Sune Engel Rasmussen
WSJ, Feb. 4, 2022
“The reason these guys are there is that they are able to lay low. The area is dense in a way that Idlib never was before the war. It is full of strangers.”
When U.S. special-operations forces touched down in northwest Syria early Thursday in a raid that would bring about the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, they entered an area they were familiar with.
A little over two years earlier, they found Qurayshi’s predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who detonated his suicide vest to avoid capture, in a house 15 miles down the road.
Idlib province in northwestern Syria has emerged as a haven for senior Islamic State leaders after the group lost most of its territory in 2017.
At first sight, it should be hostile ground. Idlib is under the control of one of Islamic State’s sworn enemies, a rival jihadist group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS.
—Nazih Osseiran contributed to this article.
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