It’s a story that seems more like satire then reality: An instructor at a training camp for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) accidentally detonated a bomb that killed him and 21 other militants.
The blast from the training camp, located less than 60 miles north of Bagdad, alerted Iraqi authorities to its location and led to the arrest of another 23 militants.
A resident who lives near the training camp said, “I heard this today when my friend rang me in the afternoon to tell me about it. He was so happy as if he was getting married.”
A local shop owner said, “This is so funny. It shows how stupid they are, those dogs and sons of dogs.” But he added, “[I]t also gives me pain, as I remember all the innocent people that were killed here.”
Sadly, the incident is unlikely to make a dent in ISIS’s operation. Within 24 hours of the training camp incident, ISIS militants attacked a group of Iraqi soldiers killing 15 of them. ISIS has become so radical that al-Qaeda recently broke ties with the group, and there is now a competition for power and influence between the two groups.
ISIS (formally al-Qaeda in Iraq), has reasserted itself throughout Iraq and Syria. Last month alone, more than 1,000 people were killed in attacks across Iraq.
The resurgence of ISIS can be partially attributed as spillover from the civil war in Syria as well to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s heavy-handed sectarian policies. But the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism polices also played a part in enabling ISIS’s resurgence, as The Heritage Foundation repeatedly warned they would.
To counter ISIS’s resurgence, the United States should rebuild a strong regional policy for the Middle East—one that includes greater counterterrorism cooperation between Iraq and the United States.
Jared Ferris is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please click here.