SIS is not over

An audacious attack on a prison housing thousands of former ISIS fighters in Syria that swelled into the biggest confrontation in years between ISIS and the U.S. military and its allies. A series of deadly strikes against military forces in neighboring Iraq. And, in December, a horrific video that showed the beheading of an Iraqi police officer.

 

Evidence of a resurgence of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is mounting by the day, nearly three years after the militants lost the last patch of territory of their so-called caliphate, which once stretched across both countries. Many of the attacks have taken place in disputed territory claimed by both the Iraqi Kurdish government and Iraq’s central government.

 

The attacks in Iraq have also highlighted a lack of coordination between Iraqi government forces and the Peshmerga, the forces of the Iraqi Kurdistan region. Iraq has also struggled to deal with Iraqi citizens who are relatives of ISIS fighters and who have been placed in detention camps — which are now feared to be breeding grounds for radicalization.

 

Analysis: “It’s a wake-up call for regional players, for national players, that ISIS is not over, that the fight is not over,” said Kawa Hassan of the Stimson Center, a Washington research institute. “It shows the resilience of ISIS to strike back at the time and place of their choosing.”