The next ISIS leader… Who will succeed Al-Qurashi in the leadership of the organization?
The death of ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi in a US security operation in northern Syria has raised questions and speculation about the would-be caliph.
Amr Farouk, an expert on the affairs of extremist groups, said that ISIS would likely take over following the killing of al-Qurashi, Hajj Juma Awad al-Badri, head of the General Shura Council and brother of former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Farouk said this was likely due to the arrest of Sami Jassim al-Jubury last October, based on details of the internal structure of ISIS, which he singled out before his assassination in a study by Iraqi counter-terrorism expert Hicham al-Hachemi.
US news network NBC News quoted experts as saying that while al-Qurashi’s successor has yet to be revealed, it is likely that another Iraqi may have been steeped in intolerance and terrorism.
James Franklin Jeffrey, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told NBC News: “So far we don’t know the name of the person who is actually waiting to take his place, but you can be sure that ISIS has already identified one”.
Jeffrey added: “The ISIS leader’s life expectancy recently is about three years, so they are prepared for this possibility”.
Daniel Milton, director of the West Point Counterterrorism Center, agreed: “I’m not aware of a particular person, but ISIS has been hit by a number of strikes targeting the leadership, so they are ready to fill the vacancy”.
Seth Jones, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there may be no public announcement of the caliphate: “Many leaders have been killed over the past few years. Because of that, they are dealing very carefully”.
ISIS’s leadership became vacant after a raid on al-Qurashi’s hideout, where he detonated a suicide bomb that killed him and many civilians, including children, rather than being captured alive, President Joe Biden said.
Biden called al-Qurashi’s action “a cowardly act of desperation”. But his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, did the same when he detonated a suicide bomb that killed him and three of his children in 2019, when US forces pursued him.
Former President Donald Trump declared victory over ISIS in 2018, a year before al-Baghdadi was killed.
According to the US network, ISIS is likely to appoint al-Qurashi’s successor based on Shura Council (Supreme Command Committee) consultations, as it has done before.
If it goes as in the past, al-Qurashi’s successor may be appointed within the next few days or weeks, and he will be given an alias to hide his identity.
Members of the organization and its affiliates around the world will be asked to pledge allegiance to it, but it may not appear publicly for months or years, if at all.
