Bottom Line
- While ISIS’s territorial caliphate has been dismantled, its ideological appeal endures.
- ISIS and its affiliates have demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt and survive, transforming into a decentralized network of regional branches, many of which retain the capacity to launch high-profile terrorist attacks.
- The ISIS-K attack in Moscow last week was a stark reminder of the group’s reach and demonstrated that, with the deadly marriage of capability and intent, Islamic State jihadists could look to target US embassies, facilities, or personnel abroad.
- An innovative and adaptive counterterrorism strategy that ensures interagency collaboration, resource optimization, synergy of effort, and international cooperation are desperately needed to address the complex challenge of terrorism and ensure the security of the United States and its allies.
Five years ago this March, the final remnants of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate were physically destroyed. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish militia backed by the United States and its allies, swept into the
Syrian desert town of Baghouz to capture the group’s remaining fighters and their families. ISIS’s last stand was the culmination of a years-long effort led by the United States and its allies to uproot the group from its Levantine headquarters.
At its apex in 2015-2017, ISIS-controlled territory larger than the size of Great Britain. They boasted tens of thousands of
foreign fighters from dozens of countries and were capable of launching complex terrorist attacks in the heart of Europe, as the group did in Paris in November 2015 and Brussels in March 2016. Its propaganda inspired lone wolves to embark on murderous rampages targeting crowds of civilians with vehicles. Its fighters beheaded Western hostages and used the videos and images to seduce radicalized recruits.
But in early 2024, the organization is nearly unrecognizable from what it was just five years earlier. Although ISIS is no longer anchored in the Middle East, a rump of hardcore fighters remain in Iraq and Syria, where they conduct guerrilla-style operations. Many of its most
prolific and active branches are now located in Africa, where ISIS branches regularly claim attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Egypt, Mozambique, and Nigeria.
Its franchise in Afghanistan, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), is the group responsible for last week’s terrorist attack at a
theater in Moscow, in addition to attacks in Iran and Türkiye so far this year. ISIS-K is currently the Islamic State’s standard bearer and most operationally capable affiliate, drawing comparisons to al-Qaeda’s Yemeni branch in the Arabian Peninsula, which developed a reputation for its ability to develop high-profile terrorist plots.
The Islamic State’s Global Network of Affiliates
ISIS and its affiliates have demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt and survive. After sustaining significant territorial losses in the Middle East, substantive reductions in its ranks, and the elimination of key leaders, ISIS still managed to transform itself into a decentralized network of regional branches, many of which retain the capacity to launch high-profile terrorist attacks. Built around its central Salafi-Jihadi extremist ideology that has continued to resonate with aspiring extremists, ISIS has leveraged social media, internet forums, and a sophisticated propaganda apparatus to promote its violent and virulently sectarian messaging to vulnerable and disenfranchised populations.
ISIS’s ability to recruit, inspire, radicalize, and mobilize its supporters to violence is directly tied to its effectiveness in exploiting historical grievances and its deliberate strategy to establish franchise groups in regions characterized by political corruption, vast socioeconomic disparities, and weak governance.
ISIS’s effectiveness in identifying the most fertile ground to promote its ideology and brand has led to the birth of affiliate groups in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Somalia, Mozambique, West Africa, and the southern Philippines, among other places. Each affiliate's alliance with ISIS is contingent on their pledge of baya’t (allegiance) to ISIS’s core leadership. The organization’s decentralized structure permits the affiliates to operate semi-autonomously outside a traditional rigid command-and-control structure. Still, it allows their activities to nest within the group's global terrorism enterprise and reinforce its overall objectives.
Where ISIS Poses the Greatest Risks
The most glaring example of where the fight against ISIS has been left unfinished is in Iraq and Syria. Approximately 46,500 women and children are still languishing in
dilapidated refugee camps in northeastern Syria, while an additional 9,000 ISIS fighters are held in detention centers administered by the SDF.
