Islamic State took an unusual step in late August when it announced that its spokesman and external operations leader Abu Muhammad al-Adnani had been killed near Aleppo, Syria.
Washington had offered a $5 million reward for Adnani, who had a hand in the gruesome November 2015 Paris attacks and other assaults. Adnani likely met the business end of a Hellfire missile fired from a Reaper drone in what the Defense Department labels a “precision strike.” He is one of the highest-level targets of the 120 or so senior Islamic State leaders the coalition has killed in the last few years.
Yet the death of a targeted terrorist is often shrouded in mystery. Determining whether U.S. weapons hit their mark is a complex endeavor. Pentagon statements couch words like “killed” in euphemisms like “taken off the battlefield.” Complicating matters, militant groups might announce a leader’s death even if the target escaped harm.
So how can the American public know if Adnani – or any senior Islamic State leader, for that matter — is really dead? How does the Pentagon determine that a strike has successfully taken out its target?
The most reliable sign for those not privy to classified data: The State Department removes a target’s name and photograph from its “most wanted” list. The U.S. government runs the website, Rewards for Justice, where it offers $1 million to $25 million for information that leads to those it classifies as terrorists. Once the administration is certain a target is dead (or locked up), it deletes that name from the list.
But Washington and its allies run through a substantial checklist before declaring that a senior terror operative is dead. Here are the steps, in order of reliability:
On-the-ground confirmation by U.S. personnel: Physical evidence, like a DNA swab or a photograph taken by U.S. personnel, remains the most reliable evidence. Washington used this to confirm U.S. special operations forces hadkilled Islamic State’s “Oil Minister” Abu Sayyaf (whose real name was Fathi Ben Awn Ben Jildi Murad al-Tunisi) during a raid into eastern Syria in 2015.
On-the-ground personnel also confirmed the June 2006 death of the founder of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It was no macabre coincidence that Zarqawi’s death photo was prominently displayed throughout the Pentagon’s press briefing, showing the world that yes, he was really dead.
It also helps if the United States has cameras in the sky pointed at a site where a key target had been positively identified, known as “PID.” Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was, for example, spotted sunning himself on the roof of a house in South Waziristan in August 2009. He had been cited as responsible for Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s 2007 assassination, as well as other operations. A missile launched from a drone struck the building, and the video feed confirmed it.
The PID was proof enough. Fifteen days later, President Barack Obama announced “we took out” Mehsud.
Monitoring signals intelligence: SIGINT plays a big part in piecing together the puzzle. The United States has hundreds, if not thousands, of people working on counterterrorism, their eyes and ears amplified by technical means in the air and on the ground. Over the past 15 years, the numbers of analysts focused on finding and finishing terrorists has grown exponentially.
Before, during and after an air strike, intelligence analysts monitor local communication devices for indications of its success or failure.
Other analysts watch social media for information that could help confirm a direct hit. Some programs, called “geofencing,” can monitor all forms of social media from a specific area. But without airtight evidence, it takes multiple analysts some time to reach a definitive conclusion. This is one reason the Pentagon (as well as other components of the U.S. national security apparatus) often hedges in its announcements.
If the United States is lucky and capable enough to pick up electronic chatter from a specific site — say, as militants pick through rubble while lamenting that so-and-so died — that can help prove a strike’s success or failure.
This is one reason why Washington was able to determine it had killed one of al Qaeda’s earliest military chiefs, Muhammed Atef, in 2001. One operative used a phone to discuss the incident soon after digging through some bombed-out wreckage.
Senior militants usually don’t carry communications devices because enemies can use the signals to locate and target them. As far back as 1996, for example, the Russians reportedly killed Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev by homing in on his satellite phone signal.
But a leader still needs to contact associates. So assistants often serve as keepers of their chief’s communications. If these interactions cease, it could be a sign a strike was successful.
Yet coordinated misinformation campaigns can also cause confusion. Folks on the ground might actually just be repeating rumors. In addition, information gleaned through technical means is not always accurate. So intelligence analysts often must find corroborating evidence to prove (or disprove) a senior leader’s death.
Nonetheless, SIGINT helps complete a larger picture of whether a strike is a success – or failure.
Jihadist groups’ official announcements: These are not always reliable, because, as stated above, militants may be trying to make the Pentagon look the fool by publishing false reports.
Still, militant groups’ media arms do sometimes openly mourn their martyrs’ deaths. A few months after the United States and Britain announced they had killed the Islamic State beheading enthusiast Mohammed Emwazi (“Jihadi John”) in a November 2015 air strike, Islamic State’s English-language magazine Dabiqran his obituary. In Adnani’s case, Islamic State’s Amaq news agency stated unequivocally that he had died.
U.S. intelligence analysts regularly monitor these jihadist pronouncements. Within CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or at NSA headquarters outside Baltimore, Maryland, analysts debate the meaning and reliability of various announcements. Their conclusions can serve as one data point in efforts to solve the larger puzzle of whether a targeted leader is dead or not.
Militants by no means make such an announcement regularly. It took the Taliban two years, for example, to reveal the death of its leader Mullah Omar.
Other governments’ announcements: Without key physical evidence, announcements by foreign regimes are usually viewed with healthy skepticism. Knowledge of any specific person’s death in a combat zone is generally murky in any case. It is also usually unclear how the local government might know, especially under adverse conditions.
Zarqawi, for example, was declared dead a half dozen times by the Iraqi government. Often without proof.
Nations often have their own rationale for declaring someone dead – or not. Any solid, physical evidence would be passed along, presumably, to the United States, which could then come to its own conclusions.
Without such evidence, though, U.S. intelligence analysts are unlikely to accept a local government’s assertions. Intelligence analysts – a skeptical, persnickety group of individuals under the best of conditions – usually require hard data to back up such a claim.
Complicating matters is that disclosures from countries that do not usually share intelligence with Washington — or regularly work at cross-purposes— require even greater scrutiny. Consider: Russia had also claimed its bombers killed Adnani.
All possible tools in the intelligence toolkit must be used to confirm or dispel rumors of a terrorist’s death. Consider: Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has reputedly been killed or severely wounded many times since 2015. But it has never been confirmed. The public knows this because the Rewards for Justice website is still offering a $10 million reward for information on his capture.
Yet, it might sometimes be in the interests of both Washington and a terrorist group to declare someone is dead. It allows the militants to appoint a new leader, while providing the U.S. government a new set of targets to strike.
After all, the militants will know the truth, as will Washington. That way, everyone can keep grinding on with the next chapter of this forever war.
About the Author
Aki Peritz is a former CIA counterterrorism analyst and co-author of Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns that Killed bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda.
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