ISIS no longer rules a territory. But its recruits still pose a global threat
Analysis by Tim Lister
(CNN) — It’s many years since ISIS, also known as Islamic State, held sway over much of Syria and northern Iraq a time when it spawned affiliates throughout Africa and Asia and organized a series of deadly terror attacks in European cities.
But as a terror group it remains active in more than a dozen countries – and has inspired and supported individuals and cells in Europe and Russia in recent years.
ISIS is far from moribund, even if it is now a loosely linked network rather than a self-declared caliphate controlling sizeable cities.
The most high-profile attack claimed by ISIS in 2024 was the devastating assault on a Moscow shopping mall in March, which left at least 150 dead and more than 500 injured.
It thrust ISIS back into the spotlight, as have events in Syria. US officials are concerned that instability following the collapse of the Assad regime may allow ISIS to expand from its remote desert strongholds, nearly six years after the “caliphate” fell, and also regain a foothold in Iraq.
There is also the perennial concern among Western security services that individuals inspired by ISIS will launch low-tech attacks – such as stabbings, shootings and driving vehicles into crowds. Such plans are notoriously difficult to detect.
Vehicle attacks in the name of ISIS in the last few years – including in Nice, Barcelona, Berlin and New York – have killed more than 100 people.
After Wednesday’s attack in New Orleans, FBI assistant special agent in charge, Alethea Duncan, said an ISIS flag was located on the trailer hitch of the suspect’s vehicle. FBI investigators are now searching for anyone who may have worked with the suspect – Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas man and Army veteran – to plan or execute the assault, Duncan said.
“We do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible,” she told a news conference Wednesday. “We are aggressively running down every lead, including those of his known associates.”
US President Joe Biden said late Wednesday that he had been told by the FBI that the driver had posted videos on social media “mere hours” before the attack “indicating that he was inspired” by ISIS. The suspect was killed in a firefight with police officers.
The ‘lone wolf’ threat
ISIS and al Qaeda have repeatedly called on sympathizers to carry out “do-it-yourself” attacks. The Boston marathon bombers in 2013 used a “recipe” from an online al Qaeda publication to build their devices.
Events in the Middle East have pushed already radicalized individuals to violence, according to Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence, a non-governmental organization that monitors terror groups,.
She notes that since Israel’s assault on Gaza began in October 2023, there has been a resurgence of “lone wolf” plots in the name of ISIS: a mass stabbing at a festival in Solingen, Germany; an alleged plot against Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna; and the stabbing of an Orthodox Jewish man in Zurich. In that instance, a 15-year-old boy, a Swiss national of Tunisian descent, declared his allegiance to ISIS in a video, saying he was “responding to the call of the Islamic State to its soldiers to target the Jews and Christians and their criminal allies.”
ISIS sought to exploit the situation in Gaza within days of the October 7 attacks by Hamas.
In January last year, ISIS spokesman Abu Hudhayfah al-Ansari called on Muslims to “hunt your prey — the Jews, Christians, and their allies — in the streets and alleyways of America, Europe, and the world,” in a speech cited by SITE Intelligence.
And as in years before, ISIS urged followers to “direct your actions at the easy targets before the difficult, the civilian targets before the military, and the religious targets such as synagogues and churches before anything else.”
Ten years ago, the then-head of Australian intelligence, David Irvine, said that his “recurring nightmare… has been the so-called lone wolf, often radicalized over the internet and who has managed to avoid coming across our radar.”
In that respect, little has changed.
Global image
Katz said at the time of the Moscow attack in March that “ISIS’ global support rests in no small part on its image as a capable organization, and this devastating massacre in Russia will only feed into that image.”
Investigators are still probing how the suspect in New Orleans became radicalized but there is still plenty of pro-ISIS content to be found online.
The Islamic State’s most potent branch – IS Khorasan (ISIS-K) – has global ambitions and a sophisticated online presence in multiple languages, including English.
The fact that Tajik nationals were charged after the Moscow attack indicated ISIS-K was responsible. US officials also said there was evidence ISIS-K carried out the attack.
Based in Afghanistan, ISIS-K has grown in strength since the US withdrawal from the country in 2021 and also tapped into radicalized populations in central Asia. The commander of US Central Command, Gen. Erik Kurilla, assessed early in 2024 that ISIS-K “retains the capability and the will to attack US and Western interests abroad in as little as six months with little to no warning.”
ISIS-K’s most infamous attack was the suicide bombing at Kabul airport in 2021 that killed nearly 200 people, including 13 US soldiers guarding the airport. But it has since expanded its orbit.
Amira Jadoon, who has written a book about the group, said that over the last three years ISIS-K “has grown more ambitious and aggressive in its efforts to gain notoriety and relevance across South and Central Asia.”
ISIS-K has also attempted to target western Europe and the United States, as well as Russia. In July 2023, seven men were arrested in Germany suspected of planning high-profile attacks and being in contact with ISIS-K planners. All the suspects were from central Asia.
In March last year, two Afghan citizens were detained in Germany, accused of plotting to attack Sweden’s parliament in retaliation for a spate of Koran burnings in the country.
Edmund Fitton-Brown, former coordinator of UN sanctions and threat assessment regarding ISIS and al Qaeda, told CNN last year that ISIS-K “has plugged into the central Asian diaspora, primarily in Russia and Turkey and to some extent in Germany.”
Fitton-Brown said ISIS also benefited from “ambient rage” among radicalized individuals at the scale of deaths in Gaza, and the release of some former jihadis from European jails after serving their sentences.
Such individuals see ISIS-K as “an inspirational and growing force… This could lead to attempts by individuals to travel to conflict zones to join its ranks or carry out attacks in their home countries on behalf of the group,” Jadoon told CNN.
Syrian vacuum
The US is concerned that should a security vacuum emerge in Syria, ISIS will regroup and expand there. On the day Bashar al-Assad fled the country, US Central Command hit more than 75 ISIS targets in Syria. Kurilla said there “should be no doubt – we will not allow ISIS to reconstitute and take advantage of the current situation in Syria.”
Analysts with the non-profit Soufan Center calculated that ISIS attacks in Syria tripled in 2024 compared to the previous year, hovering around 700. “They have also improved in sophistication, increased in lethality, and become more dispersed geographically,” they said.
One risk is that as beleaguered Kurdish forces fend off Turkish-backed militia in northern Syria, they will no longer secure the compounds where thousands of ISIS operatives are held.
Kurilla recently warned ISIS planned to “break out of detention the more than 8,000 ISIS operatives currently being held in facilities in Syria.”
Were ISIS fighters able to escape and begin terror attacks in neighboring Turkey or even travel to western Europe, the image of the group among like-minded lone wolves would only be enhanced.
The-CNN-Wire
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