Beyond al-Baghdadi? A Profile of Mohamed Ben Salem al-Ayouni

Beyond al-Baghdadi? A Profile of Mohamed Ben Salem al-Ayouni

On July 11, just days after the Iraqi army recaptured the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that it had confirmed information regarding the fate of the Islamic State leader (IS) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was allegedly killed (al-Jazeera, July 11). Other sources did not confirm this information, however, and this is not the first time that the IS leader has been declared dead. Just a few weeks earlier, Russian sources claimed the IS leader had died (al-Jazeera, June 16). One year before, in June 2016, al-Baghdadi was also declared dead, as a number of regional media outlets announced that he was killed (Yeni Şafak, June 13, 2016, Al-Alam, June 13). As it was later reported, these media outlets fell for a digitally altered image, which claimed to be a media statement from IS and reportedly said that that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed by coalition air strikes on Raqqa on the fifth day of Ramadan. (The Independent, June 14). Analyzing the July claims about his alleged death, an Indian newspaper noted that al-Baghdadi had already been declared dead seven times (One India, July 12). This would not be the first time that there have been repeated conflicting reports about a jihadist leader’s death. From this point of view, the endless Mokhtar Belmokhtar saga should serve as a reminder.

Baghdadi’s Replacement?

As already noted, the lack of certainty regarding al-Baghdadi’s fate remains significant. However, in the regional press, the name of an alleged successor of al-Baghdadi has emerged. According to the Saudi news channel al-Arabiya, Mohamed Ben Salem al-Ayouni, (a.k.a. Jalaluddin al-Tunisi), has been appointed as the new leader of IS. Originally from the region of M’saken, near Sousse, Tunisia, al-Ayouni moved to France in the 1990s, and received French citizenship. Al-Ayouni then returned to Tunisia following the Jasmine Revolution that toppled the long-standing regime of Ben Ali and started the wave of revolutions that later sweep across the region (al-Arabiya, July 14).

The spreading of this revolutionary wave through the region triggered the civil war that still engulfs Syria today. Al-Ayouni soon moved there and joined the rather peculiar Jabhat Ghuraba al-Sham, and from 2014 he became close to al-Baghdadi. In 2016, following the defeat suffered by IS in Sirte — where the Misrata Third force supported by American air power managed to beat the group that took control of the former Qaddafi’s stronghold — al-Baghdadi appointed al-Ayouni as the leader of IS in Libya. He was tasked with re-organizing the ranks of the organization in the country. According to the Arab Press, al-Ayouni was chosen for his fighting skills and his “sense of diplomacy.” Notably, he shares good relations with other extremist groups — for instance, Katiba Oqba bin Nafaa, the Tunisian offshoot of al-Qaeda, which operated in the mountainous areas along the border between Tunisia and Algeria. Moreover, al-Ayouni allegedly managed to persuade a number of other organizations in North Africa to pledged allegiance to IS (Kapitalis, July 15).

However, this appointment was allegedly decided after a review of six potential candidates, a process that provoked some discontent in IS ranks, as it seems that some Moroccan fighters disagreed with the methodology chosen and the steps that the organization has undertaken (Le360Ma, July 18).

Geographic Origins

As noted above, al-Ayouni also has French citizenship. As such, he can be considered to be part of the wider phenomenon of European foreign fighters who have, over the past few years, joined the ranks of radical Islamist organizations in Iraq and Syria, with IS having the lion share of these fighters. However, al-Ayouni’s biography also displays another interesting detail. He was born in the city of M’saken, near Sousse. M’saken is one of the most famous Tunisian religious centers, considered to be a holy city and founded by descendants of the Prophet who were escaping the Abbasids. Indeed, the name of city comes from “Masakin al Ashraf,” which stands for “House of the honorable,” from Sharif, “noble,” the title that in Sunni Islam is reserved for the progenies of Hasan ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and eldest son of Fatimah, Muhammad’s daughter, and Ali. M’skaen has been home to the Madrasa (Islamic school) of Sidi Ali ben Khalifa, one of the most significant and revered madrasas in the region.

