Kurdish media sources are reporting that ISIS is planning to take advantage of the power vacuum left by the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, in order to carry out concerted attacks in Syria.
An ISIS new year message calls for members to carry out ‘lone lion’ attacks. “Prepare your belts, silencers, knives, and explosives,” a message from ISIS leaders exhorts, calling on operatives to target “Crusaders and Jews”. ISIS members are being called on to focus their efforts on freeing fellow fighters from prisons and detention facilities in Iraq and northern Syria.
Kurdish news agency North Press Agency reports that ISIS had been collaborating with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), and that – when Iranian and Syrian army forces retreated in the wake of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham offensive – the group seized significant arms caches, along with Syrian Army weapons, which could last them at least five years. These weapons include drones, rockets and launchers.
ISIS’s deepening collaboration with the IRGC has helped them gain resources and increase their capacity to attack. Before the fall of Assad, ISIS reportedly travelled to Damascus posing as IRGC members in order to carry out a deadly massacre at a Shiite pilgrimage site in the city’s Sayyida Zainab district. ISIS operatives were reportedly secretly incorporated into IRGC ranks in several locations, according to a former Syrian Army officer.
According to human rights monitoring group Insight, ISIS carried out 234 attacks last year, which claimed the lives of almost 500 people. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched counter-operations which killed 117 ISIS members and leaders. These operations were supported by the US-led coalition. ISIS’s operations are increasing globally, as is apparent in the aftermath of their New Orleans attack, and the Global Terrorism Index recently warned that 2024 saw a 22% increase in terrorism related incidents globally.
On 22 December, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan voiced significant concerns about the resurgence of ISIS, and highlighted the critical role of the SDF in combating the group.
