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They’ll be back: Islamic State presents an increasing threat in Western Europe
Antonio Giustozzi
Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI), UK
Islamic State is once again grabbing headlines: rioters in Russian penal facilities in Volgograd and Rostov regions declared links to the terrorist group; the network’s Afghan affiliate, IS-K, claimed responsibility for a large-scale terrorist attack at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall in March; a recent incident in Solingen, Germany, was also linked to ISIS; and an unknown number of potential terrorist plots have been foiled by law enforcement. Military defeats in Syria and Iraq in the 2010s certainly cost the group territory and funding, making them a relic of the past in the public eye, but much like coronavirus, they never fully went away. Not only has ISIS survived — it will soon be reinvigorating its cells in Europe, Russia, and Turkey to stage new mass casualty attacks, warns Antonio Giustozzi of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies (RUSI).
On the verge of bankruptcy
By 2020 it was widely assumed that the Islamic State (IS) no longer represented a threat. It had lost all areas of territorial control in Syria and Iraq, its leaders were being hunted, and it hardly ever featured in the news for anything other than its defeats. Not only Western media and policymakers thought it was doomed, but so did its donors: sources within IS acknowledge that from 2019 onwards, fundraising started to become ever more difficult. Its donors, typically wealthy individuals in the Gulf monarchies, were as convinced as other external observers that IS was defeated and that it no longer served any real purpose. In addition, the evolving geopolitical environment made an organization like IS — one bent on fighting Shi’as and Iran — a much less attractive beneficiary of largesse for these wealthy Arabs.
The year 2023 was the Islamic State’s nadir: funding was collapsing to very low levels. Some of its branches were not just unable to fund operations and pay their men, but could not even feed them. In some formerly active areas, operations were suspended completely for some months. The crisis was so profound that the leadership, hiding on the border between Turkiye and Syria, decided to risk its remaining human and financial resources in an ambitious relaunch operation.
The year 2023 was the Islamic State’s nadir: funding was collapsing to very low levels
Around 2021, when this decision appears to have been taken, the capabilities of IS to carry out terror acts were limited. Its cells in Europe had been largely dismantled by the security forces, and in previous years IS had not been investing much in recreating them, presumably because the increasingly effective counter-terror effort across the continent made this seem a waste of scarce cadres. Hence, IS relied for years on poorly supported and only tangentially coordinated volunteers to carry out improvised attacks, typically relying on knives and vans as weapons. Yet even these types of attacks were becoming increasingly rare in the 2020s, as IS was haunted by the image of a defeated and failing organization and struggled to motivate potential sympathizers to immolate themselves in new operations. The attacks were also yielding decreasing returns in terms of media impact, which is what IS was really after. IS thus lost interest, while its leadership literally struggled to stay alive and was focused on finding new safe havens while simultaneously coping with the organization’s increasingly complicated financial situation.
When IS resumed plotting attacks in Europe, Turkiye, and Russia on a large scale, it had to make do with whatever human resources it had available. These were largely veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Syria — men who had fought a conventional war with the enemies of the Caliphate. The great majority of those deemed suitable for future work were Central Asians who were no longer needed in Syria once IS transitioned to a guerrilla war. They were not trained for clandestine operations and terrorist attacks, although they knew how to use weapons effectively.
Plotting new large-scale attacks, ISIS largely relied on veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Syria — men who had fought a conventional war with the enemies of the Caliphate
For over two years, these Central Asian veterans were the main protagonists of almost all the largely unfruitful IS efforts to organize attacks all over Europe, Turkiye, Russia, Iran, and even beyond. Exceptions to the rule were two attacks against a shrine in Iran in 2022 and 2023. After dozens of attempts, however, IS struck big with the January 2024 attack in Kerman, Iran, and the March 2024 Crocus City Hall attack outside Moscow — just five days after Russia’s presidential election, pulling off the plot despite warnings from American intelligence that such an attempt was in the works.
New “achievements”
The Crocus City Hall attack in particular garnered widespread coverage and appears to have translated into a significant improvement in the financial landscape of IS during 2024. The fear in Europe was of course that IS would try to repeat these feats there — and that the Summer Olympics in Paris might offer the ideal venue for doing so. However, IS proved unable to follow up on its publicly aired threats, and perhaps it never seriously tried to strike Paris with the whole world watching. Instead, what followed were the Solingen attack of August 2024 and the Austrian plot against a few Taylor Swift concerts earlier in the same month. These are noteworthy primarily because they suggest a return of IS to relying on plots carried out by volunteers and sympathizers utilizing primitive means and receiving little if any support.
