ISIS ‘on the rebound’: New Orleans attack latest sign of terror group’s resurgence

Behind the ISIS-inspired assault in New Orleans on New Year’s Day is a disturbing reality: Military officials and national security insiders fear a perfect storm is forming around the world that could lead to more deadly terrorist attacks in the U.S.

Even before U.S. Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar killed 14 New Year’s revelers by driving a vehicle into a crowd on Bourbon Street, a growing consensus in foreign policy circles acknowledged that conditions were ripe for an Islamic State resurgence abroad and a new pool of recruits in the U.S., Europe and Asia willing to carry out acts of violence.

The more territory the group controls and the safer its leaders feel from attack, the easier it is to coordinate recruiting efforts online, teach would-be terrorists how to build bombs or map out jihadi missions around the globe.

A U.S.-led counterterrorism offensive drove the radical Islamist movement from the vast “caliphate” it ruled in Syria and Iraq a decade ago, but the terrorist outfit is quickly regaining strength across sub-Saharan Africa. U.S. and international officials warn that weak central governments are ill-equipped to stop it.

In Afghanistan, the Islamic State’s local affiliate organization, ISIS-K, has dramatically expanded its reach since U.S. troops withdrew in August 2021. ISIS-K attacked a Moscow concert hall in March that killed more than 140 people.

The most immediate threat to the U.S. seems to emanate from Syria, where a surprise rebel offensive overthrew the government of longtime dictator Bashar Assad last month. The U.S. quietly increased the number of troops in Syria from 900 to about 2,000 during the regime’s collapse and carried out strikes against ISIS fighters who set up shop in areas once controlled by Mr. Assad’s forces and their Russian allies.

With an untested rebel force now governing in Damascus, the door may be open for neighboring Turkey to pursue Kurdish rebels who have been key U.S. partners for the past decade in the war against ISIS.

Turkey, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, considers elements of that Kurdish alliance to be terrorists looking to link up with Turkish-based Kurdish separatist forces.

Add to the mix the likelihood that President-elect Donald Trump will reduce, not expand, the American military footprint in Syria, and some specialists see serious warning signs on the horizon.

“We’re going to see a lot more Islamic State and copycat attacks,” said former Defense Department official Michael Rubin, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “The Islamic State is on the rebound, and tens of thousands of its militants might soon go free if Turkey or their proxies overwhelm the camp where Kurds keep them under guard in northeastern Syria. Trump may believe dictators bring stability and so give a free pass to Erdogan to do what he wants with the Kurds, but abandoning America’s top allies in Syria will have a price that Americans will pay on the home front.

“If ISIS goes free in Syria, don’t expect them to remain there,” Mr. Rubin told The Washington Times. “It would just be a matter of time until they began crossing the southern border or, for that matter, the northern border with Canada.”

The Soufan Center, a security think tank, wrote in a recent analysis that the chaotic conditions in Syria are fertile ground for a burst of activity by a revitalized Islamic State.

“The current environment in Syria is tailor-made for ISIS to exploit in an effort to help facilitate its comeback and resurgence, not just in the country but across the region …,” the analysis said. “Looking at openly available and unclassified data, ISIS attacks in Syria alone tripled from last year, hovering around 700 for 2024. They have also improved in sophistication, increased in lethality, and become more dispersed geographically.”

A dangerous moment

Jabbar carried an Islamic State flag in his vehicle during his massacre in New Orleans, authorities said. Terrorists acting on behalf of the Islamic State were also responsible for the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, a New York City subway bombing in 2017, a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, in 2015 and others in the past decade.

The facts suggest dozens, perhaps hundreds of other people in the U.S. are willing and able to carry out similar attacks. In October, the House Homeland Security Committee found more than 50 cases since April 2021 of people in the U.S. who were charged with attempting to provide material support to terrorist groups, including the Islamic State, or other terrorism-related offenses.

Connecting with those people or inspiring and coaching radicals to carry out terrorist attacks in America would be far easier for Islamic State officials who feel relatively safe to set up bases of operations. That danger is most immediate in Syria, where the Islamic State retains a significant fighting force and still has elements of the deep-rooted infrastructure it established a decade ago during the height of its caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq.

Even Russia, hardly a U.S. ally on any central foreign policy or national security issue, is concerned that a power vacuum in Syria will lead to an ISIS revival.

“There are real risks of ISIS resurgence, along with other extremist groups that were previously active in Syria before their apparent dissolution,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Friday, according to regional media.

Long before the collapse of the Assad regime, Pentagon officials warned that the conditions for an Islamic State resurgence were forming. In July, U.S. Central Command said ISIS had carried out at least 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria over the first half of 2024.

“At this rate, ISIS is on pace to more than double the total number of attacks they claimed in 2023. The increase in attacks indicates ISIS is attempting to reconstitute following several years of decreased capability,” CENTCOM said at the time.

The U.S. may need to ramp up its operations in Syria, at least temporarily. Last month, CENTCOM said it carried out an airstrike in Dayr az Zawr province that killed two Islamic State operatives and wounded another. The airstrike also destroyed a truckload of weapons, CENTCOM said.

Those ISIS operatives seem to have exploited the political instability in war-torn Syria.

“This strike occurred in an area formerly controlled by the Syrian regime and Russians,” CENTCOM said.

“This airstrike is part of CENTCOM’s ongoing commitment, along with partners in the region, to disrupt and degrade efforts by terrorists to plan, organize, and conduct attacks against civilians and military personnel from the U.S., our allies, and our partners throughout the region and beyond,” CENTCOM said in its statement.

U.S. political priorities may be shifting. During his first term, Mr. Trump tried to pull all American troops out of Syria, though influential Republican lawmakers and military officials ultimately persuaded him to keep a small detachment there.

This time, Mr. Trump seems more determined to execute a complete withdrawal.

“The United States should have nothing to do with it,” Mr. Trump said in a social media post just after the fall of the Assad government. “This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved!”