President Joe Biden watched in real time Wednesday as US commandos landed in Syria to raid a three-story home, surrounded by olive trees, where the top leader of ISIS was living with his wife and members of his family.
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From the head of the Situation Room table, Biden watched anxiously as an American helicopter suffered mechanical problems on the ground.
There was relief in the room when children emerged from the first floor of the building, running to safety.
President Biden said that the operation targeting Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in Syria showed that American forces could “take out” terrorist threats anywhere in the world.
The Islamic State’s leader blew himself up during the raid, U.S. says.
Biden describes a risky Special Forces raid designed to minimize civilian casualties.
U.S. officials say planning for the raid began months ago.
Who was Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi?
ISIS reached the peak of its powers in 2015, but it’s not done fighting.
In pictures: The aftermath of the American operation in Syria.
The raid targeted a three-story cinder block building surrounded by olive trees.
Islamic State’s leader blows himself up during raid, U.S. says.
Video
The image shows the aftermath of the U.S. raid in which the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was killed.
In brief remarks at the White House, Mr. Biden said the choice to target the ISIS leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, using the Special Forces was made to minimize civilian casualties, despite the greater risk to American troops.
Speaking in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, Mr. Biden was understated as he described the ISIS leader’s history, saying that he had ordered a series of atrocities, including against the Yazidi people. “Thanks to the bravery of our troops, this horrible terrorist leader is no more.”
He said the operation was a warning to terrorist groups.
“This operation is testament to America’s reach and capability to take out terrorist threats no matter where they try to hide anywhere in the world,” he said.
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Mr. Biden said Mr. al-Qurayshi died when he exploded a bomb that killed him as well as members of his own family.
Before his White House remarks, Mr. Biden said in a statement, “All Americans have returned safely from the operation.”
John F. Kirby, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, addressed the casualties associated with the raid in a news conference on Thursday afternoon. “To the degree there’s loss of innocent lives, it’s caused by Abdullah and his lieutenants,” he said, using a nickname for Mr. al-Quaryshi. He said the U.S. forces were able to evacuate 10 civilians from the building, including several children.
The helicopter-borne assault carried out by about two dozen American commandos, backed by helicopter gunships, armed Reaper drones and attack jets, resembled the raid in October 2019 in which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the previous leader of the Islamic State, died when he detonated a suicide vest as U.S. forces raided a hide-out not far from where Thursday’s operation took place.
The airborne raid came days after the end of the largest U.S. combat involvement with the Islamic State since the end of the jihadists’ so-called caliphate three years ago. American forces backed a Kurdish-led militia in northeastern Syria as it fought for more than a week to oust Islamic State fighters from a prison they had occupied in the city of Hasaka.
Little is known about Mr. al-Qurayshi, who succeeded Mr. al-Baghdadi, or ISIS’s top command structure. But analysts said the death of the Islamic State leader was a significant blow to the terrorist group.
American helicopters ferried the commandos into position after midnight, surrounding a house in Atmeh, a town close to the border with Turkey in rebel-held Idlib Province, according to eyewitnesses, social media reports and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a conflict monitor based in Britain.
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A tense standoff briefly ensued, with loudspeakers blaring warnings in Arabic for everyone in the house to surrender, neighbors said. Then an explosion rocked the building. After that, some of the house’s occupants had not emerged and a major battle erupted, with heavy machine gun fire and apparent missile strikes.
During the operation, one of the American helicopters suffered a mechanical problem, was forced to land and was later destroyed by American attack aircraft. After about three hours, the American commandos and their remaining helicopters flew off, witnesses said.
Given the fluid nature of early reports in a complex raid like Thursday’s operation, the military’s initial version may be incomplete. Accounts of other events have at times turned out to be contradictory or sometimes flat wrong.
Biden Details Special Forces Raid That Killed Islamic State Leader
President Biden said that the operation to kill Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in northwest Syria “took a major terrorist leader off the battlefield.”
