As goes its motto, The Islamic State is remaining and expanding. Even as the group faces growing military pressure in its core territories in Iraq and Syria, an increasing number of countries are facing the threat of Islamic State-affiliated groups within their own borders. Ultimately, this expansion is necessary to fulfilling the Islamic State’s fundamental goal: the establishment of an Islamic caliphate that extends across all Muslim lands—both past and present. Other than being an ideological imperative, expansion also serves various strategic purposes for both the Islamic State’s core and its various affiliates. Without expansion, the Islamic State ceases to exist.
The world has witnessed the spread of al Qaeda affiliates for years, and affiliates of the Islamic State represent a similar kind of threat. The global reach of the Islamic State’s message, however, means that its affiliates have spread much faster and have encouraged extreme levels of indiscriminate violence along the way.
While a narrative of violent extremism inspired by Osama bin Ladin may be the driving force behind the group, the Islamic State’s operations are often driven by opportunism. Groups like the Islamic State thrive in contexts of conflict and state failure. The Islamic State’s predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was born out of the Iraq War; the Islamic State was able to spread so rapidly across Syria and Iraq because of the violent fracturing of those societies. As such, the expansion of the Islamic State, in its various forms, has also occurred in states wracked by conflict, whether in Libya, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, Afghanistan, or Egypt.
Outside of its core territory in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State in Libya poses the most serious threat to regional and international security. The Libyan branch was actively established by Islamic State leadership in Iraq and Syria, who sent members of the Libyan Battar Brigade—which had been fighting in Islamic State core—back to Libya to form a Wilayah there. The group even deployed senior members—including Abu Nabil al-Anbari, an Iraqi former Baath party member—to oversee the development of the franchise. The power vacuum in Libya has allowed the Islamic State to seize territory along the central coast and establish its de facto capital in the city of Sirte. According to a U.S. intelligence estimate, the group has up to 6,000 fighters in Libya, many of whom are foreigners—and particularly Tunisians.
The Islamic State franchise in Libya has proven itself adept at both internal and external operations. Within Libya, the group has pursued control of smuggling routes and energy infrastructure in order to build an economic base. It has raided weapons stockpiles and may be in possession of advanced surface-to-air missiles. It has drawn extremist fighters away from other extremist groups such as Ansar al-Sharia in Libya and has coopted the Qadhafa tribe of former Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi. The Islamic State has also used Libya as a base to launch attacks against neighboring Tunisia—the attackers of the Bardo museum and the beach resort in Sousse all having received training in Islamic State camps in Libya. Within the last two weeks, Islamic State militants have even launched more conventional cross-border attacks against Tunisian security forces.
Outside of Libya, the Islamic State has capitalized on other unstable environments to expand its footprint. In some places this has meant accepting pledges of bay’ah (allegiance) from other violent extremist groups—such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and Ansar Beit al-Maqdis in the Sinai. These affiliate groups pose a severe threat to their respective regions, though Boko Haram and al-Shabaab have not seen their lethality enhanced by their pledge to the Islamic State. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, now known as Wilayet Sinai, is unique among the three; given its central geographic position, it has become a hub for smuggling weapons to Syria, as well as a fallback position for Islamic State leadership facing increasing pressure in Iraq and Syria.
The next tier of Islamic State affiliates are those in Yemen and Afghanistan, which coalesced from the local population of violent extremist fighters—with encouragement from representatives of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The group has a limited presence in both Afghanistan and Yemen, but both affiliates have increased their tempo of attacks in recent months. This has been particularly apparent in Yemen, where the Islamic State affiliate has been aggressively targeting government and security officials in the southern coastal city of Aden.
At the lowest end of the threat spectrum are the Islamic State’s loose affiliates in places such as Algeria, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. While these groups do not have the operational capacities of the larger affiliates, they remain dangerous nonetheless. The presence of groups that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, even if those groups have limited membership, represents a capacity for Islamic State core to direct attacks wherever they exist. A recent gun and grenade attack in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta demonstrates just how real that threat is. As long as the message remains strong, acts of violence will continue to be carried out worldwide in the name of the Islamic State.
