Significance of the recent change of ISIS leaders

Mahmoud al-Batakoushi

ISIS has recently been changing its leaders after the United States decided to follow the strategy of targeting the leaders of the first ranks of terrorist organizations, especially ISIS, whether through physical liquidation or arrest and detention, within the framework of what is known as the “beheading strategy”.

The assassinations of ISIS leaders, starting with Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, followed by Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, and leading to the announcement of the killing of Abu al-Hassan al-Qurashi, as well as the assassination of Maher al-Agal, who was known as the governor of the Levant, in an American air strike in July 2022, in addition to the announcement last June of the arrest of the governor of Raqqa, Hani al-Kurdi, the announcement on October 7, 2022, of the arrest of the deputy governor of the Levant, Abu Hashim al-Umawi, and finally the killing of the leader of the organization, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini, in May 2023. Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was appointed as al-Husseini’s successor more than two months after his death via an audio clip released by the organization’s Al-Furqan Foundation, in which a new media spokesman for the organization named Abu Hudhaifa Al-Ansari spoke about the success of this strategy in catching the leaders of the first ranks in the organization.

Questions

The recent ISIS release raised many questions, given that it was delayed by about 65 days and confirmed that the selection of the alleged caliph took place as soon as the ISIS Shura Council learned of the news of the killing of the previous caliph. This is possible for several reasons, including that ISIS chose the new leader and did not announce the choice, although this contradicts the approach of the organization, which criticized al-Qaeda for not acknowledging the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri and appointing a successor to him, or that the organization’s Shura Council had been in discussions for a long time to choose its new leader due to the narrowness of its leadership base after the killing of most of its historical leaders.

Disruption of communication between the leaders of ISIS and its bases

Also, the existence of a condition that the leader of ISIS be an Iraqi Qurashi makes it difficult to choose, so it is possible that the Shura Council did not know the news until recently, which indicates a breakdown in communication between the leaders of the organization and its bases, or rather between the legislative leaders of the organization and its field and media leaders, due to the security restrictions on the members of the organization. This is what the spokesman alluded to in the audio clip, as he said that the meeting was held despite the security restrictions.

It is also noticeable that the media spokesperson has changed, as the Al-Furqan Foundation stated that the new clip was from the official spokesperson, Abu Hudhaifa al-Ansari, who in turn mentioned in the clip that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) captured the former media spokesman, Abu Omar al-Muhajir.

The clip showed the weakness of the new spokesman’s style compared to the style of his predecessors, including Abu Omar, Abul Hassan al-Muhajir and Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, who made influential speeches about lone wolves. The spokesman also announced in the clip that the killing of Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini came in a fight with members of HTS and not in a Turkish operation as stated in the Turkish media, stressing that HTS killed the ISIS leader and captured the media spokesman.

Organizational confusion

The previous data confirms that ISIS is going through a new phase of organizational confusion, in addition to a phase of exhaustion at the human level, which is the strongest since the establishment of the organization in 2014, due to the increasing rates of targeting its leaders. This reflects the state of crisis that the organization is experiencing and deepens the existing leadership crisis. The greatest evidence of this is his use of cadres who are not qualified or able to control the situation within the terrorist organization, although it is still able to launch attacks in the countries where it deploys its elements, especially by using the lone wolf tactic.