Last night, operating on my orders, the United States’ military forces successfully removed a major terrorist threat to the world, the global leader of ISIS, known as Hajji Abdullah. Knowing that this terrorist had chosen to surround himself with families, including children, we made a choice to pursue a Special Forces raid at a much greater risk than — to our own people, rather than targeting him with an airstrike. We made this choice to minimize civilian casualties. Our team is still compiling the report, but we do know that as our troops approach to capture the terrorists, 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 — not just to the vest, but to blow up that third floor, rather than face justice for the crimes he has committed. Last night’s operation took a major terrorist leader off the battlefield, and it sent a strong message to terrorists around the world: We will come after you and find you.
As he declared the success of the U.S. operation to kill the leader of the Islamic State, President Biden said Thursday that the raid had been set up to try to minimize civilian casualties by sending in commandos rather than an airstrike.
Speaking in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, Mr. Biden said Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was behind a series of atrocities, including against the Yazidi people. “Thanks to the bravery of our troops, this horrible terrorist leader is no more.”
Mr. Biden said he “made a choice to pursue a Special Forces raid at a much greater risk to our own people” to limit civilian casualties, rather than to order an airstrike that would have destroyed the entire building. That was a similar calculation to the one made in killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, an operation that Mr. Biden had opposed at the time as too risky for American troops. His approval of this operation suggested he was now more comfortable with using Special Forces in these kinds of operations.
“This operation is testament to America’s reach and capability to take out terrorist threats no matter where they try to hide anywhere in the world,” he said.
Mr. Biden’s comments were the culmination of an operation that had its roots in intelligence findings last year that Mr. al-Qurayshi was living in a house in northwest Syria, near the Turkish border. That triggered the assembly of an operation that had unfolded before — in the 2011 killing of bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader, and the 2019 killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the previous leader of the Islamic State.
For Mr. Biden, the success of the operation was particularly important: After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, forcing the United States and its allies to evacuate the country, there was widespread concern that the loss of Afghanistan would give ISIS a new opportunity to retake territory. The director of the C.I.A., William Burns, told Congress that efforts to collect intelligence about local ISIS operations could suffer.
Mr. Burns noted last summer that while the agency was prepared to collect intelligence and conduct operations from afar, or “over the horizon,” the ability to gather intelligence and act on threats will erode. “That’s simply a fact,” Mr. Burns said.
But in the search for Mr. al-Qurayshi, about whom little is known, the exit from Afghanistan did not appear to be a major issue. Intelligence officials appear to have located him sometime last year, following a trail of couriers in Syria. They were able to evaluate the house where he was living, determine that a family living downstairs knew nothing about his operations, and design a plan to eliminate him focused on reducing the chances of civilian casualties.
But according to the initial reports, Mr. al-Qurayshi detonated an explosive in his third-floor apartment in the building, and that explosion appeared responsible for at least some of the deaths, according to Mr. Biden and Pentagon officials.
Just after midnight, the whir of military helicopters flying low toward their homes in a pastoral stretch of northwestern Syria roused them from their sleep.
Then a voice rang out in Arabic from a loudspeaker, ordering the occupants of a nearby house to give themselves up, witnesses told a Syrian journalist who contributes to The New York Times and who arrived at the scene soon after the attack.
“Those who want to take part in jihad, come out!” the voice said, according to a close neighbor who gave only his nickname, Abu Omar. “Everyone will be safe if you surrender. Those who remain will die.”
The United States has hailed the rare airborne raid by commandos in a rebel-held patch of Syria early Thursday as a major success against terrorism, saying it ended the life of the shadowy leader of the Islamic State, known as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi.
But for families living on the outskirts of the town of Atmeh near Syria’s border with Turkey, the raid made for a night of fear and left a house full of dead neighbors they said they had never really known. At least 13 bodies were recovered from the rubble left by the raid, rescue workers said, including six children.
A neighbor who gave his name as Abu Muhammad said that his family was so terrified by what they heard outside that they did not even peek out the windows. Then they heard heavy banging on the door and opened it to find American commandos and an Arabic-speaking interpreter.
They were told they would not be harmed, and were directed to flee the house and hide behind another building until the confrontation was over.
The family did as they were told and hid in the cold until all had fallen quiet, Abu Muhammad said. On their way back to their house, he said, they saw the body of a dead child.
