 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. On February 3rd, US forces conducted a raid in the Idlib Governorate of Syria, targeting the leader of the Islamic State Group, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Khureishi. The ISIS leader killed himself during the raid. At least 13 people were also killed, including women and children. While the US celebrated the death of the ISIS leader and claimed that all steps were taken to reduce casualties, the issue brought to the four, the larger politics around the war in Syria, the presence of the US and the state of IS. Rania Khalik of Breakthrough News addresses these issues. So I think it's noteworthy that this is the second leader of ISIS that the US has killed in Idlib. And Idlib is in northern Syria. It's an area that the US and its allies who were launched a war against Syria the last 10 years call a liberated area. And really what they mean when they say liberated is they mean it's liberated from state control. That's all. Idlib is the way it is because of the US war on Syria that really sought to create these failed state zones to bring down the government of Bashar al-Assad. And so now Idlib is under the control of a group called Hayat al-Shem, otherwise known as HTS, which used to be known as al-Nusra, which was the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. That is who is in charge of this area in Idlib. It's called a liberated area. And they're now basically allies of the Turkish government, and they govern the area. And the reason that ISIS is repeatedly able to hide out in this area is because at the end of the day, HTS and ISIS have a similar Salafi jihadi ideology that seeks to establish an Islamic state in Syria. And this is all to say that the US and its allies have continued their attempt to try to bring down the Syrian government, but now it's through an economic war rather than the war that was taking place before that, which was this idea of arming and funding collection of Salafi jihadist groups in these failed state zones in order to collapse the government. And in this raid that killed this leader of ISIS, it's also worth saying that the US actually ended up also killing six children and four women. So the majority of the people they killed in this raid or that were killed as a result of this US raid are civilians. The US of course stating that these civilians were killed because the leader of ISIS blew himself up, which is perfectly plausible. That said, you know, whatever the US does carry out a raid, it seems like they're incapable of not killing civilians. Meanwhile, we always do hear the US sort of like crying out about human rights abuses whenever the Russians, for example, bomb anything in Idlib, which also happens quite often because again, Idlib is basically under the control of a former al-Qaeda affiliate. And then the other noteworthy aspect of this that isn't getting attention, and I think is worth stating, is the fact that this is the second leader of ISIS that the US killed who also happened to serve time in an American prison in Iraq. Baghdadi, the former leader of ISIS, we know served time in an American run facility in Iraq where we know torture took place and all other kinds of human rights abuses. And so did this man that they just killed, as well as by the way, the leader of HTS, the group that controls Idlib, which is Muhammad al-Jalani, he also served time in US prisons in Iraq. So it seems like over and over again, we see this pattern of these leaders of these so-called terrorist groups having graduated from the American prisons of Iraq. And that hasn't been getting as much attention as it deserves because if it does, if we start to look at those kinds of things, I mean, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq was actually the origin of ISIS. The people whether we're talking about these two ISIS leaders who were killed in Idlib or whether we're talking about the current leader of HTS, the reason that they ended up in an Iraqi prison is because they were members of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which did not exist until the US invaded Iraq and basically invited al-Qaeda to come in. And that's exactly what happened. And al-Qaeda in Iraq was sort of like on the down until the US launched its regime change war on Syria that, like I mentioned, sought to create these failed state zones in Syria. And al-Qaeda in Iraq, under the leadership of Baghdadi, saw an opportunity to expand into Syria and to make money in Syria by basically kidnapping Westerners and journalists and then ransoming them. And it was easier for them to operate in these areas where the US allied armed groups had pushed out the Syrian state, which is their biggest challenger. So all that's to say that by collapsing states in the Middle East, by creating these failed state zones for the opportunities of regime change, whether we're talking about Iraq or Syria, it is US policy that has repeatedly created the conditions for the existence of groups like ISIS and for the ongoing threat that they pose to the surrounding countries. ISIS might not be so much of a threat to the international community anymore, to the West in particular, because we haven't seen attacks in recent years like we were seeing during ISIS's peak in the Middle East. But people in places like Syria and Iraq are still suffering from ISIS attacks. We don't hear about it in the Western media, but just a few weeks before the US killed this second ISIS leader, ISIS had launched this massive operation against a prison in an area in northeast Syria called Hasiki that held hundreds and hundreds of ISIS prisoners. They launched this huge attack that was quite successful for a few weeks and ended up causing all kinds of fighting between the SDF, which is basically the Syrian PPAK that's supported by the US and the British, fighting the ISIS captives who had been freed in this massive operation that included car bombs and suicide bombs to make their way inside this prison and ended up leading to 45,000 civilians in nearby towns fleeing the fighting because American helicopters were just bombing the hell out of the area. And also, there was several Iraqi soldiers around the same time who were slaughtered by ISIS and Diyala, a part of Iraq, and we didn't hear about this either. So the US policy of continuing to weaken, in particular the Syrian government, which like I mentioned is now mostly economic warfare through sanctions and have completely obliterated the country's economy and made it impossible to rebuild is actually what is creating the conditions for ISIS to continue to exist and to continue to get stronger. Over the past few years, questions have been raised time and again about the presence of US troops in the region. While this has been a major issue in Iraq, the question of these forces in Syria has also been discussed. What is the nature of US deployment in Syria and are there plans for them to leave? I mean in the case of Iraq because of the political will of Iraqis, the US has over time been reducing its presence, but with Syria, it's a little bit different because with Syria, there really is no pressure coming from any sort of political sphere domestically in the US to push for the withdrawal of what I think is around like 2000 US troops who mostly occupy Syrian oil fields. And they're doing this under the guys of the ongoing fight against ISIS, but the reality is that the US presence in Syria is actually a hindrance to the fight against ISIS because they ultimately end up using their positions in Syria to fight against ISIS's enemies who also happen to be US enemies. And here I'm talking about what the US will call Iranian militias, which just means, you know, Iraqi popular mobilization units that happen to be allied with Iran who are fighting ISIS at the border between Iraq and Syria. So because there's really no political will inside the US to withdraw from Syria, there's really nothing for the US to gain from it. Of course, Syria, the Syrians don't want the Americans there, but what the Syrians want has never mattered. And then of course, there's the issue of that that's always raised of the US has to stay to protect the Kurds because the US is allied with the Syrian Democratic Forces or the SDF, which is really just the Syrian PKK. And that is always a really strong argument to make in the US domestically. So while there are of course, you know, I think long term goals to reduce the US presence, I just don't at this time see that actually happening because the US administration has nothing to gain from it as far as an imperialist power is concerned and nothing to lose from staying there because there's really no part of the US political structure that has made this an issue of you have to leave Syria.