Although another Islamic State leader has been killed, the organization will endure in Iraq and Syria as long as the United States and its allies continue to substitute targeted killings for a more comprehensive counterterrorism strategy.
President Joe Biden announced Thursday that the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Ibrahim Hashimi Qurayshi, had been “taken off the battlefield” near Idlib province in northwestern Syria. Believed to be in his mid-40s, Qurayshi had a $10 million bounty on his head at the time of his death. He had been tracked down to a safe house by U.S. Special Operations Forces and surrounded.
During the raid, which was designed to minimize civilian casualties, Qurayshi detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and several of his family members. It is of little surprise that Qurayshi would refuse to give himself up and kill his family instead of allowing them to surrender. After all, the ISIS leader was perhaps most notorious for his decision to endorse the abduction, enslavement and rape of Yazidi women and girls, earning him a reputation as a sociopath.