The U.S. raid against Islamic State’s leader targeted a three-story house in northwestern Syria.
The U.S. raid against Islamic State’s leader targeted a three-story house in northwestern Syria.Credit...Mohamed Al-Daher/Via Reuters
Administration officials said that President Biden approved the operation targeting the Islamic State leader on Tuesday morning in the Oval Office, setting in motion the hourslong commando raid into northwest Syria.
Here is an initial account of the raid, according to two senior administration officials.
The raid against the terrorist leader, identified by ISIS as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was months in the planning, the officials said. An unspecified intelligence tip placed him in the Atmeh area of Idlib Province and then, by December, more specifically on the third-floor of a three-story residential building.
Mr. Al-Qurayshi left the building only occasionally to bathe on the rooftop. He relied on a top lieutenant who lived on the building’s second floor and carried out his orders to ISIS branches in Iraq and Syria, and elsewhere in the world.
Top Pentagon officials and military commanders apprised Mr. Biden of their planning, at one point presenting a tabletop model of the building where the ISIS leaders and their families lived — and noting that a Syrian family with no apparent connection to the terrorist group was living on the first floor.
Mindful of the high risk of harm to civilians and to the commandos, military engineers told Mr. Biden that they did not believe the entire building would collapse if Mr. al-Qurayshi detonated a suicide vest or other explosives on the third floor.
Shortly after the commandos arrived, warnings broadcast in Arabic over loudspeakers urged occupants on the first floor — as well as anyone else — to evacuate. One man, one woman and an unspecified number of children fled the building. The American officials said all of the casualties resulted from the explosion on the third floor.
Soon after that, Mr. al-Qurayshi detonated his explosives in a blast so large that bodies were blown outside the window, the officials said. Commandos stormed the building and engaged in a firefight with Mr. al-Qurayshi’s top lieutenant and his wife on the second floor. Both were killed, but four children were safely evacuated.
In complex raids, the military’s initial version of events may be incomplete, and accounts of past operations have at times turned out to be contradictory or wrong.
Mr. Biden, along with Vice President Harris, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, monitored the mission from the White House Situation Room. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, who oversaw the operation, also joined the meeting.
At one particularly tense moment in the operation, a U.S. helicopter ferrying commandos to the building experienced a mechanical problem. It limped to a location well away from the target site, where commanders determined it could not be readily repaired, and was destroyed by U.S. attack aircraft.
At another moment, two fighters on the ground fired at the American helicopters, which fired back, killing the militants, officials said.
Little is known about the ISIS leader, whose real name is Amir Muhammad Said Abdel-Rahman al-Mawla, or other members of the group’s senior command. But his death in a raid by U.S. commandos in Syria on Thursday was a significant blow to the terror group and a victory for U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
While he was nowhere near as prominent as his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who died in a similar U.S. operation in 2019, “Mr. Qurayshi still commands a lot of respect within jihadi circles and is known to be highly intelligent and able to think strategically, said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York.
Mr. Clarke said that Mr. al-Qurayshi had kept a low profile, which helped him elude an American-led manhunt but also may have hampered his ability to expand the Islamic State’s global network and brand. In March 2019, ISIS lost the last piece of territory from its so-called caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq.
“The trade-off has been, he’s a ghost, and not exactly active to inspire jihadist recruits,” Mr. Clarke said.
“The next ISIS leader could be someone relatively unknown, which will present the U.S. and its allies with a challenge in terms of intelligence collection and mapping his network. But it’s also a challenge for ISIS, particularly if the next leader is not someone with a reputation on par with previous jihadist leaders.”
Mr. al-Qurayshi, who was 45 and born in Iraq, was named the head of ISIS after Mr. al-Baghdadi died in October 2019 in similar circumstances: detonating a suicide vest as U.S. forces raided his hide-out in Syria’s Idlib Province. Once he took up that mantle, the United States put a bounty of up to $10 million on his head.
The U.S. government said he “helped drive and justify the abduction, slaughter, and trafficking of the Yazidi religious minority in northwest Iraq and also led some of the group’s global terrorist operations.”
