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.

 

 

The U.S. Justice System to the Rescue!

Mohammed Khalifa, a Canadian citizen who was a leading figure in the Islamic State of Iraq, was recently transferred into FBI custody. In an interview with CBC's Fifth Estate, Khalifa admitted to playing an important role in producing and disseminating Islamic State propaganda to Western audiences    CBC

"As alleged, Mohammed Khalifa not only fought for ISIS on the battlefield in Syria, but he was also the voice behind the violence."

"Through his alleged leading role in translating, narrating, and advancing ISIS's online propaganda, Khalifa promoted the terrorist group, furthered its worldwide recruitment efforts, and expanded the reach of videos that glorified the horrific murders and indiscriminate cruelty of ISIS."

Raj Parekh, Acting U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of Virginia

"[Khalifa was] a deeply ideologically committed member of the Islamic State [until his capture]."

"The ISIS higher ups also saw value in him as a media personnel, and he travelled with much of the leadership to the final holdouts."

"One of the key things he mentioned during our interview was that ISIS, as it was losing territory, started to see consistent media releases as strategically important."

"Because of all the Canadian prisoners being held in Syria, Ridwan [Mohammed Khalifa, aka Abu Ridwan Ai-Kanadi] is probably the easiest to make a case against."

"There are literally hundreds of hours of ISIS audio that he put out there, and has also admitted to multiple reporters that this was his primary role with the Islamic State."

Amarnath Amarasingam, professor, terrorism, radicalization and extremism research, Queen's University

As an adherent of the ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a Saudi-born Canadian citizen who travelled illegally from the country of his citizenship to Syria to pledge allegiance to then-ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he was assigned to the ISIL media bureau, where he excelled in the position, becoming one of the Islamist fundamentalist group's most prominent public relations stalwarts, actively producing and distributing videos for public consumption extolling the virtues of the group and demonstrating its virtuous loyalty to Islamist principles through heinous atrocities.

 

From 2013 to 2019 his outstanding work assisted hugely in the recruiting of dedicated new ISIL members. His role as a publicity director helped amplify the Islamic State's formidably fearful reputation and was without doubt useful in convincing opposing militaries in Syria and Iraq that they hadn't a chance in hell to defend the populations their professional position demanded of them, ensuring they would melt away at the first signs that Islamic State fighters approached, leaving defenceless civilians to fend for themselves. 

 

In the invasion of Sinjar when Islamic State viciously targeted the ancient Yazidi population, the merciless killing of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls exemplified the blood-curdling mission the Islamic State gave themselves in their jihad against minorities helpless before their onslaught. With Iraqi and Syrian military defence a pipe dream, it was left to the Kurdish militias to oppose and defend Christians and Yazidis and other groups fleeing the violent persecution and threats to annihilate them.

 

The US-led international coalition gave air cover to the Kurdish Peshmerga who alone demonstrated the capacity to give shelter to fleeing civilian populations, ethnic and religious minorities, in effectively countering the burgeoning presence of the Islamic State caliphate, but it was without doubt Kurdish valour and values and military acumen that destroyed the expansionary plans of the Islamic State. When the geographic gains of ISIL were destroyed, it was the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces that took upon itself the imprisonment of Islamic State fighters and their women and children, freeing the occupied towns and villages from their venomous presence.

 

A Syrian Democratic Forces fighter burns an ISIS flag on the front line on the western side of Raqqa, northeast Syria, Monday, July 17, 2017. (Hussein Malla/AP Photo)

Among those imprisoned by the SDF in the prison camp established for that purpose was Canadian ISIL member Mohammed Khalifa. The SDF has repeatedly requested that foreign governments repatriate their citizens who had joined ISIL to relieve their burden. Some have complied, others have not. Some have taken back only female ISIL members and their children. Some will stand trial for their offences against humanity. It is the fate of the children for the most part that exercises the compassionate mind.

 

There can be no compassion wasted on psychopaths like Khalifa, both male and female who were complicit in the atrocities committed by the Islamic State, from their staged and videoed beheadings, crucifixions, drownings, death-by-explosives and other malicious horrors they visited on their many victims. All of which they gloried in, celebrated, proudly exhibited. Which alternately gained them new recruits willing and eager to join the death-dealing, or further burnished the dread in peoples' minds of the terrorists.

 

It can be seen as the responsibility of the government of Canada to have taken the initiative to return this man and his ilk to Canada. Less famous, as in infamous members of ISIL with Canadian citizenship are known to have returned to Canada of their own volition, are not and have never been imprisoned, nor faced trials with the reason being given that evidence against them is too difficult to obtain, to mount a criminal investigation to bring them to justice, and so supposedly they are 'under observation' by intelligence services.

 

There is more than ample evidence available for any jury to reach a decision about Khalifa; his signature is on some of the most vile, vicious, violent of Islamic State's videos and other publicity instruments meant to enhance their reputation and create a lasting impression of sadistic barbarity in the name of Islamism. Yet Canada's government has chosen to do nothing. It has chosen to exhale a sigh of relief that the United States has taken it upon itself to exact justice on behalf of the victims of Islamic State's notorious inhumanity. 

 

Thousands of videos, graphics and other images have been collected together to form a growing propaganda archive   ISD

 

"It’s very interesting that the U.S. is going forward with this case and not Canada."

"Ridwan is probably our easiest case. There are literally hundreds of hours of his voice recorded in ISIS media. Cases against other prisoners are slightly more difficult."

"I suppose the U.S. sees him as important for reasons we probably don’t know yet."

 Queen’s University professor Amarnath Amarasingam

 

"Those who left Canada to support the terror organization need to be held accountable for their crimes before a court of law."

"I'm glad the U.S. had the political courage to do what the Canadian government did not. He is a Canadian, he left from Canada. It should be the responsibility of the Canadian government to hold him accountable for his crimes."

"[Khalifa is] calm, cold, and indifferent."

"He had no remorse for what he had done and felt his actions were justified."

Leah West, professor, national security law, Carleton University