ISIS outside of Iraq and Syria
- Arabic:
- al-Dawlah al-Islāmiyyah fī al-ʿIrāq wa al-Shām
- Arabic acronym:
- Dāʿish or Daesh
- Also called:
- Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and
- Since June 2014,:
- the Islamic State
- Date:
- April 2013 - present
- Areas Of Involvement:
- Islam
- sharia
- terrorism
- extremism
- suicide bombing
- Related People:
- Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
News •
By late 2014, cells of militants claiming to be affiliates or direct extensions of ISIS had emerged in a number of conflict zones in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Existing insurgent groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, disaffected elements of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and some factions of the Taliban in Afghanistan also pledged their allegiance to ISIS, although it was unclear if those groups were acting in coordination with ISIS’s leadership in Syria. At its height, ISIS had affiliates operational in at least 18 countries.
ISIS-linked attacks abroad
Faced with setbacks in its core territories in 2015, ISIS began focusing its efforts on using international networks of militants to carry out attacks around the world. On November 12 two suicide bombers struck a Shiʿi neighborhood in Beirut, killing more than 40 people in retaliation for the Shiʿi militant group Hezbollah’s intervention against ISIS in Syria. A day later eight ISIS-affiliated gunmen launched a series of coordinated gun and bomb attacks in Paris, killing at least 130 people at several sites around the city. ISIS spokesmen claimed the attacks as revenge for France’s participation in the international military campaign against ISIS.
Over the months that followed, a series of ISIS-linked attacks unfolded around the globe. In some cases, such as the bombing in March 2016 that killed 32 people at Brussels Airport, investigators were able to confirm that there had been operational coordination between the perpetrators and ISIS commanders. In other instances, though, such as two shooting rampages in the U.S.—in San Bernardino, California, in November 2015 and in Orlando, Florida, in June 2016—the perpetrators declared allegiance to ISIS but appeared not to have been in contact with its command structure. Such attacks, often called “homegrown” or “lone-wolf” attacks in the media, had been explicitly encouraged by ISIS in its propaganda as a way to spread violence beyond the reach of its networks of militants.
ISIS affiliates in Libya
Outside of Iraq and Syria, ISIS-affiliated groups appeared to be most strongly established in North Africa. In Libya—fragmented by factional conflict after the deposal of Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011—ISIS established control of more than 100 miles (160 km) of coastline. The group claimed responsibility for a series of attacks and released videos in early 2014 showing purported ISIS fighters carrying out mass executions of Christian hostages from Egypt and Ethiopia. By mid-2015 ISIS had captured Sirte, a strategic city linking the eastern and western halves of Libya. Sirte was recaptured by Libyan forces in December 2016.
Islamic State–Khorasan Province
In January 2015 disaffected members of the TTP pledged allegiance to ISIS. They took on the name Islamic State–Khorasan Province (ISKP; also called ISIS-K), a moniker that referred in irredentist fashion to the historical region of Khorāsān in early Islamic history, and initially received guidance and support from ISIS during the latter’s peak. Some factions of the TTP, the Afghan Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which accused those groups of being more nationalist in outlook than universal, joined ISKP.
ISKP reached its peak in 2016, when its force numbered more than 3,000 fighters and enjoyed its greatest level of centralized command. Its leader, Hafiz Saeed Khan, was killed in August of that year; subsequent leaders were quickly killed or arrested. In 2017 the United States dropped its most powerful conventional weapon—the GBU-43/B MOAB bomb—to destroy a complex of caves and tunnels used by ISKP as its base. The group continued to diminish as it faced assault from U.S. forces, the Afghan government, and the Afghan Taliban. Nonetheless, instability left Afghanistan vulnerable to ISKP, and in August 2021 the group killed about 170 Afghans and 13 Americans outside the airport in Kabul as U.S. troops were evacuating refugees from the country.
Decline
By mid-2015 ISIS appeared to be wearing down under the strain of its simultaneous confrontations with Kurdish forces and their Western allies, pro-Assad Syrian forces, and Iraqi forces. Kurdish troops gradually consolidated their hold on the areas of northern Syria along the Turkish border and by early 2016 had drawn within striking distance of Al-Raqqah. Government forces also slowly regained lost territory in Iraq, retaking key cities including Al-Ramādī in December 2015 and Fallujah in July 2016.
Meanwhile, an escalating U.S.-led air campaign weakened ISIS’s grip on key strongholds, enabling local forces to recover. On July 9, 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived in Mosul, the largest city that ISIS had controlled, to announce that the city had been fully recaptured by Iraqi forces. In October the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced victory in Al-Raqqah, ISIS’s former capital. Assad’s forces continued to pressure ISIS, forcing them out of Deir al-Zour in November 2017. Later that same month both the Syrian and Iraqi governments declared ISIS defeated, though ISIS still held an insignificant amount of territory on the outskirts of Iraq and Syria. The group lost the last of its territorial holdings in March 2019 when the SDF liberated the Syrian village of Al-Bāghūz. On October 26, 2019, Baghdadi killed himself as U.S. forces closed in on him in Idlib governorate, Syria. Yet despite these existential setbacks for ISIS, thousands of fighters, affiliates, and sympathizers of the decentralized organization remained at large, and questions about the fate of those in detention lingered. Moreover, attacks continued, picking up significantly in 2024 as regional conflict involving Israel and the Iran-led Axis of Resistance weakened the Syrian government and enabled a resurgence of ISIS in the country.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica