TheChek News Flow

U.S. steps up strikes from desert bases against an enemy it defeated half a decade ago

Islamic State militants were already resurgent last year in parts of Syria and Iraq. Then in December, the Assad regime collapsed, furnishing them with fresh supplies of weapons from stocks abandoned by the Syrian army.

The group that once terrorized the Middle East and inspired attacks elsewhere in the world is looking to exploit Syria’s uncertain future to rebuild its influence—half a decade after U.S.-led forces broke its hold on swaths of territory and millions of people.

In a sign of its persistent appeal, a U.S. Army veteran in a pickup flying an Islamic State flag drove through a crowd of people early on New Year’s Day in New Orleans, killing 15 and injuring 30 in what authorities called a terrorist attack. It wasn’t clear what connections, if any, the assailant might have had to the group, but analysts have warned of lone-wolf incidents and copycat attacks.

The fight against the remnants of Islamic State had until recently happened in the shadows, with hundreds of U.S. Special Forces based in Syria’s hinterlands working with Kurdish militias to carry out airstrikes and raids. The U.S. has since ramped up its attacks, including in areas where the airspace was previously controlled by the government of Bashar al-Assad and its Russian allies, military analysts say.

On Dec. 8, hours after the Assad regime fell, the U.S. said it hit 75 Islamic State targets with dozens of strikes involving B-52 bombers and F-15 warplanes. About a week later, the U.S. said it had killed at least a dozen militants with another airstrike. Three days later, it said it had killed two more Islamic State operatives, including one of its top leaders.

On Sunday, France deployed Rafale jet fighters and a Reaper drone against two targets in Syria that French officials said were linked to Islamic State.

There are concerns about the effectiveness of periodic bombings amid the rapidly changing regional landscape. The Kurdish groups that have been crucial in fighting and containing Islamic State and keeping its fighters contained are under new pressure from groups backed by Turkey.

The Turkish government sees the Kurdish groups as terrorists and is pressing its interests in the country now under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that once had ties to Islamic State and al Qaeda, which it later renounced.

It is also uncertain how long the U.S. military will be able to maintain its presence of more than 2,000 troops in Syria and about 2,500 in Iraq. Days after Assad fled Syria, Iraqi officials visiting Washington expressed concern about the potential resurgence of Islamic State and asked the U.S. to reassess a recently concluded withdrawal agreement that called for nearly all U.S. forces to leave within two years.

Any changes to the U.S. presence in Iraq—which provides critical support to the presence in Syria—will be up to President-elect Donald Trump, who cut back troop numbers during his first administration.

Rep. Mike Waltz, (R., Fla.), a retired Special Forces officer who is expected to be Trump’s national security adviser, said last month on Fox News that while the president-elect is focused on keeping U.S. troops out of foreign conflicts, Trump is “clear-eyed” about the threat ISIS poses in Syria.

The concerns are driven by a significant uptick in Islamic State activity. U.S. and Kurdish officers told The Wall Street Journal over the summer that the group is training new recruits and mustering forces in the Syrian desert in hopes of resurrecting its dream of ruling a new Islamist empire. Fighters increased their pace of attacks in Syria and Iraq last year, targeting checkpoints, detonating car bombs and maneuvering to free their jailed comrades.

Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim group, emerged from the al Qaeda branch that fought American and coalition forces after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The U.S. withdrew from the country in 2011 as the Arab Spring was unleashing political and military instability around the Middle East. Islamic State took advantage and in 2014 seized some 38,000 square miles of territory in Syria and Iraq, an area slightly smaller than Virginia, and declared it a caliphate ruling over 12 million people.

In a tour of the Middle East in December, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that the militants would seek to regroup in the vacuum left by the collapse of the Assad regime.

“We are determined to make sure that Daesh cannot re-emerge,” he told reporters, using a common Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani said last week Islamic State had recently seized a large quantity of weapons belonging to the Syrian army, which it could use to expand in the region. He said Iraq and the international coalition were monitoring and trying to stop weapons transfers.

Another major concern for U.S. military officials and their regional partners is the security of prisons and detention camps in northeastern Syria that hold Islamic State fighters and their families.

The camps, which according to a United Nations estimate contain up to 45,000 people, are guarded by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. If those forces are defeated or distracted by a Turkish-backed military campaign, Islamic State militants could find a way to slip their confinement.

“Anything that happens in these prisons or camps, we will all find ourselves—inside Syria and outside it—confronting those terrorists,” the Iraqi prime minister said in a televised interview last week.

Since the Assad regime collapsed, Islamic State has only attacked areas controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed Kurdish group, according to Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank, who has tracked the group for years. But greater freedom of movement across Syria may have allowed Islamic State cells to move to other parts of the country where they are biding their time, Tamimi assessed.

“I don’t think they’re going to recreate anything like what they had in 2014, but there is a real risk that you get this sudden surge of violence and wave of attacks that then HTS and its allies will need to find ways to crack down on,” he said.

The Iraqi government is now rethinking its posture toward the U.S. troop presence amid concerns the power vacuum in parts of Syria leaves it vulnerable to a cross-border surge by Islamic State, Western officials said.

Within days of Assad’s fall, U.S. military officials in Iraq saw a different tone from Iraqi officials, who were suddenly amenable to deeper cooperation over everything from logistics to drone surveillance, the officials said.

The message the Iraqis are delivering to the U.S. is, “you want to stick around, please do. Take your time,” said Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. But he said the Iraqis would only allow operations against Sunni extremists in Syria.

With only weeks left in the Biden administration, decisions about the future of the U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria will soon be in the hands of Trump, who sought to pull out of Iraq and Syria during his first term, only to halt full withdrawals himself under pressure from his advisers.

Under the withdrawal agreement, hundreds of U.S. and coalition troops based in Baghdad, western Iraq and other parts of the country would leave by next September, followed by a drawdown of forces in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil by the end of the following year. A handful of troops could remain after 2026 in an advisory capacity and for missions including providing logistical support to American troops based in Syria, officials said.

“The situation remains very dynamic, constantly evolving and we are evaluating developments on the ground constantly,” said Farhad Alaaldin, policy adviser to the Iraqi prime minister. “The development of this relationship will require close cooperation and mutual effort to shape its path forward.”