President-elect Donald Trump has frequently counted the U.S.-led coalition victory over the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria as one of the most consequential achievements of his previous administration.
Yet ISIS today has found fertile ground to spread beyond its initial homeland and accelerate operations abroad. The group is tied to daily attacks across Asia and Africa, as well as plots throughout Europe and even a deadly New Year’s rampage in the United States.
Now the next U.S. leader, set to be inaugurated Monday amid ramped-up security following at least two recent assassination attempts, must again grapple with the international jihadi militants considered to be one of the greatest threats to global peace.
“The past few years, we’ve seen an ISIS surge around the world: not just in its traditional heartland of Syria and Iraq, but also from its increasingly deadly and capable affiliates in West Africa and Afghanistan,” Nathan Sales, who previously served as the White House’s counterterrorism envoy during Trump’s first term, told Newsweek.
“The latter—ISIS-K—is particularly worrisome as it has shown the ability to carry out external operations in the region, and has its sights set on Europe and the American homeland,” Sales said. He is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and Middle East Programs.
ISIS-K, short for the group’s self-designated Khorasan province, has ambitions beyond Afghanistan, envisioning a state also that encompasses parts of neighboring Iran, Pakistan, India and Central Asia, extending to northwestern China as well. While opposed by every government in the region, ISIS-K has exploited insecurity and international rivalries to entrench itself as one of the world’s deadliest and most unpredictable non-state actors in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“Unfortunately, the Biden administration has dismantled most American counterterrorism capability in Afghanistan, leaving ISIS-K to grow more or less unchecked,” Sales said. “Americans may want to turn the page on 20 years of the global war on terrorism, but the terrorists get a vote, and they’re voting to keep fighting.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Trump transition team for comment.
“We defeated ISIS in record time,” said President-elect Donald Trump, seen beside ISIS fighters holding their flag in this Newsweek illustration, during his election victory speech.
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Associated Press
Biden oversaw the end of the longest war in U.S. history in August 2021, pulling troops out of Afghanistan in line with a deal struck with the Taliban by the first Trump administration. Trump’s decision to exit Afghanistan was finalized in February 2020 as ISIS’ global power appeared to be waning.
Upon taking office in 2017, Trump inherited the most intensive phases of the war being waged against ISIS in Iraq and Syria by a U.S.-led coalition established by then-President Barack Obama. As Iran aided militias battling the group in both nations and Russia mounted an unprecedented direct intervention in support of the Syrian government, the Pentagon-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) defeated the group in its final outpost of Baghuz in eastern Syria in February 2019.
The U.S.-claimed win would become a cornerstone of Trump’s touted accomplishments. “We defeated ISIS in record time,” Trump said in his 2024 election-night speech, having bested outgoing President Biden‘s designated successor, Vice President Kamala Harris.
But the group that once asserted control over territory roughly equivalent to the size of Virginia would not simply vanish. In addition to maintaining insurgencies in Iraq and Syria, ISIS continued to thrive in the form of its international affiliates, frustrating U.S. efforts to pivot the focus of foreign-policy initiatives toward great power competition with the likes of China and Russia.
“There is a misconception that foreign terrorist threats, particularly from ISIS, have diminished to low-cost risks,” Andrew Borene, a former senior officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told Newsweek. “However, counterterrorism is far from a dead effort.
“Over the past four years, ISIS has evolved from a territorial caliphate into a decentralized network that operates as a ‘terror innovation hub,'” Borene said. Today, he is executive director for global security at risk intelligence company Flashpoint. “This transformation allows ISIS to inspire and support a global network of affiliates and lone actors, amplifying their reach and impact.”
For Biden, ISIS-K’s most devastating blow came in the form of a suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. soldiers and nearly 170 Afghan civilians as the president oversaw the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul. The backlash was compounded by the U.S. retaliatory strike that ultimately killed 10 civilians wrongfully suspected of having ties to the attack by the U.S. military‘s admission.
The group continued to entrench itself as the Taliban seized Kabul, defying the newly established government’s crackdowns. Despite being deprived of any formal territorial control, ISIS-K has managed to establish a sophisticated multimedia presence not only undermining the Taliban’s legitimacy but also targeting disaffected audiences in neighboring nations across Asia.
“The group’s ability to leverage encrypted platforms, social media, and dark web forums has significantly enhanced its capacity to radicalize individuals and coordinate attacks remotely,” Borene said. “This poses an ongoing threat not just to U.S. interests abroad but to global stability as a whole.”
While already wreaking havoc in Afghanistan, ISIS-K claimed two operations last year that garnered global attention. The January attack on a memorial procession in Kerman for Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a drone strike ordered by Trump four years earlier, and the attack on a concert at Crocus City Hall in Russia last March claimed the lives of 102 and 145 people, respectively. The attacks demonstrated the group’s thirst for vengeance against those who intervened against its initial rise in Iraq and Syria over a decade ago.
Just one day before ISIS-K’s massacre outside of Moscow, U.S. Central Command chief General Michael Kurilla testified before Congress that “ISIS-Khorasan retains the capability and the will to attack U.S. and Western interests abroad in as little as six months with little to no warning.”
To fight back, Borene advised that the next administration pursue “a comprehensive and multilayered approach” involving partnerships with European allies and partners such as India and Arab states to disrupt ISIS-K networks, while also exerting military pressure.
On the homefront, “initiatives should focus on disrupting ISIS’s online propaganda and recruitment pipelines, which remain a significant driver of lone-wolf attacks and global coordination,” Borene said. He added that the use of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics could “identify patterns of radicalization and help preempt potential threats.”
