An image from a propaganda video released in 2014 by Islamic State, formerly known as ISIL or ISIS.Credit: AFP
In the spring and summer of 2014, the group took control of cities across Iraq and Syria, gaining notoriety for kidnappings, sexual enslavement and public executions. It also orchestrated and inspired a series of terrorist attacks across Europe.
Former Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed by US special forces.Credit: AP
In October 2019, then president Donald Trump announced the killing of al-Baghdadi, saying in a speech that he was “the founder and leader of ISIS, the most ruthless and violent terror organisation anywhere in the world”. Trump went on to say: “We obliterated his caliphate, 100 per cent, in March of this year.”
US-allied Kurdish rebels seized the last remnants of Islamic State territory.
Today, experts say the group is the weakest it has ever been in Iraq, but shows signs of resurgence in Syria. IS has continued to propagate its radical ideology through clandestine cells and regional affiliates across the globe.
Recent attacks
Even though they no longer hold major swaths of territory, IS and its affiliates have carried out a spate of deadly attacks over the last year.
In January 2024, the group’s Afghanistan affiliate, known as Islamic State Khorasan, carried out twin bombings in Iran at a memorial procession for Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian general who was killed in a US drone strike four years earlier. More than 80 people were killed and scores were injured.
A few months later, US officials blamed the Afghan group for a deadly concert hall attack near Moscow that killed at least 137 people.
Russian Rosguardia servicemen secure an area at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, where gunmen burst into a big concert hall in Moscow and fired automatic weapons. Credit: AP
In July, IS claimed responsibility for a shooting in Oman that killed six people and injured around 30 more near a mosque.
The Iran and Oman attacks specifically targeted Shiite Muslims, who IS considers to be apostates, a position at odds with mainstream Islamic belief.
Directed, enabled and inspired
Counterterrorism officials have divided IS attacks into three broad categories:
Directed: At least five successful attacks in the 2010s are known to have been directed outright by Islamic State, carried out by operatives who trained with the group in Iraq and Syria.
These cases were among the deadliest, including the co-ordinated attacks in Paris in November 2015, which killed 130 people, and the airport and subway bombings in Brussels in March 2016, which claimed 32 lives. Yet these remain the minority.
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Enabled: Counterterrorism experts have also identified violence conceived and guided by IS operatives whose only connection to the attacker is through the internet.
In Paris in 2015, Amedy Coulibaly was in contact with IS operatives in Syria before storming a kosher supermarket, taking hostages and killing four of them. And in Texas in 2015, two men initially thought to be “lone wolves” opened fire at a community centre. The FBI later said the attackers were in communication with IS via encrypted texts.
Inspired: Finally, there are the so-called lone-wolf attackers, who are radicalised through online propaganda and carry out attacks on their own.
In December 2014, Iranian-born Man Haron Monis took 18 hostages at the Lindt Cafe in Sydney’s Martin Place and announced that Australia was “under attack by the Islamic State”. Although he had another Islamic flag with him, he demanded that the IS flag be delivered to the cafe. Two hostages and Monis were killed after a 16-hour standoff. No evidence of Monis having had contact with IS was ever discovered.
In 2016 in Nice, France, more than 80 people were killed and hundreds injured when a man drove a 19-tonne truck through a packed crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks. IS claimed responsibility, although investigators said the driver had been self-radicalised, with no evidence linking him directly to the terrorist group.
Flowers are left on Westminster Bridge in memory of those who died in the March 2017 Westminster terror attack. Credit: Getty Images
In London in 2017, a 52-year-old Briton ploughed a rented Hyundai sport utility vehicle through pedestrians on the Westminster Bridge, killing two and injuring at least 40. A day later, IS described him as a disciple and a hero for the assault carried out in the shadow of Big Ben, but no evidence emerged of a direct link.
The Islamic State in Syria and Iraq
The 2024 overthrow of president Bashar al-Assad in Syria has given way to fears that the group could regain a foothold in the region. In July, the Pentagon warned that IS attacks in Iraq and Syria were on track to reach double last year’s count.
The demise of the Assad regime has also led to conflict between US-backed Kurdish forces and Turkish-backed rebels, prompting concerns that IS may exploit the instability.
More than 9000 IS fighters are housed in more than 20 facilities throughout Syria, according to the US military, which has 2000 American troops in the country and 2500 in Iraq.
While Syria is in flux, the United States has continued to target the group’s fighters and camps with airstrikes.
Regional reach
The terrorist group’s Afghanistan affiliate has been responsible for some of the recent large-scale terror attacks. It is also fighting Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which IS-Khorasan deems a nationalist force and therefore incompatible with their vision of a transnational caliphate.
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A US official said last March that the Taliban had made some progress against the Afghan group but struggled to prevent attacks and dismantle urban cells.
US officials have also been monitoring the group’s growth in the politically unstable African Sahel region. Last March, IS claimed an attack on Niger’s army that reportedly killed 30 soldiers.
An estimated 60 per cent of IS propaganda comes from sub-Saharan Africa, particularly affiliate groups in Nigeria, Congo and Mozambique, a US official said in March.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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