The Islamic State, or ISIS, made global headlines recently on account of two significant developments in Syria: a prison uprising in Hasakeh in late January and the raid by U.S. special operations forces a week later, on Feb. 3, that resulted in the death of ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.
The dire effects of massive jailbreaks a decade prior and the thousands of Islamic State convicts and suspects in Iraqi detention have induced greater attention to facilities in the country following an attack across the border.
Complex ties stretch across centuries and continents, but Turkey’s affinity for its ethnic kin is taking a backseat to global relations with Russia.
Ilmi Umerov, a Crimean Tatar political leader, was lying on a hospital bed in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea in his pajamas when Russian secret service agents carted him off to the airport and put him on a plane to Ankara with fellow Crimean Tatar political detainee Ahtem Chigoz.
War would bring Turkey under intense pressure from its Western allies to join putative sanctions against Russia, a critical trading partner and supplier of natural gas.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Feb. 3 meeting with his counterpart Volodymr Zelensky in Ukraine yielded a string of accords aimed at deepening economic and military ties between Ankara and Kyiv and thereby significantly raised the stakes for both sides should Russia attack the former Soviet state.
Iran is well aware of the changing dynamic, and it would like to advance its interests by creating a fissure between Israel and Russia.
Why would Iran want to incite Israel to strike Russian personnel or facilities in Syria? To answer that question, we need to understand the evolution of Iranian and Russian interests in Syria, which have diverged over time. Today’s post-war situation in Syria is very different from just a few years ago when Assad was hanging by a thread for his survival. At that time, Russian and Iranian interests aligned in their shared desire to defeat ISIS and prop up the Syrian dictator.
BEHIND THE LINES: What is a charity based in Israel, apparently devoted to the Palestinian cause, doing building mosques in northern Syria? Turkish ethnic cleansing.
On June 21, 2021, a newly built mosque was inaugurated in the village of Sheikh Khurez, in northwest Syria, close to the Turkish border.
On 3 February, U.S. commandos raided a house in Syria’s Idlib province, killing Abdullah Qardash, head of the Islamic State’s core group in the Levant. In this Q&A, Crisis Group experts Jerome Drevon and Dareen Khalifa explore the implications of the ISIS leader’s demise.
Who was the ISIS leader killed yesterday in north-western Syria?
Abdullah Qardash, an Iraqi national also known as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, became ISIS leader on 31 October 2019, one week after his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a U.S. raid in Idlib province in north-western Syria. Qardash was a long-time jihadist veteran. He joined what was known as al-Qaeda in Iraq shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion to fight the U.S.-led coalition forces and the new Iraqi government. Like several other future ISIS leaders, he was arrested for his role in the insurgency and spent time in the U.S. Camp Bucca detention facility.
Turkey announced the beginning of an air campaign against “terrorist groups” on the border with Syria and Iraq, according to the Shaam News Network.
On Wednesday, the defense ministry of Turkey announced the launch of an air operation called Winter Eagle against so-called terrorists in the areas of Malikiyah – Derik, Sinjar, and Qarajiq –which they use as bases in northern Iraq and Syria, Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported.
A report by the Guardian showed how underground networks in Turkey provide ISIS terrorists with fake passports, according to SANA.
Networks specializing in fake passports with official visas and travel stamps spread in Turkey and they are offering fake passports and official visas for terrorists from ISIS, the British Guardian newspaper revealed.
In a statement released today by the Media Office of the SDF, it declared that four of their fighters were martyred in the last night Turkish occupation strike on the rural Derik in the countryside of Qamishli.