With the recent Moscow concert venue attack that killed more than 140 people, the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) surprised many who may have believed that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, was a problem of the past.
In fact, the Islamic State never went anywhere. According to the Global Terrorism Index, an annual publication from the Institute for Economics & Peace that attempts to measure the impact of terrorism worldwide, the Islamic State “remained the deadliest terrorist group globally for the ninth consecutive year, recording both the highest number of attacks and deaths from terrorism.” Islamic State attacks earlier this year, in Iran and Turkey, underscore this dynamic.
At its peak, the Islamic State controlled territory in the Middle East that was equal to approximately half the size of Great Britain. It attracted tens of thousands of foreign fighters from dozens of countries worldwide. Its fighters beheaded Westerners, burned a captured Jordanian pilot alive, and sought nefarious means of murdering its captives, including drowning and crucifixion. These crimes against humanity were recorded and ISIS broadcast these snuff films as propaganda to terrify civilians and recruit bloodthirsty extremists into its ranks. The group even held slave auctions where Yazidi women were purchased.
Over the span of a few years, ISIS either directed or inspired numerous high-profile attacks throughout Europe, including the Bataclan in Paris (2015), the Brussels Metro attack (2016), Nice (2016), Berlin (2016), Stockholm (2017), Istanbul (2017), and Barcelona (2017), to name just a few. There were also attacks throughout the globe, from New York City to Tunis.
At the time, it seemed that the Islamic State was ubiquitous, but an aggressive U.S.-led counterterrorism campaign referred to as the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS helped usurp the organization’s control of large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria—particularly the group’s strongholds in Mosul and Raqqa, respectively. Efforts included a sustained airpower campaign to bomb ISIS command-and-control nodes, as well as intensive ground operations featuring a combination of U.S. special operations forces, Kurdish militias, and even Iraqi Shiite militia groups known as Hashd al-Shaabi. In late March 2019, just over five years ago, the Syrian town of Baghouz fell to the Syrian Democratic Forces, bringing an end to the group’s territorial caliphate. To this day, the United States has approximately 900 troops in Syria and another 2,500 in Iraq, forming a bulwark against an ISIS comeback in these countries. And when Baghouz fell, there was widespread optimism that the scourge of the Islamic State could be defeated once and for all.
But the Islamic State was well prepared for this inevitability. Even the group’s former longtime leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, anticipated the revocation of the territory tied to the caliphate and implored ISIS sympathizers that “the scale of victory or defeat … is not tied to a city or village.” “The land of God is wide,” he continued, “and the tides of war change.”
Part of the Islamic State’s strategy was to expand globally, developing a worldwide network of franchise groups, affiliates, and branches that could carry out its mission in different regions. Over several years beginning in 2014, ISIS formally recognized wilayats, or provinces, in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Afghanistan (Khorasan), Libya, Bangladesh, the Philippines, West Africa, the Sahel, and Central Africa (Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
This campaign succeeded. After its rise and fall in the heart of the Middle East, the Islamic State’s center of gravity has shifted to parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In 2023, among the top 10 countries impacted by terrorism were: Burkina Faso (1), Mali (3), Pakistan (4), Afghanistan (6), Somalia (7), Nigeria (8), and Niger (10). In sub-Saharan Africa, the Islamic State Sahel Province (formerly known as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, or ISGS) and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) control large swaths of territory that stretch from the outskirts of coastal West Africa all the way to the Lake Chad Basin.
Now that the Islamic State is perceived as more of an African and South Asian problem, countering the group has dropped significantly on the international community’s agenda. In the West, particularly in the United States, the national security establishment is focused instead on the rise of China, the war in Ukraine, fallout from the Israel-Hamas war, and the proliferation of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence.
When global terrorism appears to fade, it is typically in response to counterterrorism pressure.
But terrorism is a tactic. It never actually goes away, and it endures because it is versatile—an asymmetric tool of non-state actors, or the preferred response of states sponsoring proxy groups.
When it flares again, it is often in response to changing geopolitical dynamics. Both sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, for instance, are plagued by similar ills: porous borders, weak security services, and populations rife with socioeconomic grievances that terrorist groups can take advantage of for recruitment purposes, especially in countries with large numbers of military-aged males.
In Afghanistan, since the August 2021 takeover by the Taliban, IS-K has been able to reconstitute its external operations planning network. A particularly interesting dynamic is that the Taliban have been able to limit IS-K’s ability to act within Afghanistan, so in response, Islamic State militants have dedicated their resources to planning attacks abroad—within the region, but also farther afield, including in Europe. As of April 2024, the Islamic State’s Afghan branch seems to have reassembled its external operations capability, and the organization’s regional affiliates have managed to capitalize on the groundswell of anger in many Muslim communities resulting from the war in Gaza and the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, many of them women and children.
The increased operational tempo of IS-K and the frequency of plots and attacks suggest the group is broadening its targeting aperture. Its latest attack in Moscow, in particular, could have been predicted. For years, IS-K has raged against Moscow in its propaganda, painting Russian President Vladimir Putin as a stooge of the Shiite, citing the Kremlin’s relationship with Iran, Russia propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group operating alongside Lebanese Hezbollah in Syria.
Now it is determined to strike European soil. Plots have been recently foiled in Germany, while President Emmanuel Macron revealed in late March that French intelligence had foiled several IS-K plots on France. Speaking recently about the nature of the threat, retired U.S. Gen. Frank McKenzie said: “I think we should expect further attempts of this nature against the United States as well as our partners and other nations abroad.”
So far, the operatives IS-K has relied on in its failed European plots have been inexperienced. Some plots are prevented through counterterrorism expertise, others through terrorists’ ineptitude and occasional amateurism. But the Islamic State is a learning organization. Its leadership will study points of failure and seek to innovate, improving its tactics, techniques, and procedures for its next flurry of attempts.
We should therefore be asking our leaders, policymakers, and elected officials what the strategy is to mitigate a relentless threat from a determined foe. Part of this strategy must be to prevent Western counterterrorism efforts from atrophying further. For two decades, counterterrorism formed the cornerstone of efforts to decimate groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS. The United States and its allies around the world formed intelligence-sharing partnerships and cooperated by disseminating important information about terrorist suspects, groups, tactics, and ideologies motivating violence.
Dealing with a rising China and a revanchist Russia is crucial, but doing so while leaving the counterterrorism cupboard bare makes little sense. After all, strategic competition and counterterrorism are not mutually exclusive; they’re complementary. The relationships that Washington developed through two decades of counterterrorism operations with its Western partners can help facilitate the type of intelligence that also proves useful for dealing with “great powers.”
Another important pillar of a robust global counterterrorism strategy is physically being close enough to some of the world’s terrorism hot spots to respond in a timely manner. In the Sahel, the United States maintains a minimal presence yet is reportedly considering establishing a drone base in Ghana and other coastal locations to prevent the tide of jihadist terrorism from fully engulfing littoral West Africa. Following a French withdrawal and U.S. drawdown in the region, the power vacuum has been filled by Russia’s Africa Corps; the Wagner Group that preceded it was known for making the jihadist problem worse, not better.
Many of the partnerships, lessons learned, and best practices from the global war on terror should not be jettisoned simply because the focus of ISIS and its affiliates is currently elsewhere. Western security services and intelligence agencies need to remain vigilant, but even more important, there needs to be a consistent and steady stream of resources—money, manpower, and counterterrorism tools—dedicated to the fight. Only a comprehensive approach to counterterrorism—a combination of hard and soft power—can help reduce the pool of extremists that serve as ready foot soldiers for groups like the Islamic State and its network of global affiliates.