ISIS leader’s death in US raid in Syria creates problems for Turkey

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There is no doubt that the optics were not good for Turkey.

Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was killed in a US raid on his home in Atmeh in northwestern Syria on Thursday. The house was reportedly located a few hundred meters from a Turkish-controlled checkpoint and in a village just one kilometer from the Turkish border.

The attack on al-Qurashi took place a little more than two years after his predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was found and killed in a US-led operation in another village, 15 kilometers north. south of Atmeh.

This was again a border region of Idlib province, which for years had been under the tight control of the Turkish-backed Syrian forces or Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist faction formerly known under the name Front Nosra. It is headed by Abu Mohammad al-Julani, former head of Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria.

Turkey has nearly a dozen military observation posts in the opposition-held region and is seen as something of a guarantor for this corner of Syria. If you roughly divide the war-torn country into spheres of international influence, Idlib has long been categorized under the “Turkey patch”.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), America’s closest allies in Syria and Turkey’s bitter enemies, were quick to take advantage of this. Farhad Shami, an SDF spokesperson, took to Twitter to accuse Turkey of “protecting” the late Islamic State leader.

“Is there any doubt that Turkey [has] rotated areas [of] North Syria [into a] safe zone for Daesh leaders? he said Thursday night.

Turkish officials declined to comment on the raid. But Ankara’s foreign ministry issued a rather defensive statement afterwards, suggesting feathers had been ruffled.

“Turkey’s firm attitude in the fight against [Isis] terrorist organization and its contributions to the efforts of the international community in this area are well known,” the ministry said.

“As a member of the global coalition, Turkey plays an active role in the fight against [Isis] and the perverted state of mind that it represents”.

Turkey has long been accused by its critics and enemies of harboring ISIS operatives, and those critics were quick to brandish al-Qurashi’s location as further evidence of this. This put Turkey in an awkward position.

“Joe Bloggs will read about closeness [of the house] in Turkey and assuming that Turkey was guilty of incompetence or covering up an ISIS leader,” said Charles Lister, director of the Syria program at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington.

“But when you dig into the context, the location and the different issues, it gets a lot murkier. Any discussion of actual complicity is far less certain.

An aerial view of the house in which the Islamic State leader died following the US raid in Idlib, Syria on Thursday

(AFP via Getty)

History does not help. In the years leading up to and following the creation of Isis’ ‘caliphate’, Turkey failed to secure its own border with Syria, allowing thousands of foreign fighters to join jihadist groups. “In this direction, [Turkey] was instrumental in the emergence of Isis,” said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a nonresident fellow at the New Lines Institute, also an American think tank.

But, she adds, beyond that, the accusations of complicity are really part of efforts to discredit Turkey and portray Idlib as some kind of jihadist haven, which is not accurate.

Turkey has arrested thousands of ISIS operatives in the country in recent years. He also launched a military operation against the group in northern Syria in 2016.

And Atmeh is a bit different.

As the Syrian war drags on, this area has become almost entirely populated by internationally displaced people, making it a very effective place to hide.

Al-Qurashi apparently never left the house he lived in after moving there fairly recently. He would have relied on a courier, his deputy who lived one floor below him, to connect to the outside world.

Late ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi

(US DEPARTMENT OF STATE/AFP via Getty)

Mr Lister said it would be ‘harder than looking for a needle in a haystack’.

“Who would have suspected a man who had arrived with his family in the most transitional zone in all of Syria? he said. “In many ways, it’s the perfect hideout.”

Atmeh is not controlled by Turkey but by HTS, which also faces accusations of incompetence.

Relations between HTS and Turkey are murky: Turkish military patrols often cross the border with HTS, serving as escorts under various ceasefire agreements reached with the Syrian regime’s boss, Russia.

Turkey’s MIT intelligence service is known to have close contact with its HTS counterparts, but there is little evidence that Ankara has control over the jihadist group.

Al-Julani’s organization amounts to a formidable and independent-minded political group, which in recent years has sought to rebrand itself as more moderate and the bitter rival of Isis, with whom it regularly clashes.

File photo: A member of the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) holds the group’s flag in Idlib, Syria, August 20, 2021

(AFP via Getty)

HTS maintains a strict surveillance system in the parts of Idlib province that it controls. He has repeatedly cracked down on civil society activists who oppose his austere version of Islam through a system of informers.

Thus, the fact of not having detected the presence of the leader of the Islamic State on its territory would constitute a major security problem.

The Independent contacted HTS, but still haven’t received a response.

No one also knows what role (if any) Turkey played in the operation to kill al-Qurashi.

But for now, the incident clearly puts pressure on Ankara, which effectively negotiated the buffer zone in Syria it controls, on the understanding that it would ensure that all jihadist groups – including Al- Qaeda and Isis – be rooted out.

The raid against another ISIS leader in the northwest played perfectly into the hands of their detractors.

This could further stoke tensions between Turkey and the United States, already at odds on the frontline in northeast Syria due to Washington’s support for the SDF, which is effectively at war with Ankara.

Only time will tell how things will unfold for Turkey.

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