Islamic State expanding beyond base, analysts warn

The Islamic State group is expanding beyond its base in Syria and Iraq to establish militant affiliates in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt and Libya, U.S. intelligence officials assert, raising the prospect of a new global war on terror.

Intelligence officials estimate that the group’s fighters number 20,000 to 31,500 in Syria and Iraq. Less formal pledges of support are coming from “probably at least a couple hundred extremists” in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Yemen, according to a U.S. counterterrorism official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in an assessment this month that the Islamic State, also known as ISIL, was “beginning to assemble a growing international footprint.” Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, echoed Stewart’s analysis in recent testimony before Congress.

Long conflict feared

But it is unclear how effective these affiliates are, or to what extent this is an opportunistic rebranding by some jihadist upstarts hoping to draft new members by playing off the notoriety of the Islamic State.

Critics fear such assessments will once again enmesh the United States in a protracted, hydraheaded conflict as President Obama appeals to Congress for new war powers to fight the Islamic State. “I’m loath to write another blank check justifying the use of American troops just about anywhere,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The sudden proliferation of Islamic State affiliates and loyalist fighters motivated the White House’s push to give Obama and his successor new authority to pursue the group wherever its followers emerge — just as he and President GeorgeW. Bush hunted al Qaeda franchises outside the group’s headquarters, first in Afghanistan and then in Pakistan, for the past decade.

“We don’t want anybody in ISIL to be left with the impression that if they move to some neighboring country, that they will be essentially in a safe haven and not within the range of United States capability,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, saidWednesday.

Al Qaeda used as model

The Islamic State began attracting pledges of allegiance from groups and individual fighters after it declared a caliphate, or religious state, in June 2014. Counterterrorism analysts say it is using al Qaeda’s franchise structure to expand its geographic reach, but without al Qaeda’s rigorous, multiyear application process. This could allow its franchises to grow faster, easier and farther.

The Islamic State’s attraction, even in the West, was proved when Amedy Coulibaly, one of the gunmen in the Paris terrorist attacks last month, declared allegiance to the group.

In Afghanistan last week, a U.S. drone strike killed a former Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and had recently begun recruiting fighters. But that pledge seemed to indicate less a major expansion of the Islamic State than a deepening of internal divisions in the Taliban.

Similarly, until recent- ly, leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen, used nonconfrontational language to mask simmering disagreements with the Islamic State and its head, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But tensions peaked in November, when a faction of al Qaeda fighters there swore loyalty to Baghdadi.

Although there is little or no public evidence that the Islamic State’s leaders in Syria and Iraq have practical control over its North African provinces, its influence is already apparent in their operations and is destabilizing the countries around them. A publication released by the central group this month included a photograph of fighters in Libya with its affiliate there parading 20 Egyptian Christian captives in the Islamic State’s trademark orange jumpsuits, indicating at least a degree of communication.

In Egypt, the Sinai extremist group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis sent emissaries to the Islamic State in Syria last year to seek financial support, weapons and tactical advice, according to Western officials briefed on classified intelligence reports.