The killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a US raid in northwestern Syria Saturday night is a blow against the terrorist organization.

While ISIS may have a succession plan in place it is likely only known to a very small number of the organization's senior leadership. The group has not publicly signaled who will take over. This means that whoever succeeds Baghdadi may have very little name recognition amongst jihadis worldwide. This may challenge ISIS' ability to inspire global terror.

In removing Baghdadi from the battlefield, the United States has neutralized the threat from a man who was both ruthless and highly adept in running a clandestine terrorist organization. After he took over the leadership in 2010 of what was then-called the Islamic State of Iraq, Baghdadi rebuilt the group into a force that just a few years later took control of vast swathes of Syria and Iraq.

In announcing the death of Baghdadi, President Donald Trump declared he was the "world's number one terrorist leader." But for ISIS and its tens of thousands of followers globally, he was much more than that. Ever since Baghdadi was publicly presented as "caliph" by the group in the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul in July 2014, his followers have held him to be the supreme political and spiritual leader of all Muslims worldwide.

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