ONLINE PRESENCE OF ISIL FOLLOWING ITS FALL Autor: Charlie Winter

6 ONLINE PRESENCE OF ISIL FOLLOWING ITS FALL SECTION 3: THE ISLAMIC STATE TODAY An analysis of Islamic State military and media activities since the collapse of its territories in Syria in 2019 provides a useful lens to understand its current approach to tactical evolution and strategic capability development. [...] While there has been a 92 percent decrease in claimed attacks in Iraq and Syria (from 280 to 22), the African continent has seen a 100 percent increase in operations, with Islamic State affiliates from the Sahel in the west to Mozambique in the east in their most recent period of ascendancy in Q3 2023.5 Figure 1. [...] That being said, it is important to note that, notwithstanding this clear and definitive decline in formally reported activity in its former core, there is a marked divergence between the number of attacks that are being claimed by the Islamic State and the number of attacks that are being attributed to it by sources external to it. [...] formally reported activity in its former core, there is a marked divergence between the number This trend appears to have been accelerated by the repeated killing of Islamic State caliphs and of attacks that are being claimed by the Islamic State and the number of attacks that are being spokesmen.10 Its historically centralised command-and-control structure, which operated in lockstep attributed t. [...] In the first week of January 2024, in support of its week-long global campaign, there was a five-fold increase in its activity and output, something that indicates a clear latent ability to coordinate, produce, and amplify kinetic, offline activities in spite of the challenges it faces due to the combined efforts of its adversaries.