From its Syrian sanctuary, the Badiya desert, south of the Euphrates, where it has rebuilt its operational capabilities, the Islamic State (IS) organization extends its influence from eastern Homs to the province of Diyala, on the border between Iraq and Iran. Five years after the defeat of Baghouz, in March 2019, which marked the collapse of the “caliphate”, which he had proclaimed over a third of Iraq and Syria in 2014, the black flag jihadist movement is engaged in a war of attrition. Working to rebuild their networks, its cells carry out deadly ambushes and, sometimes, large-scale attacks.
“We continue to see a real threat in Iraq and Syria”underlined Ian McCary, the deputy special envoy to the international anti-IS coalition at the US State Department, in an interview for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (Winep), March 21. The action carried out by the coalition in support of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, predominantly Kurdish), in the Syrian North-East, and the Iraqi forces since 2014 has, however, “significantly reduces the organization’s ability to carry out attacks”, he clarified. Since March 2023, only a third of the 1,120 attacks claimed by ISIS worldwide have taken place in Iraq and Syria, noted Aaron Zelin, an expert atuWinep, while its franchises in Afghanistan and Africa are gaining momentum.
If the repetition of a scenario which would see the Islamic State once again take control of entire territories, in Syria and Iraq, seems excluded, the risk of a resurgence of the jihadist group is pointed out by the UN experts responsible for evaluating this threat, despite significant losses in the group’s management. In a report dated Februarythey estimate that ISIS still has 3,000 to 5,000 members in Syria and Iraq.
The collapse of Syrian state institutions and fragmentation of the militia landscape in Syria have allowed the organization to establish a sanctuary in the Badiya desert, a trafficking zone under the control of forces loyal to President Bashar Al-Assad and pro-Iranian militias, note Patrick Haenni and Arthur Quesnay in a note for the European University Institute.
Release of seasoned fighters
Beyond that, ISIS extends its influence into the provinces of Rakka and Deir ez-Zor, where Kurdish forces are struggling to impose their control on the Arab population. In the province of Idlib, in northwest Syria, where several of its leaders found refuge before being eliminated, ISIS is taking advantage of the weak control that the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the dominant force in this region, exerts on rural areas. In Iraq, the organization is reorganizing in the disputed territories between Baghdad and Erbil, in the north-east of the country, as well as in the provinces plagued by sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shiites, and among the millions of people displaced in informal settlements since the end of the war against ISIS in 2017.
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