed by a month due to Turkey's military build-up at the Syrian border and the Turkish incursion into northeastern Syria that followed.
The New York Times reported that unnamed U.S. intelligence, military, and counter-terrorism officials said that the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria by President Donald Trump had complicated the plans for the operation against Baghdadi, but the Syrian Kurds continued to provide information to the CIA amidst the Turkish offensive. One of the officials remarked that both the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds had provided more intelligence for the raid than any single country.
CENTCOM commander General Kenneth McKenzie later confirmed the SDF had provided intelligence to American forces prior to the raid in Idlib, but denied reports that President Trump's prior order to withdraw forces from north Syria had any impact on the timing or execution of the mission.
Embedded informant
The Washington Post reported that, according to a U.S. official, an IS militant-turned informant for the Kurds had provided critical intelligence about Baghdadi's location. The SDF commander, General Abdi, said that their informant was deep inside Baghdadi's inner circle as a security adviser and had provided a detailed layout of the complex, and was on-site during the operation, after which he left with the U.S. forces. SDF officials said that the informant had stolen Baghdadi's underwear and a sample of Baghdadi's blood, which was provided to the U.S. intelligence for DNA analysis and resulted in a positive match. U.S. and Middle East–based officials stated that the informant was a Sunni Arab IS operative, who served as a trusted facilitator and logistics aide to Baghdadi, but defected because IS killed his relative, after which he was cultivated as an intelligence asset by the SDF. They said that, after the SDF leadership handed control over the informant to U.S. intelligence, he was carefully vetted for several weeks by them and that the effort to begin exploiting this intelligence asset began in the summer of 2019. The informant was subsequently extracted from the region with his family two days after the raid and will likely receive at least some of the $25 million bounty.
Prelude
Two U.S. officials stated that Baghdadi had been staying at the compound in Barisha since July 2019 and that it had been under surveillance since, but U.S. forces avoided assaulting it due to the presence of al-Qaeda affiliates and the airspace being controlled and monitored by Russia and the Syrian government. Some U.S. officials claimed that the Pentagon decided to carry out the mission after President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria in early October, as to not lose track of Baghdadi. However, CENTCOM commander Frank McKenzie stated that the north Syria pullout had "absolutely" no effect on the timing or execution of the operation. "We chose the time based on a variety of factors: weather, certainty, lunar data ... We struck because the time was about right to do it then given the totality of the intelligence and the other factors that would affect the raid force going in and coming out," General McKenzie added.
The Turkish Defense Ministry said that Turkish and U.S. military authorities exchanged and coordinated information ahead of the attack in Idlib. A U.S. official stated that Turkey was informed prior to the operation to avoid an unintended clash between their forces, but was not notified about the target due to concerns that the information would become compromised and did not provide any assistance to the operation. Turkish officials also informed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which controlled much of the area where the raid took place at the time, not to open fire on the helicopters that would be used in the operation; despite being informed, anti-aircraft fire by HTS was used, however, the operators were detained by HTS commanders afterward for not following orders.
General McKenzie briefed Defense Department leaders on the intelligence and the plan on October 25 and received the approval of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley for the operation. President Trump was then briefed "on all aspects of the plan and the risks involved in its execution" and that Russia and Turkey were contacted ahead of the mission to avoid unintended clashes. With Trump's approval, McKenzie, as operational commander, gave the order for the mission to start October 26 around 9 a.m. EST.
Operational name
The operation was named after Kayla Mueller, an American aid worker who was abducted by IS in Syria in August 2013. During her captivity, she was reportedly forced into marriage with al-Baghdadi, during which time she was repeatedly raped, tortured, and physically abused. She was confirmed dead in early February 2015, reportedly murdered by al-Baghdadi himself.
The special forces that were to carry out the operation named their task force "Task Force 8-14", based on Mueller's birthday.
Raid
On October 26, 2019, shortly after U.S. president Donald Trump and a small team of key civilian and military leaders gathered in the White House Situation Room at around 5 p.m. EST (00:00 Syria time), U.S. Joint Special Operations Command's 1st SFOD-D (Delta Force) operators, along with U.S. Army Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment, departed Al Asad Airbase in Iraq. The operation used eight U.S. military helicopters, including MH-47 Chinooks and MH-60L/M Black Hawks, to conduct an air assault on an "isolated compound" 300 meters outside of Barisha village—located five kilometers (three miles) south of the border with Turkey in hostile rebel-held territory in Syria's Idlib Governorate—to kill or capture Baghdadi. The assault force reportedly flew through Turkish-controlled and Russian-monitored airspace towards the objective and landed after 70 minutes.