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Washington had known for weeks that the Islamic State leader was dead

2022-12-01 20:57:12Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Washington had known for weeks that the Islamic State leader was dead
Washington had known for weeks that the Islamic State leader was dead

The announcement by the Islamic State terrorist group of the death of its second-in-command in less than a year did not come as a surprise to the United States. Washington appears to have known about his death for more than a month.

ISIS announced the death of Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi in a brief audio statement on Wednesday. Spokesman Abu Umar al-Muhajir is heard saying: "He died fighting the enemies of God and killing some of them, before he was killed as a man on the battlefield."

US Central Command later issued a statement, confirming that Abu al-Hassani had been killed in mid-October in Syria's southern Daraa province by the Free Syrian Army (USL), a rebel group that does not cooperate with the United States.

But despite the non-involvement of the Americans in this operation, they were involved in the process of verifying the identity of the leader of the Islamic group.

Based on evidence at the scene and DNA testing, the U.S. has determined that ULS did in fact kill Abu al-Hassan, a U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told VOA. anonymity with reference to disclosure information.

The US official did not give a reason why the US had so far refused to confirm the death of the ISIS leader. Similarly, neither the defense officials nor those of the American intelligence have explained how they managed to identify him through DNA, in the conditions when his real name is not Abu al-Hassan, but a pseudonym.

Intelligence gathered by UN member states and released in July suggested that Abu al-Hassan was most likely one of two people – Juma'a Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri, the brother of the former ISIS leader , Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or Abd al-Raouf al-Muhajir, who headed the overall provincial division of ISIS.

Other earlier reports suggested that Abu al-Hassan was an Iraqi national, Bashar Khattab Ghazal al-Sumaida'i, but Turkish officials confirmed in recent months that al-Sumaida'i had been in custody in Turkey since May, after a raid carried out by the authorities in Istanbul.

On Wednesday the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group that was among the first to report a series of ULS raids that led to the death of the ISIS leader, released the name of his real name as Abd Al-Rahman Al-Iraqi.

Despite this, US officials welcomed the announcement of the death of the ISIS leader.

"We are pleased to see the departure of senior ISIS leaders so quickly," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, referring to the death of the group's previous leader in February. past.

"We will mark further achievements on these successes against terrorism and will continue to exert pressure on this issue", she added further.

The death of Abu al-Hassan is the latest development in a series of strong blows to the terrorist group's leadership.

In addition to the killing of Abu al-Hassan's predecessor in February and the arrest of al-Sumaida in May, ISIS has lost at least five other senior leaders in the past eight months.

Hani Ahmed al-Kurdi, a key leader of the group's operations in Syria, was captured during a US helicopter strike in June.

Then in October, Rakkan Wahid al-Shammri, an ISIS operative and smuggler was killed by a US airstrike in the village of Qamishli in northeastern Syria.

Less than 24 hours later, the United States launched an airstrike that killed two more senior ISIS officials: Abu 'Ala, described as one of the terrorist group's "core five," and Abu Mu'Ad al - Qahtani, ISIS official for prisoner affairs.

Even before the latest operations targeting ISIS, US officials had said the terrorist group had essentially been put in a survival position by "a major loss among ISIS's senior leadership".

"[This] has caused them to focus their efforts on expanding the group's branches, which has made the focus on the United States less acute than in previous years," National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid said in a conference last September.

The terrorist organization has also seen a significant decline in its ranks. Intelligence estimates from the US and UN member states indicate that ISIS has gone from perhaps over 20,000 fighters in the months following the fall of the self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria to perhaps as many as 6,000 across Syria and Iraq.

ISIS is now led by Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi, named the group's new emir in the same statement that announced Abu al-Hassan's death.

"He is one of the veteran fighters and one of the loyal members of the Islamic State," ISIS spokesman al-Muhajir said.

According to JihadoScope, a company that monitors jihadist activity on social media, some ISIS followers have pledged allegiance to the new leader.

In the past, ISIS has followed the announcement of a new leader with social media campaigns in which followers around the world appear to pledge their allegiance./ VOA


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