He knows how to take advantage of chaos, and the uncertainty over Syria’s future could, in theory, become a boon for him. Can ISIS take advantage of the fall of Bashar al-Assad to reconstitute its forces? If its ideology persists beyond the Syrian borders, the terrorist group today seems too weakened, from a territorial, material or political point of view, to represent an immediate threat.
Notably because its worst enemy, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), came to the head of the country by presenting itself as the main alternative to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. And “in HTS prisons, the most radical enemies are the members of ISIS,” explains François Burgat, former director of the Middle East Institute in Damascus. “IS places the oppressive Assad regime on the same level as the “democratic system” (sic) that HTS would like to establish,” adds Laurence Bindner, co-founder of the JOS Project, a platform for analyzing online extremism.
A dispersed entity
Since the destruction of its caliphate and the last pocket of its territorial influence in 2017, Daesh has not been eliminated, but largely weakened. Of the 20,000 to 30,000 fighters still active in 2018, there are only 3,000 to 5,000 left, according to a United Nations report published in January 2024. Jihadists “largely driven out,” says Jenny Raflik, professor of international relations at Nantes University, and scattered across the vast Badia desert, which extends to Iraq in is. They do not have territory like the Kurds or HTS may have in this shattered Syria, but a few pockets in the center of the country.
In addition to these several thousand jihadists, around 9,000 veterans, women and children, populate Kurdish prisons in northeast Syria. Among them, “more than 70” French people, according to the resigning Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, whom the State refuses to repatriate.
A weakened activity
Always armed, the few bastions united behind the black flag of the jihadist group mainly have “guerrilla and harassment activity”, according to Jenny Raflik. Before the surprise overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s government, they mainly carried out destruction of strategic sites such as pipelines or even raids against positions of the former Syrian government. Their most intense fights in recent years have been against HTS. “The group is leading a low-intensity insurgency, but has significantly increased the number of attacks in 2024 compared to 2023,” specifies Laurence Bindner.
With recent events, they have been able to take advantage of some loopholes and territories abandoned by the regime. Like last December 6, when cells took control of areas in the Syrian desert of Deirezzor, reports a Kurdish activist based in Germany who writes under the pseudonym Scharo Maroof. The day before, ISIS members claimed to have taken control of new areas southeast of the city of Homs after clashes with the Syrian army. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) also reported on Tuesday the execution of 54 fleeing Syrian soldiers.
Limited room for maneuver
The presence of ISIS in Syria therefore represents a risk: that of an attempt to destabilize HTS and a fragile Syrian society. It would rely on “their usual strategy of inciting terror, violence, creating chaos and attempting to establish an atmosphere of civil war between minorities. All to get them to turn to them as the ultimate solution, in accordance with the strategy recommended in the book. Management of Barbary who guides their action,” warns Jenny Raflik. “IS strongly criticizes calls for coexistence with religious minorities, in total opposition to its ideology,” adds Laurence Bindner.
If “chaos and anarchy will inevitably constitute a boon for ISIS,” said Colin Clarke, scientific director of the Soufan Center in New York, to AFP, their room for maneuver seems limited because they are also weakened politically by the rise of HTS.
Our file on Syria
“They no longer have a stake in the rebel dynamic in Syria, they have become very marginal, very extremist,” analyzes François Burgat. “The political resources of extremism have value when political institutions are blocked. But when these start to function again, the extremes become extremes again and are less likely to prosper,” he explains. Especially since the West, and the Americans in the lead, do not intend to give them the slightest opportunity. Washington thus carried out “dozens of airstrikes” on “more than 75 targets” of Daesh on Sunday. A “very significant intervention which attests to the firmness of the United States in not giving the slightest breathing space to the IS to reconstitute itself”, estimates Laurence Bindner.