n February 2, U.S. Special Forces conducted an operation targeting Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi in Atimah, an area of Idlib province near the border with Turkey. The organization’s previous leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed by a similar operation in the nearby town of Barisha in October 2019. Both of these areas are controlled by rival jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which split from IS in April 2013 and later broke ties with al-Qaeda in July 2016.
Over the past few years, HTS has been attempting to establish a polity in northwest Syria via its technocratic Syrian Salvation Government. Part of this governance project has involved building up the group’s General Security Service (GSS), which was formally announced in 2020 but had been operating in proto-form for years.
Many of the announcements issued by GSS have focused on arrests of IS, al-Qaeda, and Assad regime cells, though its operatives are also suspected of targeting activists who oppose their parent group’s authoritarian rule. Since HTS adopted its current name in 2017, GSS elements have publicly announced twenty-one raids against IS cells in Idlib city, Sarmin, eastern Hama province, Salqin, Harem, Jisr al-Shughour, Khan Sheikhoun, Tahtaya, Sarmada, Abu Dali, Mseibin, Zardana, Kafr Naseh, and Majdaliya. The most recent raid was announced on October 7, 2021, though other operations may have been conducted but not publicized. Apparently, however, these intensive security efforts were not enough to deter the past two leaders of IS from using HTS territory as a base, though IS has long refrained from publicizing any information about its activities in Idlib.
Click here to read the rest.