Islamic State wanes, but terror threats rise

WASHINGTON — In Germany and France, authorities thwarted terrorists’ plots to attack with the deadly poison ricin. In eastern Syria, the Islamic State group continued its retreat under stepped-up assaults by Kurdish militia and Iraqi pilots. And extremists in Yemen, Somalia and Libya were targeted by U.S. airstrikes.

That spate of action, over the past few weeks alone, illustrates the shifting and enduring threat from Islamic extremism around the world that will last long after the Islamic State is defeated on the battlefield.

From the scheming of lone extremists with no apparent connections to terrorist groups, like the ricin plots, to fighters aligned with the Islamic State or al-Qaida in more than two dozen countries, terrorist threats are as complex and diverse as ever, U.S. and other Western intelligence officials said in interviews.

The Islamic State, in particular, is adapting to setbacks and increasingly using the tools of globalization — including bitcoin and encrypted communications — to take their fight underground and rally adherents around the world.

“If you look across the globe, the cohesive nature of the enterprise for ISIS has been maintained,” Russell Travers, acting head of the National Counterterrorism Center, said, using another name for the Islamic State.

“There’s not been any breaking up,” Travers said. “The message continues to resonate with way too many people.”

The Pentagon’s latest defense strategy elevates Russia and China above terrorism in the hierarchy of national threats. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met late last month with the four-star commanders of U.S. Special Operations forces and troops in Africa to discuss options for halving the number of counterterrorism forces on the continent over the next three years, and assigning them new missions.

Yet many counterterrorism specialists voiced concern that refocusing resources and political capital could go too far and give violent extremists time and space to regroup and rebound — much as the Islamic State did in 2013, emerging from the ashes of al-Qaida in Iraq.