ISIS sees the global pandemic as an opportunity to further weaken its enemies. Governments seek to stay focused on foreign security issues while addressing a global fitness crisis that also triggers an economic crisis, Project Lead Counter extremism Project (CEP) principal investigator Josh Lipowsky told Fox News.
“ISIS recognizes this and sees opportunities to take advantage of the developing fears of civilians, such as governments that refocus and use their resources.”
In March, when housing maintenance orders took root in the United States, ISIS, its weekly al-Naba publication, called on its members to attack the West.
“IS regards the entire West as an enemy of Islam to blame for destroying its physical caliphate. IS has incorporated the COVID-19 pandemic into its propaganda, praising it as a divine punishment for the West,” Lipowsky said. “At first, ISIS called its supporters to the spaces affected by coronavirus, but now ISIS has learned that it can capitalize on the concern caused by the pandemic.”
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Last month, Gerguy’s government foiled an alleged ISIS plot, allegedly plotted through Tajikistan fighters, to attack U.S. army facilities. Also in April, the French anti-terrorist government opened an investigation after a Sudanese man inserted a knife in the sunlight in Roguys-sur-Isere, according to France 24, in which two other people were killed. The suspect, who stole a knife from a local butcher’s shop, allegedly connected with an extremist group outdoors.
Moreover, police across Europe are reportedly investigating whether ISIS cells are quietly reactivated as closing measures progress. In April, the UK’s most wanted Islamic State fugitive Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, arrested in Spain, and a Moroccan citizen arrested earlier this month on suspicion of making plans for an attack.
However, the position that has noticed the significant increase in activity amid the calamity of public fitness is Iraq, army analysts warn. Although he was territorially defeated in the country, once controlled about a third of just three years ago, the extremist organization has maintained a slow-burning presence across the country that is distracted and politically charged.
“The Islamic State has in fact tried to make the most of the coronavirus pandemic, triggering a wave of attacks across Iraq that also clash with the holy month of Ramadan, which jihadists have benefited greatly in recent years as the month of conquest.” Gluck, founder of the Jihadoscope of terrorist surveillance, said.
Since the loss of its caliphate, ISIS has been on a true guerrilla-style campaign, returning to the way it was before the massive land grabs of 2014. ISIS encourages fighters to demonstrate in the shadow of the plague. “
In particular, it has accelerated attacks on remote villages in northern Iraq, taking advantage of the best pandemic storm, tensions between Iran and the United States, long-standing protests opposed to Tehran’s interference, and sharp fall in oil prices.
Only in the week after, ISIS militants re-ignited the chimney at the heights of Qarachogh near Mosul, wounded several Iran-backed People’s Mobilization Forces (FMP) infantrymen at their checkpoints in the northern province of Diyala, and introduced a series of fatal attacks such as the holy Month of Ramadan is coming to an end – adding in the historic province of Babylon.
Iraqi army officials also told Fox News that they were heavily involved in the reactivation of sleeping sleeper cells in Salahuddin, Makhmour, Diyala and the ancient Christian of the Nineveh plains.
“There has been an increase, many blows and escapes and the killing of police and army officers,” said an Iraqi defense expert, who called for anonymity for security reasons. “They’re active on many fronts.”
The risk of coronavirus has also forced the US-led army coalition, known as Operation Inherent Resolve, to stop parts of its crusade in Iraq and Syria, while Iraqi forces have also had to make curfews and make operational changes. Several European countries have also withdrawn their troops from nato’s coalition and educational missions in an effort to prevent the spread of the new pathogen.
In neighboring Syria, local forces struggling to keep IS cells at bay say their fighting has doubled since the pandemic began more than two months ago.
“IsIS has certainly benefited from the emergence of coronavirus and has been able to repair a presence in some areas it had lost,” Mehmud Faruq Ibrahim, co-chair of the Office of Civil Affairs of the Civil Administration of Deir-Ez-Zor, near the Iraqi border, told Fox News on Wednesday. “There are armed men who stand firm in the face of the Islamic State and who reject any attempt to find a solution. We don’t think they’ve been defeated, because they still control many of them. Recently, they have shown the boldest in their actions.”
According to Ibrahim, in recent days, ISIS has carried out attacks at various checkpoints of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as well as “shooting mines, detonating a fuel truck, attacking SDF bases and water distribution stations.” bomb in Basara in which three young men died and a boy.”
However, the U.S. military remains convinced that ISIS is shrinking.
