Three attacks intensify concern about militants’ reach
Friday’s terrorist attacks appeared to have no connection in terms of tactic or target.
The beheading and failed attempt to blow up a chemical plant in France bore no operational resemblance to the suicide bombing of a mosque in Kuwait or the armed assault on a tourist-packed beach in Tunisia. Even so, the outbreak of violence was seen by counterterrorism officials and experts as part of an emerging pattern — each inspired by, if not directly attributable to, the Islamic State.
U.S. officials and experts said the nearly simultaneous eruptions of violence on three continents is likely to intensify anxieties about the Islamic State’s expanding reach.
The group is still seen as primarily focused on its regional ambitions in Iraq and Syria, where the Islamic State has maintained its grip on large tracts of territory despite recent military setbacks. U.S. officials have said that the organization seems far less driven to launch elaborate, overseas terror plots than al-Qaida and its affiliates.
But the Islamic State is also increasingly seen as the center of an expanding movement whose disparate elements range from the ranks of stray followers drawn by the group’s brand of extreme brutality to formal franchises in Libya and other countries where security has deteriorated.
“It’s become more diffuse geographically and dispersed ideologically,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. In some ways, Hoffman said, the amorphous nature of that network may make it more difficult to contain than alQaida, which has often exerted an almost corporatestyle control of regional franchises and terror plots.
U.S. officials say it’s too early to determine whether the attacks were coordinated by the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL.
“While we’re still working to determine whether the attacks were coordinated or directed by ISIL, they bear the hallmarks that have defined ISIL’s violent ideology,” a U.S. official said.
The suspect in France reportedly told authorities of his ties to the Islamic State, and a decapitated corpse has become one of the group’s grisly signatures. The organization claimed responsibility for the attack in Tunisia, where at least 39 people were killed. The Islamic State has drawn hundreds of recruits from that country. The mosque bombing in Kuwait was quickly claimed by an Islamic State affiliate.
U.S. officials and counterterrorism experts noted that all three incidents took place just days after a spokesman for the Islamic State urged followers to launch attacks during the month-long Muslim holiday Ramadan, and that the terror group may be seeking to mark the anniversary of its declaration of a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
“With the three attacks, you basically have three different agendas at work at the same time,” said Will McCants, an expert on militant Islamism at the Brookings Institution. “But what’s holding them together are people who are favorably disposed to the broader agenda of the Islamic State.”
A North African intelligence official said the geographically dispersed violence is also a signal to al-Qaida, its rival for influence among jihadists: “The message is: We can reach anywhere.”