“By integrating kinetic action, regional partnerships, and domestic counterterrorism initiatives,” Borene said, “the administration can mitigate the threat posed by ISIS while addressing the root causes of instability that enable its resurgence.”
ISIS vehicles used for suicide car bombings and a map of the group’s self-proclaimed states are seen at Iran’s Museum of Resistance, on March 24, 2024. Khorasan is the easternmost region.
Kaveh Kazemi//Getty Images
Instability has been a key driver of ISIS’ rise and its continuity following the fall of the so-called “caliphate” first proclaimed in 2013 by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a U.S. raid ordered by Trump in 2019. A decade after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq gave way to rampant insurgencies, ISIS morphed out of an Al-Qaeda splinter that Baghdadi would expand to Syria as the neighboring nation underwent a civil war raging since 2011.
That same year, a NATO intervention aided rebels to overthrow longtime Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, opening the floodgates for a flow of battle-hardened militants to Africa’s Sahel region. As was the case in the Middle East and Afghanistan, ISIS’ West Africa Province (ISWAP) cultivated local partnerships by capitalizing on existing conflicts between government forces and insurgents, including Nigeria’s powerful Boko Haram, to establish itself as a major player in the region.
“Groups like ISIS-K in Afghanistan and ISWAP in West Africa have exploited ungoverned spaces to recruit fighters and destabilize regions,” Borene said. “Their operations demonstrate the continued relevance of ISIS affiliates in driving global instability.”
ISIS-K has emerged as one of the group’s most active and ambitious affiliates, but the recent upheaval in Syria’s near-14-year internal strife has also created a complex situation for the U.S. in one of ISIS’ core territories.
With Middle East tensions already soaring over the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement, backed by the Iran’s regional Axis of Resistance coalition, Syria’s long-reigning Assad family was suddenly toppled last month at the hands of a rapid rebel offensive. At the helm of the campaign, and now effectively ruling the nation is the man who previously allowed ISIS founder Baghdadi to export his ideology to Syria, Abu Mohammed al-Golani.
Golani, now going by his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, ultimately rejected a merger between his Al-Qaeda-loyal Nusra Front and Baghdadi’s ISIS in 2013. Three years later, he rescinded ties to Al-Qaeda as well, claiming a purely anti-government stance and rebranding the Nusra Front to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, finally coalescing with like-minded Islamists to establish Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in 2017.
Since overseeing the ousting of Assad, Sharaa has continued to disavow his jihadi past. The SDF remains skeptical amid its ongoing clashes with Turkey-backed factions allied with HTS. Vice President-elect JD Vance has also expressed doubts regarding the supposed Sharaa’s supposed reorientation.
As with ISIS, HTS is designated by the U.S. to be a terrorist organization.
But Trump’s former special envoy for Syria and the coalition to defeat ISIS, James Jeffrey, told Newsweek that “the U.S. should coordinate with the Damascus government on a plan to eliminate ISIS,” given HTS’ track record in opposing the rival jihadi group.
When it comes to Afghanistan, however, where the U.S. had also hoped for cooperation with former Al-Qaeda ally the Taliban against ISIS, Jeffrey said that “the administration’s options are more limited.”
“Occasional bombing can help at the margins but does not solve the problem,” he added. “Enhanced intelligence to ascertain when/if Khorasan starts planning to target U.S. or ally/partner targets is about the most Washington can do.”
Jeffrey also emphasized that the current threat posed by ISIS to the West should be put into perspective.
“ISIS, however subdued, will always have a limited capacity to inspire one-off attacks by lone-wolf terrorists such as seen on January 1 in New Orleans and recently in Europe,” Jeffrey said. “But major organized attacks in the West as seen in 2015-16 appear now beyond its capabilities.
“Its operations in the African Sahel and Mozambique are more threatening as ISIS units operate in large numbers and control terrain and finances,” Jeffrey added. “But African nations have shown little interest in more active, especially on-ground, American or Western support, so U.S. strategy can, as with ISIS-Khorasan, do little more than monitor in hope of catching in time any major new capability or threat.”
People look at a blocked-off road from Canal Street after at least 15 people were killed on Bourbon Street on January 1 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The attack was tied to a U.S. Army veteran who allegedly proclaimed allegiance to ISIS.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images
But, as Trump plans to tackle the broader Middle East crisis rooted in the conflict in Gaza and Israel-Iran tensions, the Russia-Ukraine war and an array of pressing foreign and domestic policy issues, the ever-evolving threat of ISIS may test his “peace through strength” approach to upholding national security.
“The Islamic State threat is now emanating from more vectors or regional branches,” Lucas Webber, senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, told Newsweek. “Since Trump’s first term, IS-Khurasan Province has expanded its vision globally and has ramped up its international terrorist activities.
“This is indicated by an increased amount of successful external operations—such as those in Iran, Turkey, and Russia in 2024—as well as numerous plots foiled in Central Asia, Europe, and North America,” Webber said. “In addition, ISKP has built out a robust propaganda apparatus that publishes in more languages than any other branch since IS in Iraq and Syria at the height of the caliphate.”
As far away as Somalia and Pakistan, Webber added, ISIS’ international charters have “become increasingly important to the larger organization” and have “expanded its international financial, recruitment, and militant operations capabilities.”
“The Trump administration should increase focus on detecting and disrupting IS activity online as the organization and its followers are exploiting social media and messaging applications to attract followers, recruit, fundraise, and incite violence,” Webber said. “As the New Orleans attack demonstrates, IS maintains the ability to project influence online to reach and inspire followers to take violent action.”
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