The New York Times: The Islamic State... Its recent attacks in Iraq and Syria have caused a sign of its return

The New York Times says that evidence is increasing day by day of the re-emergence of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, three years after it lost its last regional foothold in the so-called caliphate.

The newspaper pointed

that the organization launched a series of complex attacks recently in both Syria and Iraq, indicating that it is re-emerging as a more serious threat three years after its expulsion.

She referred to the attack, which she described as daring, on a Syrian prison holding thousands of ISIS detainees, and to the series of strikes against the Iraqi military forces, and the spread of a video clip showing the beheading of a kidnapped Iraqi police officer.

The organization of the state is not finished

It quoted Kawa Hassan, director of the Middle East and North Africa at the Stimson Center - a think tank in Washington - as saying that these attacks are a wake-up call to regional players, and to players in Iraq and Syria that ISIS is not over yet, that the fighting is not over, and that it shows the organization's ability. To withstand the response at a time and place of his choosing.

The report indicated that the success of some of the attacks raised fears that some of the same conditions in Iraq that allowed the rise of the Islamic State in 2014 give way again for it to reconfigure.

He said the attacks in Iraq's remote mountainous and desert regions highlight the lack of coordination between Iraqi government forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces under the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, noting that many of them took place in a disputed area claimed by both the Iraqi Kurdish government and the central government.

A new generation of ISIS fighters

The report quoted Ardian Chaikovichi, director of the American Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Targeting and Resilience, as saying that many of the group's fighters who have been arrested in attacks since the group lost its last territory three years ago were younger and came from families with older members with ties to the organization.

If that's the case, Shaikovichi added, this is a new generation of ISIS recruits, changing the calculus and threats in a number of ways.

The report noted that Iraq struggled to deal with tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens who were relatives of ISIS fighters, and they were collectively punished and placed in detention camps that are now seen as fertile ground for "extremism."

Corruption of the Iraqi forces

He said that corruption in the Iraqi security forces left some bases in the country without proper supplies and allowed soldiers and officers to neglect their duties, which contributed to the collapse of entire army divisions that retreated in 2014 instead of facing the organization.

He explained that the fighting extended between a Kurdish-led militia backed by the United States and the Islamic State, on Tuesday, to neighborhoods around a besieged prison in northeastern Syria, which is at the center of the largest confrontation between the US military and the Islamic State in three years.

The US military joined the fight last Monday to support its allies in the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces against the organization, days after the organization attacked a temporary prison in the city of Hasaka in an attempt to free the organization's fighters held there.

The United States carried out airstrikes, provided intelligence, and ground forces in Bradley Fighting Vehicles helped cordon off the prison.

The biggest battle between the coalition and the Islamic State

The US-led coalition said that the battle for this prison is the biggest battle between US forces and ISIS since the group lost the last piece of land it seized in Syria in 2019.

At its peak, the Islamic State controlled a territory the size of Britain stretching between Iraq and Syria.

An estimated 40,000 foreigners - including children - have gone to Syria to fight or work for the caliphate, and thousands have brought their young children, and other children have been born there.

Many of the men in the prison, numbering about 3,500 fighters, some with lingering wounds, reflected the international appeal of the Islamic State. They hail from all over the world, and most of their countries have refused to take them back.

A separate part of the complex houses about 700 boys, children of suspected members of the organization, who were also captured as the group collapsed.