He was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq in early 2008. The date of his release is not known. While in American custody, he appeared cooperative in interrogations and even provided information about other ISIS operatives, according to interrogation reports that were later made public.
A day after his capture, the U.S. military’s Central Command said that operations in Mosul, Iraq, had resulted in the capture of “a wanted individual believed to be the deputy Al Qaeda in Iraq leader for the network operating in the city.” It said the man had “previously served as a judge of an illegal court system involved in ordering and approving abductions and executions.”
Earlier, Mr. al-Qurayshi had served briefly in the Iraqi military before the fall of Saddam Hussein and completed a Master’s degree in Islamic Studies at the University of Mosul in January 2007. He told interrogators he joined the Islamic State in Iraq soon after that.
Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led militia that has fought the Islamic State, warm themselves near Ghweiran prison in Hasaka, Syria.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
The death of the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, in a pre-dawn American commando raid in northwest Syria on Thursday, came just days after the biggest battle between the U.S. military and the Islamic State since the fall of the jihadists’ so-called caliphate in 2019.
American forces backed a Kurdish-led militia in northeastern Syria as it fought for more than a week to oust Islamic State fighters from a prison they had occupied in the city of Hasaka.
The battle for the prison killed hundreds of people and offered a stark reminder that even after the collapse of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate, the group’s ability to sow chaotic violence persists, counterterrorism specialists said.
In Iraq, ISIS recently killed 10 soldiers and an officer at an army post and beheaded a police officer on camera. In Syria, it has assassinated scores of local leaders, and it extorts businesses to finance its operations. In Afghanistan, the withdrawal of U.S. forces in August has left it to battle the Taliban, with often disastrous consequences for the civilians caught in the middle.
“The recent attacks by ISIS,” said Mick Mulroy, a former top Pentagon official and retired C.I.A. paramilitary operations officer, “indicate that ISIS is not done fighting, nor is the U.S. and our partners.”
The Islamic State, whose history stretches to the insurgency following the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003, reached the peak of its powers around 2015, when a swath of Syria and Iraq the size of Britain lured droves of foreign fighters from as far away as China and Australia. It ran a sophisticated propaganda machine that inspired or directed foreign attacks from Berlin to San Bernardino, Calif.
An American-led coalition joined with local forces in Syria and Iraq to roll back the group’s gains, until a Kurdish-led militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces, pushed it from its last patch of territory in northeast Syria in early 2019.
Since then, the Islamic State has struggled to rebuild. The killing of its previous leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in October 2019 deprived it of a unifying figure, and his successor, Mr. al-Qurayshi, was largely unknown at the time of his death. Tighter border controls have blocked foreign fighters from entering Iraq and Syria, and persistent raids by U.S.-backed forces in both countries have largely pushed the group out of the bigger cities and into the peripheries.
Scenes from the military operation that killed ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.
The raid targeted a three-story cinder block building surrounded by olive trees.
Video from the scene where an American raid targeted the leader of the Islamic State posted on social media showed people pulling the bodies of at least nine men, women and children from the rubble of the badly damaged house.
Witnesses said that American strikes on the house caused the damage. But a senior American military official said there was an explosion inside the house that was not caused by U.S. firepower, and was more likely caused by the target of the raid blowing himself up.
Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, pulled bodies and survivors from the rubble and wrote on Twitter that at least 13 people had been killed during the operation, including four women and six children. The group did not provide further details on the identities of those killed.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported 13 deaths, including three women and four children and others who had not yet been identified.
UNICEF said in a statement that at least six children were killed “due to heavy violence.”
The raid targeted a stand-alone, three-story cinder block building surrounded by olive trees. Images shared on social media by activists who visited the site showed simple rooms with mats on the floors, a diesel heater and clothes and blankets scattered about, some of them covered with blood.
Idlib Province is home to many violent Islamist extremist groups, dominated by Hayat Tahrir al Sham, formerly the Nusra Front, which was formerly linked to Al Qaeda. Syrian military forces, backed by Iranian and Russian firepower, have targeted the group. Another prominent group is Hurras al Din, a Qaeda affiliate.
