Troy alum heads mission against ISIS leader

Pradyot Sharma The commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the division that carried out the raid that killed the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is a Troy University alumnus. Lt. Gen. Scott Howell, the commander of JSOC, earned a Master of Science in management from Troy in 1992. According to the U.S. Air Force’s website, Howell is a command pilot with 2,600 hours of flight time. He has previously led all North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) special operations forces in Afghanistan as commanding general of NATO Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan and Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan. President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that Al-Baghdadi had died after detonating a suicide vest while running from U.S. special forces. The blast also killed three of Al-Baghdadi’s children.