When Donald Trump announced on Sunday the killing of the leader of the Isis militant group in a US operation, he hailed it as an immediate change to global security. The death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the US president said, had brought a brutal killer to justice and would make the world “a much safer place”.
Baghdadi’s death was undoubtedly a symbolic blow for a once potent terror group which is losing its power, analysts said: only this year, Isis surrendered the final portion of its self-proclaimed caliphate, a sliver of territory in north-eastern Syria, to US-backed forces.
“It’s not every day that we take out the leader of the most powerful terrorist organisation in the world. In terms of western counter-terrorism policy, it’s a huge development,” said Charles Lister, counter-terrorism director at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.