Isis 'making plans in case leadership is killed'

Reports suggest Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delegates tasks to a war cabinet

Isis is planning for when its leadership might be killed, according to security sources, who also say that the group’s local commanders have been given significant powers to act in Syria and Iraq.

Intelligence officers in the US and Iraq claim that Isis’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has adopted a plan to ensure that the group maintains its grip on large swathes of Syria and Iraq, even if he and other leaders are killed.

According to The New York Times, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was reported to have been seriously injured in an attack earlier this year, delegates much of his authority to what is effectively a war cabinet. This comprises departments of war, religious affairs and finance. The heads of these units, based in Isis’s de facto capital, Raqqa, in Syria, have significant authority to act without Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s direct command.

“Isis… has formed a structure that can survive the losses of leaders by giving mid-level commanders autonomy,” a diplomat said.

Perhaps most significantly, Isis commanders on the ground have been granted the freedom to conduct operations without interference from the group’s leadership. This is important because it means that should these officers be captured they will have little information about the leadership to give to interrogators.

Just as al-Qaeda is not a corporate institution, but offers a kind of franchise to independent terrorists, so Isis is attempting to ensure its ideology lives on.

It is not clear how much day-to-day control is exercised by Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi, but security officials believe that two of his lieutenants, Abu Alaa al-Afri and Fadel al-Hayali, may have been killed in air strikes.