The Strangers Next Door

"They kept to themselves and our kids played with their kids occasionally outside, but we never socialized with them."

"We thought they could have gone through a lot, but as you know, here everyone has a tragedy and people rarely speak of what happened to them these years and everyone prefers to keep to themselves."

Ameena, resident of the ground floor, Atmeh, Syria

Interior of a building destroyed in the aftermath of a counter-terrorism mission conducted by the U.S. Special Forces  Reuters

When Osama bin Laden established himself and his family in a compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan, his neighbours were not familiar with the presence of an Islamist terrorist warlord in their midst. There was a Pakistani military garrison for elite officers in the very near vicinity and it's quite likely they had knowledge of his presence. And a next-door neighbour, a Pakistani doctor had his suspicions. His aid to the CIA in positively identifying the occupants of the bin-Laden compound when on a medical pretext he gained entry, earned him the reward of imprisonment by the government of Pakistan, as a traitor.

This was not the case with Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, past-current head of Islamic State. His presence in the small town in a corner of Syria full of refugees fleeing 11 years of civil war, ostensibly as yet another misplaced person was not questioned by the nearby residents. He had rented two floors of a three-story building serving as home to a number of families. His family was on the third floor, and other members of ISIL who had his confidence were on the second floor.

 

From the second floor, a man and a woman exchanged fire with the several dozen U.S. troops that had been helicoptered to the town, surrounding the building. Before the exchange of fire the U.S. military had instructed all those occupying the first floor of the building to evacuate, and they did. Soon afterward, before being confronted by the presence of U.S. military personnel within the building, Quraishi blew himself up, evading capture, in the process killing his wife and children along with others located on the second and third floors of the building

.

People inspect a destroyed house following an operation by the U.S. military in the Syrian village of Atmeh, in Idlib province, Syria, on Feb. 3.  Ghaith Alsayed/The Associated Press

Locals had been of the belief that Quraishi was a Syrian merchant who had fled Aleppo, bringing his family with him to Atmeh, distant from Syrian front lines, and close to the Turkish border. No one imagined that the Iraqi head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was living among them. He kept his children  out of sight for the most part, though they occasionally accompanied their mother on shopping expeditions in the town.

 

The death of this, the second head of ISIL, follows a pattern. In 2019 an American assault force entered Idlib province four miles from the Turkish border. After dispatching ISIS forces that "demonstrated hostile intent against U.S.Forces" by two airstrikes from U.S. helicopters, they continued on to the nearby compound of ISIL founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, surrounding it and urging people within to leave, among them 11 children.

Just as they did when they confronted and shot the al-Qaeda leader in Abbotabad, U.S. forces retrieved documents and electronics from the Quraishi compound, before detonating explosives to destroy a building that could become a 'shrine' to the former leader. To "ensure that it would not be a shrine or otherwise memorable in any way". On that occasion too, Baghdadi who had taken himself and his family into a tunnel, detonated a suicide vest collapsing the tunnel, killing three young children with him.

Beyond the internally displaced millions in war-torn Syria there are also foreign Islamists, dedicated fighters and volunteers for jihad. Crowded throngs of people seeking haven from the Alawite Syrian regime's killing machine of Bashar al-Assad. In the attack and blast on the three-story building in Atmeh, thirteen people altogether were killed once the raid began, including four women and six children.

Building destroyed in the aftermath of a counter-terrorism mission conducted by the U.S. Special Operations Forces   Reuters

Another Jihadi Leader Down ... No Shortage of Others

"Hajji Abdullah oversaw the spread of [IS]-affiliated terrorist groups around the world after savaging communities and murdering innocents, as the driving force behind the genocide of the Yazidi people in north-western 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, rape used as a weapon of war."                                                                                               "Thanks to the bravery of our troops this horrible terrorist leader is no more."            U.S.President Joe Biden

"The explosion, which was more massive than would be expected from a suicide vest, killed everyone on the third floor and in fact ejected multiple people from the building."

Marine General Frank McKenzie

 

"[US forces engaged a small group of people who approached the area during the two-hour mission and were] deemed hostile, [resulting in two of them being killed]." 

"That resulted in the end of hostile activity. It appears as if a child was also killed."

"[The US doesn't] have perfect knowledge of every single person who was killed."

"More than ten women, children and babies [had been safely evacuated from the house before the bomb hit]."

