Eurasia Press & News
The Islamic State is on pace to carry out more than double the number of attacks in Iraq and Syria in 2024 than it did the year before, representing the terrorist network’s attempt to reconstitute.
The U.S. Central Command announced on Monday that it had tracked 153 ISIS attacks so far this year, though nonmilitary experts noted that part of its strategy is not to take credit for its operations, indicating the number is likely even higher.
ISIS has a “doctrine of not even claiming all of their attacks, so the numbers are likely much higher,” Lucas Webber, the founder of the Militant Wire Research Network and a research fellow at the Soufan Center, told the Washington Examiner. “People were wishfully thinking that the war on terror was over, we can move on to this great power competition mindset, which has to be a priority, of course, but you can’t determine their motivations. You can’t make these decisions for them.”
U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria working to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS have carried out 196 missions so far this year, which have resulted in the deaths of 44 ISIS operatives and the apprehensions of 166 others. About 70% of the missions took place in Iraq.
CENTCOM said there were eight “senior” leaders who were killed while 32 were captured and described them as people “responsible for planning of operations outside of Syria and Iraq, recruiting, training, and weapons smuggling.”
“We took our eye off the ball, essentially, and now we’re at heightened risk of being burned for it. So we can see the surge in capabilities of [ISIS] in Iraq and Syria. We see it in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Webber explained.
There are approximately 2,500 ISIS fighters whom the U.S. and partners are pursuing, CENTCOM said.
“We continue to focus our efforts on specifically targeting those members of ISIS who are seeking to conduct external operations outside of Iraq and Syria and those ISIS members attempting to break out ISIS members in detention in an attempt to reconstitute their forces,” Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, CENTCOM commander, said in a statement.
Kurilla’s acknowledgment that ISIS is looking to conduct external attacks has been proven multiple times this year alone.
ISIS-K, the Afghanistan offshoot, carried out a bombing in early January in Iran near the burial site of slain military commander Qassem Soleimani that killed more than 80 people and injured more than 280 others, while in March, ISIS gunmen opened fire with automatic weapons at a crowded concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia, killing at least 137 people and injuring more.
Earlier this week, ISIS took credit for an attack on a Shiite mosque in Oman that left five victims, a law enforcement officer, and three perpetrators dead in the capital Muscat’s Wadi Kabir district, according to the Royal Oman Police.
“Unfortunately, we no longer place that pressure on [ISIS], so they’re free to gain strength, they’re free to plan, they’re free to coordinate and to outreach that hit us in our homelands,” explained retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, former CENTCOM commander, warning that ISIS as a whole has a “strong desire” to attack the continental United States and is “going to try to do it.”
