They were almost just a bloody footnote in history. But despite many thousands of its fighters killed and captured, its organizational structure smashed, its leadership in the grave, and its so-called "caliphate" destroyed, the Islamic State is still inspiring terrorist attacks around the world.
Their latest inspirational success was in New Orleans, where Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native and U.S. Army veteran, was radicalized online over the last year. He rarely attended the nearby mosque or another mosque located a short drive away. But his belief in Islam darkened as his personal life fell apart. Three divorces and money troubles due to large alimony and child support payments weighed heavily on him. Even after going to work at Deloitte, making $120,000 a year, he could barely keep his head above water.
"I joined ISIS," Jabbar claimed in one of the numerous videos he posted before the attack. Authorities are still trying to determine if that was true. Whether he joined formally or not, he was inspired to murder by ISIS's belief that the decadent West needs to be destroyed and "unbelievers" need to die.
Now, ISIS is gathering its strength, growing steadily, and ready to go beyond "inspiring" attacks to planning and carrying them out.
“I have never seen the threat landscape this worrying, not just from a counterterrorism perspective but from state-sponsored threats,” said Christopher Costa, whom AP identifies as "a former career intelligence officer." Costa was senior director for counterterrorism during the first Trump administration.
ISIS has already managed some major attacks in recent months.
Those assaults include one by gunmen on a Russian music hall in March 2024 that killed at least 143 people, and two explosions targeting an official ceremony in the Iranian city of Kerman in January 2024 that killed nearly 100.
Despite the counterterrorism pressure, ISIS has regrouped, "repaired its media operations, and restarted external plotting," Acting U.S. Director for the National Counterterrorism Center Brett Holmgren warned in October.
Counter-terrorism analysts agree that those media operations are the most sophisticated and most effective propaganda operations among terrorist groups today.
A UN team responsible for tracking and reporting on ISIS activities told the Security Council in July that there was a “risk of resurgence” of the group in the Middle East. There is also growing concern about ISIS's Afghanistan affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), which regularly carries out mass casualty attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The team reported that European governments viewed ISIS-K as “the greatest external terrorist threat to Europe." What will the situation be in six months? A year?
AP:
“You pick the grievance, and then you’ll find the ideology to act on it,” Costa said. “Now it includes Oct. 7, it includes IS — and why IS is so important right now is because it is resurging as a result of what IS could perceive as a victory in Syria.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Associated Press that he was “hard-pressed to think of a time in my career where so many different kinds of threats are all elevated at once.”
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in June that ISIS was attempting to “reconstitute following several years of decreased capability.”
More from Reuters:
CENTCOM said it based its assessment on Islamic State claims of mounting 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024, a rate which would put the group “on pace to more than double the number of attacks” claimed the year before.
H.A. Hellyer, an expert in Middle East studies and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, said it was unlikely Islamic State would gain considerable territory again.
He said ISIS and other non-state actors continue to pose a danger, but more due to their ability to unleash "random acts of violence" than by being a territorial entity.
"Not in Syria or Iraq, but there are other places in Africa that a limited amount of territorial control might be possible for a time," Hellyer said, "but I don't see that as likely, not as the precursor to a serious comeback."
We've already seen that ISIS can inspire individuals to wreak havoc and kill people in mass casualty attacks. Gaining control of even small parcels of territory might not matter in the strategic sense, but as a propaganda weapon, it would be invaluable.
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