ABU AL-HASAN AL-HASHEMI AL-QURASHI

About:

• On February 3, 2022, US forces claimed the elimination of al-Qurashi in a similar raid in Syria.
  
  
• Last week, confirming the death of al-Qurashi, ISIS named one Abu al-Hasan al-Hashemi al-Qurashi as its third Caliph.
  
  
• Reports suggest he is older brother of al-Baghdadi, and a key member of the shura or consultative assembly.
  
  
• The trajectory of the group since the loss of the so-called caliphate and its first two caliphs, suggests that ISIS core based in Iraq and Syria continues to pose formidable risks to the region and the world at large.
  
  

Background

• In December 2011, the US withdrew its troops from Iraq, claiming that Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), led by Al-Baghdadi, had been decimated. By then, AQI’s Syrian branch, Al Nusrah Front (ANF), led by Abu Muhammad al-Julani, had already sent scores of cadres to Syria and grabbed territory.
  
  
• By April 2013, the AQI had morphed into ISIS — and on June 29, 2014, it declared a caliphate across large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
  
  
• However, Julani declared that ANF would remain a branch of al-Qaeda, and later renamed it Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which still controls northwestern Syria and some other parts of the country.