An overnight raid conducted by U.S. special forces in Syria has resulted in the death of the leader of the terrorist Islamic State group. Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was killed as he exploded a bomb at his compound in the country’s northwestern Idlib province. The blast also caused the death of members of his family, including children, U.S. officials said. This isn’t the first time that American forces have targeted the head of terrorist organizations, nor the first time they have been successful. The Conversation asked Amira Jadoon, a terrorism expert at the U.S. Military Academy, and Haroro J. Ingram and Andrew Mines, research fellows at the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, to explain how this raid fits the U.S.‘s counterterrorism strategy, and where it leaves the Islamic State. 1. Who was Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi? Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi is the alias adopted by Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla, who became leader of the Islamic State in 2019 following the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a U.S. raid. He was born in 1976 in Mosul, northern Iraq. But very little was known about al-Qurayshi until September 2020, when it...