Barisha resident recalls the US raid that killed ISIS leader al-Baghdadi

Barisha raid remembered

Rashid Muhammad Kaseer, a resident of Barisha, still recalls the sound of helicopters the night U.S. Delta Force commandos raided the northwestern Syrian village and killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The 2019 operation ended the life of the man who led a brutal ISIS administration across large parts of Syria and Iraq and who was blamed for numerous atrocities, and was hailed by then-President Trump in triumphal terms.

Local aftermath and shifting militants

The raid is also set against shifting local dynamics in nearby Idlib, where a former associate of al-Baghdadi who had been charged with expanding Al Qaeda into Syria broke with him around 2013 and by 2016 began pursuing a more moderate and sometimes conciliatory course, illustrating the complex and changing landscape of armed groups in northwest Syria, as reported by New York Times