More recently, the town has emerged as a hotbed for radical Islamism. M’saken is geographically close to Sousse, the most important urban center of the so-called Tunisian Sahel (Coast), which stretches from the Gulf of Hammamet southward to Chebba, and whose main cities are Sousse, Monastir and Mahdia. Social elites from this area have had a fundamental role in shaping the modern republican and secular Tunisia —Bourguiba was from Monastir — and have always been perceived as modernist and Westernized by Tunisians of more conservative backgrounds, and M’saken well represents the latter. In July 1981, when Islamist activity was on the rise in the country and the Bourguiba regime started facing increasing conflict with Islamist groups, the city hit the headlines after a group of local worshippers tried to oust the state-appointed Imam to the Great Mosque and to appoint one closer to their views. Following the Jasmine Revolution, the city became a hotbed for radical groups, and the Great Mosque fell into the hands of ultraconservative Salafists (BusinessNews.Tn, July 1, 2015). Notably, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the man who killed 86 people in a lorry attack in Nice in July 2016, was born in this town as well (RFI, July 16, 2016).

New Leadership for a New Islamic State 

As al-Baghdadi’s actual fate is yet to be confirmed, the analysis of this alleged succession can only be speculative, and the real context may change soon, and significantly, depending on whether al-Baghdadi is confirmed dead.

However, if al-Ayouni is confirmed as the new leader of the organization in the coming weeks, it would provide important insight to the future direction of IS and what lies ahead for the wider jihadist world. From this point of view, there are three major aspects that must be taken into consideration:

• The appointment would represent a shift in IS’ geographic focus: the history of al-Baghdadi shows his close connection, in terms of militancy history and geographic origins, to the actual founder of IS, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Moving from an Iraqi leader whose history is deeply intertwined with that of the founder of IS, to a leader who is originally from Tunisia, holds a European passport and has led the organization in Libya, may signal the necessity of IS to focus on the two theaters in which it is now, in comparative terms, stronger. Tunisians made up IS’ biggest group of foreign fighters in Libya. Despite the Sirte defeat, the fluidity of the Libyan environment, the risks of a full disintegration of the country and the persistent presence of IS groups who have now dispersed in other areas of the country, this could suggest that North Africa may soon be the gravitational center of the organization. In addition, a European foreign fighter leading the organization would make it even more clear that the struggle against Europe and attacks on European soil remain the priority for the organization, which has proven itself to be capable of activating a number of more or less individual actors in several major European cities.
• IS seeks to reorganize itself in territories in which it is under less military pressure: IS’ biggest selling point was its capacity to arrange a rather complex and sophisticated “state machine” in the territory under its control. In Syria and Iraq, this will not be possible, as military pressure from a number of different external actors will almost indefinitely remain strong. In Libya, however, this pressure will likely be less intense in the coming months. Although it remains unlikely that IS can recreate in Libya what it managed to create in Raqqa and the surrounding area, shifting IS’ organizational center from the Siro-Iraqi theater to the North African one would give the organization more freedom of action.
• This would quite possibly be an attempt to heal the cleavages between IS and some al-Qaeda affiliates: as noted before, al-Ayouni is considered to have good relations with members of the Katiba Oqba bin Nafaa, the al-Qaeda offshoot in Tunisia. This group was possibly one of the al-Qaeda affiliates closer to IS, and its relations with the wider galaxy of IS fighters was much less conflicted than that of other Qaedist groups, like al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) or the old Jahbat al Nusra in the Syrian theater. However, as IS’ position in Syria and Iraq started dwindling, this intra-jihadist competition somehow lost centrality, and there have been signs of rapprochement. While the distance at the leadership level remains significant, in the past two years, there have been signs of increasing cooperation and convergence between IS and al-Qaeda affiliates on a local level. If confirmed as leader of IS, it is possible that one of the strategic tasks of al-Ayouni would be to bring this convergence to a much higher level.

Conclusion

Analyzing the developments within a possibly post-Baghdadi IS remains complicated, as the fate of its top leader remains unclear. Moreover, jihadist organizations have shown that the impact of leaders on their operational and propaganda capacities is not as significant as it was in other non-state groups in the past. That said, the news coming from the Arab press must be analyzed, and it is important to understand where al-Ayouni, if confirmed as the leader of IS, could take the organization. His alleged appointment suggests a much greater focus on the Mediterranean region, namely North Africa and Europe. Moreover, as the organization struggles in Iraq and Syria, and despite the setback it has already suffered in Libya, it may still find a greater freedom of action in Libya and the surrounding areas, rather than in its birthplace. Finally, al-Ayouni is considered to be the person who could mend the cleavages and the rivalry between IS and al-Qaeda, and he may work to bring these two groups closer in the future. Whether or not he becomes the future leader of the Islamic State, his unique positioning and relationships with other organizations assures that he will be an important player in the Islamic State for some time to come.