Important Takeaways:

• Branches make gains in Africa, Middle East, and reach out to U.S. sympathizers
• Behind the ISIS-inspired assault in New Orleans on New Year’s Day is a disturbing reality: Military officials and national security insiders fear a perfect storm is forming around the world that could lead to more deadly terrorist attacks in the U.S.
• Even before U.S. Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar killed 14 New Year’s revelers by driving a vehicle into a crowd on Bourbon Street, a growing consensus in foreign policy circles acknowledged that conditions were ripe for an Islamic State resurgence abroad and a new pool of recruits in the U.S., Europe and Asia willing to carry out acts of violence.
• The more territory the group controls and the safer its leaders feel from attack, the easier it is to coordinate recruiting efforts online, teach would-be terrorists how to build bombs or map out jihadi missions around the globe.
• U.S. and international officials warn that weak central governments are ill-equipped to stop it.
• In Afghanistan, the Islamic State’s local affiliate organization, ISIS-K, has dramatically expanded its reach since U.S. troops withdrew in August 2021.
• The most immediate threat to the U.S. seems to emanate from Syria, where a surprise rebel offensive overthrew the government of longtime dictator Bashar Assad last month. The U.S. quietly increased the number of troops in Syria from 900 to about 2,000 during the regime’s collapse and carried out strikes against ISIS fighters who set up shop in areas once controlled by Mr. Assad’s forces and their Russian allies.
• With an untested rebel force now governing in Damascus, the door may be open for neighboring Turkey to pursue Kurdish rebels who have been key U.S. partners for the past decade in the war against ISIS.
• “We’re going to see a lot more Islamic State and copycat attacks,” said former Defense Department official Michael Rubin, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “The Islamic State is on the rebound, and tens of thousands of its militants might soon go free if Turkey or their proxies overwhelm the camp where Kurds keep them under guard in northeastern Syria
• “If ISIS goes free in Syria, don’t expect them to remain there,” Mr. Rubin told The Washington Times.
• “It would just be a matter of time until they began crossing the southern border or, for that matter, the northern border with Canada.”

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