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby

 

The Sharia Islamic scholar who led the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as its second leader in depraved inhumanity after the death of the founder of the Islamic State in an earlier successful assassination to rid the world of vicious scum -- chose, when he understood that reprisal was in store for him through the auspices of U.S. special troops involved in a raid in his village to secure his home and extract him to face justice for crimes against humanity -- chose to exit life on his own volition, taking his family with him.

 

The raid that targeted Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi certainly took the villagers of the town by surprise. The target was the three-story building that Qurayshi and his family occupied on the third floor. The American military took care to convince others sharing the house to expeditiously exit the building, assuring them they would be in the care and protection of the U.S. Army. A move that prevented other deaths above and beyond the 13 that ensued when the building was bombed.

 

In a sense their prey evaded justice by choosing to destroy his life and that of his wife and two children. His 'martyrdom' would be a matter of celebration for ISIL members, on his ascent to Paradise. His loss to ISIL is not insurmountable; there are other young, brutal and ambitious aspirants to take his place; there always will be. The portrayal of the raid leading to the ISIL leader's death as a 'catastrophic' blow is a bit overblown by the U.S.

 

But then, President Biden is looking for good news, to be congratulated on taking an initiative finally on destroying the most immediate ISIL candidate for restoring America's reputation as a resolute, reliable ally in the struggle of good against evil. Certainly the degraded, abysmal performance of the U.S. administration and its military from its Afghanistan withdrawal did it no credit anywhere in the world. 

The ISIL cells loyal to the original vision of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi face no shortage of martyrdom-seeking jihadis to fill their ranks in areas of Iraq and Syria and Africa. They will take inspiration from the fearless defiance of their now-defunct leader, in taking decisive action to free himself from the bonds of existence so he could ascend to the heavens to meet his maker. He detonated his suicide bomb before U.S. forces could reach him.

"[Qurayshi was responsible for] savaging communities and murdering innocents."

"In a final act of desperate cowardice, with no regard to the lives of his own family or others in the building, he chose to blow himself up, rather than face justice for the crimes he has committed, taking several members of his family with him."

"Thanks to the bravery of our troops this horrible terrorist leader is no more."

U.S.President Joe Biden

President Biden's self-congratulatory statements ring rather hollow, as well. He speaks of the man evading 'justice' but that would be, under international law, being tried for his unspeakable crimes in a court of justice. Qurayshi decided to take his own life rather than give it to Biden. As for the jihadi's killing of his family, it is a way of retaining honour in the mind of the jihadist horde. A mindset oblivious of and scornful of 'international law'.

Interior of a building destroyed in the aftermath of a counter-terrorism mission conducted by the U.S. Special Operations Forces is seen in Atmeh, Syria, February 3, 2022. Mohamed Al-Daher/Handout via REUTERS

A bomb powerful enough to blow to pieces people outside of the three-storey house and into the neighbourhood surrounding it. Nearby olive groves were scattered with rubble from the blast. Also dead, a man and woman who opened fire on U.S. forces from the second floor, where a child also was killed. According to Syrian rescue workers, four women and six children were among the 13 people killed in the raid. What a show of U.S. bravery!

 

ISIL had recently broken its silent, sinister threat in the staging of a ten-day assault on a northeast Syrian prison where Kurdish forces held thousands of its supporters in crowded prisons, a few weeks earlier. ISIL fighters held off the Kurdish People's Defense Units for ten days with the prison attack that saw 77 prison staff killed, along with 374 prisoners and ISIL fighters. It might have been interpreted as a rout for ISIL, but that's not the way they saw it, considering it instead a coup

 

An event that led to social media exploding in support of the group. Another ISIL raid on an Iraqi military base killed eleven soldiers. That was ISIL bringing attention to itself, telling the world it hasn't gone away, just awaiting opportunity to act. The U.S.-led raid on the town of Atme saw a small group of U.S commandos arrive by helicopter backed by helicopter gunships, armed drones and jets surrounding the house in the province of Idlib, near the Turkish border. 

The residents of the building's first floor responded to the call to exit the premises. And there was additional drama when a helicopter had to be blown up on the ground as a result of mechanical problems. The inactivated helicopter would not be left to ISIL. Unlike the thousands of military trucks, warplanes, munitions left for the Taliban. Interestingly, Moscow responded to a U.S. request to keep its forces away from the area since as an ally of Syria, Russia maintains troops there.