On February 2nd, 2022, the United States announced that we launched a raid in Northern Syria, killing ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. The attack was launched on February 3rd and marks the largest raid executed by the United States of America since the 2019 raid that executed former Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
This raid marks the United States’ continuation of the “war on terror”. A war that people of my generation have grown up with. Ever since the attacks on the twin towers on September 11th, the United States has been involved in Middle Eastern affairs, in the name of rooting out terrorism, but the ideologies fueling counterterrorism are a bit convoluted.
It is hard to denounce the idea of counterterrorism, after all, shouldn’t everybody be “counterterrorist”? The concept of counterterrorism that is never addressed; is the fact that millions of civilians have been caught amid the crossfire of our “anti-terrorist” efforts. In the most recent raid of Abu Ibrahim, as United States forces surrounded him, he blew himself up in an attempt to take out as the many United States lives as possible. With this attempt he failed; however, he was responsible for murdering several innocent women and children in the destruction. The number of civilians that died as a result of his suicide bombing is being disputed amongst the United States and the Syrian government, but the fact remains, women and children died as a result of the attack. This is the United States’ story…
In this case, it is hard to pin blame on the United States Military. After all, we were not inherently responsible for those deaths because we did not pull the trigger. Many will argue, that the United States’ occupation of Syria, the Levant, and the Middle East as a whole, is at large responsible for the plethora of catastrophes that have crippled this area of the world.
The Syrians have a different story. The Syrian government believes that it has proof that the United States fired shots on the building, which lead to the numerous casualties inflicted on the civilians. “Some of the corpses in the area do not look like they died in an explosion. They look like they were hit by extremely heavy-caliber gunfire,” Charles Lister, director of the Syria program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, stated. “And we do know, because I saw it in a video last night as it was happening, that at least one of the helicopters in the area fired its heavy machine guns at the building for over a minute straight.” (Islamic State Leader Killed).
This is not uncharacteristic of the United States to launch an attack on a civilian population if there was reasonable suspicion of a terrorist leader in the area. One campaign, Operation Haymaker, took place in northeastern Afghanistan. ‘…airstrikes killed more than 200 people…nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.’” (Friedersdorf).
The United States launches quite a few attacks on this portion of the world annually and misses its intended target. Just a few years ago, an account of an attack was released that stated “Starting at 2:08 am on Saturday 3 October, a United States AC-130 gunship fired 211 shells on the main hospital building where patients were sleeping in their beds or being operated on in the operating theatre.” (Medecines Sans Frontieres). The United States had accidentally struck a hospital in Afghanistan in which, “At least 42 people were killed, including 24 patients, 14 staff and 4 caretakers. Thirty-seven people were injured.” (Medecines Sans Frontieres). Arabs in this portion of the world use this to fuel their hatred for the western world and specifically the United States of America.
With attacks like these, the United States is creating leaders such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi as well as giving them talking points to promote their cause.
It becomes hard as an American to celebrate and appreciate military accomplishments such as this one because we will never reach a neat conclusion to the “war on terror”. The United States has been involved in the Middle East since the Cold war in 1970 and due to oil and the “war on terror,” it doesn’t look like we will be leaving any time soon.
It is hard to see this as a complete victory knowing the damage that our presence will do to the Middle East and how many families it will break. Another sad account of misuse of American force in the Middle East is when the United States committed another blunder and “…in Gardez in December 2003, when a US A-10 Warthog aircraft gunned down nine children in broad daylight. Or the massive sustained airstrikes in 2009, in western Farah province, that killed almost 100 civilians – mostly children – some of whom were blown into unrecognizable pieces.” (Gossman). If a horrific event like this happened on United States soil, we would have a holiday in memoriam of the events, but the fact that it is in another country we dismiss it as irrelevant and move on with our lives.
I fear that the murder of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi won’t bring us any nearer to the end of terrorism, but rather once again open a new door to a new leader that will wreak havoc in the Middle East as well as the rest of the world for the years to come.
It is a tricky problem to fix because there is no clear-cut solution. Many Americans feel that a United States presence in the Middle East may restore peace and order to the area, but I am afraid the citizens of the area have vastly different feelings. It is important to listen to the perspectives of people residing in this area, because the only true way to sustainable peace in the Middle East is not through the military eradication of terrorist organizations, but rather supporting legitimate governments and not intervening in these nations’ sovereignty. If we continue to act the way we do and bully this area of the world and act ignorant to our destruction, I am afraid that we will never take a step closer to peace in the Middle East.
Works Cited:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/03/world/syria-us-special-forces-raid-intl-hnk/index.html