Islamic State (IS) formerly Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or Daesh)

As of June 2022

Structure

Africa

After the military defeat of the Islamic State in the Middle East, its leadership aimed to expand influence in other regions of the planet.

At the end of 2022, Africa is the most important bridgehead for the spread of IS ideology. The organization has a network of branches there that consistently increase the combat potential and area of ​ ​ the controlled area.

The leadership of the "Islamic State" seeks to create a network of quasi-states in the controlled territories. In the vast expanses of Africa, there are enough huge territories virtually without a state presence, which are in the power of various gangs.

West African Province

In 2015, the Nigerian group Boko Haram pledged allegiance to IS, forming the Islamic State in West Africa. Due to the inaction of the authorities in the fight against the terrorist threat of IS, it was possible to create a semblance of a quasi-state with a political structure in northeastern Nigeria. The Islamic State fundamentally refuses equal partnership with African groups and, at best, throws them under itself or absorbs them. Some of the leaders of Boko Haram did not agree with this and already in 2016 refused the oath.

Islamic State's "West African Province" has settled in northwestern Nigeria in the Lake Chad region.

The group is also active in border areas with Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

As of early 2023, IS and Boko Haram are fighting each other for territory and influence. At this time, the Islamic State in West Africa is the main terrorist actor in northern Nigeria. In addition to activities in neighboring states, the group is still actively fighting the central government.

Islamic State in the Greater Sahara

Islamic State in the Greater Sahara carries out dozens of attacks in Sahel states every year. The most difficult situation remains in the area of ​ ​ the Three Borders between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Government forces do not actually control the region. Under these conditions, IS militants crushed smuggling routes for themselves and receive income from the traffic of gold, weapons and drugs to the states of the Gulf of Guinea.

Islamic State Province in Central Africa

Islamic State Province in Central Africa is represented by two groups:

• "Ahlul Sunna wal-Jamaa" operates in the northern part. Mozambique Her attacks threatened a multibillion-dollar international project to develop gas fields in the province of Kabu Delgadu, which they EU are trying to urgently revive as part of a search for an alternative to Russian gas.

• The "Allied Democratic Forces" are active in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In the past few years, the faction has carried out a series of bloody attacks on civilians, which forced the country's authorities to declare martial law in several areas.

Cells in Egypt and Libya

In North Africa, there are "sleeping cells" of the Sinai Province militants in the Sinai Half Island in Egypt and the Islamic State in Libya in southern Libya.

Although both factions do not have large zones of control and become targets of anti-terrorist raids, from time to time they also launch attacks. For example, during the May terrorist attack in 2022, 11 Egyptian servicemen were killed.

Islamic State in Somalia

On the east coast, the IS leadership planned to absorb the al-Qaeda-affiliated Somali group al-Shabab for attacks on Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.

The attempts ended in failure, but some of the militants still broke away and formed the Islamic State in Somalia. The organization settled in the Puntland Mountains in the northeast of the country.

2024: Court in Moscow sentenced blogger to 12 years for attempted terrorist attack on Lubyanka

On October 23, 2024, the Second Western District Military Court sentenced blogger Nurmukhamad Sharipov, known as Xafizz.01, to 12 years in prison for preparing a terrorist attack near the FSB building on Lubyanka. According to the verdict, the convict will spend the first three years in prison, the rest in a maximum security colony.

According to RBC, Sharipov fully pleaded guilty to financing and participating in the Islamic State terrorist organization (banned in Russia). The guilty verdict was passed under articles on participation in a terrorist organization and financing of terrorism. Read more here.

2023

US uses Islamic State militants in Syria for its own purposes

In this photo, American Blackhawk helicopters fly up to the Ar Roj refugee camp in northeastern Syria.

The episode occurred in early July 2023 in front of local eyewitnesses - and this time it turned out to be filmed on camera.

Camp Ar-Rozh is located outside the zone of close attention of official structures, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense of Russia. They talk about him, mainly either in Syria itself or in the West. At the same time, unlike the Al-Hol camp, there are a significant number of family members of the Islamic State and Lion Caliphate militants, whom American military advisers use for their own purposes.

Around the perimeter are American MaxxPro, Black Hokies regularly visit the camp itself - the camp of members of militant families. With the delivery of humanitarian aid to Ar-Rozh, it is not just tight - it is not there for "security reasons."

So the answer to the question for what purposes is the Ar-Rozh camp in northeastern Syria. And what is its true meaning.

IS in Iraq severely weakened

Many years have passed since the peak of the Islamic State terrorist organization in Iraq and Syria. In March 2023, the group is going through difficult times after several significant defeats, the last of which was the "Fall of Baguz."

