deadly Attack on New Orleans The 15 deaths on New Year’s Eve are a disturbing reminder of a bygone era, when the transnational terrorist organization known as Islamic State, or ISIS, dominated the country’s attention and resources.
The attacker, Shamsud-Deen Bahar Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran from Texas, rammed a truck on Bourbon Street before being killed in a shootout with police. Jabbar was flying an ISIS flag from his car Posted the video on Facebook Shortly before the attack, the group pledged support.
A Thursday briefingFBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raya described Jabbar as “100 percent inspired by ISIS.” Raia said Jabbar, who also planted two explosive devices on Bourbon Street that never went off, claimed he had joined ISIS as early as last summer. In his videos, Jabbar said he originally planned to attack his relatives and friends – he had recently gone through a divorce – but was concerned that media coverage would not focus on what he called “a war between believers and non-believers”. Authorities are also investigating It remains to be seen whether there is any link between the truck bombing and the attack outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas on the same day.
Using trucks and vans to ram into crowds has been a staple of deadly ISIS-linked attacks over the years. Nice, France from Barcelonafrom Berlinfrom Stockholm. New Orleans is possibly the largest ISIS-inspired attack on US soil since 2016, when gunman Omar Mateen killed 49 people at Pulse, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The last notable ISIS-inspired attack in the United States was in 2017, when Saifullo Saipov drove a truck down Manhattan’s West Side Highway, killing eight people.
ISIS-linked violence was still common around the world – a major one A suicide attack on a military base in Somalia Just this week. The group’s Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS, is particularly ambitious and global in its operations. It carried out an attack on Moscow’s Crocus Theater that killed more than 130 people last March, as well as a January 2024 suicide bombing in Tehran that killed nearly 100. In August, authorities foiled a “highly advanced” ISIS plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Austria.
The fact that there have been no recent ISIS-inspired attacks in the United States in recent years may not be for lack of trying. Aaron Y. Zelin, who researches and tracks jihadist groups at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Note that five people have been arrested For ISIS-related plots in the United States in 2024, including “attempts to target a church in Idaho, an LGBTQ ‘institution’ in Philadelphia, a Jewish center/synagogue in New York City, an Election Day polling place in Oklahoma City, and a Pride parade in Phoenix,” it is in 2023. Arrests of sorts increased from zero.
That one of the group’s self-confessed acolytes has now succeeded to deadly and tragic effect raises some difficult questions about whether ISIS is key to the resurgence and what “ISIS-affiliated” actually means today.
The “Caliphate” has fallen but not out
ISIS trace its origin Back in 2011, when fighters from al-Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate, then led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, traveled to Syria to create a new affiliate there to fight in that country’s civil war. In 2013, al-Baghdadi attempted to merge Iraqi and Syrian affiliates, a move that al-Qaeda leaders rejected and led to a major schism in the global jihadist movement.
In 2014, Baghdadi’s group began capturing cities in western Iraq, eventually capturing Mosul, Iraq’s largest city. At the height of 2014 and 2015, the group dominated An area the size of Great BritainWhat Baghdadi proclaimed as a new “caliphate” during his reign. ISIS’s emphasis on controlling territory and imposing its brutal theocratic rule, rather than remaining underground, set it apart from other militant groups, as did the bloody drama of its approach: the group exploded into the consciousness of many Americans. Videotape of the beheading of two American journalists.
The US-led military intervention to fight ISIS began in 2014 In 2019, the group’s last regional base in Syria fell to the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Al-Baghdadi himself was there Killed in US action A few months later. In 2020, President Donald Trump announced in his State of the Union address that “ISIS’ regional caliphate has been completely destroyed“
This was largely true, but ISIS has outgrown the regional caliphate on a much broader scale. In Iraq and Syria, it continues to operate underground and carry out attacks and is regularly targeted by airstrikes and operations by US forces and their local partners.
But in many ways what was once known as the Islamic State In Iraq and Syria a Today’s more decentralized and global organizations, Whereas local franchises from Afghanistan, Somalia, West Africa, Mozambique are now much more active and dangerous than the core group. ISIS acts more like a traditional terrorist organization than a quasi-nation state at the top.
