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Biden says Islamic State leader Qurayshi killed in US raid in Syria
With al-Qurayshi’s death, ISIS has lost its second top leader in less than three years. His predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a US operation in the same region in October 2019
The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was killed during a US special forces counterterrorism operation in northwest Syria, President Joe Biden announced on Thursday.
As the two-hour long US offensive began on Wednesday, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi detonated a bomb, killing himself and members of his family, including women and children, on the third floor of the building where he lived.
“Last night, operating on my orders, United States military forces successfully removed a major terrorist threat to the world – the global leader of ISIS, known as Haji Abdullah,” Biden said in televised remarks. “He took over as global leader of ISIS in 2019. Since then, ISIS has directed terrorist operations targeting Americans, our allies, our partners and countless civilians Middle East, Africa and South Asia.”
With al-Qurayshi’s death, ISIS has lost its second top leader in less than three years. His predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a US operation in the same region in October 2019.
US officials and experts on ISIS believe that Wednesday’s operation is yet another step in significantly degrading the capabilities of the group, but warn that the terror group remains a threat.
The US president said that the ISIS terror leader had overseen the spread of ISIS affiliate terror groups around the world, after “savaging communities and murdering innocents”. He was responsible for the recent attack on a prison in northeast Syria holding ISIS fighters; and was the “driving force” behind the genocide of the Yazidi people in northwestern Iraq in 2014.
“We all remember the gut-wrenching stories of mass slaughters that wiped out entire villages; thousands of women and young girls sold into slavery and rape used as a weapon of war,” he said, adding that thanks to the bravery of US forces this “horrible terrorist leader” was no more.
Biden said that he had directed the department of defence to take “every precaution possible” to minimise civilian casualties. And since they knew al-Qurayshi had chosen to surround himself with family, including children, the US made a choice to pursue special forces raid “at a much greater risk to our own people” than an air strike.
“We do know that as our troops approached to capture the terrorist, in a final act of desperate cowardice, with no regard to the lives of his own family and others in the building, he chose to blow himself up and blow up the third floor rather than face justice for the crimes he has committed, taking several members of his family with him.”
Biden said that the killing was a testament to American reach and capabilities to take out terrorist threats. “We will come after you and find you”, he said, sending out a strong message to terrorists across the world.
The background and identity of al-Qurayshi, an Iraqi national, was opaque, even to governments and counterterror experts till a few years ago. A report by Counter Extremism Project, an international policy organisation tracking and fighting extremism, said that al-Qurayshi was an army officer in Baathist Iraq under Saddam Hussein and became a religious scholar and joined al-Qaeda after the US invasion of Iraq.
He was subsequently indoctrinated by al-Baghdadi during a prison stint, and joined ISIS, reportedly playing a key role in the ISIS’s capture of Mosul, in the genocide against Yazidi people, and in global terror plots.
Explaining the build-up to the operation, a senior administration official, without specifying the exact timing of the intelligence lead, said that they had first obtained intelligence about al-Qurayshi’s location and briefed the president.
Biden then asked them to make sure to do everything to confirm his identity and directed his military-intelligence team to explore options “to take him out”. US national security officials were certain about his identity by early December 2021. “Operational commanders then came into the situation room and briefed the president on a number of options,” said the senior official.
The senior official said that this was a “high-risk and complex” operation due to the presence of number of children and families present in the building, and the fact that al-Qurayshi never came out of his house and ran ISIS through couriers.
With the explicit intent to protect non-combatants, Biden gave the final go-ahead for the operation on Tuesday morning. Both Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris were present in the situation room on Wednesday night, monitoring the operation on a real-time basis and receiving direct briefings from secretary of defence Lloyd Austin, chairman of the joint chiefs of staffs, Mark A Milley, and head of the US central command Frank Mckenzie.
Apart from a helicopter developing a “mechanical issue”, the operation went ahead as anticipated and planned.
“Everything ran according to clockwork. The complication was because the leader of ISIS chose to run this global terror network in a house with his family and ten people living on the first floor…Our overall goal was to remove him, which was successful,” a second senior administration official said. Safeguards were taken to protect civilians.
“But we cannot account for actions taken by targeted individuals.” US officials did not confirm the number of civilian casualties who died as a result of al-Qurayshi detonating a bomb on the third floor.
A lieutenant of the ISIS leader then barricaded himself on the second floor and engaged with US forces, resulting in his and his wife’s death. While four children came out of the second floor and were taken to safety, US officials were not clear if there were other children on the second floor. All casualties were due to the acts of ISIS terrorists, officials said. There were no casualties on the American side.
The first official said that with al-Qurayshi’s death, ISIS had lost one of its few remaining legacy leaders, and pressure has forced the terror group to change its operational models. But he cautioned that the group has become ideologically diverse and has affiliates in over three dozen countries.
Kabir Taneja of the New Delhi-based Observer Researcher Foundation and author of The ISIS Peril: The World’s Most Feared Terror Group and Its Shadow on South Asia, said, “The killing can be seen as a significant blow to ISIS, which had been trying to rebuild since the killing of Baghdadi in a similar raid. Over the past few months, ISIS had been gaining stem. al-Qurayshi’s killing will certainly demoralise ISIS cadres. They will realise that their geographic presence has severe limitations, as Western counterterror operations can get to them successfully.”
