SOHR: And after the death of the leader of the Islamic State: everything you need to know
Qurashi was an ethnic Turkmen from the Iraqi city of Tal Afar.
Beirut:
In the aftermath of the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi in a US raid in Syria, many questions remain about the operation and the future of the jihadist group.
How was it located?
Qurashi was killed in the city of Atme during a nighttime airborne operation on his home.
US officials said its location was restricted last year. The owner of the building told TAUT that Qurashi had been living there for 11 months.
The raid came days after the Islamic State launched its biggest operation in years to break out fighters from a massive Kurdish prison in the northeastern city of Hasakeh.
“The timing of the operation suggests there was intelligence linking Qurashi to the Ghwayran prison attack,” said Newlines Institute analyst Nick Heras.
“It would not be surprising if the United States pressured Turkey to give up information.”
Turkey wields considerable influence over northwestern Syria and has some form of working relationship with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the jihadist who controls most of the Idlib region.
It is believed that a large number of ISIS prisoners escaped during the attack on Hasakeh. Their subsequent trajectories and communications may have created intelligence opportunities.
“If Qurashi was planning to record a statement about the recent attacks, that may have created an opening,” said Aron Lund, a colleague from Century International.
Iraq’s prime minister on Thursday claimed credit for collecting the intelligence that led to one of the world’s most wanted men.
How did he die?
According to White House and US defense officials, Qurashi died when he detonated a bomb to avoid capture.
“He killed himself and his immediate family without a fight, even as we tried to call for his surrender and offered him a way to survive,” said U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Kenneth McKenzie.
Visible damage to the house at three levels – including scorch marks and a collapsed part of the roof – tends to confirm that at least one explosion occurred inside the house.
Neighbors told TAUT they heard explosions but official US statements are the only version so far of what happened inside the house.
US Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Qurashi’s fingerprint identification was done at the scene, but did not explicitly state whether US forces took away or left the body.
A photo purporting to show Qurashi’s face that has been circulating on social media could not be authenticated by TAUT and does not provide clear information on how he died.
Who else was there?
US officials said at least three civilians died during the raid, in addition to Qurashi and two others outside the house who special forces returned fire to.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said it reported 13 deaths, including 12 killed inside the house.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said Qurashi had two wives, both of whom were killed in the raid, as well as the Islamic State leader’s sister and adult daughter.
He also said the bodies of four children had been found, along with two other incomplete bodies which may belong to children.
Save the Children said at least six children, including two infants, were killed in the raid.
Abdel Rahman said a senior associate of Qurashi was also killed.
One of Qurashi’s injured children was treated by Civil Defense but later moved to an unknown location by HTS-linked forces.
Why in Idlib?
Qurashi was hiding in a town far from the Islamic State’s area of operations and under the control of HTS, a rival jihadist group.
Still, analysts say it’s no surprise that he was found in an area far from the Islamic State’s heartland, which covers the arid stretches straddling the Iraq-Syria border between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
His predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was also killed in Idlib province, some 15 kilometers (nine miles) away, in October 2019.
“Idlib is a messy war zone full of displaced people, with few proper policing and no real state structures or record keeping,” Lund said.
Hassan Hassan, author of a book on ISIS, said Idlib is safer for an ISIS leader than areas in western Iraq or eastern Syria where anti-Islamic State forces have years of experience in hunting down jihadists.
“It is a hostile area for ISIS because its rivals dominate this region of northern Syria, but it is precisely the right place to hide where no one expects you to be there” , did he declare.
Hassan, who is also an analyst at Newlines, said associates close to Qurashi have been running the group’s operations and building businesses in the region for two years.
What future for Daesh?
The week-long attack on Ghwayran prison launched by ISIS two weeks earlier had raised fears of a resurgence, nearly three years after ISIS lost the last pieces of its “caliphate”.
For Hassan, however, the attack on the prison was “not part of a strategic comeback, nor an indication of recovery”.
“The group remains weak and exposed,” he said, adding that Thursday’s raid was further evidence of the growing effectiveness of US and allied forces tasked with tracking down ISIS leaders.
Qurashi was largely invisible during his time at the helm but the group, which has yet to acknowledge his death, will nonetheless need to find a new “caliph”.
Experts say there are few obvious names for a successor, but the next ISIS leader will most likely hail from the same region.
Qurashi was an ethnic Turkmen from the Iraqi town of Tal Afar who played a key role in the ethnic cleansing campaign against the Yazidi minority in 2014.
Source: The AU Times