Erin Banco, Jonathan Landay and Idrees Ali
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. military veteran who carried a black Islamic State flag on the truck he drove into New Year’s Eve revelers in New Orleans shows the extremist group still retains the ability to incite violence despite years of losses to U.S. forces. led a military coalition.
At the height of its power from 2014 to 2017, the Islamic State “caliphate” inflicted death and torture on communities across vast swaths of Iraq and Syria and enjoyed franchises across the Middle East.
Its leader at the time, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed by US special forces in northwestern Syria in 2019, rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declared himself the “caliph” of all Muslims.
The caliphate collapsed in 2017 in Iraq, where it once had a base just a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria in 2019, following a protracted military campaign by the US-led coalition.
The Islamic State has responded with a scattering of autonomous cells, its leadership is secretive and its overall size is difficult to quantify. The UN estimates them at 10,000 in the center of the country.
The US-led coalition, including about 4,000 US troops in Syria and Iraq, has continued to attack the militants with airstrikes and raids that the US military says have killed and captured hundreds of fighters and leaders.
Still, the Islamic State has managed to pull off some major operations as it struggles to rebuild and continues to inspire lone wolf attacks like the one in New Orleans that killed 14 people.
Those attacks include one attack by gunmen on a Russian music hall in March 2024 that killed at least 143 people, and two bombings targeting an official ceremony in the Iranian city of Kerman in January 2024 that killed nearly 100 people.
Despite counterterrorism pressure, ISIS has regrouped, “fixed its media operations and resumed external scheming,” Brett Holmgren, acting director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, warned in October.
Geopolitical factors helped the Islamic State. Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has sparked widespread anger that jihadists use for recruitment. Risks to the Syrian Kurds, who hold thousands of Islamic State prisoners, could also open up space for the group.
Islamic State has not claimed responsibility for the New Orleans attack or praised it on its social media pages, although its supporters have, US law enforcement agencies said.
A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there is growing concern that Islamic State is ramping up its recruiting efforts and rebuilding in Syria.
Those concerns have been heightened since the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December and the prospect of a militant group filling the vacuum.
‘MOMENTS OF PROMISE’
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Islamic State would try to use this period of uncertainty to re-establish capabilities in Syria, but said the United States was determined not to let that happen.
“History shows how quickly moments of promise can turn into conflict and violence,” he said.
A UN team monitoring Islamic State activities reported to the UN Security Council in July on the group’s “risk of resurgence” in the Middle East and raised concerns about the ability of its Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), to setting up attacks outside the country.
European governments viewed ISIS-K as the “biggest external terrorist threat to Europe”, it said.
“In addition to the attacks carried out, the number of plots disrupted or tracked across the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Levant, Asia, Europe and potentially into North America is striking,” the team said.
Jim Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey and special envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat the Islamic State, said the group has long sought to motivate lone wolf attacks like the one in New Orleans.
Its threat, however, remains ISIS-K’s efforts to launch large-scale mass-casualty attacks like those seen in Moscow and Iran and in Europe in 2015 and 2016, he said.
ISIS also continued to focus on Africa.
This week, 12 Islamic State militants using vehicle mines were said to have attacked a military base in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region on Tuesday, killing around 22 soldiers and wounding dozens.
He called the attack “the hit of the year. A complex attack that is the first of its kind.”
Security analysts say Islamic State in Somalia has grown stronger due to an influx of foreign fighters and more revenue from extorting local businesses, becoming the group’s “nerve center” in Africa.
‘ROAD TO RADICALIZATION’
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native and US Army veteran who once served in Afghanistan, acted alone in the New Orleans attack, the FBI said Thursday.
Jabbar appears to have made recordings condemning music, drugs and alcohol, restrictions that echo the Islamic State playbook.
Investigators have been looking into Jabbar’s “path to radicalization,” uncertain how he transformed from a military veteran, real estate agent and former employee of major tax and consulting firm Deloitte to someone who was “100 percent inspired by ISIS,” an acronym for the Islamic State.
U.S. intelligence and homeland security officials have warned local police in recent months about the potential for foreign extremist groups, such as ISIS, to target large public gatherings, particularly with drive-by attacks, according to intelligence briefings reviewed by Reuters.
US Central Command said in a public statement in June that Islamic State was trying to “rebuild after several years of reduced capabilities.”
CENTCOM said it based its estimate on Islamic State’s claim of launching 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024, a rate that would put the group “on pace to more than double the number of attacks” it claimed the year before.
HA Hellyer, an expert in Middle East studies and senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, said it was unlikely that Islamic State would regain significant territory.
He said ISIS and other non-state actors remain a danger, but more because of their ability to launch “random acts of violence” than because they are a territorial entity.
“Not in Syria or Iraq, but there are other places in Africa where a limited amount of territorial control might be possible for a while,” Hellyer said, “but I don’t see that as likely, not as a precursor to a serious comeback.”
