Do recent attacks ‘inspired’ by ISIS mean the group is resurging? : NPR

Just over a decade ago, the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) held vast swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, carried out attacks that shocked the world and regularly flooded social media with gruesome videos depicting the beheading of Western captives in orange jumpsuits.

The Islamic State has been declared extinguished by the US, but recent attacks by officials linked to the group suggest it is still viable, experts say.

At its peak, the group, also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh, over 40,000 foreign fighters the Wilson Center, a congressionally chartered think tank, estimates 120 countries.

But by 2019, ISIS's “caliphate,” which briefly ruled millions of people in Iraq and Syria over an area the size of Kentucky, had largely collapsed after years of U.S.-led operations aimed at dismantling its leadership, retaking its territory and undermining its ability to carry out attacks.

When the US announced the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that same year, President Trump stated“We destroyed his caliphate, 100 percent.”

However, recent attacks believed to be inspired, at least in part, by ISIS have raised questions.

Chrissie Barrett, Australian Federal Police Commissioner said Sunday's mass shooting during Hanukkah celebrations at Sydney's Bondi Beach was an “Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack”. The father and son fighters traveled to Davao, on the Philippine island of Mindanao, long a hotbed of Islamist extremist groups, before returning to Sydney in late November. according to the Philippine Bureau of Immigration.

Trump in his Truth Social post: accused ISIS for another attack over the weekend near the city of Palmyra in Syria that killed three Americans, including two U.S. military personnel, although the group has not claimed responsibility. And in January FBI stated The attacker in the New Orleans car attack that killed 14 people was inspired by ISIS.

Despite losing territory six years ago, Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says the group has not disappeared.

According to him, after the collapse of the caliphate there was “an even greater dispersion of leadership.” “ISIS never gives up. As long as they have the will to fight… they will use whatever means necessary to achieve what they are trying to do.”

Last year According to Pentagon estimates that there are still 2,500 ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq. Just recently, last month, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it worked with the Syrian government to locate and destroy 15 sites containing ISIS weapons caches. “The terrorist group's conventional threat has declined since its territorial defeat in 2019, and ISIS fighters are dispersed,” CENTCOM said.

Congressional Research Service defines the ideology of the Islamic State as “a uniquely violent version of violent jihadist Salafism – the group and its supporters are willing to use violence in an armed struggle to create what they consider an ideal Islamic society.”

“Vast amounts of propaganda” spread through social media have always been a key element of the Islamic State's recruitment strategy, and that has not changed since the fall of the caliphate, according to Daniel Byman, director of the Warfare Program on Irregular Threats and Terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He says the strategy, while effective, has always been “somewhat spaghetti on the wall.” In other words, ISIS is relying on a receptive audience to be inspired to carry out its own attacks. Anger over the war in the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, according to United Nationshas helped spark propaganda. The brutal conflict began after a Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people, according to Israel.

But despite the extremist rhetoric, militant groups linked to the Islamic State have struggled to re-establish a presence in the Philippines, said Sidney Jones, an associate professor of international relations at New York University who has also served as a consultant to the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism. That makes the possible link between the Bondi Beach attackers and ISIS-linked groups in Mindanao surprising, she said.

“We haven’t had a significant ISIS attack in this region for a long time,” Jones says.

During a five-month campaign in 2017, U.S.-backed Philippine forces laid siege to the southern city of Marawi to dislodge militant groups linked to the Islamic State, and Jones said the Philippine government “has been pursuing them tooth and nail for the past several years… the army has been engaged in systematic operations against ISIS remnants throughout Mindanao.”

That means it's highly unlikely that the Bondi Beach attackers would have found anything resembling a fully operational terrorist training camp there, says Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. “You're talking about groups and small cells of people hiding in the shadows,” he explains.

Byman says that while recent Islamic State-inspired attacks are tragic, the number of attacks is declining. He says this also applies to potential attacks such as arrest earlier this year of a Michigan man who was allegedly planning an attack on a military base there on behalf of ISIS.

“The FBI and others are making arrests. But the number of real conspiracies and real attacks decreases over time,” Byman says.