Hurras al Din emerged in early 2018 after several factions broke away from the Nusra Front, which publicly distanced itself from Al Qaeda. Hurras al Din is the successor to the Khorasan Group, a small but dangerous organization of hardened senior Qaeda operatives that the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri sent to Syria to plot attacks against the West.
The province has been the scene of American airstrikes in recent months, but the pace of activity there has been far short of the American-led coalition’s attacks against remnants of the Islamic State in northeastern Syria.
In early December, an American MQ-9 Reaper drone carried out a strike against a suspected senior Qaeda leader and planner in Idlib. But the initial review of the attack indicated that the drone’s missile struck both the Qaeda leader on a motorcycle and a Syrian family in a car close to the motorcycle.
Kurdish security forces searching for Islamic State fighters near the Ghweiran prison in Hasaka, northeastern Syria, in January.
Kurdish security forces searching for Islamic State fighters near the Ghweiran prison in Hasaka, northeastern Syria, in January.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
BEIRUT, Lebanon — One week after Islamic State fighters attacked a prison in northeastern Syria, where they have held out despite a heavy assault by a Kurdish-led militia backed by the United States, the terrorist organization published its version of what had gone down.
In its official magazine, it mocked how many times in its history its foes had declared the Islamic State to be defeated. Its surprise attack on the prison, it crowed, had made its enemies “shout in frustration: ‘They have returned again!’”
That description was not entirely wrong.
The battle for the prison, in the city of Hasaka, killed hundreds of people, drew in U.S. troops and offered a stark reminder that three years after the collapse of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate, the group’s ability to sow chaotic violence persists, experts said. On Saturday, about 60 ISIS fighters still controlled part of the prison.
In Iraq, ISIS recently killed 10 soldiers and an officer at an army post and beheaded a police officer on camera. In Syria, it has assassinated scores of local leaders, and it extorts businesses to finance its operations. In Afghanistan, the withdrawal of American forces in August has left it to battle the Taliban, with often disastrous consequences for the civilians caught in the middle.
The Islamic State, which once controlled territory the size of Britain that spanned the Syria-Iraq border, is not as powerful as it once was, but experts say it could be biding its time until conditions in the unstable countries where it thrives provide it with new chances to expand.
“There is no U.S. endgame in either Syria or Iraq, and the prison is just one example of this failure to work toward a long-term solution,” said Craig Whiteside, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College who studies the group. “It really is just a matter of time for ISIS before another opportunity presents itself. All they have to do is to hang on until then.”
Continue reading the main story
Read Biden’s statement on the ISIS leader’s death.
Last night at my direction, U.S. military forces in northwest Syria successfully undertook a counterterrorism operation to protect the American people and our allies, and make the world a safer place. Thanks to the skill and bravery of our armed forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi — the leader of ISIS. All Americans have returned safely from the operation. I will deliver remarks to the American people later this morning. May God protect our troops.
Al-Qurashi was an Iraqi Islamist who handed away after triggering an explosive system throughout a counter-terrorism raid. He grew to become the second Caliph of the Islamic State after being appointed by the shura council on October 31, 2019.
Beforehand, the U.S. Rewards for Justice Program provided as much as $10 million in data associated to Abu Ibrahim’s apprehension. His id was speculated for a very long time till January 2020, when a report confirming the ISIS chief’s true id acquired revealed.
What Occurred To ISIS Chief Abu Ibrahim Al Hashimi Al Qurashi?
Abu Ibrahim Al Hashimi Al Qurashi died on February 2, 2022, in Atme, Syria. America President Joe Biden introduced on February 3 that the U.S. army undertook a counterterrorism operation in Syria, which resulted within the ISIS Chief’s loss of life.
A White Home official revealed that in the course of the Joint Particular Operations Command operation, Abu had exploded a bomb that killed himself and the members of his household. The operation killed a number of civilians, together with six kids.
The Particular Forces carried out the two-hour raid, the place 13 folks have been killed. In keeping with the eyewitnesses, there was blood in all places. There have been eruption noises from helicopters, machine-gun fireplace, and explosions.
