Thousands of Islamic State jihadists are taking advantage of the lull through the coronavirus pandemic to regroup in key spaces and threaten to unleash a new wave of attacks, a Kurdish general has warned, according to the Times.
Siwan Barzani, commander of Kurdish Peshmerga forces stationed near the northern Iraq city of Erbil, told The Times last week that as the coronavirus spread around the world in March, coalition forces were forced to suspend much of their activities.
They have had to suspend joint raids with Iraqi forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northern Syria and are now operating their aircraft at about 80% capacity, Barzani said.
In addition, the United States reduced its forces in Iraq to 2,500 troops last month, about part of the level of less than a year ago. British troops were also sent home after the Camp Taji military base, north of Baghdad, was taken over by Iraqi security forces. last year. Only a hundred British infantrymen remained.
Officials, veterans and citizens now that the withdrawal will create a security vacuum in the country, Reuters reported last month.
ISIS fighters have seized the opportunity to reorganize in Iraq and, according to the Times, are emerging from their civilian hideouts to resume operations in the country’s mountainous regions.
“When the liberation of the entire area began, they shaved their beards and posed as civilians, but they were waiting for the opportunity and slowly came back to join them,” Barzani said, according to the Times.
“They were reorganized more temporarily due to the pandemic and because there were fewer Coalition operations. It’s a smart thing for them but bad for us, of course,” he added.
Barzani estimates that there are now more than 7,000 ISIS in Iraq.
They are said to have already stepped up their attacks.
According to the Associated Press, at least 20 men and women were killed last month in the Al-Hol refugee camp in northern Syria. These killings are believed to have been carried out largely by Islamic State fighters, who punish perceived enemies and monitor to intimidate those who might disagree with their extremist ideologies.
“Al-Hol will be the womb that will give birth to new generations of extremists,” Abdullah Suleiman Ali, a Syrian researcher specializing in jihadist groups, told the AP.
“There are several reasons for the increase in crime, apart from attempts by Daesh members to impose their ideology in the countryside against civilians who reject it,” Ali added.
The jihadist organization also claimed to have carried out a double suicide bombing at a busy second-hand clothing market in Baghdad last month, which injured more than a hundred people and killed at least 32.
It is the largest suicide attack perpetrated in Baghdad in three years.
At its peak in late 2014, ISIS controlled about 110,000 square kilometers in Iraq and Syria, and another 8 million people were under its rule.
But although the jihadist organization may not have these territories, its harmful ideologies remain widespread.
Colonel Wayne Marotto, spokesman for the global coalition, told the Times: “We defeated them territorially, but we did not defeat them ideologically and they are resistant, and now what they are doing is almost like an insurgency. “
Advertisement
POPULAR CATEGORIES