Death of Islamic State leader raises more questions than answers

The self-styled caliphate has lost its leader again. On the surface, the attack United States in Syria who killed the head of the Islamic state Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi may seem like a game-changer, but experts warn that the group’s resurgence is likely to continue relentless.

“Thanks to the bravery of our troops, this horrible terrorist leader is no more,” declared the President of the United States, Joe Bidenhours after the end of the operation that hit Qurayshi in the rebel enclave Syrian from Idlib.

Biden may have expected the same fanfare that greeted his predecessors when they toppled the group’s founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the leader of the al Qaeda Osama bin Laden.

But Islamic State experts were quick to throw a bucket of cold water on claims that the action dealt a significant blow to the group. Qurayshi is not Baghdadi, and a group that once commanded a piece of territory larger than the United Kingdom it is now a guerrilla insurgency with its leadership scattered.

But the group accused of committing genocide, mass execution and oppression has proven it remains a formidable force. A United Nations report released on Friday said the organization was far from defeated. Indeed, it remains a potent force in Iraq and Syria, with a growing presence in Afghanistan and West Africa, according to the analysis of the UN.

The report – compiled by UN experts on the group and al Qaeda before Qurayshi’s death and covering the last six months of 2021 – said the Islamic State could have up to $50 million in its coffers.

Even before the death of its leader, according to UN experts, the group had lost several important members of the senior echelon. And yet, he remains a threat.

The instability in Iraq and Syria “indicates that an eventual ISIL resurgence in the central region cannot be ruled out,” the report concludes, referring to the group by its alternative acronym.

At the Iraq, the Islamic State carries out attacks almost daily. At the Lebanon, officials say they have found fertile ground for recruitment in the city of Tripoli. And the United Nations says the organization could still have up to 10,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.

Last week, the group launched its biggest attack in three years when the group’s fighters tried to free prisoners from a prison in northeastern Syria. He lost the fight, which lasted a week. Hundreds of Islamic State prisoners, including children, as well as dozens of US-backed Kurdish fighters, died in the fighting.

The increase in violence has security officials in the region on edge, precisely because the picture is murkier than it was at the organization’s heyday, when it took Mosul in 2014.

At that time, a US-led coalition, as well as Shiite armed groups backed by the Will, fought years of battles that eventually led to Islamic State territory evaporating. Now the group is virtually invisible. Its propagation is detectable, but it does not seem to have a single source.

For that reason, the US attack – as dazzling as the optics may have been to some – raises more questions than it answers. What was the Islamic State leader doing in Idlib, where the blatant rivals of the Hay’at Tahrir al Sham group, a former al Qaeda affiliate, hold sway? How was he able to command cells further afield in Syria and Iraq?

Far from reassuring observers and security officials, the devil in the details of Thursday’s operation seems to confirm what experts have been saying for months: Qurayshi was the head of a snake, but much more sophistication and international cooperation will be needed. to exterminate the pit from which he came.