President Biden thanked the abilities and bravado of the Armed Forces, as they’d taken off the ISIS chief, Al Qurashi, on the battlefield. Within the assertion, he additional revealed that every one the People have returned residence safely after the operation, experiences The New York Put up.
Was Abu Ibrahim Al Hashimi Al Qurashi Married With A Spouse?
It’s unclear if Abu Ibrahim Al Hashimi Al Qurashi was actually and legally married. His id and private life particulars weren’t revealed to the general public for years.
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was an Iraqi Salafist and the second leader of the Islamic State. His appointment by a shura council was announced by the Islamic State media on 31 October 2019, less than a week after the death of previous leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The U.S. Rewards for Justice Program was offering up to $10 million in exchange for information leading to al-Qurashi's apprehension. On 3 February 2022, it was reported by a US official that al-Hashimi killed himself and members of his family by triggering an explosive device during a counter-terrorism raid by the US Joint Special Operations Command.
At the time he was announced as the successor of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, little was known about al-Hashimi, but his Arabic onomastic, al-Qurashi, suggested that he, like Baghdadi, claimed a lineage to Muhammad's tribe of Quraysh, a position that offers legitimacy in some quarters. Al-Hashimi's name was believed to be a nom de guerre and his real name was unknown at the time.
The possibility that al-Hashimi was Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal Rahman al-Mawla was already raised on the day of al-Hashimi's coming to power, but this was uncertain at the time. Muhammad Ali Sajit, the brother-in-law and aide of Baghdadi caught in June 2019, also believed that 'Hajji Abdullah', a top aide to al-Baghdadi, was al-Hashimi, the new leader.
Rita Katz, director of SITE Intelligence Group, believed that it is unlikely that the Islamic State would 'release any video speeches from this new leader or at least ones that show his face'. Nonetheless, on 1 November 2019, United States president Donald Trump claimed on social media that the United States government had identified al-Hashimi's true identity. However, a report on 5 November 2019 by The National said that this 'does not seem to be the case' and that 'reports indicate that Iraqi, Kurdish and American officials say they don’t have much to go on'. The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center correctly speculated on 5 November that al-Hashimi was of Iraqi nationality. The Small Wars Journal agreed with this assessment, stating that Iraqis constitute the majority of the Islamic State members and would not accept a non-Iraqi leader for the organization.
A report on 23 December by the Voice of America expressed doubt that al-Hashimi existed at all. It stated that the Islamic State was possibly caught off guard and announced a name as a holding move, to 'create the impression it is on top of things'.
On 20 January 2020, The Guardian released a report confirming al-Hashimi's true identity as al-Mawla.
Biography Early life Al-Hashimi was born on either 1 or 5 October 1976 as Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla in Tal Afar, Iraq. He was born into an Iraqi Turkmen family, and educated in Sharia law at the University of Mosul. After graduating, he served as an army officer in Ba'athist Iraq. After the end of Saddam's rule following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he joined Al-Qaeda and served as a religious commissary and a general Sharia jurist. In 2004, he was detained by US forces in Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq where he met Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In 2008, while in prison, he served as a willing informant to the US military in Iraq. A US official stated that 'He did a number of things to save his own neck, and he had a long record of being hostile — including during interrogation — toward foreigners in ISIS'. He presumably re-joined Al-Qaeda after being released from prison at an unknown time.
In 2014, al-Hashimi officially left al-Qaeda, reaffirming his loyalty to the Islamic State. He played a key part in the Islamic State's capture of Mosul in June 2014. He was one of the main Islamic State leaders who orchestrated the genocidal mass killings of Yazidis during the Sinjar massacre in August of that year. By this point, he had risen to deputy of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
According to the Islamic State, al-Hashimi is a veteran in fighting against Western nations, being a religiously educated and experienced commander. He was described as 'the scholar, the worker, the worshiper', a 'prominent figure in jihad', and an 'emir of war'.
