Despite suffering years of losses to a US-led military coalition, the Islamic State retains its ability to inspire violence, as witnessed in the terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year’s day.
It was in this Louisiana city on the Mississippi river that a 42-year-old US Army veteran used a pickup truck to plough over New Year’s revellers, resulting in the death of 15 people and injury of over dozen others.
At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the Islamic State “caliphate” imposed death and torture on communities in vast swathes of Iraq and Syria and enjoyed franchises across the Middle East.
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 2017 in Iraq, where it once had a base just a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria in 2019, after a sustained military campaign by a US-led coalition.
Islamic State responded by scattering in autonomous cells.
Its leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify.
The U.N. estimates it at 10,000 in its heartlands.
Some 4,000 American troops in Syria and Iraq, have continued hammering the militants with airstrikes and raids.
The US military says that hundreds of fighters and leaders have been killed and captured in such airstrikes and raids.
Yet, Islamic State has managed some major operations while striving to rebuild.
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 counter-terrorism pressure, ISIS has regrouped, “repaired its media operations, and restarted external plotting”, Acting US Director for the National Counter-terrorism Center Brett Holmgren warned in October.
Geopolitical factors have aided Islamic State.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has caused widespread anger that jihadists use for recruitment.
The risks to Syrian Kurds who are holding thousands of Islamic State prisoners could also create an opening for the group.
Islamic State has not claimed responsibility for the New Orleans attack or praised it on its social media sites, although its supporters have, US law enforcement agencies said.
A senior US defence official, said on condition of anonymity that there had been growing concern about Islamic State increasing its recruiting efforts and becoming active again in Syria.
Those worries were heightened after the fall in December of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the potential for the militant group to fill the vacuum.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Islamic State will try to use this period of uncertainty to re-establish capabilities in Syria.
Blinken said that America is determined to foil such attempts by the IS.
“History shows how quickly moments of promise can descend into conflict and violence,” he said.
A UN team that monitors Islamic State activities reported to the Security Council in July a “risk of resurgence” of the group in the Middle East and increased concerns about the ability of its Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), to mount attacks outside the country.
European governments viewed ISIS-K as “the greatest external terrorist threat to Europe”, it said.
“In addition to the executed attacks, the number of plots disrupted or being tracked through the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Levant, Asia, Europe, and potentially as far as North America is striking,” the team said.
Jim Jeffrey, former American ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, and Special Envoy to the Global Coalition To Defeat Islamic State, said the group has long sought to motivate lone wolf attacks like the one in New Orleans.
Its threat, however, remains.
He drew attention to attempts by ISIS-K to launch major mass casualty attacks like those seen in Moscow and Iran, and in Europe in 2015 and 2016.
ISIS also has continued to focus on Africa.
This week, it said 12 Islamic State militants using booby-trapped vehicles, attacked a military base on Tuesday in Somalia’s northeastern region of Puntland, killing around 22 soldiers and wounding dozens more.
It called the assault “the blow of the year. A complex attack that is first of its kind”.
Security analysts say the Islamic State in Somalia has grown in strength because of an influx of foreign fighters and more revenue from extorting local businesses, becoming the group’s “nerve centre” in Africa.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the Texas native and Army veteran who once served in Afghanistan, acted alone in the New Orleans attack, the FBI said on Thursday.
Jabbar appeared to have made recordings in which he condemned music, drugs and alcohol, restrictions that echo Islamic State’s playbook.
Investigators were looking into Jabbar’s “path to radicalization”.
They are not sure of how he transformed from military veteran, real-estate agent and one-time employee of the major tax and consulting firm Deloitte, into someone who was “100 percent inspired by ISIS”, an acronym for Islamic State.
In recent months, US intelligence and homeland security officials have warned local law enforcement about the potential for foreign extremist groups, such as ISIS, to target large public gatherings, specifically with vehicle-ramming attacks, according to intelligence bulletins reviewed by Reuters.
US Central Command said in a public statement in June that Islamic State was attempting to “reconstitute following several years of decreased capability”.
The assessment from CENTCOM was based on Islamic State claims of mounting 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024.
(With inputs from Reuters)
