Israelis and others have welcomed the killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and the mastermind of the 7 October 2023 attacks, as an “Osama bin Laden moment”. This reflects how many in Israel feel about the death of a man responsible for the murder of 1,200 people, mostly civilians and their compatriots, but terrorism experts have long debated the efficacy of eliminating the leaders of violent extremist groups, with some suggesting the strategy is counter-productive.
The truth is that no one is sure.
There are some cases where the elimination of a leader has brought definitive success. When the Mossad killed Wadie Haddad, leader of a breakaway faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and responsible for a string of spectacular terrorist attacks in the 1970s, probably with poisoned chocolates, his group disintegrated. Hijackings and bombings continued, but were carried out by others.
Velupillai Prabhakaran, the head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in Sri Lanka, died in 2009 in a skirmish with government forces after a brutal campaign with many civilian casualties – about the same number who have died in Gaza. This decisively closed a bloody decades-long civil war with complex social, ethnic, religious and economic roots.
Targeted killings were a mainstay of US strategy during the “war on terror” that followed the 9/11 attacks of 2001, the work of Bin Laden and his al-Qaida. The advent of drones was one reason, but so was the growing reluctance to risk western soldiers’ lives in combat.
In Afghanistan, the killing of a series of Taliban leaders was lauded at the time but did nothing to change the circumstances, regional and local, that ultimately lent the movement its strength. “Hunting man is a difficult game,” one British brigadier blithely said in Kabul in 2006. It was also a futile one. The Taliban were undoubtedly hurt by their losses, and some studies show their capabilities suffered, but they were still able to retake power in 2021.
In Iraq, the US killed successive leaders of Sunni extremist jihadist groups. The elimination in 2006 of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the first prominent leader of al-Qaida’s affiliate there, merely cleared the way for competent, low-profile local men to rebuild. These too were killed, eventually allowing the little known but ruthlessly effective Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to take over. He unleashed Islamic State on the region and eventually western Europe too.
Al-Baghdadi was killed in 2019, but the IS leaders who followed have been lacklustre – when they have stayed alive. The current head is thought to be a minor preacher and faction leader in a remote part of east Africa. So that could be counted as a win for those who support assassination as a strategy.
Then there’s Hezbollah. Hassan Nasrallah became leader of the Lebanon-based organisation in 1992 after his predecessor was killed by Israel, then ruled skilfully and effectively for 32 years, evading multiple efforts to end his life. Last month Israel killed not just Nasrallah but the entire top leadership echelon. This combination of “decapitation” and straightforward attrition is virtually unprecedented. Unsurprisingly, Hezbollah is reeling.
The US had its literal “Bin Laden moment” in 2011 when the founder and leader of al-Qaida was tracked to a Pakistani hide-out and killed by US special forces. Subsequently, under Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida gave up international attacks and entrenched itself in local communities. Al-Zawahiri was killed in 2022 and we still don’t really know who al-Qaida’s current leader is, not least because there is no one who has the profile of either predecessor.
Al-Qaida is still around, though it does not pose much of an international threat at the moment. This is less true of IS, which is gaining ground in Africa, active in Afghanistan and continues to inspire attacks elsewhere.
Israel has of course already killed many of the leaders and most capable operatives of Hamas in the past 20 years. Each death has forced change, but rarely that anticipated.
If the chequered history of decapitation strategies tells us anything, it is that it is almost impossible to predict what effect killing a leader will have. This may not matter to those who order the killings or to those who rejoice at the news of a successful assassination. Politics and entirely understandable desire for retribution and justice are important factors.
But any jubilation in Israel or elsewhere at the death of Sinwar should be tempered with an awareness that no one can know what will come next. It may indeed be the beginning of the end of the war in Gaza, as Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested. But the history of such killings suggests that, in the long term, any decisive victory will remain elusive.
• Jason Burke is the international security correspondent of the Guardian
• This article was amended on 21 October 2024. An earlier version said that more people had died in Gaza than in the 2009 campaign in Sri Lankan where Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed. In fact, both conflicts have had about the same number of deaths, about 40,000.
