Demonstrators chant pro-Islamic State group slogans as they carry the group’s flags in entrance of the provincial authorities headquarters in Mosul, Iraq, on June 16, 2014.
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The FBI says the person accountable for the ramming assault in New Orleans that killed no less than 14 individuals, labored alone and executed his plan after being impressed by the terrorist group ISIS.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Military veteran from Houston, was killed in an alternate of gunfire with police following the attack. As he drove from Houston to New Orleans, the FBI says he revealed movies on-line proclaiming his assist for ISIS.
In them, he mentioned he joined ISIS earlier than the summer time of 2024, in response to FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia.
This newest assault underscores the continued resonance of ISIS ideology “to individuals inclined or amenable to radicalization and recruitment,” much more than a decade after the group was at its peak, mentioned Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland safety on the Council on Overseas Relations.
“Defeating the terrorist group and seizing territory from them and even killing tens of hundreds of its fighters, we’re studying tragically now, remains to be very completely different from successfully countering an ideology and its continued attraction to people,” Hoffman added.
A quick historical past of ISIS
ISIS, a Salafi-jihadist group, rose to world prominence in 2014 when its fighters took over huge swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria. The group used its rising world place to name upon followers from world wide emigrate to Syria or Iraq to determine a caliphate, Hoffman mentioned. Upwards of 40,000 international fighters from no less than 120 nations answered that decision and got here to the caliphate, he mentioned.
“However on the identical time, ISIS very explicitly mentioned, even if you cannot come to the Levant to combat alongside us, you should use no matter is inside your attain in your house nations to hold out assaults in assist of our general goals,” Hoffman mentioned. “And this virtually instantly precipitated a sequence of impressed ISIS assaults.”
By 2019, ISIS was weakened following a worldwide coordinated effort to defeat the terrorist group and it subsequently misplaced most of its bodily territory in Iraq and Syria.
Devorah Margolin, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Close to East Coverage, mentioned the group’s lack of bodily territory has not fully diminished its energy. “It continues to hold out assaults. It continues to function its associates. It continues to recruit. It continues to publish propaganda,” Margolin mentioned. “The group remains to be in existence, simply not essentially how we considered it when it was controlling bodily territory in Syria and Iraq.”
The Widespread Mobilization Forces show weapons seized from ISIS in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad, Iraq, in 2023.
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The attract
ISIS embraced “new” types of media when it started to emerge, Margolin mentioned. Fb, Twitter, Telegram, YouTube all supplied new avenues to unfold its message to males, ladies and kids world wide.
“When Islamic State first got here onto the scene, they have been form of seen as the brand new youngsters on the block of jihadist teams,” Margolin mentioned. They used brief, flashy movies (at occasions depicting graphic violence), and do-it-yourself magazines revealed in a number of languages — all of which contributed to their capacity to unfold their agenda to a really large viewers, she mentioned.
ISIS embraced “new” types of media when it started to emerge. Fb, Twitter, Telegram, YouTube all supplied new avenues to unfold its message and affect world wide.
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Evan Vucci/AP
ISIS has now been largely pushed out of most mainstream social media websites and onto the darkish internet and encrypted platforms, however there are nonetheless methods to entry the fabric, mentioned Daniel Byman, the director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program on the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research, and different specialists.
It is nonetheless unclear what Jabbar’s motivation was for becoming a member of ISIS. He was a U.S. citizen and Military veteran who served as a human assets and IT specialist from March 2007 till January 2015, serving an 11-month stint in Afghanistan beginning in February 2009. He later served within the Military Reserves as an IT specialist till July 2020. On the finish of his service, he was a employees sergeant.
Anybody might be drawn into extremism, Margolin mentioned.
“There is not any one profile of an American who joins the Islamic State,” she mentioned. “It is actually vital to keep in mind that it is a homegrown menace. It is a menace that has emerged from grievances that individuals really feel right here in america.” These grievances may embrace a traumatic occasion, a divorce, monetary troubles, or political motivations.
What does the long run maintain?
Margolin estimates that about 5,000 to 10,000 insurgents are nonetheless affiliated with ISIS — a far cry from its peak of tens of hundreds. Even with these diminished numbers, the group has its eyes set on rebuilding. The current power vacuum in Syria affords a main alternative for ISIS to attempt to regain its previous territory, she famous.
Up to now 12 months, U.S. government officials, together with FBI Director Christopher Wray, have warned concerning the potential resurgence of ISIS. They are saying it is an actual menace that might manifest in main, orchestrated assaults on the U.S. and different nations. However the world ought to count on to proceed to see these people impressed by ISIS launching assaults across the globe, Margolin and Hoffman mentioned.
“That is why I feel we have now to [be] on our guard going ahead and be involved about replication of the occasions in New Orleans,” Hoffman mentioned.