IS is likely to persist in its efforts to deliver bigger blows to get its fundraising on solid footing again
Why would IS return to a strategy it had abandoned in the past? One obvious explanation is that the successful attacks of early 2024, which produced a real impact in the media sphere, boosted the lagging morale of IS and pro-IS individuals in Europe, making it easier to mobilize them once again. Still, in the absence of detailed information about the plots and attacks, which the police will only provide at a much more advanced stage of their investigations, one cannot be sure that there was any direct involvement of IS structures in either Germany or Austria. Should such involvement be demonstrated, however, it would suggest that IS has not proven capable of carrying out more attacks like the one at Crocus City Hall — especially in Europe, where procuring adequate weapons is hard. In the meantime, it tries to fill the media vacuum with smaller, old-style attacks. But IS is nonetheless likely to persist in its efforts to deliver more — and bigger — blows, which is what the group needs to do if it is to get its fundraising on solid footing again.
After all, one should keep in mind that IS faces competition to attract the attention of the man in the street in the Muslim world. The war in Gaza has been a major embarrassment for IS, having exposed its non-existent record of fighting Israel and highlighting how until recently it entirely focused on killing other Muslims. The Gazan conflict might have contributed to IS deciding to downscale its indiscriminate attacks against Muslim targets. Even more likely, the conflict in Gaza is a factor compelling IS to raise its media profile, lest Hamas and the hated Iranians end up monopolizing the media and increasing their popularity among Muslim communities. IS has no capacity to attack Israel, nor is it likely to develop one — other than by encouraging isolated attacks by sympathizers on Israeli territory.
IS lags far behind Hamas in popularity within the Muslim diasporas in Europe — certainly an issue for group’s attempts to establish a grassroots funding system
The way IS has been trying to deal with this serious image problem is by taking aim at surrogate targets that its propaganda could link to Israel — essentially Jewish-affiliated objects like synagogues. The Russian authorities reported at least one attempt on a synagogue before the Crocus City Hall attack in March, and then in June IS did attack a synagogue in the Caucasus. The Turkish authorities have also reported plots to attack synagogues. But these plots — and the single successful attack — have done little to alter the image of IS, which lags far behind Hamas in popularity within the Muslim diasporas in Europe — certainly an issue when we consider the terrorist group’s attempts to establish a grassroots funding system aimed at collecting small donations from large numbers of individual supporters.
Terrorism isn’t cheap
The full capabilities of IS are not known to anyone, possibly not even to IS itself, given that the group relies to such an extent on faraway sympathizers of limited capacity. It does boast a few thousand members equipped for guerrilla warfare in Africa, Afghanistan-Pakistan, and Syria-Iraq, but these fighters play a modest role in the group’s current strategy. IS still runs two significant insurgencies in the Sahel and in Nigeria, while it seems to be keeping military activities at a minimum elsewhere: in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Mozambique. This is probably due to its acknowledgment that it does not have the resources to fund full-scale wars everywhere the way it did in the past. The leadership still manages to produce a strategy and to get its branches to implement it, even if it seems to be allowing a growing degree of decentralization. This is likely the result of the lack of resources needed for maintaining the large bureaucratic apparatus necessary for supervising and controlling its numerous far-flung branches.
Much more important is the role of dozens of cells, each composed of a few members, that IS has in Russia and Turkiye, and also the smaller number it has in Europe. It also controls dozens of support elements in Europe and Russia, which help with propaganda, recruitment, and fundraising — and in Turkiye, it has many more such helpers. Overall, the terror apparatus of IS probably numbers several hundred members.
Overall, the terror apparatus of IS probably numbers several hundred members
Recruitment is not the primary concern of IS at present — fundraising is. The group has more people than it can pay and support. Thus it focuses on recruiting educated cadres that can run efficient underground operations and plan and commission terrorist attacks. Its recruitment potential remains high, especially among Central Asians and Afghans. In general, it targets young males who feel frustrated about their lack of prospects and who face humiliation or discrimination. Given the increasingly dispersed character of IS operations, it relies more and more on social media for recruitment, seemingly with some success. Its recruitment and propaganda operations online are intensifying all the time, a clear confirmation of the fact that the leadership sees value in them.
Recruitment is not the primary concern of IS at present — fundraising is. The group has more people than it can pay and support
Increasingly, fundraising is also happening online, often using cryptocurrencies. The main problem IS seems to be facing now is preparing well-trained terrorist cells, given that its bases and camps are now quite far from its target areas for terrorist operations. There are some reports of IS trying to set up training camps — essentially isolated farms — in Turkiye, but given the level of surveillance that the Turkish authorities dedicate to anything related to IS, establishing such centers is likely easier said than done.
This presents a conundrum for IS. Conducting headline-grabbing attacks will require ever more well-trained cells, capable of operating underground without being detected. Without training, that is going to be hard to achieve, especially when pitted against security forces that have spent years refining their counter-terrorism processes and introducing new technologies. IS is still a threat, but not the threat it once was.