The Islamic State has shown renewed firmness in Syria by attracting fighters and growing Attacks, according to UN and US officials, adding the volatility of a country still unfolding from the fall of President Bashar Al-Assad.
The team is not yet close as strong as it was a decade ago, when it controls Eastern Syria and much of the northern Iraq, but there is a risk, experts say that the Islamic State can find a way to release thousands of its fighters held in prisons.
A serious resurgence of the Islamic State would undermine a rare moment when Syria seems to have the opportunity to go beyond a violent dictatorship. But it could also resonate more broadly, spread volatility through the Middle East. The extremist group once used Syria as a base to design attacks on the country’s neighbors and further abroad in Europe.
Between 9,000 and 10,000 Islamic State Fighters and about 40,000 of their family members are held in northeast Syria. The escape will not only add to the team numbers, but also provide propaganda coup.
“The Crown jewelry for the Islamic State is still prisons and camps,” said Colin Clarke, head of the Soufan Group, a global information and security company.
“There are the experienced fighters who have hardened battle,” he said. “Apart from the muscles they add to the team, if these prisons are open, the net value of propaganda” would serve the group’s hiring efforts for months.
Top US information officials last month presented the annual global threat evaluation in Congress, concluding that the Islamic State will try to exploit the end of the Assad government to release prisoners and revive it.
The United States announced at the end of last year that its army had doubled its number of troops in Syrian territory in 2,000 and its many strikes for the Islamic State Redoubs in the Syrian desert in recent months seem to have been threatened.
However, President Trump expressed deep skepticism to keep our troops in the country and a confrontation of other developments in Syria has been concerned about experts who say that by taking together, they could facilitate the Islamic State to be further reconstituted.
The United States hopes that the new Syrian government, led by al -Qaeda subsidiary Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, will become a partner against a refreshing Islamic State. The initial signs were positive, with the US -based group provided by the US to disrupt eight Islamic government plots in Damascus, according to two senior US military officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operations.
But violent violence last month, which killed hundreds of citizens, showed the lack of control of the government in some forces under its order and it is not clear how much the zone should fight the Islamic State.
The Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim group of guerrillas, locates its authorities in Al Qaeda in Iraq, where it was defeated by local militias and US troops. His fighters were rebuilt as the Islamic State and took advantage of the chaos of the Syrian civil war to exploit huge areas of the territory and return to Iraq.
It received a reputation for abductions, sexual enslavement and public executions and orchestrated or inspired a series of terrorist attacks across Europe. The group was largely launched more than five years ago by a combination of the Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria and US troops. But by the beginning of 2024, the Assad regime was increasingly in defense. His Iranians and Russian allies were stretched by clashes elsewhere. And the Syrian Kurds were forced to divert troops to fight Turkish attacks.
But, although it no longer holds a large territory, the Islamic State continues to spread its radical ideology through flood cells and regional subsidiaries outside Syria and online. Last year, the team was behind major attacks on Iran, Russia and Pakistan.
In Syria, according to a US Department of Defense official, who spoke anonymously to discuss information that has not yet been publicly released, the team claimed 294 attacks in 2024 out of 121 claiming in 2023.
The attacks so far seem to have been slowed down, according to human rights groups and US military officials – partly due to the recent US bombardment campaign targeting Islamic state fighters – but is still relatively early year.
Aaron Zelin, a colleague of the Washington Institute, who has attended Islamic groups’ activities and propaganda for more than 15 years, said that the upheaval facing the new government from the remains of the Assad regime and the invasions of Turkey in Syria was the biggest challenges. But he warned that the Islamic State added yet another threat.
“A major attack on Damascus on foreigners or expatriates and everyone will change the way they see it, so we must be careful,” he said.
Concerns about a possible escape of prison by prisoners of the Islamic State prisoner have increased by constant violence in the northeast. The detention centers in northeast Syria are kept by the Fighters led by the Kurds, the Democratic forces of Syria, who also help keep the nearby camps held by members of the Islamic State State. But these forces have distanced themselves from attacks by Turkey backed militias.
The Turkish authorities consider the fighters led by Kurdish as a Syrian industry of Kurdish separatists in Turkey, who fought a 40 -year -old battle against the Turkish government. Turkey sees them as terrorists.
Prisons have already proven to be concern. In 2022, about 400 Islamic prisoners linked to the state escaped during an Islamic state attack in a prison in Hasaka. At that time, US Special Operations forces helped Syria’s democratic forces gain control of the situation.
Since then, US information about possible prison breaks have helped Syria’s democratic forces disturb other plots before it happened, one of the US senior officials said.
In Al Hol, the largest camp where the women and children of the Islamic State have taken place for years, the extremist group is testing the limits. In a recent report, a United Nations committee said the chaos surrounding Mr Al-Assad’s fall allowed some Islamic fighters to escape the camp, though it was not clear how many.
If the Syrian Kurds are weakening, “there is no doubt that it will create a gap,” said Kawa Hassan, an Iraqi analyst and a non -resident at The Stimson Center, a non -profit organization in Washington. “And just the Islamic State thrives in a vacuum.”