Rise to power Less than a week after the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, al-Hashimi was elected by a shura council as the new caliph of the Islamic State, indicating that the group still considers itself a caliphate despite having lost all of its territory in Iraq and Syria. Al-Hashimi's appointment was supposedly done in accordance with the advice of Baghdadi, meaning the new emir was named as a successor by Baghdadi himself. Further evidence that al-Hashimi may have been appointed as successor by Baghdadi may be inferred from the relatively quick succession of Baghdadi. Al-Hashimi's coming to power followed several days of speculation and denial surrounding Baghdadi's death among the Islamic State supporters.
The general expectation was that al-Hashimi would become 'the leader of a frayed organisation that has been reduced to scattered sleeper cells' and the ruler of a 'caliphate of ashes'. Some analysts believed that Baghdadi's death would likely cause the Islamic State to splinter, 'leaving whoever emerges as its new leader with the task of pulling the group back together as a fighting force'. However, other analysts believed that Baghdadi's death would not have much of an impact on the Islamic State 'in terms of operational capacit'y and that it was likely 'not to result in the group’s demise, or really even bring about a decline'.
Leader of the Islamic State On 2–3 November 2019, al-Hashimi's caliphacy was criticized as illegitimate by the al-Wafa' Media Agency, an online media outlet previously aligned with the Islamic State before turning against it in March 2019. It was argued that 'the Prophet decreed obedience to leaders who exist and who are known … not obedience to a nonentity or an unknown'. Further, it was argued that the council which elected al-Hashimi did not qualify as legitimate since it lacked three qualifications for the caliph's electors: justice, knowledge, and wisdom – which the council lacked, since it had sent Baghdadi to Idlib, which had earlier been deemed by them a 'land of unbelief', when he 'would have been much safer hiding in the desert'. Further disqualifying the council was the fact that the council had 'shed innocent Muslim blood and embraced extremism in the practice of excommunication'. As a final note, the al-Wafa' Media Agency stated that nothing was left for a would-be caliph to preside over – 'You do not recognize that God has destroyed your state on account of your oppression.'
In 2019, al-Hashimi received pledges of allegiance from the Islamic State's Sinai province and Bangladeshi affiliates, Somali province, Pakistani province and Yemen province, Hauran province and Khorasan Province, Tunisia province, West Africa province, Levant Province – Homs, Levant Province – al-Khayr, Levant Province – Raqqa, East Asia Province and Central Africa Province, West Asia Province, West Africa Province – Mali and Burkina Faso and Levant Province - al-Barakah, Levant Province – Halab, Iraq Province – Baghdad, Libya Province, Iraq Province – Dijlah, Iraq Province – Diyala, Iraq Province – Salah al-Din, Iraq Province – Kirkuk, East Asia Province – Indonesia, Azerbaijani affiliates, and in 2020 from the Islamic State's Malian affiliates. These pledges of allegiance appeared to be intended to illustrate the legitimacy and unanimous acceptance of al-Hashimi, to counter criticism that he was unknown and illegitimate.
Following an attack on the Tajikistan–Uzbekistan border that killed 17 people on 7 November, the attackers declared allegiance to al-Hashimi prior to the attack, according to journalist Rukmini Callimachi.
On 23 December 2019, Voice of America commented that al-Hashimi had 'not provided visible leadership'. In contrast, the United Nations Security Council judged in January 2020 that the Islamic State had undergone a resurgence in Iraq and Syria. Though these successes were partially attributed to al-Qurashi's leadership, he still remained a shadowy figure. The UN Security Council suggested that the Islamic State feared that al-Hashimi lacked some credentials that were usually necessary for a caliph, and kept him out of the spotlight so as to not endanger his position.
On 24 March 2020, the United States Department of State designated al-Hashimi as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224.
On 20 May 2020, the Iraqi Intelligence Service identified a captured militant as al-Hashimi; however, the military clarified that this was actually Abdul Nasser Qardash, a potential successor to al-Baghdadi. Al-Hashimi, the leader of the Islamic State, was still outside Iraqi custody at the time.
Death On 3 February 2022, United States President Joe Biden announced that U.S. military forces successfully undertook a counterterrorism operation in northwest Syria, resulting in the death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi. A senior White House official stated to Reuters that al-Qurashi exploded a bomb which killed himself and 12 more people, including members of his family, during the Joint Special Operations Command operation.
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