“Iraqi security forces have carried out more than 25 ISIS terrorist operations in the following week,” Colonel Myles B. Caggins III, spokesman for the coalition, said Wednesday. “In Syria, our SDF security partners have carried out several raids on ISIS networks; Coalition allowed such operations with intelligence exchange and air support.
Lieutenant General Pat White of the Pentagon also told reporters last week that ISIS claimed the duty of 151 attacks in April, almost the same as last year, pointing out in a call with reporters this month that the sophistication of their attacks had deteriorated. In addition, the pentagon’s latest report called ISIS a low-level insurgency that cannot maintain territory.
But in economic terms, Islamic State spending has fallen dramatically into a physical caliphate to maintain, and the terrorist organization continues to exploit the economic mechanisms it has implemented. From Lipowsky’s perspective, ISIS’ individual provinces continue to increase the budget through resource theft, citizen taxes, and extortion.
“We have not fully accounted for what became of the vast wealth ISIS accumulated during the caliphate,” he said. “It has also been reported that ISIS even invested some of that capital into legitimate businesses in Syria and Iraq, from which the group continues to draw funding.”
And in Afghanistan, the United States blamed radical Islamic militants for one of the most horrific attacks in recent years: the storm of a maternity hospital in Kabul earlier this month that killed at least 16 people, adding two newborns.
U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad condemned ISIS for the attack and tweeted that the Afghan partner “opposes a peace agreement between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban, and seeks to inspire a sectarian war as in Iraq and Syria.”
According to Gluck’s follow-up, ISIS claimed duty for the hospital assault, and the United States blamed ISIS, while the Afghan government blamed the Taliban.
Meanwhile, the presence of ISIS in swathes of Africa remained fervent to the coronavirus pandemic.
In recent times, northern Mozambique has become a vital pocket for ISIS attacks and, in April, has taken control of at least two cities in the Cape Delgado region, according to local reports. The black-flag jihadist army also took over a bloody attack in Xitaxi, Mozambique, last month that killed more than 50 people in what many defense experts considered to be a capitaliser of the instability of a country suffering from the nascent pandemic.
“With its wave of attacks in Africa, ISIS has made a special mention of attacks on Christians since its conquest of Ramadan,” Gluck said.
A recent augment in ISIS activities in Africa’s Sahel region has also been documented, not only toward civilians but also against Al Qaeda branches in the area, of which ISIS once cooperated with to wreak havoc. And in the northern African militant stronghold of Libya, the pandemic is said to have bolstered the array of militias — giving them easier passage to bring in weapons and aid for their fighters — although U.S. defense and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) officials told the Washington Examiner that Russia’s increasing use of shadowy groups in Libya to support Khalifa Haftar poses a greater geopolitical threat than ISIS.
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But with its physical terrain largely diminished, ISIS has once again returned to its online presence to cheer up and recruit troubled minds.
“Several of your troll accounts are coming back and are posting more videos and photos,” said a security expert specializing in Iraq, who asked that their names not be used. “They’re much smarter to avoid automatic facebook and twitter detection, and they’ve learned from their experiences beyond.”
A May 15 report through the Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI) entitled “In the midst of COVID-19, ISIS supporters are stepping up their efforts to repair the presence on social media,” showed that “recent weeks have noticed an accumulation in media activity of supporters of Islam. State (ISIS), that “there had been an accumulation” in the launch of Facebook accounts, the opening of new media and the creation of activity of established media, Telegram channels and other media and propaganda companies”.
“It turns out that ISIS supporters benefited from relief in the web society’s prevention activity of the COVID-19 pandemic,” MEMRI said. “Meanwhile, on Telegram, ISIS supporters have controlled reviving much of their presence in the messaging app, which has served as the main platform for ISIS to publish official publications. Dozens of new channels have emerged in recent weeks, after several months of limitations. activity after a coordinated effort through Europol and Telegram to close ISIS accounts until the end of 2019.”
According to MEMRI, the platform where ISIS supporters thrive is the Hoop messaging app, a Canada-based app that presents itself as unprecedented freedom and privacy.
“Currently, dozens of official channels are active in Hoop; whether they distribute official ISIS publications and unofficial or semi-official party channels. Many of those channels have thousands of members,” MEMRI said. “ISIS supporters make percentage of links to their Hoop channels on Telegram.”
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And even though its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi mercilessly immolated himself while surrounded by US forces in Syria in October 2019, raising questions about whether that would be the needle in the coffin of the terrorist group, it turns out that it only broke.
“Baghdadi’s death had a mental effect on ISIS supporters, but it didn’t have much of an operational effect on ISIS,” Lipowsky added.