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Islamic State was crushed by the US-led coalition.

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Militant groups can still incite violence.

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New Orleans Attack Inspired by Islamic State

Erin Benko, Jonathan Lande and Idris Ali

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Army veteran who flew a black Islamic State flag on a truck he drove into New Year’s revelers in New Orleans shows how the U.S.-led militant group Despite the military’s losses over the years, it retains the ability to incite violence. Unity

At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the Islamic State “caliphate” inflicted death and violence on communities across vast swathes of Iraq and Syria and enjoyed franchises throughout the Middle East.

Its then-leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed by US special forces in northwestern Syria in 2019, rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself the “caliph” of all Muslims.

The caliphate fell in 2017 in Iraq, where it once had its base just 30 minutes from Baghdad, and in 2019 in Syria, following a sustained military campaign by the US-led coalition.

The Islamic State responded by fragmenting into independent cells, its leadership secretive and its overall size difficult to gauge. The United Nations estimates its population at 10,000.

The U.S.-led coalition, including about 4,000 U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq, has continued to target the militants with airstrikes and raids that the U.S. military says have killed and captured hundreds of fighters and leaders. has gone

Yet the Islamic State has managed some major operations as it tries to rebuild and continues to inspire lone wolf attacks, such as the one in New Orleans that killed 14 people.

These attacks include an attack by gunmen on a Russian music hall in March 2024 that killed at least 143 people, and two bombings targeting a state event in the Iranian city of Kerman in January 2024 that killed nearly 100. People were killed.

Despite counterterrorism pressure, ISIS has reorganized, “repaired its media operations, and resumed external conspiracies,” Brett Holmgren, acting U.S. director of the National Counterterrorism Center, warned in October. .

Geopolitical factors have helped the Islamic State. Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has sparked widespread anger, which the jihadists use to recruit. The threat posed to Syrian Kurds by holding thousands of Islamic State prisoners could create an opening for the group as well.

U.S. law enforcement agencies said Islamic State has not claimed responsibility for the New Orleans attack or credited it on its social media sites, although it has supporters.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was growing concern about a resurgence of Islamic State recruitment efforts in Syria.

Those concerns grew after the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December and the prospect of a militant group filling the void.

‘Moments of Promise’

US Secretary of State Anthony Blanken has warned that Islamic State will try to use the period of uncertainty to re-establish its capabilities in Syria, but said the US is determined not to let that happen.

“History shows how quickly moments of promise can descend into conflict and violence,” he said.

A UN team monitoring Islamic State activities reported to the UN Security Council in July about the “threat of resurgence” of the group in the Middle East and its Afghanistan-based affiliate, Daesh-Khorasan. had raised concerns about the ability to carry out attacks outside of The country

It said European governments saw ISIS-K as “the biggest external terrorist threat to Europe”.

“In addition to the actual attacks, the number of intercepted or tracked plots in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Levant, Asia, Europe and possibly as far as North America is striking,” the team said.

Jim Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Turkey and special envoy for the global coalition to defeat Islamic State, said the group has long sought to encourage lone wolf attacks like the one in New Orleans.

The threat, however, is ISIS-K’s attempts to carry out mass-casualty attacks, such as those seen in Moscow and Iran, and in Europe in 2015 and 2016, he said. ISIS has also focused on Africa. This week, it said 12 Islamic State militants using booby-trapped vehicles attacked a military base in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region on Tuesday, killing about 22 soldiers and injuring dozens.

He called the attack “the blow of the year. A sophisticated attack that was the first of its kind.”

Security analysts say Islamic State has grown in power in Somalia due to an influx of foreign fighters and increased revenue from extortion from local businesses, which has become the group’s “nerve center” in Africa.

The path to radicalism

Shamsuddin Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas resident and U.S. Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, acted alone in the New Orleans attack, the FBI said Thursday.

Jabbar has made recordings in which he denounces music, drugs and alcohol, restrictions that echo the Islamic State’s playbook.

Investigators were looking into Jabbar’s “path to radicalization,” it was unclear how he went from being a military veteran, real estate agent and one-time employee of major tax and consulting firm Deloitte to someone who Which was “100 percent ISIS inspired,” was an acronym. For the Islamic State

U.S. intelligence and homeland security officials have warned local law enforcement agencies in recent months to watch out for attacks by foreign extremist groups, such as ISIS, on large public gatherings, particularly vehicle attacks. has been warned about the possibility of targeting.

U.S. Central Command said in a public statement in June that the Islamic State group is “trying to rebuild after years of diminished capacity.”

CENTCOM said it based its assessment on Islamic State claims of an increase of 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024, a rate that would “more than double the number of attacks” attributed to the group. will take what was claimed a year ago.

HA Heller, an expert on Middle East studies and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, said it was unlikely that Islamic State would regain significant territory.

ISIS and other non-state actors remain a threat, he said, but because of their ability to carry out “random acts of violence” rather than being a regional presence.

“Not in Syria or Iraq, but there are other places in Africa where a limited amount of territorial control might be possible for a time,” Heller said, “but I don’t see that likely, not a serious situation. Prelude to. The Return.”

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