Here’s the disturbing reality behind the ISIS-inspired New Year’s Eve assault on New Orleans: Military officials and national security experts fear a veritable storm is forming around the world that could lead to attacks even deadlier terrorists on American shores.
Even before U.S. Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a vehicle into a crowd on Bourbon Street and killed 14 people on New Year’s Day, foreign policy circles were increasingly resigned to the fact that the conditions were ripe for both a resurgence of the Islamic State abroad and a resurgence of the Islamic State abroad. so that the extremist group can potentially find a new pool of willing recruits in the United States, Europe and Asia, ready to commit acts of violence. The more territory the group controls – and the more secure its leaders feel from attacks by the United States or its counterterrorism allies – the easier it is to plan overseas operations or undertake coordinated recruiting efforts. online, to teach potential terrorists how to make bombs, or alternatively, map jihadist missions around the world.
The radical Islamist movement no longer controls the vast “caliphate” that it led ten years ago, straddling Syria and Iraq, driven from its stronghold by an anti-terrorist offensive led by the United States.
But the once-powerful terrorist group is rapidly regaining strength across sub-Saharan Africa, where U.S. and international officials warn that weak central governments are ill-equipped to stop it. In Afghanistan, the local Islamic State affiliate, ISIS-K, has significantly expanded its reach in the three years since U.S. troops left the country. The rise of ISIS-K is perhaps best illustrated by its attack on a Moscow concert hall last March, which killed more than 140 people.
But for the United States, the most immediate threat appears to emanate from Syria, where the government of longtime dictator Bashar Assad was toppled last month in a surprise offensive by rebel forces. The United States has quietly more than doubled the number of its troops in Syria from 900 to around 2,000 when the Assad government collapsed, and American troops in recent weeks have carried out new strikes against Assad fighters. ISIS who had established themselves in areas previously controlled by Mr. Assad’s forces and their Russian allies.
With an untested rebel force in power in Damascus, the door could be opened for neighboring Turkey to target Kurdish rebels who have been key U.S. partners over the past decade in the war against ISIS.
Turkey, under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, views elements of this Kurdish alliance as terrorists seeking to associate with Kurdish separatist forces based in Türkiye.
Add to that the strong likelihood that President-elect Donald Trump will reduce, not expand, the U.S. military footprint in Syria and some experts say serious warning signs are on the horizon.
“We’re going to see a lot more Islamic State and copycat attacks,” said Michael Rubin, a former Defense Department official who is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “The Islamic State is on the rebound, and tens of thousands of its militants could soon be freed if Turkey or its proxies invade the camp where the Kurds are keeping them under guard in northeast Syria. Trump may believe that dictators bring stability and therefore gives Erdogan carte blanche to do whatever he wants with the Kurds, but abandoning America’s key allies in Syria will have a price that Americans will pay on the front lines. interior.”
“If ISIS is unleashed in Syria, don’t expect it to stay there,” Mr. Rubin told the Washington Times. “It would only be a matter of time before they started crossing the southern border or, for that matter, the northern border into Canada. »
The Soufan Center, a security think tank, wrote in a recent analysis that chaotic conditions in Syria provide fertile ground for a new burst of activity by a revitalized Islamic state.
“The current environment in Syria is tailor-made for ISIS to exploit in order to facilitate its return and resurgence, not only in the country but throughout the region,” reads in part the analysis. “…Looking at freely available and unclassified data, ISIS attacks in Syria alone have tripled from last year, hovering around 700 for 2024. They have also improved in sophistication, increased in lethality, and became more geographically dispersed. »
A dangerous moment
In New Orleans, Jabbar was carrying an Islamic State flag in his vehicle during his attack, authorities said. This incident joins a host of other terrorist incidents over the past decade in which attackers said they acted on behalf of the Islamic State, including the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, an attack the 2017 New York subway bombing, a mass shooting in San Bernardino. , California, in 2015, and others.
The facts suggest that there are already dozens, if not hundreds, of other individuals in the United States willing and able to carry out similar attacks. Last October, a House Homeland Security committee found more than 50 cases since April 2021 in which people in the United States were accused of attempting to provide material support to terrorist groups, including the Islamic State , or other terrorism-related offenses.
Connecting with these individuals, or inspiring new potential radicals and coaching them on how to carry out terrorist attacks in America, would be much easier for Islamic State officials who feel relatively safe to establish base bases. operations. And that danger is more immediate in Syria, where the Islamic State retains a significant fighting force and still possesses some elements of the deeply rooted infrastructure it established a decade ago at the height of its caliphate in Syria and neighboring Iraq.
Even Russia, hardly a U.S. ally on major foreign policy or national security issues, fears that a power vacuum in Syria could lead to a resurgence of ISIS.
“There are real risks of a resurgence of ISIS, as well as other extremist groups that were previously active in Syria before their apparent dissolution,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Friday, according to regional media. .
Long before the collapse of the Assad regime, Pentagon officials were warning that the conditions for a resurgence of the Islamic State were forming. In July, US Central Command said ISIS had carried out at least 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024 alone.
“At this rate, ISIS is on track to more than double the total number of claimed attacks in 2023. The increase in attacks indicates that ISIS is trying to rebuild itself after several years of diminishing capabilities.” , CENTCOM then declared.
Since then, it has become clear that the United States may need to step up its operations, at least temporarily, to maintain control over the group. Last month, CENTCOM said it carried out an airstrike in Dayr az Zawr province that killed two Islamic State operatives and wounded another. The airstrike also destroyed a truck loaded with weapons, CENTCOM said.
These ISIS members appear to have exploited the political instability inside the war-torn country.
“This strike took place in an area formerly controlled by the Syrian regime and the Russians,” CENTCOM said.
“This airstrike is part of CENTCOM’s ongoing commitment, alongside its partners in the region, to disrupt and degrade terrorist efforts to plan, organize and carry out attacks against U.S. civilians and service members , our allies and our partners throughout the region. and beyond,” CENTCOM said in its statement.
But politically, American priorities could change. During his first term, Mr. Trump attempted to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria, but was ultimately convinced by influential Republican lawmakers and military officials to maintain a small detachment there.
This time around, he seems more determined to make a complete withdrawal.
“The United States should have nothing to do with this,” Mr. Trump said in a social media post just after the fall of the Assad government. “This is not our fight. Let him play. Don’t get involved!
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