The recent Mumbai knife attack, in which a 31-year-old man, Zaib Zubair Ansari, stabbed two security guards after allegedly asking them to recite the Kalma and attacking them when they couldn’t, was concerning for its ISIS influence. According to reports, the accused expressed a desire to join the Islamic State and had notes with words like ISIS and lone wolf at his residence. The ISIS imprint, though at low levels, shouldn’t be ignored. Although there has been an increase in arrests and crackdowns against ISIS networks over the past five years, India needs to assess ISIS’s emerging terror pattern more deeply and create a robust counter-terror mechanism that focuses not only on pre-emptive action but also on preventive action that holistically works on preventing the building of an environment conducive to ISIS propaganda, digital recruitment and deep, undetected small cells – a practice popular in key terror organizations like Pakistan-backed The Resistance Force (TRF) and once in Black September, a Palestinian militant organization.
The Same Design
Just last year, the Bondi Beach attack was quite similar, with ISIS-inspired gunmen opening fire on Jewish people at the beach. Similarly, a few years back, a 42-year-old US Army veteran, Shamsud Din Jabbar, crashed a Ford F-150 pickup truck into a crowd-packed street celebrating New Year’s in New Orleans, then exited the vehicle and opened fire on the crowd. According to reports, this attack resulted in the killing of at least 15 people and the injury of more than 30. This kind of lone-wolf attack on US soil came after almost eight years.
The last was in the 2017 New York City Truck Attack, where eight people were killed, and 12 were injured—ISIS then took the responsibility. However, since last year, the terror dynamics have changed, and this recent attack has perhaps indicated a dangerous shift in ISIS’s striking pattern.
ISIS Lone Wolf Attacks
ISIS exhibits a typical pattern of attacks—suicide bombings and lone wolf assaults, with the former being more frequent since the twin bombing in Iran in January of last year and the Moscow concert hall attack. Over the past year, ISIS has carried out high-intensity terror strikes, primarily through bombings, especially as its capabilities have diminished. The last reported lone wolf attack in a metropolitan area occurred the previous year in Solingen, Germany, where a Syrian ISIS member stabbed three men during a festival.
Similarly, two lone wolf attacks occurred in October 2023 in France and Belgium. The assessment indicates that ISIS was unable to carry out a deadly lone wolf attack in the West like the one in France in July 2016, where a truck ploughed into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day, resulting in 86 deaths and injuring 434 people.
Most ISIS strikes occurred in Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East, mainly involving suicide bombings or coordinated mass shootings. In Western countries, ISIS attacks were fewer and mostly consisted of stabbing incidents, which can be considered multiple attempts at lone wolf attacks or large-scale coordinated lone wolf assaults like those in Paris in November 2015 and July 2016.
ISIS Limited Capabilities
Since 2017, ISIS’s capabilities have started diminishing after the US intensified its counter-terrorism operations against ISIS. The US’s ongoing operation Inherent Resolve has achieved notable successes against ISIS, leading to significant losses in ISIS’s terrorist presence from 2017 to 19. In 2019, ISIS was defeated in Syria and Libya. In October 2019, the US killed ISIS Chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Operation Kayla Mueller. In 2023, the US killed several senior ISIS leaders and detained around 79 ISIS terrorists. US anti-ISIS operations have fragmented ISIS, at least eliminating its capabilities for over-the-horizon strikes targeting the West. This has resulted in a limited presence of ISIS in Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle Eastern region. In the past one or two years, high-intensity attacks have mainly occurred in these regions. The most significant decline happened when the US killed ISIS’s intelligence/foreign branch head Abu Muhammad al-Adnani in October 2016.
The killing of Adnani significantly affected ISIS’s striking and recruitment capabilities, limiting high-intensity strikes on Western soil. Multiple major blows to ISIS over five years, from 2016 to 2020, and again in 2023, weakened ISIS, but the potential for a resurgence was not taken seriously. The patterns also suggest that whenever ISIS’s influence is seen to be dwindling, it has tried to send a message to the West by carrying out high-intensity terror attacks in West Africa or Middle Eastern countries. Most recently, just a few months ago, the US carried out a series of air strikes on ISIS strongholds in West Africa and Syria under an operation codenamed Hawkeye Strike, which resulted in significant damage to ISIS’s presence and key infrastructure.
ISIS Resurgence And Shift In Pattern
The US-led coalition against ISIS has intensified its operations against the organisation’s limited and fragmented presence for a year, conducting 200 missions against Daesh since January 2024. According to reports, the US-led forces have killed 44 ISIS terrorists and detained around 166. Despite intensified operations, the organisation maintains a tight grip on its fragmented network and has attempted to capitalise on various opportunities to resurge. Three primary reasons have contributed to the periodic resurgence of Daesh.
1-US shifting focus on Iran due to ongoing war
2- Increased destabilisation in Syria and West Africa, and eventual fall of the Syrian Government
3- ISIS’s Khorasan’s increasing freedom of operation in South and Central Asia, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan(Mosque blast a few months back).
These three reasons have directly or indirectly facilitated ISIS’s regrouping at the regional level, providing the outfit with occasional opportunities to carry out low-intensity terror strikes worldwide. The fall of the Assad government last year and the mobilisation of various Islamic coalitions in Syria have given ISIS, especially Khorasanis, a window to resurgence and to enhance their capabilities to strike. However, the resurgence factor is not the only concern; a potential shift in ISIS’s striking pattern could also be significant and worrisome, enabling Daesh to demonstrate its capabilities while managing its resurgence.
Shift in Striking Pattern
ISIS terror strikes can be classified into three patterns. The first is direct, in which ISIS carries out attacks. The second involves ISIS enabling an attack and indirectly participating, as seen in the 2015 Texas attack, where one attacker who opened fire at a community centre was in contact with ISIS through encrypted texts.
Third is Inspired, where individuals carry out lone wolf attacks on their own after becoming self-radicalised through ISIS online propaganda, such as the 2016 France attack, in which a self-radicalised man drove a vehicle into a crowd and opened fire, killing 80 people and injuring around four hundred. Later, ISIS claimed responsibility, but the driver had no direct link to ISIS. A critical incident was the 2017 Stockholm attack, where a similar vehicle ramming occurred by a self-radicalised man who was later arrested; in this case, however, ISIS did not claim responsibility. During 2017, ISIS was under intense pressure, and its presence and capabilities were significantly weakened, helping US-led coalition forces to defeat ISIS in Iraq by the end of the year.
Similarly, ISIS is once again under pressure in Syria from US air strikes, while seeking opportunities to resurge. In such a situation, it can be argued that ISIS may have resorted to enhancing online propaganda and carrying out inspired attacks without direct involvement.
The reason for such a change in Daesh’s striking pattern is to ensure resurgence and maintain limited strike capabilities without exposing itself, thereby avoiding an immediate retaliatory and offensive response from the US, which could harm Daesh’s chances of resurging in Syria and elsewhere. If left unchecked, a new wave of ISIS terror could emerge, potentially being dangerously lethal because the detection of such inspired attacks is quite minimal.
