BAGHDAD — The U.S. Central Command said Wednesday that the Islamic State group is trying to “reconstitute” itself as a fighting force as the number of attacks in Syria and Iraq is on track to double those of the previous year.
IS has claimed responsibility for 153 attacks in both countries in the first six months of 2024, CENTCOM said in a statement. According to a U.S. defense official, who spoke on background, the group was behind 121 attacks in Syria and Iraq for all of 2023.
“The increase in attacks indicates ISIS is attempting to reconstitute following several years of decreased capability,” CENTCOM said.
The announcement comes just after the 10-year mark since the militant group declared its caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria. At its peak, the group ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom where it attempted to enforce its extreme interpretation of Islam, which included attacks on religious minority groups and harsh punishment of Muslims deemed to be apostates.
Militants also killed thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority and kidnapped thousands of women and children, many of whom were subjected to sexual abuse and human trafficking.
A coalition of more than 80 countries, led by the United States, was formed to fight IS, which lost its hold on the territory it controlled in Iraq and 2017 and in Syria in 2019, although sleeper cells remain in both countries and abroad.
Iraqi officials say that they can keep the ISIS threat under control with their own forces and have entered into talks with the U.S. aimed at winding down the mission of the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq, although the remaped-up tempo of attacks calls those claims into question.
The talks come at a time of increased domestic tensions over the U.S. military presence.
From October to February, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq launched regular drone attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, which they said was in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza and were aimed at forcing U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq.
Those attacks largely halted after three U.S. soldiers were killed in a strike on a base in Jordan, near the Syrian border in late January, prompting U.S. retaliatory strikes in Iraq.
On Tuesday, two Iraqi militia officials said they had launched a new drone attack targeting the Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. It was unclear whether the attack had hit its target. U.S. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Iraqi branch of Islamic State is not the only that has stepped up activity in recent months. Islamic State-Khorasan Province, another arm of the group based in Afghanistan has been battling both the ruling Taliban government in Kabul and targets farther afield.
ISIS-K claimed credit for a deadly bombing at a military event in Iran in January that killed nearly 100 people and for the operation against a Russian entertainment district two months later that killed some 135 people.
The Afghan-based group has also stepped up its activities across Central Asia, according to Lucas Webber, an analyst writing this week in the Eurasia Daily Monitor.
“More recently, Central Asia has seen a marked rise in [ISIS-K-related] arrests, violence, and foiled plots throughout the region, indicating an elevated operational prioritization of the region,” he wrote.
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