Back in May, the US was elated to report [8] that commandos had killed Islamic State “gas minister” Abu Sayyaf in a raid in Eastern Syria.
That effort has been cited as evidence of how effective targeted SpecOps raids can be when it comes to taking out senior ISIS commanders. In November, the US claimed to have killed [9] the infamous Jihadi John in a drone strike near Raqqa.
These “success” stories are part and parcel of a US “strategy” characterized by minimal success in terms of curtailing Islamic State’s operations and periodic claims of “major”, high value kills. The public has no idea what’s going on in Mosul, or in Ramadi, or in Raqqa, but what the mindless masses can internalize are headlines like this: “US kills senior ISIS leader in targeted strike.” Those types of stories play well with an increasingly impatient public that can’t seem to understand why the US has yet to make a dent in a group that comprises just 30,000 soldiers.
Well this afternoon we got another completely amorphous claim from The Pentagon regarding the death of a “senior” ISIS commander when Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL (whatever the hell that means) Brett McGurk took to Twiiter with the following message for the public:
Confirmed: Death of #ISIL [10] finance minister Abu Saleh & 2 associates as part of coalition campaign to destroy ISIL's financial infrastructure
— Brett McGurk (@brett_mcgurk) December 10, 2015 [11]
Who is Abu Saleh, you ask? Well, McGurk doesn't say, but he's probably talking about Muwaffaq Mustafa Mohammed al-Karmoush. Here's a handy org chart for the group's Iraqi operations that should help:
[12]
So there you go. Washington apparently killed Baghdadi's FinMin in Iraq. Here's what we said last month in the wake of the drone strike that allegedly killed Mohammed Emwazi:
At this point, with everything we know about the support Washington's regional allies have provided to Sunni militants like Emwazi, it's difficult to determine how to assess these types of stories. That is, when you foment discord on the way to creating civil war (and again, you don't have to believe the US created ISIS to believe that the US did indeed participate in stirring up the sectarian hornet's nest and that Washington's "friends" in Riyadh and Doha not to mention Ankara probably did assist Islamic State in one form or another), groups like ISIS invariably emerge, so when you go back and you kill them, you're just putting down the Frankenstein you helped to create. Does Wasington deserve a pat on the back for that? We don't know.
But what we do know is that targeting a single high profile ISIS member to grab a headline or two isn't going to cut it when it comes to convincing those of a skeptical persuasion that The Pentagon is ready to take the fight seriously. Not while Russia and Iran are staging assaults on major Syrian cities.
It's also interesting that the man in charge of "general finance" died just days after the world began to ask serious questions about whether or not NATO member Turkey is involved in facilitating the sale of the group's 45,000 b/d of illicit crude. Dead men, we suppose, tell no tales.
Fortunately for ISIS, the group's FinMin in Syria is still alive and well...
[13]
