The deadly spate of terrorist attacks that have been connected to ISIS over the last week and throughout the holy month of Ramadan demonstrate the group’s deadly global reach even as it loses territory in Iraq and Syria.
As Ramadan draws to a close, attacks seemingly directed or inspired by ISIS have left hundreds dead as terrorists have brought violence and bloodshed into urban centers around the world. In May, ISIS had called for its followers to make Ramadan “a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers.” Over the last week alone, five countries — Turkey, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Iraq — have been hit by terrorist attacks either claimed by or linked to ISIS.
Colin Clarke, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation, said the “up-tempo they’ve maintained was pretty impressive.” He credited the increasing number of attacks to two major factors — Ramadan and the significant territorial losses ISIS has experienced recently. Take the victory in Fallujah over ISIS in June, Clarke said: “Look, nobody’s talking about that. Everybody’s talking about what’s happening elsewhere.”
Last Tuesday, three suicide bombers attacked the Istanbul Ataturk Airport, killing at least 45 people and wounding hundreds more. Turkish authorities linked the attack to ISIS and said the attackers were Russian, Uzbek and Kyrgyz. On the same day in Malaysia, according to local authorities, ISIS was responsible for a grenade attack at a bar in the town of Puchong.
On July 1, a standoff and hostage situation in a Dhaka café in Bangladesh ended after security forces shot dead the gunmen. At least 20 people were killed in the attack, which was claimed by ISIS. Bangladeshi police say they believe that the domestic terrorist group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh played a major role in organizing the attack, BBC reported. In Baghdad, Iraq, a suicide bombing on Sunday claimed by ISIS killed more than 200 people and left hundreds wounded in a busy shopping area in the Karada district.
The bloody week continued this Monday in Saudi Arabia, although no group has yet made a claim of responsibility for the three attacks in the Kingdom. Two of the attacks left only the respective suicide bomber dead, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency: An attacker killed just himself after he detonated explosives near the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, and in Qatif, a suicide bomber also only killed himself in an attempted attack on a Shiite mosque. But the suicide bombing outside one of Islam’s holiest sites — the Prophet’s Mosque in the city of Medina — killed four security guards.
“Three attacks in Saudi Arabia on one day in three cities demonstrates a jihadist infrastructure that is quite advanced,” Brookings’ Bruce Riedel, an expert on terrorism and a former national security adviser to four U.S. presidents, told The Cipher Brief in an email. “We have not seen anything like this in a decade. Striking at the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina is especially provocative.”
There have also been a number of foiled plots linked to ISIS throughout the holy month of Ramadan. On Monday, for instance, Kuwaiti officials said they thwarted an attack and arrested a number of suspects tied to ISIS.
And throughout Ramadan, attacks linked to or thought to be inspired by ISIS have hit other countries such Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, and the United States. As ISIS’ territorial future appears shaky, a return to the bombings and attacks that characterized the group’s actions when it was known as al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and before it seized land appears likely.
ISIS spokesperson Abu Mohammad al-Adnani has particularly been “downplaying the caliphate” territory recently and trying to emphasize the organization as a “transnational or global caliphate” with its roots as an insurgency, Clarke noted, in order to prepare its followers for even more significant losses on the battlefield. Since the group’s brand has been directly tied to its claim to the caliphate, one way ISIS has attempted to maintain their stature, even as it loses ground, has been to show it can direct or inspire attacks further afield, Clarke said.
Riedel, meanwhile, said he is “skeptical of the argument IS is attacking because it’s losing territory.”
“I think they are doing more terrorist attacks because their capacity is growing to stage operations in distant cities like Paris, Dhaka and Istanbul,” he told The Cipher Brief in an email. “Their tactics are evolving too. Two years ago it was kidnapping Americans and others, then it was inspiring lone wolves.”
Now, Riedel said, ISIS is using teams of terrorists — which he dubs “wolf packs” — operating in well-organized strikes that stretch far beyond its so-called state.
“The attacks in Dhaka and Istanbul demonstrated the Islamic State can strike outside the Arab World,” he said. “Both attacks used teams of terrorists determined to die for their cause, which is far more dangerous than the so called lone wolf attacks like the one in Orlando. Wolf pack attacks, as I call them, are an emerging ISIS trade mark first seen in Paris and Brussels. What's new is their capabilities outside the Middle East are improving.”
Clarke said he thinks it is likely the group will shift its operations wholesale to a failed state or ungoverned territory, such as Libya, to exploit a local conflict for its own benefit. And the varied ways ISIS can now conduct or claim attacks around the world — carrying out attacks themselves, ordering them directly, having fairly autonomous affiliates take action without direct prompting, or ISIS-motivated attacks — offers the terrorist organization further flexibility in the future, particularly with the loss of territory, he said.
“That’s a pretty diverse set of parameters that the group can use to conduct strikes all over the world,” Clarke said.