ISIS still has a very large presence online, though somewhat less than during the caliphate era, researchers say. Like other militant groups, it is also particularly active The encrypted messaging app Telegramas well as decentralized messaging platforms rocket.chat. (Other social media platforms are more closely monitored, though Widespread footage of crocus attacks on X (suggests that the site formerly known as Twitter has become free-for-all in its current incarnation.)
ISIS has distinguished itself from al-Qaeda and other groups by promoting the English language and encouraging sympathizers to carry out attacks in the name of ISIS. That would seem to be what happened in New Orleans.
“They publish almost every day something about attacking the English language,” says Zelin of the Washington Institute.
Lone wolf or part of a pack?
According to the FBI, Jabbar claimed in videos posted the night of the attack that he had joined ISIS as early as last summer, but the FBI’s Raya also emphasized that based on an analysis of Jabbar’s communications and social media accounts, “There is nothing. to indicate that he assisted anyone in this attack.” In other words, he acted alone, but considered himself part of a group.
This is not as contradictory as it seems. The largest and deadliest ISIS attacks in the West, such as the massacre of 130 people in Paris in 2015, were coordinated by ISIS itself or carried out by people fighting and training with the group in the Middle East.
But this is increasingly rare. “These things used to be done from ISIS hubs, but ISIS no longer has territory,” French counterterrorism analyst Wasim Nasr told Vox in July. It’s completely dematerialized.” It’s more common for those who want to launch an attack to contact ISIS’ “cyber-coaches,” who advise them on planning and logistics.
Sometimes, the relationship is even less direct. The Orlando and Manhattan attackers do not appear to have had any ties to ISIS abroad. They were “self-radicalized” – inspired by the group’s message and methods of carrying out their own attacks.
That appears to be the case for Jabbar, based on statements from law enforcement agencies, though it’s still early days. One development that could change our understanding of the attack is if ISIS posted a pre-recorded message from Jabbar on its own channel. “This would indicate that this was not someone who was solely inspired by ISIS, but perhaps had contact with ISIS operatives,” Zelin said. (In the case of the Moscow attack, the ISIS-affiliated Amaq news agency Bodycam footage posted from the attack itself.)
So far, no official ISIS channel has claimed credit for the attack, although there’s a good chance they did. ISIS has never been shy about claiming credit, even for attacks it had nothing to do with.
Colin Clark, counterterrorism researcher at the Sophan Center, noted that ISIS-affiliated Telegram and Rocket.chat channels There have been calls for attacks over Christmas and New Year. Clarke told Vox that the fact that Jabber doesn’t appear to be part of an organized underground cell shouldn’t be comforting.
“To me, it’s more shocking to be a solo actor,” he said. “This is the ISIS model. They want to be able to reach out and inspire someone in the United States to be able to do that. Their ultimate goal is to scare Americans.
Trump vs. ISIS: Rematch?
Before the New Orleans attack there was already global concern about the resurgence of ISIS, mainly due to events in the Middle East. As White House National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan put it, there are concerns that ISIS “Get new oxygenFrom the instability in Syria following the overthrow of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad. (The main party in power in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is itself the successor to an al-Qaeda affiliate that split from ISIS in 2013, though it has also left al-Qaeda and is trying to present a more moderate face to the world.) US has been Increasing its strike Against ISIS targets in Syria since the fall of Assad, in an effort to prevent it from taking advantage
There is also Concerned about camp security In northeastern Syria where thousands of ISIS fighters and their families have been held for years. These camps are under the control of the US-backed, mainly Kurdish SDF Currently under threat From the Turkish military and its local proxies.
“There will be a policy question for ISIS [incoming] Trump administration,” said Javed Ali, a longtime FBI terrorism analyst who served on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term. “Despite the fact that ISIS was not an organization a decade ago, we need to rethink our approach to counter-terrorism.”
Although Trump often cites the defeat of the ISIS caliphate as one of his first-term accomplishments, he has often expressed a desire to withdraw U.S. commitments to the Middle East, including the withdrawal of Syrian troops engaged in the fight against ISIS remnants. (For what it’s worth, The President-elect’s first response (The purpose of the attack was to falsely claim that US-born Jabbar was an immigrant.)
Overall, counterterrorism is far less important to US national security than it was a decade ago, as attention and resources have shifted to the “great power competition” with China and Russia. That’s an understanding and most welcome development, but a few more incidents like what we’ve seen in New Orleans could change that trend very quickly.
