WASHINGTON — Bilal al-Sudani was no stranger to American counterterrorism officers.
Earlier than becoming a member of the Islamic State affiliate in Somalia, Mr. al-Sudani was subjected to punitive sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Division in 2012 for his involvement with Al Shabab, Al Qaeda’s department within the East African nation.
Nevertheless it wasn’t till American officers began digging deeper into the background of one other Islamic State department, the one in Afghanistan that had carried out the lethal bombing at Kabul’s worldwide airport in August 2021, that analysts absolutely realized Mr. al-Sudani oversaw a sprawling ISIS monetary and logistical community throughout Africa, Europe and Afghanistan.
Mr. al-Sudani’s newly revealed function because the financier for the ISIS department answerable for the dying of 13 U.S. service members in Kabul rocketed him to the highest ranks of U.S. counterterrorism kill-or-capture lists, senior American officers stated. Final week, commandos from the Navy’s SEAL Workforce 6 killed him in an early-morning helicopter-to-ground raid in a distant cave complicated in northern Somalia.
“Al-Sudani helped to place cash within the pockets of the identical components of ISIS-Ok answerable for Abbey Gate,” stated a senior U.S. official, referring to ISIS-Khorasan and the Kabul airport location of the bombing.
The dying of Mr. al-Sudani, whose Somalia-based headquarters coordinated trainers and funding for Islamic State associates in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and South Africa, underscores the group’s international connections and help construction, analysts say.
Regardless of his killing, analysts level to ISIS’ resiliency practically 4 years because the finish of its so-called caliphate, or non secular state, in Iraq and Syria because it leverages terrorist networks to maintain new and established associates.
“Sudani’s dying could quickly disrupt this administrative community and the help reaching these associates, however is unlikely to dampen this help completely,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Crucial Threats Mission stated in an evaluation this week.
Extra on U.S. Armed Forces
Underneath intense navy strain by the USA and its native allies, the Islamic State’s management in Iraq and Syria has confronted vital useful resource constraints lately, a pointy decline from the group’s peak as one of many best-financed terrorist organizations on this planet.
This led the Islamic State to direct its associates to pursue monetary self-sufficiency, as a number of “workplaces” coordinate income technology and cash laundering between associates and networks inside areas, reasonably than cash flowing from Iraq and Syria to branches all over the world, in response to a latest evaluation within the Lengthy Warfare Journal, an internet site run by the Basis for Protection of Democracies that tracks navy strikes in opposition to militant teams.
ISIS has tried to increase its affect in Africa by means of large-scale operations in areas the place authorities management is proscribed. In saying sanctions in opposition to 4 South African-based financiers for the group, the Treasury Division stated final March that ISIS branches in Africa had been counting on native fund-raising schemes comparable to theft, extortion and kidnapping for ransom, in addition to monetary help from the ISIS hierarchy.
Somalia is healthier often called a sanctuary for Al Shabab, the terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda, than for the Islamic State. However the ISIS department within the nation has performed an outsized function for the worldwide terrorist group regardless of having solely 200 to 280 fighters.
The Islamic State’s Somalia wing features a regional workplace referred to as Al Karrar, which serves as a coordination hub for operations within the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, South Africa and the networks between them, Caleb Weiss and Ryan O’Farrell wrote within the Lengthy Warfare Journal evaluation.
With counterparts in West Africa, South Asia, Syria and elsewhere, the Al Karrar workplace oversees substantial fund-raising operations by means of extortion rackets and prison exercise in Somalia and South Africa, the evaluation concluded.
However U.S. and different Western intelligence providers have previously 12 months detected growing ties between Al Karrar and ISIS Khorasan in Afghanistan. A United Nations report final July concluded that Al Karrar facilitated the move of cash to the Afghan affiliate by means of cells in Yemen, Kenya and Britain.
The U.N. report stated that ISIS Khorasan “makes use of these funds within the acquisition of weapons and to pay the salaries of fighters.”
Earlier than his dying, Mr. al-Sudani was thought to play a key function in, and even direct, the Al Karrar workplace, officers stated. “There’s proof he was pulling the strings from East Africa,” stated Heather Nicell, an Africa analyst with Janes, the London-based protection intelligence agency.
One senior administration official stated that nobody else within the Islamic State rivaled Mr. al-Sudani in his potential to obtain and distribute illicit funds — as a lot as tons of of 1000’s of {dollars} at any given time — to far-flung ISIS associates on at the least three continents by means of a community of clandestine contacts he had constructed over greater than a decade.
As Mr. al-Sudani’s function in supporting ISIS fighters in Afghanistan — together with the Kabul airport bomber — got here into sharper focus, the navy’s secretive Joint Particular Operations Command ramped up its planning to kill or seize him, officers stated.
The Particular Operations raid on Jan. 25 passed off in a distant mountainous cave complicated within the Puntland area of northern Somalia, months after American spy networks first detected Mr. al-Sudani’s hidden headquarters and started utilizing spy satellites and different surveillance plane to review his actions.
The American commandos had been ready to seize Mr. al-Sudani, however he and 10 different Sudanese associates had been killed in a gun battle after they resisted, a senior administration official informed reporters after the raid was disclosed.
A mannequin for these sorts of operations passed off in Might 2015, when two dozen Delta Pressure commandos entered Syria aboard Black Hawk helicopters and V-22 Ospreys from Iraq and killed Abu Sayyaf, whom American officers described because the Islamic State’s “emir of oil and fuel.”
The data harvested from the laptops, cellphones and different supplies recovered in that raid yielded the primary essential insights in regards to the Islamic State’s management construction, monetary operations and safety measures.
The truth that the Pentagon despatched commandos to kill or seize Mr. al-Sudani — a call that required President Biden’s approval — reasonably than utilizing a much less dangerous drone operation indicated his significance.
In one other signal of Mr. al-Sudani’s significance, the commandos rehearsed their secret mission at an undisclosed location within the area with related terrain. The Navy SEAL Workforce 6 forces that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 in Pakistan had practiced their mission on a mock-up of the bin Laden compound in a lot the identical means.
For the raid in opposition to Mr. al-Sudani’s hide-out, American officers stated about two dozen members of SEAL Workforce 6 flew in Military MH-47 Chinook helicopters, operated by the a hundred and sixtieth Particular Operations Aviation Regiment, often called the Evening Stalkers, from a small, unassuming Navy vessel crusing off the Somali coast.
The commandos landed a ways from the cave complicated to keep away from detection, and made their means by foot to Mr. al-Sudani’s cave complicated. There, an hourlong firefight ensued with Mr. al-Sudani and his associates holed up within the caves till they had been killed, officers stated.
A senior U.S. navy official stated the commandos recovered a trove of fabric — together with laptop computer computer systems and arduous drives, cellphones and different data — from Mr. al-Sudani’s hide-out that might present suggestions for future counterterrorism operations.
