ISIS ‘Caliph of the Shadows’ still at large

ISIS has kept its current caliph hidden to avoid another targeted assassination.

By World Israel News Staff

The top commander of the Islamic State is still evading authorities after the terror group’s second-highest-ranking official was killed in a joint U.S.-Nigerian targeted operation on Saturday.

Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, the fifth and current caliph, or leader, of the Islamic State, remains at large but was likely rattled by the killing of his second-in-command and the de facto ISIS leader in Africa, Abu Bilal al-Minuki.

Omar Mohammed, a senior research fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism, told Fox News Digital that al-Minuki’s assassination would have demonstrated to top ISIS leadership that their security measures are not impenetrable.

Despite taking extensive precautions to avoid technology that could be used to track them, U.S. intelligence was still able to locate such a prominent ISIS official — something Mohammed suggested likely resulted from a betrayal by someone within al-Minuki’s inner circle.

“Al-Minuki would have had no smartphones, relying instead on courier-based communications and constant movement between these small camps,” Mohammed explained.

The precision strike, which targeted the exact location where al-Minuki was hiding, “would have utilized deep local networks the Nigerian military has struggled to penetrate for over a decade,” Mohammed added.

The successful operation demonstrated that terrorist leaders are not safe anywhere in the world — even in parts of Africa, where extremist groups have increasingly sought refuge outside the Middle East.

Mohammed described the killing of al-Minuki as “the most significant blow to ISIS’ global leadership architecture since the al-Baghdadi raid in 2019, executed in the theater that has quietly become the group’s beating heart.”

He added that the strike “is not a one-off kinetic moment.”

Speaking about al-Qurashi, Mohammed noted that ISIS has chosen to keep the leader “deliberately faceless,” with analysts referring to this generation of commanders as the “caliphs of the shadows.”

Keeping such a powerful figure shrouded in secrecy underscores fears within ISIS that its top leader could also become the target of a future assassination operation.