U.S. commandos raided a remote mountainous cave complex in northern Somalia on Jan. 25, killing a key facilitator for the Islamic State’s global network. The raid adds to a growing series of operations to capture or kill those involved in plotting transnational attacks. Over the past year, at least nine Islamic State leaders have been removed from the battlefield — two of whom were taken alive.
Targeting high-value individuals within the Islamic State weakens it, but raids and airstrikes won’t be enough to win this fight. The Islamic State has routinized its leadership succession to overcome rapid losses, which means the U.S. must refocus on denying terrorists the safe havens needed to recruit and plan for attacks.
Bilal al-Sudani (a.k.a., Suhayl Salim Abdul-Rahman) — the recent raid’s target — facilitated foreign fighter travel to Somalia since 2007 and even had networks that extended into South Africa. His specialized skill set generated support for Islamic State groups across Africa and funneled money through Yemen to Afghanistan. Essentially, Sudani made significant contributions to strengthening the Islamic State’s branches worldwide. Having matured, those branches will survive without such support.
The death of Sudani and others like him temporarily disrupts the global network behind the Islamic State’s activities, but terrorist safe havens allow them to replace lost resources and recruit new fighters. These capture-or-kill counterterrorism operations do not solve the terrorist safe-haven problem.
Whether controlling terrain or not, terror groups benefit from having a destination for future fighters and space to prepare attacks. Syria provided such a space for the Islamic State of Iraq to reconstitute needed explosive expertise in 2011-12 that jump-started a prison-break campaign and its momentum toward declaring the caliphate in 2014.
The anti-Islamic State coalition’s destruction of the physical caliphate in Iraq and Syria sharply reduced Islamic State safe havens in both countries. Yet it did not remove them entirely. The Islamic State now carries out increasingly brazen attacks in Syria. Meanwhile, Islamic State safe havens in other regions actually expanded, growing alongside local African insurgencies that destabilize large regions in poorly governed territory.
Eliminating or even diminishing safe havens is no easy task. The U.S. set out to do so with partners over two decades ago, trying various approaches with mixed success. The 2007 Iraq “surge” defeated al Qaeda by the time the U.S. withdrew in 2011. But replicating that resource-intensive counterinsurgency model and exposing U.S. troops to combat operations is neither desirable nor feasible. Developing partners — training, advising, enabling and sometimes accompanying local forces to conduct counterterrorism operations — has had limited success in shrinking safe havens temporarily in places such as Somalia and Yemen. But the groups have reestablished themselves when politics or resource competition cause partners to lift pressure. Although developing partners draws on significantly fewer resources, it is not truly a sustainable solution because it has no end in sight.
The battle over safe havens is not just removing terrorist groups from the terrain. More often than not, terror groups exploit already-present grievances or societal fissures to entrench themselves in local dynamics. They build pragmatic relationships within a populace that largely rejects their extremist ideology by filling some communal needs — even, at times, creating a demand for their services in mafia-like fashion. These local ties serve as lifelines for groups to reenter areas once counterterrorism pressure eases.
Missing from efforts to recapture terrain is not always just a capable local partner, but the redress of grievances or resolution of intercommunal conflict. In the Sahel, the Islamic State expanded by recruiting heavily from one side in an ongoing farmer-herder conflict while the other received support to fight the Islamic State, further fueling conflict. Resolving the land-use question, exacerbated by climate change, will reduce recruitment opportunities for the Islamic State.
Washington’s hesitancy to do more than targeting for fear of overcommitting resources again is letting terrorists regroup. Suppressing terrorist networks is not a forever solution — it requires constant resources to monitor and prevent attacks. The Islamic State’s growing safe havens and the loss of intelligence about the goings-on in these spaces as resources shift increases the danger of a successful attempt on American lives. And should a major terrorist attack occur, the U.S. inevitably will need to shift resources from strategic national security priorities to respond to the threat.
The U.S. and partners have made major gains against both the Islamic State and al Qaeda. Neither group poses an imminent threat to the U.S., though both seek to attack the U.S. in the future. Now is the time to capitalize on these hard-won gains and try a new approach that might eliminate safe havens for good. Focus U.S. resources not just on counterterrorism operations, but also on weakening the bonds between the terrorists and local communities.
Katherine Zimmerman is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and advises AEI’s Critical Threats Project. Follow her on Twitter at @KatieZimmerman.