A Prison Attack and the Death of its Leader: Weighing Up the Islamic State's Trajectory in Syria.

AuthorWinter, Charlie

In the early hours of February 3, 2022, the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurashi, died during a U.S. military operation in northwest Syria that followed months of surveillance. (1) According to The Washington Post, "The picture of Qurayshi that emerged from the surveillance is that of a hands-on commander who was firmly in charge of his organization [...] His intensive involvement in operational planning made Qurayshi especially dangerous, officials said." (2) (a) However, in the course of his two and a quarter years as caliph, al-Qurashi refrained from making any audio or video appearances, limiting his ability to provide strategic guidance to followers and making it unclear, at least at present, what the impact of his loss will be on the broader Islamic State movement.

For the Islamic State, though, all caliphs are important, and al-Qurashi's death was unequivocally a major symbolic blow (3) It was not just the fact that U.S. forces had managed to identify and locate the most reclusive leader of the movement to date; it was that the raid came two weeks to the day after what was, as this article demonstrates, easily the Islamic State's most significant and impactful operation in Syria since well before its territorial defeat in 2019, an event that had energized its global cadres and in-country networks in a manner not been seen in years. (4)

The assault--which al-Qurashi was deeply involved in the planning of, per U.S. officials quoted by The Washington Post (5)-started when, on January 20, 2022, a vehicle bomb struck the gates of Ghwayran prison in the city of Hasakah, a place in which thousands of Islamic State fighters had been detained since March 2019 when the last vestiges of the group's territorial proto-state were routed by the global coalition and its local allies. (6) This attack--which coincided with a multi-pronged assault by Islamic State sleeper cells, an insurrection inside the prison, and a separate bombing at a nearby fuel depot--facilitated the escape of a large (though unconfirmed) number of militants and left hundreds dead and injured, before ultimately descending into a week-long siege. (7) While it was still ongoing, the Islamic State went to painstaking lengths to demonstrate that this was not just 'another' attack in Syria. Rather, it framed it as a new 'malhama' ('epic battle'), the latest episode in its apocalyptic war against the enemies of Islam and something akin in significance to the pitched battles of Mosul, Raqqa, the Libyan town of Sirte, and Marawi in the Philippines. (8)

As of the time of publication, it remains unclear how many of Ghwayran's Islamic State inmates were able to escape. Autonomous Administration (AA) sources reported minutes after the first bombs went off that 20 had fled the prison, though this claim was walked back later that evening. (9) The following morning, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced that SDF security officials had detained some 110 inmates in the immediate vicinity of the prison and stated that the clean-up operation was ongoing. (10) On February 3, The Washington Post reported that by the time the prison was back in the hands of the SDF, "scores, maybe hundreds, of prisoners had escaped, free to raise the Islamic State's black flag and fight again." (11) Meanwhile, Islamic State sources on Telegram have claimed that hundreds managed to break out, including "three senior leaders," a number that was later revised up to 800 by the Islamic State's Central Media Diwan. (12) However, there is no independent evidence to back the Islamic State's claims that so many escaped, and such claims need to be treated with extreme caution; U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan stated on January 30 that the group had "failed in its efforts to conduct a large-scale prison break to reconstitute its ranks." (13)

In the weeks since, the Islamic State has hailed the Ghwayran siege as a major strategic breakthrough for its insurgent prospects in Syria, with some of its supporters even going so far as to claim that it more than outweighed the death of al-Qurashi, the movement's elusive leader. (14) (b) This article assesses the extent to which that is the case, considering in detail its operational trajectory in the country to date by drawing on a complete dataset of all Islamic State attack reports published from Syria since March 2019, the month during which the group lost its last significant territorial foothold in the country.

Even though these reports are, by definition, propagandistc in nature, the U.S.-led Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF- OIR) has itself stated that they are largely accurate' as an indicative measure of Islamic State activity. (15) Moreover, separate research by this author and others has determined that, if anything, the Islamic State underreports in Syria, not overreports. (16) An as yet unclaimed bombing near Ghwayran prison on December 19, 2021--that is, almost one month exactly before the January assault--could be one potentially highly relevant example of this deliberate underreporting dynamic. (17) It is conceivable that, if the Islamic State was indeed behind this incident--which was the first explosive device detonated in Hasakah city in 2021--it was testing the waters to see how quickly the SDF was able to respond, but in a manner that did not draw attention to its capability in the city, which, as discussed below, was assumed to be lacking on account of its prolonged inactivity there. On that basis, it would make strategic sense for it to refrain from issuing an official claim regarding the incident.

In any case, this broad indicative accuracy means that, provided that they are only treated as strategic indicators of trends--as they are below--and not as definitive evidence of specific operations, the collective utility of these data points is significant. The analysis proceeds as follows. First, there is an overview of the Ghwayran prison attack itself, which draws on both the Islamic State's own account of the assault and the accounts of several non-Islamic State sources in northeast Syria, including that of the SDF. After that, the authors outline the data collection methodology before then using this data to consider the broader strategic context within which the operation occurred, weighing up just how significant or unusual it was for the Islamic State to conduct an attack of this kind.

When considered in aggregate, the data clearly attests to the fact that the Ghwayran prison attack was not simply 'par for the course' for the Islamic State within Syria. However, the data also cuts through the idea that it was the result (or the beginning) of a new period of resurgence for its network in the country. Instead, the data shows that the Islamic State never went away; rather, it has been a persistent and capable actor in the Syrian security landscape, especially in the northeast, throughout the time that has elapsed since its 'defeat' at Baghuz in 2019, which was wrongly hailed by the SDF at the time as the "total...

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