The devastating recent terror attacks claimed by the Islamic State in the U.K. have strengthened the resolve of civil society around the globe to defeat radical Islamic terrorism, but experts say the terrorists are just as determined to continue their carnage.
“Analysts say they expect to see an uptick in terror attacks inspired by the Islamic State group in the wake of last weekend’s deadly assault near London Bridge – a position starkly at odds with the pronouncements of U.S. military leaders who have long predicted the group’s ability to inspire violence would diminish with the size of its so-called caliphate,” U.S. News and World Report reported on Friday.
“As perverse as it sounds, the ISIS brand and its violent ideology still resonates strongly with a global following not deterred by its battlefield losses,” Martin Reardon, a Marine Corps and FBI veteran with deep experience in counterterrorism and intelligence operations and now a senior vice president at The Soufan Group, said.
“Reardon made the remark this week after a spate of attacks, including three in the U.K. in as many months, carried out by perpetrators in the name of the Islamic State group but who may have had no previous ties to the extremist network, also known as ISIS,” says U.S. News and World Report. “The attacks are noteworthy because they follow a series of military losses for the group – losses that many had predicted would erode its ability to inspire new acts of terror as its fighters increasingly became associated with defeats.”
Initially, the Islamic State encouraged followers to travel to the areas of Iraq and Syria it controlled after the summer of 2014 but later encouraged followers to launch attacks wherever they lived.
Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said the fight against the Islamic State group, militarily and ideologically, extends beyond Iraq and Syria. But he also supports fighting the terrorists where they operate as a way of countering their ideology by showing their cause is being defeated and that joining it is not only fruitless but could be deadly.
But Army Col. Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition fighting the Islamic State group, said this week that the fight goes beyond the battlefield to include crippling efforts to raise money and direct attacks.
“We are degrading their ability not just to conduct just battlefield operations but to plan, inspire and direct terror attacks,” Dillon said in a phone interview from his headquarters in Baghdad.
“The logic, however, is increasingly being tested,” U.S. News and World Report writes. “Those with knowledge of the group’s methods now say that obvious and undeniable losses and the sieges of its capitals of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq have had little effect in curtailing the willingness of sympathizers to act out on the group’s behalf as they did in 2015 in San Bernardino, California, or last year in Nice, France.”
“Their messaging is still very popular,” Otso Iho, a senior analyst with the London-based Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, said. ”We haven’t seen a huge amount of signs suggesting that ISIS has lost that stature of a household brand yet.”
Iho said, in an analysis of the most recent London attack, that the increased frequency of terror incidents also indicates a “substantial increase in the pool of potential attackers,” a concern that military and political leaders have shared since noting that battlefield successes against the Islamic State group has caused the extremists to shift tactics.
“If Raqqa, say, falls in five months, that doesn’t spell the end of ISIS,” Iho says. “That doesn’t spell the end of its influence, particularly as we see foreign fighters leave Iraq and Syria, and some of whom will be able to embed themselves in local networks in Europe.”
“Islamic State group fighters have been connected to terror attacks in France, Belgium and just Wednesday in Iran,” U.S. News and World Report reported. “Indeed, top military and intelligence planners – including Dunford – have said that the ultimate conflict against the extremists would not end on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria.”
“ISIS is unlikely to announce that it is ending its self-declared caliphate even if it loses overt control of its de facto capitals in Mosul, Iraq and Ar Raqqah, Syria and the majority of the populated areas it once controlled in Iraq and Syria,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in an assessment it released in May.
“The number of ISIS foreign fighters leaving Iraq and Syria might increase,” the assessment stated. “Increasing departures would very likely prompt additional would-be fighters to look for new battlefields or return to their home countries to conduct or support external operations.”
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