While the world’s media is focused on whether the Gaza ceasefire will succeed, another development in the region is receiving very little attention: the strength and potential of ISIS, after nearly a decade of apparent marginalisation.
Back in 2018, at the end of the intense US-led air war in Syria, staff from the US’s Special Operations Command staff reported that ISIS had taken huge casualties, losing as many as 60,000 of its supporters, leading directly to the collapse of the caliphate.
Then the group appeared to suddenly come back from nowhere at the start of 2025. A US army veteran, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, killed 14 people in New Orleans early on New Year’s Day, claiming to have joined ISIS. Though the organisation later avoided claiming responsibility for the attack (while still praising Jabbar for carrying it out), military bases across the US were put on alert for possible further attacks.
