Hardcore survivors of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) are staging more attacks in parts of rural Iraq in what Western experts see as a resurgence of this terrorist group after its territorial caliphate was annihilated by the United States and its allies in March 2019.
The aim of the 10,000 ISIS fighters based in Iraq and Syria is to resurrect their caliphate. This caliphate was established in Syria in June 2014 until it was destroyed by an international coalition five years later.
The new ISIS is exploiting the dislocation and confusion created by the COVID-19 pandemic to foster its resurgence in Iraq and Syria. It this effort, the new ISIS is being bankrolled by the more than $100 million in cash its leaders have stashed in Iraq, Syria and in other Middle East countries.
These frightening developments were revealed in a report released Thursday by the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), the agency that tracks the global jihadi terror threats.
The CTC report states the number of ISIS attacks in Iraq and Syria "increased significantly in early 2020 as compared with the same period in 2019." It warns ISIS is consolidating in Iraq and Syria and is "showing confidence in its ability to increasingly operate in a brazen manner in its former core area."
CTC also pointed out ISIS is exploiting security gaps caused by the pandemic and by political turbulence in Iraq to relaunch a sustained rural insurgency. ISIS is also launching sporadic atttacks in Baghdad and other large cities.
Because it retains its former ambition of becoming an Islamic empire, the new ISIS is bent on conquering territory, CTC said the terrorist group maintains the ambition to control territory and populations. As of now, however, ISIS remains an entrenched rural insurgency incapable of threatening cities and urban areas on a sustained basis. This will change, however.
Local lockdowns imposed throughout Iraq to quell the spread of COVID-19 have also given ISIS a captive audience it can indoctrinate in its ideology. CTC said ISIS has successfully used lockdowns to recruit fighters. ISIS is also exploiting the economic misery caused by massive job losses and economic dislocations to recruit fighters and supporters.
CTC warns easing lockdowns and movement restrictions in non-conflict zones will see an increase in attacks. Another motivation is fear of irrelevance among ISIS leaders who feel COVID-19 has largely eclipsed terrorism from the global news.
The COVID-19 pandemic is also hurting fighting men of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (CDF), which played the key role in the ground war that destroyed the ISIS caliphate.
General Commander Mazloum Kobani Abdi, SDF commander-in-chief, previously said a major COVID-19 outbreak will limit the SDF's ability to counter ISIS. In part, this will be because SDF will have its hands full maintaining control over prisons housing thousands of ISIS members.
The presence of foreign fighters, many of them from Russia, is also fanning the flames of ISIS's resurgence. A report from the Defense Studies Department at King's College London said a far greater risk to the Iraqi government "is the growing threat from ISIS in both its former stronghold in Iraq and Syria and in terrorist zones around the world."
