ISIS’ global reach
Our view: As terrorists devise new strategies and tactics, the U.S. and its partners must develop a much closer collaboration
The recent string of deadly suicide attacks inspired by the Islamic State that killed hundreds of people in Iraq, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Turkey show that despite its recent losses of territory in the Middle East, the group is still capable of sowing havoc around the globe. ISIS is changing its strategy to make up for its deteriorating situation on the battlefield, and the U.S. needs to increase pressure on the group to keep up with its shifting tactics.
Although U.S. airstrikes, intelligence and logistics support for local forces on the ground have squeezed ISIS out of 20 percent of the territory it once controlled along the Syrian-Iraq border, defeating the group ultimately will require a multifaceted military, diplomatic and economic offensive that the Obama administration and its international partners have yet to fully implement. Among key elements that must be addressed are better mechanisms for gathering and sharing intelligence, more effective ways of tracking terrorists before they strike and cyber warfare operations to disrupt ISIS’ propaganda and recruiting efforts online.
Attacking ISIS’ online presence is especially important because the group may try to compensate for losses in Iraq and Syria by encouraging radicalized followers elsewhere to strike targets that demonstrate it is still a force to be reckoned with. Investigators already suspect that several recent bombings and shootings for which ISIS has claimed responsibility were actually carried out by “lone wolf” sympathizers acting on their own — unstable individuals like the shooter in the Orlando nightclub attack last month who had little or no direct contact with the group’s headquarters but pledged allegiance to it while carrying out his massacre. That made it nearly impossible for intelligence agencies to spot him before it was too late.
At the same time there’s a growing danger that ISIS’ “lone wolf” attacks could morph into even more dangerous “wolf packs” — groups of radicalized individuals who conspire with friends or relatives to strike targets with multiple attackers. In Orlando the lone gunman was able to kill dozens of people and hold scores of hostages for hours before he was shot by police. Had there been even one or two more gunmen acting in concert with him, the death toll undoubtedly would have been much higher. The recent attack on a restaurant in Bangladesh by a group of upper-class young men who had been radicalized online bore all the hallmarks of such a “wolf-pack” operation.
Coordinating the effort against ISIS will require the U.S. to redouble its efforts to hold together the fractious coalition it has assembled, whose members often seem more interested in A Bangladeshi woman holds her smartphone with a photograph of her missing son, who worked at a cafe that was the scene of an attack and seige in Dhaka. pursuing their own narrow interests than in defeating the terrorists. Until last month, when ISIS suicide bombers killed scores of travelers at the Istanbul airport, Turkey was far more eager to strike Kurdish separatists along its border than to attack ISIS, even though the Kurdish militiamen have been some of most effective fighters against the group.
Similarly, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia all deeply distrust each other despite their mutual loathing for ISIS. And Pakistan has long played a double game by supporting Taliban extremists on its own soil with a wink and a nod while professing to oppose terrorists with identical agendas elsewhere. All those tensions have been exacerbated by the seemingly never-ending war in Syria, whose patchwork of ethnic and sectarian antagonisms has made the conflict resemble a war of all against all.
One would think that last week’s horrific attacks in Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq and Saudi Arabia would be enough to convince governments there and in the West that they need to band together in the fight against ISIS. The group has shown over and over again that it is as willing to shed the blood of fellow Muslims as it is willing to slaughter Westerners. It is a global menace that demands a global response.
The U.S. could start to overcome the ethnic, sectarian and geopolitical interests that divide its partners by urging them to at least create a unified command-and-control structure. It is clear from the latest string of attacks that much of what they are doing now is ineffective or counterproductive.