Al-Jubouri had fled Iraq after the defeat of ISIS there in December 2017, and settled in the Syrian region of Al-Bukamal until the battle of Al-Baghuz, which brought down the organization in Syria as well, to flee to Turkey in early 2019.
Since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last August, ISIS has been active in the governorates of Kirkuk, Diyala, Salah al-Din and Anbar in Iraq, the Badia and the western countryside of Raqqa and Idlib in northwest Syria, taking advantage of ISIS Khorasan activity in Afghanistan, with the repositioning of US forces in Iraq and Syria and the declining level security in both countries.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazemi announced that his country’s intelligence services managed to arrest Al-Jubouri, in “an operation that is considered one of the most difficult intelligence operations of the Iraqi forces outside the borders,” as he put it.
The arrest of al-Jubouri is one of the largest operations targeting ISIS leaders, after the success of the United States and the Syrian Democratic Forces in killing al-Baghdadi and his deputy Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir in two separate currencies in Idlib, northwest Syria, in October 2019, which raises questions about the impact of the last operation on the movements of terrorist organization at this time.
Who is Sami Jassim Al-Jubouri?
Al-Jubouri, who is classified as a global terrorist by the United States, has a history of working with extremist organizations, as he worked with Al-Qaeda in Iraq before being arrested by US forces in 2005 for 6 years.
After his release from prison, he stayed in Mosul, his hometown, and studied forensic sciences until he became a jurist who possessed arguments of persuasion and theorizing, which prompted al-Baghdadi to choose him in a number of positions.
Hazem Saeed, a researcher at the European Center for Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence, believes that the arrest of a well-known leader in ISIS is a “big blow” to the organization in Iraq and Syria, given that it is a “treasure of information about terrorist organizations and an intelligence gold mine, for his relations with a number of al-Qaeda leaders,” he said. .
Saeed indicated, during his speech to “Sky News Arabia”, that al-Jubouri held a number of important positions in ISIS, including the General Supervision Authority for Transport and the Ministry of Industry, where he built an infrastructure for the manufacture of belts, explosive devices and missiles, and then took over the organization’s Ministry of Finance.
He added: “After the killing of al-Baghdadi, the importance of al-Jubouri’s role among ISIS leaders doubled, so the current leader of the organization, Abdullah Qardash, assigned him the tasks of managing the security files and hideouts of ISIS, religious affairs and the media, in addition to the financial management.”
ISIS financing
In 2014, al-Jubouri followed a strategy to raise funds for the organization in Syrian and Iraqi cities, by smuggling oil, minerals, antiquities, extortion, imposing royalties on roads and kidnapping hostages, bringing the income of ISIS at the time to about $1.9 billion.
Observers believe that the money provided by al-Baghdadi’s deputy contributed to building a fortune for the organization, and it was an attraction for foreign fighters to join ISIS over the past years, and a means to regroup the organization again during the past two years.
After toppling the so-called “ISIS” state in Mosul and Raqqa, the organization’s leaders, led by al-Jubouri, searched for other sources of funding in a desire to re-form the entity again, and resorted to introducing smuggled money from donations via the Internet and sources in Europe, to ISIS elements and their families. In the camps and concentration camps in Iraq and Syria, whose numbers are estimated in the tens of thousands.
obstruction of regulation
The researcher at the European Center explains the nature of the changes that are expected to occur in the organization after al-Jubouri’s arrest, saying: “ISIS is characterized by rapid adaptation to the circumstances. separately in countries across Asia and Africa.
Saeed explains that, “Currently, we find a revival in ISIS activities, as it is taking advantage of any opportunity to engage and grow again in Iraq and Syria in addition to Afghanistan, and its attacks have become more complex, in addition to intensifying its electronic activity and increasing recruitment and polarization operations via the Internet.”
However, the researcher expects that the arrest of al-Jubouri will lead to “weakening the organization’s capabilities and limiting its terrorist operations, which will lead to impeding its return in the short term,” noting that the operation at the same time “will not eliminate it completely, given that ISIS is not just a terrorist organization but an extremist ideology that it embraces.” Many of its fighters and followers, eliminating the ideology is much more difficult than defeating the organization militarily, and it will not be affected by the arrest of one of its leaders.”
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