For a man who sought to disappear, the leader of the Islamic State group seemed to have done everything right.
He hid out far from where his enemies expected. He never left the house, relying on trusted couriers to communicate with his far-flung underlings. He was the group’s only leader to never issue a video or voice address, for fear it would make him easier to track. Most of his most fervent followers would not have recognized him on the street.
But American commandos came for him anyway, and on Thursday, the leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, blew himself up during a raid on his hideout in northwestern Syria, U.S. officials said.
American leaders hailed al-Qurayshi’s death as a fresh wound to a fearsome organization whose reach and power had already been greatly diminished. But terrorism analysts warned that killing yet another leader would not erase a group whose members have continued to seek refuge and plan attacks in chaotic parts of the globe.
It is another painful blow to an organization that just a few years ago cast a broad shadow across the entire region,” said Pratibha Thaker, editorial director for the Middle East and Africa at the Economist Intelligence Unit. “But I think everyone is wondering deep down how much taking down the top leader really matters since the organization is very decentralized.”
The United States has invested great resources in killing leaders of terrorist organizations. U.S. forces took out Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaida, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who led al-Qaida in Iraq, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, al-Qurayshi’s predecessor at the helm of the Islamic State group.
