According to experts, the collapse of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is giving rise to a group of successor groups, which are rapidly gathering, recruiting members and launching increasingly sophisticated attacks against government forces.
A military victory in the war against ISIS was officially declared by the Iraqi government in December of last year. In recent weeks, US President Donald Trump reiterated his government statement that US forces are "tearing ISIS apart". The Sunni militant group, which became famous in 2014 after having conquered much of Syria and north-western Iraq, is clearly in retreat, having lost all the major urban centers that it used to control. However, the collapse of the organization has led to the emergence of numerous insurgent groups that are rapidly forming in Iraq and Syria.
Many of these highly agile groups operate in the sparsely populated and uninhabited southern district of the Iraqi Kurdish region, which includes the Hamrin Mountains. Others are found in the arid regions of Iraq west of the Euphrates. All are engaged in recruiting, propaganda and, increasingly, attacks on government forces and rival Shiite militias. BuzzFeed's Turkish Middle East correspondent Borzou Daragahi on Sunday profiled one such group, the so-called White Flags. The group was formed in late 2017 by the union of two ISIS commanders, Khaled al-Moradi, an Iraqi Turkmen and Hiwa Chor, a former member of Ansar al-Islam and a predominantly Kurdish jihadist group that was active in the north of Iraq after 2003. Daragahi notes that the White Flags have managed to carry out strikes in Baghdad and Kirkuk, and have repeatedly ambushed Iraqi government forces and members of Shia militias. Senior White Flag members have been involved with ISIS for years and have "a vast repertoire of experience and a high level of training," says Daragahi. They are one of several post-ISIS armed groups that recruit members of the Sunni Arab minority, while promising to protect them from the wrath of the almost exclusively Shiite Iraqi government.
In a separate but correlated development, two analysts at the British government's communications headquarters - the country's primary communications interception agency - have warned that ISIS remains a "significant threat" to the West. The two analysts spoke on British television Sky News, using only their first name, Ben and Sunny. They recognized that ISIS has lost much of its territory in recent months, but warned that it continues to be "a credible and dangerous opponent", mainly due to its technological dexterity. ISIS operational planners "pushed the bar and raised the level" in terms of "technology they used and the ways they used it," said one of the analysts, adding that British intelligence agencies must continue to adapt their techniques to stay "one step ahead" to ISIS operators. The danger now is the use of chemical weapons in urban centers, British analysts say.