USA. NYC. 2012. A message scrawled on the window of the United Nations Headquarters, which was being renovated. After I took a number of pictures, my escort shouted at me, concerned that I would misrepresent the UN. Unlike in previous wars, where the death of the senior leadership often signaled an end to the conflict, the death of bin Laden meant little to the conflicts in the wake of September 11. By the time he was killed, the wars had expanded so dramatically and the insurgency was so fractured that bin Laden no longer exercised much strategic power.
Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda had spawned the ultraviolent al-Qaeda in Iraq, which in turn morphed into ISIS. Al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, had been held in a U.S. detention camp in Iraq for ten months, but was ultimately released as a “low level” threat. He and other radicalized Sunnis, many of them marginalized ex-Baathists and military officers who had been disempowered after Paul Bremer (Di- rector of the Coalition Provisional Authority) disbanded the Baath Party, formed the strategic leadership of ISIS. From 2014 to 2019, ISIS held and then lost vast swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, and at its peak, 10 million people lived under ISIS control. If history is any guide, ISIS will transform into another entity, and the intergenerational war will continue.