It was on March 23, 2019 that IS militants lost the last territorial section in the province of Deir ez-Zor in Syria. Since that moment, the positions of extremists have significantly weakened, and the Islamic State itself has degraded to the level of small organizations.

How dangerous are the militants now?

At the end of 2022, the IS press service presented a general infographic, where 484 incidents occurred in terms of the number of attacks and attacks on Iraqi territory. The Rybar team, using data from open sources, counted just over 90 cases where IS militants claimed responsibility.

Even if we take the data of terrorists, the number of attacks in 2022 in Iraq has noticeably decreased compared to 2021 - 1,079 attacks, which is twice as many as in 2022. In addition, the scale of terrorist attacks and sabotage has slipped into ordinary sorties and raids.

At this time, the IS branch in Iraq represents only a semblance of what happened in the mid-2010s, and terrorists in Iraq are extremely far from the activities of extremists in Africa or the same Afghanistan. This happened largely due to the presence of a large military contingent of heterogeneous forces, including NATO, pro-Iranian formations, the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army.

At the beginning of 2023, the group's militants are in survival mode - their activity barely extends beyond the western part of Iraq. The main activity of the IG lies in the media plane: the press service of the group actively distributes personnel of attacks in different directions, demonstrating the commitment of extremists of various branches to one goal. At the same time, there have been no really high-profile attacks in Iraq for a very long time.

The members of the group themselves are equipped to a greater extent with small arms of various calibers and types, ranging from Kalashnikov assault rifles to T-5000 sniper rifles. In some cases, 107 mm Chinese-made type 63-2 mortars were noted.

The lack of heavy weapons, the lack of people and the wide presence of internal and external forces forced IS in Iraq to change tactics to the "fight-flight" principle. Extremists use ambushes, night sorties and sleeper cell attacks.

The final elimination of IS militants in Syria is not yet real

Despite the military defeat of the Islamic State in the Middle East in the early 2020s, the militants of the terrorist organization are still active in Syria and Iraq.

As of January 2023, there are no large and even small cities under their control. Most of them hide in the deserted, sparsely populated areas of Deir ez-Zor and Homs provinces in Syria and Anbar in Iraq.

But the lack of sufficient resources in manpower and weapons does not prevent them from regularly resorting to the tactics of raids, sorties and sabotage on the positions of government troops and oil and gas infrastructure facilities. For more details, see Syria.

2022

IS terrorist attack in Iza in the Iranian province of Khuzestan. 6 people died

November 16, 2022 at 19.00 local time in the city of Ize in the province of Iran Khuzestan during regular protests against the authorities at the Khalal Ahmar intersection, unknown persons on two motorcycles fired at the crowd from machine guns.

As a result, at least six were killed, including an eight-year-old child, injuries of varying severity were received from 15 to 20 people, including representatives of law enforcement agencies. Some of the victims are in critical condition.

The shooters immediately left the scene. At the same time, several young people threw Molotov cocktails at the Isa Theological Seminary and set fire to three cars. There are no victims.

A couple of hours later, Islamic State militants (the so-called Vilayat Khorasan) claimed responsibility for the attack.

French cement maker Lafarge fined $778 million for bribes to terrorists

On October 18, 2022 the French , the company, a Lafarge major manufacturer of construction materials, pleaded guilty to transferring money to terrorist organizations. Under the terms of the agreement Ministry of Justice USA with Lafarge, he will pay a fine of $777.78 million. More. here

Plan to create geopolitical instability in Central Asia from Afghanistan

In late spring, early summer 2022, militants of the Afghan branch of the Vilayat Khorasan IG increased their activity. They are increasingly boldly attacking the positions Taliban of "," and their information service conducts recruitment and propaganda in different languages. IS increased its presence from 6 to 11 provinces. Afghanistan

IS extremists have concentrated their attention in northern Afghanistan. And this is no coincidence: the existing contradictions and armed conflict of the Taliban with the resistance and other ethnic minorities are fruitful grounds for spreading their ideology and attracting new people.

Ill-conceived domestic policies, economic pressure, the humanitarian crisis and the oppression of ethnic minorities by the Taliban only played into the hands of IS in strengthening its position. The leadership of Vilayat Khorasan acts on a well-worked strategy, gradually expanding its range of presence, especially in the blazing north of the country.

Central Asian republics are establishing de facto relations with the Taliban because of security concerns about their southern borders. IS is trying to dismantle any kind of interaction between the states of the post-Soviet space and the Taliban both in the political and economic sphere.

