VIENNA, Feb 18 — Islamic State, the militant group that imposed hardline Islamist rule over millions of people in Syria and Iraq for years, has been trying to stage a comeback in the Middle East, the West and Asia.
On February 1, the media branch of IS’s Afghan branch, Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), circulated a post calling for lone wolf attacks in America and Europe following a New Year’s truck attack in New Orleans, according to SITE Intelligence, which tracks jihadist groups.
After a deadly stabbing attack on Saturday in the Austrian town of Villach, Austria’s interior minister said the Syrian man suspected of carrying it out was believed to be an IS follower who was radicalised online.
Here are some details about IS:
Recent Islamic State operations
The group was implicated in the New Orleans truck attack that killed 15 people and injured about 30 on New Year’s Day.
The suspect, identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a US citizen from Texas who once served in Afghanistan, was flying an IS flag during the assault.
Former US President Joe Biden said the FBI reported to him that Jabbar had posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired by IS.
Though largely crushed by a US-led coalition several years ago, the group has managed to rebuild and regroup.
It carried out an assault on a Russian concert hall in March 2024, killing at least 143 people, and two explosions that killed nearly 100 people in the Iranian city of Kerman in January.
It also claimed responsibility for an assault by suicide attackers on a mosque in Oman last year, killing at least nine people.
Then US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that IS will try to re-establish capabilities in Syria after the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad but said the United States is determined not to let that happen.
Aside from its bloody operations in the Middle East, the group has also inspired lone wolf attacks in the West.
In August 2024, authorities said a 19-year-old Austrian suspected of masterminding a planned attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna had vowed allegiance to the group’s leader.
History of Islamic State
At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the IS “caliphate” held sway over a wide area of Syria and Iraq, imposing death and torture on opponents.
Its fighters repeatedly defeated both countries’ armies and carried out or inspired attacks in dozens of cities around the world.
Its then leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed in 2019 by US special forces in northwestern Syria, rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims.
The caliphate collapsed in Iraq, where it once had a base only a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria after a sustained military campaign by a US-led coalition.
The new leader, known by the pseudonym Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, remains shrouded in secrecy.
New tactics in the Middle East
IS has switched tactics since the collapse of its forces and a string of other setbacks in the Middle East.
Once based in the Syrian city of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul, from where it sought to rule like a centralised government, the group took refuge in the hinterlands of the two fractured countries.
Its fighters are scattered in autonomous cells, its leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify. The UN estimates it at 10,000 in IS heartlands.
The movement went underground with sleeper cells that launch hit-and-run attacks, according to an Iraqi government security adviser who helps to track IS.
Some foreign fighters fled Iraq for countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan. Most have joined Islamic State’s Khorasan branch (ISIS-K), named after an old term for the region that included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
It is active along Iran’s borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Sanaullah Ghafari, the 29-year-old leader of the Afghan branch of IS, has overseen its transformation into one of the most fearsome branches of the global Islamist network, capable of operations far from its bases in Afghanistan’s borderlands.
Half of IS’s branches are now active in insurgencies across Africa and ‘may be poised for further expansion’ said the US National Counterterrorism Centre. ― Reuters pic
Islamic State role in Africa
Islamic State — often called ISIS, ISIL or the pejorative Daesh — has also made its mark in parts of Africa.
In Uganda, militants from the IS-connected Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) staged a series of attacks including a massacre at a boarding school, the murder of a honeymooning couple and a village raid that killed at least three people.
The group, which started as an uprising in Uganda, has largely moved operations to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, where it has staged multiple attacks.
Several other groups have pledged allegiance to IS in West Africa and across the Sahel. Affiliates have control of large areas of rural Mali, Niger, northern Burkina Faso and into North Africa.
In January 2023 the US military carried out an operation that killed a senior IS leader in northern Somalia. The UN fears militant groups could exploit the political instability in Sudan, which is gripped by a civil war.
Overall strength of Islamic State
The US National Counterterrorism Centre has said the threat posed by IS and militant group al Qaeda “is at a low point with the suppression of the most dangerous elements”.
But it went on to warn that half of IS’s branches are now active in insurgencies across Africa and “may be poised for further expansion”. — Reuters
