Islamic State’s brutal ideology still inspires attacks worldwide
Screams, carnage — and a black banner.
The attacker in the deadly New Year’s truck-ramming strike on revelers in New Orleans’ French Quarter had a black Islamic State flag, the FBI says.
Law enforcement says it believes the assailant acted alone, killing at least 15 people in what they are investigating as a terror attack. Authorities are also scrambling to establish what inspiration he might have drawn from the Sunni Muslim extremist group, which blazed into the world’s consciousness more than a decade ago.
By 2014, Islamic State had seized control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria. Under the group’s harsh interpretation of Islam, thousands in the region, including minorities such as Yazidis, were persecuted, sexually enslaved and killed. Islamic State’s deadly reach spread into Europe and beyond, with Islamic State operatives carrying out audacious bombings and shootings in capitals, including Paris and Brussels.
A U.S.-led military coalition crushed Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate more than five years ago. But territorial losses and the death of its leader did not end attacks carried out by its many offshoots, or by “lone wolves” embracing its ideology.
Here is a look at Islamic State, the strikes in which it was implicated or involved over the years, and the continuing threat it poses.
How did Islamic State come into being?
It started out as a rebranded faction of Al Qaeda, under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi militant cleric and insurgent leader turned self-styled caliph. Those living under its rule in a wide arc of Iraq and Syria — particularly members of other religions, or of other sects of Islam — faced horrifying punishments: decapitations, crucifixion, torture. During that same era, the group also took Western hostages, killing several, including U.S. journalist James Foley, who was beheaded in 2014, and Arizona aid worker Kayla Mueller, confirmed dead in 2015.
A U.S.-spearheaded military coalition freed Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, from the group’s grip in 2017, and pursued its remnants into eastern Syria. By 2019, with U.S. forces on the brink of capturing him, al-Baghdadi killed himself in a suicide blast that also killed two children. Donald Trump, who was president at the time, declared the caliphate “obliterated.”
What were some of Islamic State’s most notorious attacks in Europe?
In November 2015, coordinated strikes by its operatives in Paris at a concert hall and outside a stadium killed 130 people, and only four months later, airport and public-transit bombings in Brussels killed 32 people.
The group was deemed to have inspired attacks including the 2016 truck rampage in the French Riviera city of Nice, which killed at least 80 people and injured hundreds more on Bastille Day, and a ramming attack on a London bridge in 2017, which killed two people and injured dozens more.
Have there been Islamic State-inspired attacks in the United States?
Fourteen people were killed in a 2015 shooting in San Bernardino by a husband-and-wife team who were hailed by Islamic State as “supporters.” In 2016, a gunman who swore allegiance to al-Baghdadi shot and killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla.
What links New Orleans suspect Shamsud-Din Jabbar with Islamic State?
In addition to the black banner recovered from his truck, the Army veteran had posted videos prior to the attack “indicating he was inspired” by the group, according to President Biden. The investigation is continuing.
What is Islamic State’s current status?
In the years since its last bastion in eastern Syria was overrun, Islamic State has struggled to mount large operations, with its dwindled forces conducting mostly gang-style attacks and kidnappings in the border between Iraq and Syria
How about elsewhere in the world?
Islamic State has had greater success with its decentralized network of affiliates that have sprouted across Africa and parts of Asia.
A particularly potent affiliate is Islamic State Khorasan — or ISIS-K — which has mounted increasingly daring attacks in the last year, including an assault on a Moscow concert hall in March that killed more than 140 people, and a twin bombing during a funeral procession in Iran that killed some 100 people.
ISIS-K was also linked to the August 2021 bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and about 170 Afghans as the U.S. was withdrawing from Afghanistan.
How has the fall of Syria’s dictatorship affected the group?
The fall of the government of Bashar Assad in Syria has raised fears of an Islamic State resurgence on home turf, with some believing its resurrection is already underway. Despite continuing pressure from the U.S. coalition and local forces, a U.S. Central Command report in July said Islamic State had claimed more attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first six months of 2024 than it had for the entirety of 2023.
A U.S. Central Command statement in September warned that a particular focus for the group was to free the roughly 9,000 ISIS detainees held in more than 20 detention facilities across Syria — what one U.S. official described as an Islamic State army in waiting.
“If a large number of these ISIS fighters escaped, it would pose an extreme danger to the region and beyond,” Centcom commander Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla said at the time.
What are the most recent strikes by Islamic State affiliates?
This week, Islamic State in Somalia said it conducted an attack with 12 militants and two booby-trapped vehicles that killed more than 20 military personnel. It was that ISIS offshoot’s largest attack to date, experts say. In March, an Islamic State affiliate operating in the West African nation of Niger claimed responsibility for an assault it said killed 30 soldiers.
Source » latimes.com
