Politico – ISIS is an extremist group formed from al-Qaeda offshoots in Iraq and Syria. Since its formation in 2013, ISIS has worked to sustain a self-declared caliphate in eastern Syria and western Iraq. In February of 2014, al-Qaeda and ISIS formally severed ties. Ultimately, ISIS seeks to unite the world under a single caliphate and has expanded into over nine countries. Initially,
ISIS gained support within Iraq as a Sunni insurgency group fighting what some Sunnis viewed as a partisan Shiite-led Iraqi government. The group has since garnered additional momentum as a result of the Syrian civil war, and has recruited up to 33,000 fighters from around the world. Thousands of foreign ISIS fighters are estimated to have been killed in battle, while some have returned or are planning to return to their home countries. (Sources: Reuters, Europol, Soufan Center)
ISIS adopted the slogan “remain and expand” shortly after its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared the caliphate at the start of Ramadan in June of 2014. ISIS expected the fight against the opposition to last for generations and heavily invested in indoctrinating children into its forces. (Source: Institute for the Study of War)
At its height, ISIS controlled about 34,000 square miles of territory from western Syria to eastern Iraq. Their strategic takeover of oil fields, partnered with tactics of extortion, kidnapping, and robbery, allowed the group to generate billions of dollars in revenue. However, once the United States and its coalition partners began to seize back terrain in April of 2015.
ISIS adjusted its strategy that coupled defensive tactics along with the group’s standard offensive campaign. According to scholars at the Institute for the Study of War, ISIS’s operational objectives included to destroy key Sunni Arab cities under its control, to impose high costs on counter-ISIS forces, and to retain psychological control over civilian populations as long as possible.
Additionally, ISIS waged five major lines of effort in pursuit of these goals: (1) seize new cities outside of Iraq and Syria; (2) increase global terror attacks; (3) conduct fortified defense of key cities in Iraq and Syria (4) attrite counter-ISIS forces, and (5) undermine religious rivals. (Sources: BBC News, Institute for the Study of War)
Beginning in late 2018, ISIS fighters have begun to carry out prison breaks. On September 29, 2018, at least 10 militants escaped from Al-Bab correctional facility in northern Syria and on March 12, 2019, over 80 prisoners escaped from an HTS-run prison in Idlib. On April 7, 2019, ISIS militants attempted to break out of a detention facility in Derik, in the Kurdish administered area of Syria.
YPG forces managed to thwart the attempt. It is still uncertain whether these prison breaks were coordinated events or undertaken by independent cells. Many of the escaped fighters were later recaptured. ISIS will also attack displacement camps in order to free sympathetic civilians held in de facto detention.
It already conducted one such attack against an IDP camp along the Middle Euphrates River Valley on October 11-12, 2018, releasing 130 families. According to scholars at the Institute for the Study of War, ISIS likely intends to repatriate the former population of its caliphate and thus will likely attack other displacement camps in Iraq and Syria. (Sources: Military Times, Institute for the Study of War)
Despite ISIS’s territorial defeat on March 23, 2019, central provinces outside Iraq and Syria are contributing resources to the insurgency, which is providing the group with the necessary resources and backup to reestablish itself. Its external provinces outside Iraq and Syria are contributing resources to its insurgency in those countries while giving the organization renewed global momentum.
On May 31, 2019, ISIS declared a new global campaign called the “Battle of Attrition.” Its propaganda instructed its forces to seize terrain temporarily as a way to attrite their opponents. According to Jennifer Cafarella, Brandon Wallace,
and Jason Zhou at the Institute for the Study of War, ISIS’s successful reconstitution of a physical caliphate in Iraq and Syria would produce new waves of ISIS attacks in Europe and dangerously legitimize ISIS’s narrative of inevitable long-term victory. (Sources: BBC News, Associated Press, Institute for the Study of War)
On October 26, 2019, U.S. Special Forces conducted a raid in northwestern Syria, culminating in the death of Baghdadi. U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed Baghdadi’s death, the next day. Baghdadi, who was 48 years old, killed himself and his three children, detonating a suicide vest in a tunnel while being pursued by U.S. troops. ISIS’s media arm,
the Amaq News Agency, confirmed the death a few days later on October 31, 2019. In an audio recording uploaded on the Telegram app, ISIS mourned the loss of Baghdadi as well as its spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, who was killed a day after Baghdadi in a U.S. led airstrike. Muhajir had widely been considered Baghdadi’s potential successor. However.
ISIS released a recording on October 30th where the new ISIS spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Quraishi, announced ISIS’s new leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, the nom de guerre of Amir Mohammed Abdul Rahman al-Mawli al-Salbi. Al-Salbi was a former officer in Saddam Hussein’s army and was considered one of the most prominent ISIS members in Baghdadi’s circle.
Following the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq and the capture of Hussein in 2003, al-Salbi turned to violent extremism and eventually took on the role of religious commissary and a general Sharia jurist for al-Qaeda. In 2014, al-Salbi left al-Qaeda and pledged allegiance and full support to the radical’s mission, providing ISIS the support to quickly take control of the city. (Source: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Military Times, New York Times, National, CNN, Al Monitor, Daily Mail)
