PARIS: What remains of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, could gain new life after Bashar al-Assad’s fall, potentially claiming territory and freeing its fighters in the Kurdish-controlled northeast.
IS has long flourished in conditions of war or uncertainty, often on the territory of failing states.
Its fighters are for now holed up in small cells spread across the eastern Syrian desert – with their survival already marking a win in the face of the defunct Assad leadership’s weak grip on the region.
A chaotic political transition following the bloody half-century of the dynasty’s rule and 13 years of civil war could offer the scattered jihadists benefits.
“Chaos and anarchy will inevitably be a boon to Islamic State, which has been biding its time, slowly and steadily rebuilding its networks throughout the country,” said Colin Clark, research director at the New York-based Soufan Center.
Apparently scenting danger in the light of Assad’s ouster at the weekend, US Central Command – responsible for operations in the Middle East – said on Sunday (Dec 8) it had launched air strikes against more than 75 IS targets.
IS’ own official weekly Al-Naba wrote in its latest edition that it would accept no new government in Damascus unless the group itself was in charge.
Unlike the IS “caliphate” that stretched across parts of Iraq and Syria from 2014 to 2019, the aim of the separate Islamist rebels who ousted Assad “is to create a civil and democratic state, far removed from its project of a state built on syariah”, or Islamic law, said Laurence Bindner, co-founder of the JOS Project which tracks extremist propaganda online.
By contrast, IS jihadists “present themselves as the only viable alternative that would impose respect for religious principles while opposing foreign interests”, Bindner told AFP.
She pointed out that IS harshly criticises the victorious rebels’ appeals for peaceful coexistence with religious minorities such as Alawites, Yazidis and Christians, which represent “the opposite of its radical vision”.