Increasingly, rocket attacks on the territories of neighboring countries are taking place, which demonstrate the capabilities of Vilayat Khorasan to operate outside Afghanistan. So, since spring, IS militants fired at the Uzbek Termez of "artisanal" MLRS three times, and in May launched a similar blow to Tajikistan. The Uzbek leadership immediately denied the fact of strikes from Uzbekistan, but the existing photo and video materials indicate the opposite.

The Vilayat Khorasan terrorists are already confidently present in the provinces of Balkh, Kunduz, Tahar, demonstrating the weaknesses of the Taliban in the ability to ensure security in the country. Events also show the impossibility of fulfilling Taliban commitments to combat the spread of terrorism against neighbors.

US eliminates "caliph" Abu Ibrahim al-Quraishi

On the night of February 2-3, 2022, the United States conducted an operation during which it eliminated the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Quraishi, and the official representative of the terrorist organization Abu Hamza al-Qureishi.

However, on March 10, the Al-Furkan media center announced the new leader of the IG, which was Abu Hassan al-Hashimi al-Kureishi, and the new representative of the MTO, Abu Umar Al-Muhajir, who made a statement.

The elimination of the "caliph," as well as other high-ranking commanders in the "Islamic State," at the current stage has little effect on the actions of ordinary militants.

2021:368 attacks in Syria

Having suffered a military defeat in Syria in December 2017, IS retained pockets of resistance on the left bank of the Euphrates in the province of Deir ez-Zor.

However, after the liquidation of the enclave in the area of ​ ​ the village of Baguz in 2019, the terrorist organization ceased to control at least some territory in the SAR.

In this regard, the central leadership of the terrorist organization changed tactics, launching a campaign of "war of attrition."

Now the goal of the Islamic State is not to control this or that territory, but to carry out terrorist attacks and sabotage aimed at weakening its opponents: government troops and the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Earlier, the "cells" of the "Islamic State" were also present in "Big Idlib," but the company for their elimination, launched by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in 2018, reduced almost any IS activity in northwestern Syria to zero.

According to Amaq, in 2021, terrorists carried out 368 attacks that led to the death or injury of 736 people. For comparison: in neighboring Iraq during the same period of attacks - 1227, victims - 2093.

Ambushes and terrorist attacks occur in the territory controlled by the government. "Sleeper cells" hide in the badia (desert in eastern Syria) and mainly carry out attacks in the area of ​ ​ the Palmyra-Deir ez-Zor highway.

But the bulk of Islamic State attacks are in the zone of control of Kurdish armed groups.

This is explained by the problems of the Al-Hol camp, where families of IS militants are being held, and prisons with captured terrorists, which have not yet been resolved by the Americans and the leadership of the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The content of a critical number of Islamic State supporters in places of compact residence in itself implies security problems.

But in May 2020, an IS official added fuel to the fire with a statement published by the Al-Furqan propaganda media center.

The late Abu Hamza al-Qureishi called on Islamic State supporters to focus on the release of prisoners and detainees in camps - first in Sunni regions, then in prisons and refugee camps.

One of the most high-profile consequences of this statement is the seizure of Al-Sinaa prison and Gweiran district in Hasek in January 2022.

At this time, IS activity remains, but it no longer poses the same global threat in Syria as it did before the end of 2017.

2019

Tanzania-Mozambique border attack. 6 people killed

According to Tanzanian police, in November 2019, IS militants from Mozambique gathered all residents of the village of Ngongo, located on an island on the Ruvuma River, and opened fire on them. Six people died, but many managed to escape.

The day before, jihadists had claimed the execution of 11 Mozambican army spies in the same locations.

Execution of 4 people in Mozambique

In July 2019, ISIS (an organization banned in the Russian Federation) announced the execution of 4 spies who collaborated with the Mozambican army, their houses were burned down as a result of a militant attack on the village of Makul, Mosimboa da Praia district in the north of the country.

2016: Restart of West African gold exports

In 2016, al-Qaeda and Islamic State-linked movements seized hundreds of semi-abandoned and artisanal gold mines in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, becoming security guarantors and resellers for millions of illegal prospectors. They declared the collection of zakat from prospectors a "halal" practice and - to the great delight of local residents - abandoned the increasingly less profitable abductions for ransom.

Precious metal mined at the mines they control is sent to Togo, and from there it is transported to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Switzerland and India. As the Zangaro Today telegram channel wrote, in just one year, jihadists became the main employers for residents of remote and depressed desert districts, got rich by $2 billion and found an inexhaustible source of recruits in mines and in the surrounding settlements, welcoming bans on alcohol and prostitution and distribution of alms among those in need.

Notes